Chapter 2—
The Irish Architectonics of Ulysses:
Symbolic Structures from The Book of Invasions

HILDA: Oh, it was so gloriously thrilling! I couldn't have believed there was a builder in the whole world that could have built such a tremendously high tower. And then, that you yourself should stand at the very top of it, as large as life! And that you shouldn't be the least bit dizzy!. . .

HILDA: Why don't you call yourself an architect, like the others?

SOLNESS: I haven't been systematically enough taught for that. Most of what I know, I've found out for myself.

HILDA: But you succeeded all the same.

Ibsen, The Master Builder

Symbolic structures in Ulysses —the phrase conjures up images of a wily, battle-scarred veteran of Troy afoot in Dublin, a woman weaving and unweaving a tapestry of thoughts, a son looking for (or perhaps not looking for) a father, bronze-by-gold sirens, a surly nationalist of a cyclops, and all the rest of those determinations that go back to Joyce's old chapter headings for Ulysses and Stuart Gilbert's study, symbolic elements linked

by the architectonics of the Odyssey .^[1] Gilbert's book was immensely useful in helping general readers and critics alike to understand Ulysses in the early decades after the publication of the book, but the view of Ulysses that Joyce fostered and Gilbert disseminated has in many ways narrowed critical investigation and interposed itself between readers and the text. The Homeric parallels popularized by Gilbert have served to restrict critical reception of Ulysses in no area more than that of its symbolic structures and its architectonics.

The commonly accepted symbolic values for Bloom, Stephen, and Molly all come from European tradition as a whole: there is nothing particularly Irish about them. The established approach to the symbolism and architectonics of Ulysses reflects the predilection of the critical establishment to see Joyce as a European writer rather than an Irish one; accordingly, his cosmopolitan spirit is stressed, his disdain for the Anglo-Irish literary revival and Irish nationalism celebrated. We are told that Joyce's books "are of Irishmen and by an Irishman, but not for Irishmen" (Levin, James Joyce 6). I do not wish to dispute Joyce's cosmopolitan spirit or the established symbolic interpretations of Bloom, Stephen, or Molly; instead, I would like to suggest that these values are incomplete. We must reconsider the notion that Joyce's books are not "for Irishmen," particularly in light of the advice Joyce gave Arthur Power in 1921 while finishing Ulysses: "You are an Irishman and you must write in your own tradition. Borrowed styles are no good. You must write what is in your blood and not what is in your brain." When Power objected that he was tired of nationality and wanted to be international, like all the great writers, Joyce countered, "They were national first, and it was the intensity of their own nationalism which made them international in the end" (Power, From the Old Waterford House 64–65; cf. JJ 2 505). European elements of Joyce's symbolism and architectonics in Ulysses are correct so far as they go, but the European values for Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Tweedy Bloom are harmonics. The dominant of the symbolism behind their identities and their relationships is Irish and comes from Irish tradition.

It has become a somewhat procrustean commonplace to observe that Joyce's writings meld nineteenth-century realism and the symbolist re-

[1] For the argument that Stephen is trying to "get clear" of all fathers, see Kenner, "Ulysses" 10–19.

action to realism. To generalize somewhat, if we accept the prevailing critical view that the symbolism in Ulysses is European, particularly Greek, then the Irish elements in the book presumably must be naturalistic. But if Joyce's writings are to be set in the context of Irish tradition, the question of this balance of symbolism and realism in Ulysses must be reopened. Why is the Irish Ulysses—Leopold Bloom—a Jew? Why is his "son" a Greek named Stephen Dedalus? Why is his wife, Molly, from Gibraltar? In what sense are these three characters in James Joyce's tradition, of his "blood" rather than his "brain"? The explanations of these apparent anomalies not covered by the Homeric parallels are also commonly made in terms of European symbol systems or an ingenuous realism. It is said that Bloom was modeled on specific Jews whom Joyce had met in Dublin or elsewhere (JJ 2 197, 230, 374–75, 430; Hyman 167–92), and critics point out that the character evokes the legend of the Wandering Jew.^[2] As a Jew, Bloom is seen as a universal metropolitan hero "equally at home and ill at ease in any city of the world" (Levin, James Joyce 84). Stephen Dedalus, by contrast, is at once rational Greek, master artisan, Christian martyr, and emblem of Dublin. His name is "the wedge by which symbolism enters" A Portrait of the Artist (Levin, James Joyce 46), and that symbolism carries over into Ulysses as well. Finally, Molly's youth in Gibraltar captures the ironic Irish presence in the British army; her Mediterranean origin infuses passion and profusion, fertility and sensuality, into the clammy climate of Dublin.

Let us consider the realism in all this. Not one of these characters has a typical Irish name, not one is from the oldest native families of Ireland—families whose clan is signaled by "mac" or "ó." Why do the main characters of Ulysses, particularly Bloom as the Irish Everyman, not come from modern Irish stock with common Irish names? Why is each alienated in some way from Irish culture?^[3] Is this constellation of characters plausible in any naturalistic sense? Hugh Kenner notes the incongruity in Bloom's coming from an immigrant family in a "country whose

[2] This legend was widely known in Anglo-Irish circles, for it formed the basis of Charles Robert Maturin's popular three-volume novel Melmoth the Wanderer, published in 1820. Maturin, a relative of Speranza and Oscar Wilde, was curate of St. Peter's, Dublin. An edition of Melmoth with a biographical essay about the author appeared in 1892, and Joyce refers to Maturin in Finnegans Wake 335.34–35.

[3] For some thematic values of the characters' alienation, see the discussion in Hyman 178–80, as well as the references cited there.

citizens characteristically emigrate" ("Ulysses" 71; cf. Hyman 183). In the text of Ulysses Joyce even signals the difficulty of accepting Leopold Bloom as an immigrant and a Jew in a realistic sense with Deasy's bigoted joke that Ireland is the only country never to have persecuted the Jews "because she never let them in" (2.442). We might pursue this problem by asking why Bloom's "Jewishness" causes relatively little comment within the framework of the book, the scene with the Citizen notwithstanding, and why Bloom knows relatively little about Jewish culture. Indeed, Bloom is so ignorant about "the faith of his fathers" that Jewishness becomes the decor rather than the substance of his world.^[4]

These are some of the problems of the "realism" of Ulysses, particularly if it is to be viewed as the Irish element of the book. The fact that these questions are so seldom raised should remind us of how strongly readers and critics of Joyce's work are influenced by the prevailing European symbolic interpretations of the identities of the main characters of Ulysses even when the symbolic values contravene naturalism

i. The Erigenating Hierarchitectitiptitoploftical Framework of Ulysses : Joyce's Refraction of The Book of Invasions

If Joyce is to be taken seriously as an Irishman, the possibility that his primal symbol systems may be Irish must be considered. In particular, we must examine native Irish literature for correlates to his work when realism breaks down, as it does in the case of the configuration of the main characters in Ulysses. Taken one by one, Joyce's main characters in Ulysses are plausibly explained in terms of the shared symbolism of European literary tradition. As a system, however, Joyce's characters have no parallel in European literature; taken together, the three main characters point to a more unified source than European literature can provide. The interface of Stephen, Bloom, and Molly is Irish because Joyce's constellation of characters in Ulysses —a Greek, an ersatz Jew, and a lady from Spain—is based on the mythic structures of Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Taking of Ireland), generally known in English as The Book of Invasions.

[4] A discussion of the actual background of Irish Jews is found in Hyman.

The Book of Invasions contains the pseudohistory of Ireland: the traditional history of Ireland before A.D. 432, the usual date for the coming of Patrick and the beginning of written history in Ireland. Its prototype was probably composed in the seventh century to fill in the gap for Ireland in such standard late Roman universal histories as those by Origen and Eusebius. Though the story apparently was originally restricted to the account of the postdiluvian history of the Milesians, supposed ancestors of the Goidelic stock in Ireland, it was opened up at an early period to include bits of cosmogony and old myth. Eventually it came to contain the "history" of Ireland since the Creation, giving accounts of several conquests of Ireland before and after the Flood and culminating in the invasion of the sons of Mil.^[5]

The Book of Invasions and its associated kinglist became the matrix for the rest of Irish history and literature; and as the organizing referent for Irish tradition, it stands in initial position in the great twelfth-century manuscript the Book of Leinster, a compendium of Irish narratives and histories, genealogies, and learned poetry. By the seventeenth century the contents of The Book of Invasions were presupposed or distilled in most native Irish historical materials from the Annals of the Four Masters to Geoffrey Keating's History of Ireland . In 1861 Eugene O'Curry felt obliged to spend little time explaining The Book of Invasions to his English-speaking Irish audience; he notes in his Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History , "The Milesian history is pretty generally known, and has been much canvassed by the writers of the last 150 years" (446). In the nineteenth century the story of the Milesians was promoted by scholars and popularizers alike, from precursors of the Anglo-Irish literary revival like Standish O'Grady to writers of school history books. Elements of The Book of Invasions are still part of popular history among the Irish and Irish-Americans as well.

The relevant features of The Book of Invasions for the symbolism and the architectonics of Ulysses can be summarized as follows.

There are six invasions of Ireland. The first two groups of invaders are wiped out and leave essentially no survivors. The third, fourth, and fifth—those of

[5] The Book of Invasions survives in four recensions, which have been edited in two series: R. A. S. Macalister and John MacNeill, eds., Leabhar Gabhála, The Book of Conquests of Ireland, The Recension of Micheál Ó Cléirigh ; and R. A. S. Macalister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn, The Book of the Taking of Ireland, 5 vols.

Nemed, the Fir Bolg, and the Tuatha De Danann, respectively—come from Scythian Greek stock. The Nemedian invasion is eventually abandoned because of opposition and difficulties from the Fomorians, a chaotic and oppressive race of marauders. The Nemedian invasion is succeeded by that of the Fir Bolg, who are in turn overcome by the Tuatha De Danann. Though these three groups are related genealogically, their characters and experiences differ widely. The Fir Bolg are subjugated and become laborers in Greece, while the Tuatha De Danann become skilled in lore, crafts, and hidden knowledge. The Tuatha De Danann become allies of the Athenians before departing for Ireland.

Meanwhile the Goidels—descendants of Noah, of course, and genealogically related to their predecessors in Ireland—are involved in building the Tower of Babel. After that architectural disaster, they establish a language school, becoming language teachers with a specialty in Hebrew and Irish (which is constructed from all the languages that come into existence after Babel). They are invited to Egypt at the time of the pharaohs because of their erudition. Their leader, Nel, is given Scota, the daughter of the pharaoh, as wife. The Goidels become sympathizers of Moses and aid the Israelites in their flight from Egypt. Moses is grateful for their help and offers the Goidels a place in the Promised Land should they care to accompany the Hebrews. However, the Goidels decline Moses's offer. After some years the Goidels are expelled from Egypt in revenge for aiding the Israelites. They undertake various travels (including a second sojourn in Egypt, during which their leader Mil marries the pharaoh's daughter). Eventually they go to Spain, where they make conquests, settle down, and take wives. While in Spain the Goidels see Ireland from a high tower and decide to go there. After various struggles with their predecessors in Ireland (the Tuatha De Danann), the Goidels (or Milesians) defeat the Tuatha De and arrange a settlement with them—the Milesians get the upper half of Ireland, and the Tuatha De get the half below ground.^[6]

The Book of Invasions is in itself a fascinating subject. It depends on the medieval circular map of the world (which explains the somewhat bizarre geographical course of the Milesians and the contiguity of Spain and Ireland), the medieval tradition of the seven wonders of the world (which included the Roman pharos at Corunna from which the Milesians sight Ireland), and much more. It also cheerfully assumes that Ireland is the

[6] Because the story survives in four recensions and countless retellings, details vary from text to text. The summary here is a schematic based on the outline common to most versions.

second Promised Land and that the Irish language is second only to Hebrew in its purity and sacredness.^[7]

There is ample evidence that James Joyce knew the main lines of The Book of Invasions. In the text of Ulysses there are direct references to the Milesians, including a reference to Milesius (12.1310), an allusion to the Milesian facility in Hebrew and a synopsis of the passages in The Book of Invasions related to the language school of Fenius Farsaigh (17.748ff.), and a naming of the Milesians as the Clan Milly (14.371), as well as a reference to Balor (12.197–98). In addition to the internal evidence in Ulysses, there are references to the framework of The Book of Invasions in Joyce's other writings. The Book of Invasions figures explicitly in A Portrait of the Artist, for example, when Stephen sees Davin as a "rude Firbolg" and Thomas Moore, the national poet, is described as "a Firbolg in the borrowed cloak of a Milesian" (180); and Finnegans Wake is larded with allusions to the story (e.g., 15.5ff., 86.15, 130.4, 144.12ff., 219.11, 309.11, 381.03ff., 601.36).^[8]

The Book of Invasions stands as the epitome of an early Irish narrative whose sources were overdetermined for Joyce.^[9] Even had Joyce read nothing about The Book of Invasions, he would have been familiar with the main outlines of the story from oral sources; discourse about Milesians and Tuatha De Danann, Fir Bolgs and Fomorians, was part of daily life.^[10] The popular periodicals of Joyce's youth are full of allusions to The Book of Invasions and summaries of its pseudohistorical scheme. In addition to popular and oral sources, Joyce had several written sources for his material related to The Book of Invasions. In 1920 Joyce's library included William Francis Collier's History of Ireland for Schools (Ellmann, Consciousness of Joyce 105; Gillespie #111), a school history that opens with a summary of The Book of Invasions ; it is likely that Joyce chose to own Collier's school book as he was writing Ulysses precisely because he had

[7] For a discussion of some of these elements, see Kelleher, "Humor in the Ulster Saga" 35–38.

[8] References are found elsewhere in Joyce's critical writing as well; see, for example, CW 166.

[9] John Kelleher writes, "It would be as pointless to try to determine where Joyce got his knowledge of Lebor Gabála , or how much of it he knew or in what detail, as it would be to attempt to ascertain how an American writer learned about the first Thanksgiving, Pocahontas, and George Washington's cherry tree" (quoted in French 281).

[10] Oliver Gogarty had accused Joyce himself of having Fir Bolg melancholy and needing to be roused to Attic joy (JJ 2 118).

used this book early in life during his schooldays and wished to have it as a reference while he worked.^[11] Joyce had also read at least one scholarly source on the topic, Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville's Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology, R. I. Best's translation of which had been serialized in 1901–2 in the United Irishman, which Joyce read regularly (see below ch. 7); d'Arbois de Jubainville's study includes a close and detailed examination of the materials in The Book of Invasions. Still another likely textual source is P. W. Joyce's Concise History of Ireland, which Gilbert cites (65), presumably at James Joyce's behest; this volume, initially published in 1893, was in its twenty-fourth edition in 1920 and contains material similar to the author's Illustrated History of Ireland, which James Joyce owned in 1939, again presumably because he had known versions of P. W. Joyce's history since his youth.^[12]

The Book of Invasions is used only in a partial way in Ulysses, in the manner that Joyce uses mythic structures in general. In his discussion of early Irish mythological elements in "The Dead," John Kelleher cautions,

Everyone of course knows that Joyce was fond of weaving into his work parallels with myth, saga, and epic. It is, however, a mistake to assume, when such a parallel is identified, that it must be complete. It rarely is. Even Ulysses does not reflect the entirety of the Odyssey. In Finnegans Wake wonders can be done with a mere hint of resemblance. Usually Joyce is content with a few salient indications as, for example, in the well-known sketch-parody of Dante's Divine Comedy in the story "Grace." The same, I think, holds for "The Dead" and "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel." The shadowy similarity between Gabriel Conroy and Conaire Máar is enough for Joyce's purposes which by their very nature must be suggestive rather than explicit. ("Irish History" 421)

The parallels between Joyce's text and his mythic prototype are general and sketchy rather than complete and detailed in part because of his mythic method itself: though most retellers of mythic stories use the surface content of myth, manipulating the mythic material so as to fore-

[11] I am indebted to John Kelleher for this suggestion. See below, ch. 4, for a specific element Joyce took from Collier.

[12] For Joyce's ownership of a 1921 edition of P. W. Joyce's Illustrated History , see Connolly 21 #163. Kelleher suggests that Joyce probably read P. W. Joyce's Child's History of Ireland during the years between Clongowes and Belvedere (quoted in French 281).

ground thematic material, Joyce uses myth as an architectural substructure to the realistic surface of the story. In the terms developed by Mieke Bal in her Narratology, the myth in Joyce's narratives does not enter the story at all; it enters on the level of the fabula, whereby the sequence of the mythic events can be equated to the sequence of narrative events in Ulysses, or whereby the relation of actors in Joyce's narrative can be equated with a configural grouping in a myth. In this process, the myth itself is condensed and reduced before entering Joyce's creative process; the fabula of the myth intersects with the fabula of Joyce's narrative. Ipso facto, therefore, Joyce's use of myth appears to be minimalist, as Kelleher has observed.^[13] By using a myth as a subtext—by using the fabula of a myth rather than a mythic story—Joyce develops a mythic method with great flexibility. In virtue of his method he is, for example, able to conflate different mythic narratives and different mythic systems; he can also suggest a myth and undermine it simultaneously.^[14] This technique characterizes Joyce's use of The Book of Invasions in Ulysses as it does his use of other myths; he refers to main elements in the early Irish story rather than give point-by-point correspondences. Though the references to The Book of Invasions are incomplete, condensed, and schematized, they are not insignificant: in the Irish story we find the unified source for the constellation of main characters in Ulysses, the constellation of Greek, Jew, and Mediterranean woman. The Book of Invasions provides the scaffold for the relations of the central characters in Joyce's book and supplies typologies for Joyce to work with in developing his cast.

Leopold Bloom can be seen as a counterpart to the Goidels, the Irish invaders who could have been Jews because they are invited by Moses to share in the Promised Land: "'Come with us, with thy whole people,' said Moses, 'if you will, and remain permanently with us, and when we reach the land that God hath promised us, you will get a share in it'" (Macalister and MacNeill 198–99). The Goidels are confederates of Moses but

[13] Bal distinguishes between three levels of a narrative: the "deep structure" (10), or the fabula, in which a series of logically and chronologically related events are caused or experienced by actors (5); the story, which is a certain manner of presenting the fabula (5); and the text, in which a narrative agent tells a story (117).

[14] The technique is unlike that of many other twentieth-century mythic retellings in which the myth appears on the surface, as it does, for example, in Anouilh's Antigone or Giraudoux's La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu.

not Hebrew, sympathetic to Moses but not among the chosen people. The Goidels share Hebrew history but choose deliberately to go in different directions. In the same way Bloom has Jewish sympathies and through his father the potential of being a Jew, but his actual experience and identity are not Jewish. Because under religious law Jewish descent comes through the mother's line and Bloom's mother and maternal grandmother both have Irish names, Bloom appears not to be a Jew. Bloom is not circumcised, he has been twice baptized as a Christian by official clergy, and in the cabman's shelter Bloom tells Stephen explicitly that "in reality" he's not a Jew (16.1085).^[15] Bloom's mixed identity—his Jewish sympathies and ancestry combined with his Irish actuality—mirrors the early history of the Goidels in The Book of Invasions more than it does the actual experience of any Irish Jew at the turn of the century. It is possible, moreover, that Bloom's preoccupation with Egyptian and Turkish things (e.g., 4.192ff., 15.297ff.) is intended to reflect the Goidelic sojourns in Egypt in The Book of Invasions; Bloom's preoccupation with Egypt also brings to mind the pharaoh's daughter who becomes one of Mil's wives.

In the Stephen Dedalus of Ulysses we can see a representative of the Irish invaders with a Greek heritage, particularly the Tuatha De Danann. As noted in the summary, in The Book of Invasions the Tuatha De Danann are known for their learning and skill, including their magical skills. The Tuatha De Danann "learned druidry and many various arts in [the northern islands of Greece] . . . till they were knowing, learned and very clever . . . They considered their men of learning to be gods" (Macalister and MacNeill 142–43). Like the Tuatha De, Stephen Dedalus is schooled in ancient knowledge; like them he has the richness of Western culture and its secret mysteries at his disposal; like them he can be arrogant and aloof as a divinity. The attitude of the Tuatha De Danann toward artists, considering "their men of learning [or artists ] to be gods," has an amusing parallel in Stephen's own aesthetic theory; following Flaubert, Stephen believes that in drama "the artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails" (PA 215). The identification of Stephen and the Tuatha De Danann is mediated as well by an

[15] For a full discussion of the question of Bloom's religion and ethnic affiliations, see Steinberg 27–49.

Athenian alliance of the Tuatha De Danann since in some versions of the classical myth Daedalus is an Athenian. The chief hero of the Tuatha De Danann is Lug, the samildánach, the 'many-skilled'; and Stephen, too, is many skilled. Teacher, bard, singer, potential journalist—Stephen has many arts and on Bloomsday is urged to take up the professions of singer and newspaperman even as he is acknowledged as an emerging literary man.

Molly appears to represent the recurrent Spanish connections in Irish pseudohistory. In her is embodied Mediterranean sensuality—but a sensuality that is Ireland's legitimate heritage in the framework from The Book of Invasions. Of the many characters in The Book of Invasions, Molly calls to mind Tailltiu in particular, the daughter of Magmor, king of Spain, who is wife to Eochaid son of Erc, king of the Fir Bolg. When Eochaid son of Erc is defeated, Tailltiu marries Eochaid the Rough, son of Dul of the Tuatha De Danann. Later Tailltiu becomes foster mother of Lug, the young hero of the Tuatha De Danann, and her memory comes to be celebrated with games at the site of her grave.^[16] Tailltiu is also credited with clearing one of Ireland's plains: "Tailltiu [came] after the fighting of [the first] battle of Mag Tuired to Coill Chuan [Cuan's Wood]; and the wood [was] cleared at her command, so that it was a clovery plain before the end of a year, and she inhabited it afterwards" (Macalister and MacNeill 150–51).^[17]

Tailltiu—a character mentioned by Joyce in Finnegans Wake (83.23) and most probably familiar from his youth—has a dwelling place that brings to mind Molly's love of flowers and nature, a love of lushness appropriate to both women because of their Mediterranean origins. Note, too, that both Bloom and Molly toy with the idea that Stephen might move into their home—become, as it were, their "foster son." Whatever her erotic fantasies about the situation, we might say that Molly, like Tailltiu, almost becomes "foster mother" of a multitalented youth. Taill-

[16] Tailltiu is the modern Telltown; under the Gaelic Athletic Association the old Telltown games had been revived, and they continue to be observed to the present. The irony of the nationalists' choice to celebrate the memory of a woman who goes from husband to husband cannot have escaped Joyce. Note also that Tailltiu's "sensuality" here is part of her function as a Sovereignty figure (cf. chapter 4 below).

[17] I have silently normalized the spelling of proper nouns in this quotation.

tiu and the Spanish wives obtained by some of the Goidels after their conquest of Spain might have suggested to Joyce that Mediterranean passion enters Irish tradition through the distaff side—a possible explanation for all the women with vigorous sexual appetites who people medieval Irish literature. In terms of the scaffolding of Ulysses, we should also observe that Molly enjoys dalliance on hilltops and heights and places from which she has a large vista. Her final thoughts of the day are memories in which her embraces with Mulvey on the rock of Gibraltar fuse with memories of her lovemaking with Poldy on the hill of Howth. This scene should remind us of the Spanish tower from which the Goidels spot Ireland in The Book of Invasions.

The identification of the central characters in Ulysses as types from The Book of Invasions explains some of the puzzles about Bloom, Stephen, and Molly noted in the critical literature. Phillip Herring ("Toward an Historical Molly Bloom" 507, 521 n. 31), for example, has commented that Molly and Leopold have a curiously parallel heredity and that by religious law she is more Jewish than he. It is obviously the subtext of The Book of Invasions that explains the unlikely case of having both Bloom and Molly be of Jewish ancestry: because Molly is also identified with the Milesians in Joyce's use of the pseudohistorical scheme, her having potential Jewish ancestry is consistent with the Irish mythic underpinnings, even if it is a rather notable statistical anomaly in Joyce's realism. In a similar way, Bloom's famous "blooper," "All that long business about that [sic ] brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage alleluia " (7.208–9), takes on a new meaning as an ironic Milesian commentary on Irish pseudohistory rather than as a simple error of a man who is ignorant of Jewish ritual: the Milesians have left the bondage of pharaoh only to end in the house of British imperialism.

In Surface and Symbol Robert Adams has suggested that a departure from or absence of surface realism points to a symbolic purpose in the text; Adams concludes that "Bloom's Jewish character was a symbol into which Joyce tried to project, not only his social reflections about modern man, but some rather intimate and complex psychic responses of his own" (106). However, the absence of surface realism in Bloom's Jewishness not only indicates Joyce's symbolic intent but also reifies Bloom's identity as an ersatz Jew, like that of the Milesians as a whole; he thus signals the Irish mythic system behind the Joycean text. In the same way

the lack of verisimilitude in Molly's portrait is usefully reconsidered in light of the Irish architectonics of Ulysses.^[18]

It has also been observed that when Stephen Dedalus leaves Bloom's garden in episode 17, he walks out of the Joycean world. He vanishes. The point should not escape the reader: it is a radical relocation of Joyce's interests and priorities to replace Stephen Dedalus with Leopold and Molly Bloom, to leave the reader with those two protagonists in possession of the fictive world, inhabitants of the reader's Dublin. This shift, which has in its nature something of a revolution, is an enactment of the progression of The Book of Invasions, a text presenting wave after wave of invasion, wave after wave of possession and dispossession of the land of Ireland. In The Book of Invasions in particular there is a confrontation of the Tuatha De Danann and the Milesians; the result of that confrontation is that the Milesians take possession of Ireland, driving their predecessors underground. The Tuatha De walk out of the world of men and retreat to the hollow hills, an exit as sudden and total as that of Stephen from Ulysses. The feature of replacement here is, particularly in light of its mythic counterpart, part of the meaning in Ulysses .

Recognition of the framework from The Book of Invasions illuminates more than the relations of the three major characters; it is also a factor in Joyce's portrait of the Citizen in the "Cyclops" episode of Ulysses . Joyce's treatment of this character has been cited to show his disdain for the Irish cultural revival and for the cruder forms of insular nationalism. The Citizen was modeled on the founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, Michael Cusack (JJ 2 61; cf. Groden 132–39), but The Book of Invasions adds resonance to the character, for the Citizen can be identified as the representative of still another wave of invaders, the Fir Bolg. In Irish typology the Fir Bolg are short, dark, ugly, crude people. They were laborers in Greece, and in Ireland, after the conquests of the Tuatha De

[18] Although these issues will be addressed at length in chapter 6, it is appropriate to comment here on the seeming incongruity of Molly's "Spanish" origin and her lack of a Gibraltar accent. Phillip Herring has observed that Molly speaks with an Irish brogue, thus claiming that her language undercuts the surface realism. This seeming error is again related to the Irish mythos behind Ulysses: with the shearing of realism Joyce here is conveying to his audience that Molly is both Spanish and Irish; her sensuous Mediterranean nature is subsumed within her Irishness. Herring also argues that Molly has "no understanding of her mixed heritage"; but we should understand that Molly's mixed ethnicity is not intended as a surface, but as a symbol of her Milesian identity from The Book of Invasions . See Herring, "Toward an Historical Molly Bloom" 516.

Danann and the Goidels, they become the unfree, subjugated, nonnoble populace. The Fir Bolg typology—current in Joyce's time and still in force today—is one element behind Joyce's construction of the Citizen.

Not only is the Citizen crude in person and thought, but he is chaotic as well. Kenner points out that Joyce could associate the nationalist movement with destruction and chaos, particularly with the 1916 destruction of Dublin: "When the biscuit-tin, by heroic amplification, renders North Central Dublin a mass of ruins we are to remember what patriotic idealism could claim to have accomplished by Easter 1916" ("Ulysses " 139; cf. 92–96). The most chaotic figures in early Irish literature are the Fomorians (or Fomoiri), who are responsible for the failure of the Nemedian invasion and who fight against and for a time oppress the Tuatha De Danann; this battle between the Fomorians and the Tuatha De Danann is a reflex of the Indo-European pattern of the battle of the gods of order with the gods of chaos (Gray 1–10; Sjoestedt 19; Mac Cana, Celtic Mythology 60). The Fomorians are often conflated with the Fir Bolg in the ancient texts; each group opposes the Tuatha De Danann in a battle at a location called Mag Tuired, and each group is defeated by the Tuatha De. This conflation is apparent in Joyce's treatment of the Citizen, who is as unattractive as the Fir Bolg and as chaotic as the Fomorians; the conflation is partly reflected in the Citizen's being simultaneously an ordinary-sized person in the narration and a gigantic figure in the parodies paralleling the action of the episode.

The most chaotic figure of all the Fomorians is Balor, the one-eyed figure who can turn men to stone with his gaze and who is killed in the Second Battle of Mag Tuired by Lug.

An evil eye had Balor the Fomorian. That eye was never opened save only on a battle-field. Four men used to lift up the lid of the eye with a polished handle which passed through its lid. If an army looked at that eye, though they were many thousands in number, they could not resist a few warriors. It had a poisonous power. Once when his father's druids were concocting charms, he came and looked out of the window, and the fume of the concoction came under it, so that the poison of the concoction afterwards penetrated the eye that looked. (AIT 44)

Elsewhere the Fomorians in general have only one eye (cf. Sjoestedt 16). As a group, therefore, the Fomorians can be compared to the race of Cyclopes; and we should remember that it is the narrator as much as the

Citizen whose (single) eye is mentioned: "I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P. at the comer of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye" (12. 1–3). While he represents two groups in The Book of Invasions at one and the same time—crude Fir Bolg and chaotic, one-eyed Fomorian—the Citizen also owes something to the specific characterization of Balor; and the one-eyed quality of the Fomorians, best elaborated in the descriptions of Balor, provides the surface linkage between the Irish mythic prototypes and the Homeric Cyclopes.^[19]

Given this mythic background for the Citizen, we should expect Stephen Dedalus rather than Bloom to oppose the character, since Dedalus seems to represent Lug in particular and the Tuatha De Danann in general. It is the Tuatha De who fight both the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians at the two battles at Mag Tuired, and Lug slays Balor. Thus, it is suggestive that Joyce originally intended Stephen to be part of the "Cyclops" episode (Groden 133–37; cf. 149). Because Bloom was apparently intended as the Citizen's victim from the very start (Groden 132), the mythological structure of The Book of Invasions may offer some clue to Joyce's original plans for the chapter. As it stands, Joyce has bent the early Irish myth by having Bloom rather than Stephen oppose the Citizen, but The Book of Invasions explains in part why there is a typological as well as a personal contrast between Bloom and the Citizen: they represent the opposition of their races within Ireland.

In sum, The Book of Invasions helps to explain why the central characters in Ulysses are all outsiders though they stand as universalized representations of Dubliners, for the invasion theory of Irish history in Lebor Gabála is predicated on the notion that there are no aboriginal inhabitants of the island. In this scheme, everyone is an outsider, descended as it were from immigrants. From the perspective of Irish pseudohistory, the cultural alienation of Stephen, Bloom, and Molly mirrors the heritage of all the island's inhabitants as descendants of invaders: to be Irish is to be an immigrant. Thus, within an Irish mythic framework, if not an Irish

[19] Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, Irish Mythological Cycle 123, takes the view that in Irish literature there is no counterpart to the Cyclops, but Rees and Rees (66) note that the theme of the one-eyed enemy pervades Irish literature. Ingcel in The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel is an example both of a one-eyed enemy and a chaotic figure (AIT 104ff.).

naturalistic context, the main characters of Ulysses are typical of their country. Irish myth, therefore, underscores the modernist alienation that pervades the book.

In this light we see the ultimate irony of Deasy's joke about Ireland's having no Jews as well as the irony of the Citizen's xenophobia and his virulence against the Jews in particular (12.1140ff., 12.1666). The Book of Invasions provides a framework in which the Goidels of Ireland and their descendants should have a natural sympathy and affinity for the Jews, for the Goidels might well have joined Moses's band and shared in Jewish history after aiding the Israelites in Egypt. Indeed, from this mythic perspective the Goidels might well be called an "Israelitish" race, a term Joyce applied to the Irish;^[20] and the views of the tolerant characters in Ulysses are all sentiments that Joyce himself espoused, believing that the Irish least of all have a claim to purity of race (discussed at greater length below). Against the mythic framework of The Book of Invasions, the Citizen betrays his non-Goidelic and base ancestry through his anti-Semitic views.^[21]

Bloom and the Goidels, Stephen and the Tuatha De Danann, Molly and Tailltiu, the Citizen and the Fomorians/Fir Bolg—taken one by one, each correspondence between Ulysses and The Book of Invasions is of little moment. Taken together they carry weight. Ireland's pseudohistory, which had shaped Irish concepts of time and identity for over a thousand years, found its way into Ulysses and informs the relations of Joyce's main characters. Ulysses is a roman à clef, though no one key fits it exactly. To the Odyssey and Hamlet and the Divina Commedia, the books that are most widely acknowledged to have contributed to the architectonic structure of Ulysses, we should now add a fourth: The Book of Invasions. One of the keys to Ulysses is Irish, a key unlocking many of its textual puzzles, its mode of signification, its meaning.

ii. That Greekenhearted Yude : Hebrew and Greek in Ulysses

It is well known that Joyce subscribed to Victor Berard's theory of the Phoenician origin of the Odyssey, elaborated in Berard's two-volume

[20] Cf. Hyman 180–82.

[21] Joyce believed that anti-Semitism was a touchstone of bigotry; see the discussion in Manganiello 56.

publication, Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée (1902–3). Bérard maintains that the Odyssey is a Greek account of the wandering of a Phoenician merchant-adventurer, a Hellenized Phoenician tract on the geography of the Mediterranean world and on navigational instruction. Bérard's analysis includes a linguistic component, and he accounts for various names and words in the Odyssey by providing Semitic etymologies or loantransfers. About the Odyssey Bérard concludes: "The poem is obviously the work of a Hellene, while the 'log' is clearly the record of a Semitic traveller. The poet—Homer, if you will—was a Greek; the seafarer—Ulysses, as we know him—was Phoenician" (trans. Gilbert 82). Joyce probably became acquainted with Bérard's theories in Zurich while he was writing Ulysses (JJ 2 408), and they influenced his own manipulation of the Homeric parallels in Ulysses. It is thus Bérard's views on the Odyssey that Gilbert quotes again and again as he draws the parallels between Ulysses and the Homeric poem, for Bérard's metatext of the Odyssey was one of the main refractions of the Greek text that Joyce relied on in constructing Ulysses . In general critics have viewed Joyce's interest in Bérard as idiosyncratic, the sort of eccentricity that is tolerated in a great artist. According to the conventional interpretation of Joyce's mythic substructure in Ulysses , the value of Bérard's theory lies in its ability to provide a link between the Greek plot of Ulysses and Joyce's Semitic hero, for the Phoenicians, as Bérard indicates, were Semites. Bloom can be both Ulysses and a Wandering Jew under this construal of the Odyssey.^[22]

It is not generally recognized in Joyce scholarship that a theory similar to that of Bérard had also been proposed for the settlement of Ireland. ^[23] At the end of the eighteenth century, Charles Vallancey had claimed that the original explorers and settlers of Ireland were Phoenician and that the Irish language itself was to be derived from the Semitic language of the Phoenicians. Vallancey elaborated on these views in a series of publications including An Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language (1772), A Grammar of the Iberno-Celtic or Irish Language (1773), A Vindica-

[22] A summary of Bérard's views is found in Gilbert, esp. 76–84. For the argument that Ulysses is indebted to Bérard in rather thoroughgoing ways, see Seidel. See also Groden 75–94; Rose and O'Hanlon xxix-xxxi.

[23] Seidel (17) is an exception, but he fails to pursue the implications of the similarities between Vallancey's theories and those of Bérard for the construction of Ulysses .

tion of the Ancient History of Ireland (1786), and Prospectus of a Dictionary of the Language of the Aire Coti or Ancient Irish (1802). Though Vallancey's views of Ireland's settlement are extreme, Phoenician contact with Ireland may be historical, for it is generally agreed that Ptolemy's geography of Ireland derives from that of Marinus of Tyre and thus perhaps from Phoenician sources (Dillon and Chadwick 19). Vallancey's linguistic views about Irish are now considered quaint, but at the end of the eighteenth century the family group of the Celtic languages was still in doubt, largely because of the initial mutations in Celtic languages as well as the Irish word order; it was not yet widely agreed that Irish was Indo-European, and many people grouped Irish with the Semito-Hamitic (Afro-Asiatic) family of languages.^[24]

Vallancey's theories were therefore accepted widely in his day in Ireland, and they addressed various timely issues about Irish culture. In his works, particularly in his Vindication, Vallancey depends on material from the The Book of Invasions to construct his thesis about Phoenician exploration, and in the seventh chapter of this work, entitled "Phenian History," he actually attempts to correlate episodes in The Book of Invasions with the various episodes in the Odyssey, giving Irish etymologies or cognates in some cases for the names of the Homeric sites (e.g., Scylla and Charybdis); these arguments are to some extent anticipated by The Book of Invasions itself, where an episode parallels Ulysses's use of wax in the ears of his men as a means of resisting the Sirens (Macalister 2: 20–21, 2: 40–43; Macalister and MacNeill 206ff.). Vallancey's Prospectus opens with a brief argument that the Phenian (leg. Fenian, i.e., Irish) and Phoenician languages are related; the bulk of that work is a lexicon of Irish words, comparing their meanings with the meanings of supposed cognates from Hebrew, "Hindoostanee," Arabic, "Chaldee," and other languages. All of these arguments dovetail to a remarkable extent with those of Bérard. A reader today will dismiss Vallancey as fanciful, but he was a man of his time: a nascent (if wrongheaded) comparative philologist and a traditionalist in holding to the Mediterranean theory of the origin of Western culture. It is worth noting that ideas not unrelated to those of Vallancey and Bérard have recently been revived by Martin Ber-

[24] For a brief history of the controversy about the linguistic affiliations of Irish and the development of the argument that Irish is an Indo-European language, see Dillon, "Archaism of Irish Tradition" 1–2, and Aitchison 27–28, as well as references cited by these authors.

nal in his Black Athena , in which he argues that the intellectual hegemony of the Indo-European proposition has led to the denial and suppression of evidence that points to the debt of Greek culture to the cultures of the Mediterranean world, to the Egyptians and the Phoenicians in particular. The popularity of Vallancey's ideas in Ireland throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth may be attributed to the valorization of Irish culture that results from an antiquity greater than the classical civilization of Greece; the theory was also attractive as a means of euhemerizing and rationalizing the traditional pseudohistory of Ireland.

To have been aware of Vallancey's theories in Ireland at the turn of the century, it was no more necessary to have read Vallancey's publications than at present it is necessary for a literary critic to have read Derrida in order to know something about deconstruction. Vallancey's theories had been taken up in various general histories of Ireland in the nineteenth century, and they were still current during Joyce's youth in Ireland, even at times discussed in the popular press (e.g., All Ireland Review 30 Mar. 1901). Joyce cites Vallancey by name in his 1907 Trieste lecture entitled "Ireland, Island of Saints" (CW 156), and he held views deriving from those of Vallancey, for in the same lecture Joyce takes the position that Irish is an outgrowth of Phoenician,^[25] that the Greeks learned about the Irish from the Phoenicians, and that the religion and civilization of Ireland, "later known by the name of Druidism," were Egyptian in origin (CW 156). There are also oblique references to Vallancey and his theory of the Phoenician origin of the Irish in the "gran Phenician rover" of Finnegans Wake (197.31 ). It is possible that Joyce had read some of Vallancey firsthand, even perhaps while he was writing Ulysses, since the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich where Joyce worked almost daily from 1915 to 1919 contains both Vallancey's Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language and his Grammar of the Iberno-Celtic. Joyce's interest in Bérard during this period may have sent him back to Vallancey as well, though it is clear from the Trieste lecture that his initial exposure to Vallancey had occurred before 1907, most likely before he left Ireland in 1904.

In The Book of Invasions, the foundation of Ireland's traditional history, the connection between the Israelites and the Goidels had been established, including the proposition that the Irish language has affinities

[25] Nonetheless, he also maintains that Irish is Indo-European (CW 155).

to Hebrew. Joyce was therefore predisposed to be attracted to Bérard's theories by his own cultural background, which included both The Book of Invasions and the theories of Vallancey, theories that are themselves derivative in part from The Book of Invasions . It is one of those famous Joycean coincidences that Bérard's theory links Semite and Greek, a linkage found in The Book of Invasions as well, and that both the Odyssey and the settlement of Ireland could be traced to Phoenician travels. That Vallancey had already begun to correlate the adventures in The Book of Invasions and the Odyssey is suggestive, and it is tantalizing to think that Joyce may have known this material firsthand.

The importance of Vallancey's theory of the Phoenician origin of the Irish for the construction of Ulysses is obvious. Not only do Vallancey's theories dovetail very nicely with those of Bérard, thus fitting with Joyce's conceptualization of the Odyssey , but the two theories in tandem become a historico-literary rationale for Joyce's enterprise of merging Irish myth and Greek myth. The similarity between The Book of Invasions and the Odyssey within a framework set by the critical theories of Bérard and Vallancey would in turn have legitimated Joyce's own fusion in Ulysses of mythic elements from both texts. The theories of both Bérard and Vallancey serve to link Joyce's three primary mythic systems: the Greek story, the story of the Wandering Jew, and the architectonics from The Book of Invasions . Paradoxically, in forging a link between the Phoenicians and the Odyssey , Bérard was also forging a link between the Irish and the Odyssey . But a special value to Joyce of Bérard's theory of the Odyssey was that, like the Homeric parallels in Ulysses , it could be talked about in an international context and therefore facilitated the critical reception of Ulysses ; because of their limited circulation outside of Ireland, neither Vallancey's theory nor the mythic matter in The Book of Invasions could serve that function.

Though all these theories and pseudohistories related to the Mediterranean and to Ireland are important for Joyce's imaginative construct behind Ulysses , his choice of typologies from The Book of Invasions , particularly his decision to make the main character in Ulysses "a Jew," was not simply literary, a function of his sources and his mythic method. The question of national traits was of great interest to Joyce. He felt personal affinities to the Jews, and he felt that in general the Irish and the Jews were similar and their destinies alike. In his letter to Carlo Linati accompanying a scheme of classical and anatomical correspondences for the

book, Joyce referred to Ulysses as "an epic of two races (Israelite-Irish)" (Letters I: 146).^[26] These apparently naturalistic observations were perhaps in part a conventional product of the "two peoples" rhetoric of Irish nationalist politics, in which Irish suffering under the English was frequently compared to the Israelites' bondage and captivity.^[27] This political trope is encoded in Bloom's "blooper" regarding the exodus "out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage," and a full example of the discourse is given in the text of Ulysses when professor MacHugh recites John F Taylor's speech supporting the Irish language movement (7.791–870) 870).^[28]

At the same time Joyce's views on race have a larger cultural context, a context formulated by Matthew Arnold, who believed that the world moves between the two poles of Jew and Greek; these polarities are discussed in several places in his work, particularly the chapter entitled "Hebraism and Hellenism" in Culture and Anarchy , which Joyce owned in 1920 (Ellmann, Consciousness of Joyce 99; Gillespie #17). Joyce himself held this view (cf. JJ 2 395), and Bloom and Dedalus are representations of these two types. By suggesting the affinities, indeed the union, of Hebraic Bloom and Hellenistic Dedalus through the convergence of their thought, as well as through classical parallels and the Irish substructure, Joyce is suggesting that Ireland is heir to the whole range of human experience, valuation, and potential. Elsewhere such temperaments might be opposed, but in Ireland they are fused: "Jewgreek is greekjew" (15.2097–98). The binding structure from The Book of Invasions helps to explain why Joyce believed that in Ireland, at any rate, those two temperaments could be reconciled: Ireland's populace can be seen as heirs to both typologies because of successive waves of invasions and generations of intermarriage.

But this view may be supported also by the history of the Milesians themselves. In summarizing The Book of Invasions , Gilbert stresses that several of the invasions of Ireland have connections with Greece, and he

[26] On these points, see also JJ 2 373, 382, 395, 515, 521.

[27] For a discussion of the "two peoples" theme in Irish politics, see Kenner, "Ulysses" 137–39, and Hyman 162, who gives examples.

[28] It may be, of course, that the political trope is itself based on the Book of Invasions scheme, which Irish audiences would have recognized but which most Joyce scholars do not. John Garvin (66–70) claims that Joyce rewrites the speech to emphasize Egypt and the Jews and hence, we might add, the connection with The Book of Invasions.

notes that "Irish chroniclers had a strongly rooted belief in the Grecian origins of the Irish race" (65). A second reading of Stephen, as related to the poles of Jew and Greek, emerges from the framework established by The Book of Invasions . This second reading is also hinted at in A Portrait of the Artist , where an embryonic manipulation of the mythos of The Book of Invasions suggests an implicit racial contrast between Davin as Fir Bolg (180) and Stephen. Stephen's own race is not named explicitly in A Portrait of the Artist , but Stephen thinks in racial terms, musing about "his race" (e.g., 183, 238, 253; cf. 202, 221). Because the normal second term of contrast with Fir Bolg in Irish nationalist rhetoric is Milesian, in this reading Stephen, like Leopold and Molly in Ulysses , is also a Milesian. The juxtaposition of these two schemes from The Book of Invasions suggests that Joyce is saying that the privileged race in Irish pseudohistory has within its own heritage both Hebraic and Hellenic qualities, an identity that is dubletted by the successive waves of invasions altogether, thus underlining the reconciliation of "jewgreek" and "greekjew" that we find in Ulysses (15.2097–98).^[29]

A doubled rewriting of the The Book of Invasions in Ulysses is not in the least improbable; indeed, Joyce manipulates Greek myth in exactly this manner. In A Portrait of the Artist Stephen can be read not only as Daedalus the artificer but also as Icarus; he is both simultaneously, and the multiple readings add resonance and interest to the mythic subtext. In Ulysses Molly is both Calypso and Penelope; multiple mythic perspectives take Joyce's mythic parallels beyond the technique of simple mythic retelling, deepening the semiotic values of the mythic subtexts and adding ambiguity and openness to the Joycean text. Joyce is able to manipulate myth in this fashion precisely because he uses only the deep structure of the myth, the fabula. It gives him tremendous flexibility: he can, for example, invoke expectations using the mythic subtext (Stephen as Telemachus is searching for his father) and then undercut those same expectations (Stephen is trying to stay clear of all fathers). By working the myth against itself in this fashion, Joyce establishes a productive ironic gap in his text that can be used for any number of purposes: intellectual and aesthetic delight in a new reading of an old myth, political

[29] Kelleher lays out the contrast between Davin, who "is described as a Firbolg—dark, a serf, one who knows the secret ways of Irish life," and Stephen, who is to be understood as "a Milesian—fair, free, bravely open" (quoted in French 281).

or aesthetic signification, humor or parody. The double readings of myth contribute to Joyce's complex tone and facilitate the textual elements of humor that nonetheless do not undercut other more serious readings.

In Finnegans Wake Joyce refers to the "mixed racings" of the Irish (117.12), and his theories about the mixture of Celtic and Viking races in Ireland permeate his last book. But as early as 1907 he held these views, writing in his Trieste lecture "Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages" that

our civilization is a vast fabric, in which the most diverse elements are mingled, in which nordic aggressiveness and Roman law, the new bourgeois conventions and the remnant of a Syriac religion are reconciled. In such a fabric, it is useless to look for a thread that may have remained pure and virgin without having undergone the influence of a neighbouring thread. What race, or what language . . . can boast of being pure today? And no race has less right to utter such a boast than the race now living in Ireland. (CW 165–66; cf. CW 161–62)

This is obviously a political statement, one that radically repudiates the bitter sectarianism and cultural oppositions that have characterized Irish history of the past four centuries. It is also a theme elaborated in Ulysses through the mythic structuring from The Book of Invasions , a structure that resonates with Bérard's theory of the Odyssey , with Arnold's theory of Hellenism and Hebraism, and with Vallancey's theory of the Phoenician origin of the Irish.

iii. An Irish Met Him Pike Hoses

A most celebrated aspect of Celtic thought is the belief in reincarnation. Diodorus Siculus, like other classical writers, reports on this view among the early Celts: "Among [the druids] the doctrine of Pythagoras had force, namely, that the souls of men are undying, and that after achieving their term of existence they pass into another body" (quoted in Nutt, Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth 108.)^[30] Since Irish texts—particularly the Ulster

[30] A convenient collection of the classical references to Celtic beliefs in metempsychosis is to be found in Nutt, Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, 107. These statements by classical writers have engendered a lively interpretive debate among scholars in the modern period, a debate that began in the nineteenth century and has continued to the present. An assessment of this literature is beyond the scope of the present work, but a brief summary of current critical views of Celtic beliefs about reincarnation, metempsychosis, and life after death, including a discussion of the attribution to the Celts of the Pythagorean theory of metempsychosis, can be found in Mac Cana, Celtic Mythology 123; Piggott 102—4; and Dillon and Chadwick 152–53. See also Nutt, Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth , and references cited in these sources.

Cycle, which Kenneth Jackson has called "a window on the Iron Age"—frequently presuppose cultural patterns corresponding to those of Gaul, it is not surprising that in early Irish literature the motif of metempsychosis is common.

Metempsychosis , the word that reverberates through Ulysses like the thunderclap in Finnegans Wake , refers not only to the rebirth of Ulysses, Penelope, and Telemachus but also to the rebirth of Ireland's avatars from The Book of Invasions : in Ulysses the types of Hebraic Milesian, Greek Tuatha De, and Spanish female reappear in contemporary Dublin. The motif of metempsychosis permits Joyce's characters to represent simultaneously characters from the Odyssey, The Book of Invasions, Hamlet , and the other mythic schemes that Joyce has used partially or wholly in Ulysses ; Bloom is at once Ulysses, Milesian, the Wandering Jew, and Hamlet's father. In the repertory of mythic elements that Joyce uses in Ulysses , metempsychosis is in fact the mainspring; it coordinates and drives all the mythic systems of the book. Metempsychosis is the philosophical center of the reanimation of all mythologies in Ulysses and the rationale for Joyce's complex mythic compression; serving to bind the parallel mythic systems, metempsychosis is in fact the center of Joyce's mythic architectonics and mythic method in Ulysses .^[31] Critical discussions of metempsychosis in Ulysses have generally related the principle to the Greek mythos in the book; the motif can be seen as providing a Pythagorean and Neoplatonist context for Joyce's work.^[32] The Celtic belief in reincarnation is less well recognized, yet a close consideration of Joyce's treatment of the motif of metempsychosis in Ulysses indicates that Joyce utilized an Irish rather than a Greek conception of metempsychosis.

By 1904 Celtic beliefs in reincarnation had been widely discussed in critical studies and disseminated in popular literature as well. The foremost treatment of the topic from the period is Alfred Nutt's volume entitled The Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, published in 1897 as the second volume of Kuno Meyer's edition of The Voyage of Bran. Though Nutt's

[31] Metempsychosis is also central to Finnegans Wake , though its subordination to Viconian cycles alters its role in the later work.

[32] Gilbert sets a Buddhist context for this feature of Joyce's text.

study is comprehensive and rather scholarly, it was issued as part of a popular series of books published by David Nutt, a series that also included Alfred Nutt's Cuchulainn, the Irish Achilles and Eleanor Hull's Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature.^[33] The topic had also been taken up by d'Arbois de Jubainville in The Irish Mythological Cycle , with which Joyce was familiar from his reading of the United Irishman . The Irish and Celtic views on reincarnation were, in fact, well known in the Dublin of Joyce's youth; most discussions of early Irish literature included at least a brief consideration of the topic, the popular press ran articles on the subject, and Celtic ideas about reincarnation fascinated and influenced writers of the Anglo-Irish literary revival including A. E. and Yeats.

The Celtic material on reincarnation, particularly the classical references, had given rise to a critical debate on how to construe the evidence. For example, in The Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth Nutt takes the position that early Celtic views on reincarnation are very close to the Archaic Greek material on the subject (133), particularly the Orphic materials that underlie the Pythagorean doctrines. Nutt says that in Irish stories "the personality subsists in its entirety whatever be the form under which it manifests itself" (72), though in some stories reincarnation involves memory of the past life and in others it does not. Nutt acknowledges that "the Irish doctrine, if doctrine it may be called, has no apparent connection with any belief in a soul as distinct from the body, or in a life led by the soul after the death of the body" and that the Irish myths are "innocent of metaphysical colouring" and are "the outcome of no religious or philosophical impulse" (96); overall, however, he stresses the similarity between Greek and Irish views of metempsychosis. In his interpretation, therefore, an Irish version of the motif of reincarnation would be rather similar to a Greek example.

By contrast, in The Irish Mythological Cycle d'Arbois de Jubainville distinguishes rather sharply between Irish views of metempsychosis and Greek views, particularly the Pythagorean conceptions. D'Arbois notes that for the Pythagoreans metempsychosis "is a punishment and the common lot of the wicked" (197); for the Celts "it was a privilege and not a punishment."^[34] Here d'Arbois's observation is consistent with the fact

[33] David Nutt, a London publisher, also published volumes issued by the Irish Texts Society as well as Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire

[34] All quotes from this volume are taken from Best's translation.

that in Irish tales only special persons are subject to metempsychosis; it is not the lot of common mortals. He continues that for the Greeks, "the souls of the just are not encumbered with a body: pure spirits, they live in the atmosphere around, free, happy, immortal" (197). The distinctions that d'Arbois makes about the two types of metempsychosis are germane to a reading of Ulysses and suggest that Joyce was influenced by his reading of d'Arbois de Jubainville in the elaboration of the concept of reincarnation in Ulysses . Following d'Arbois de Jubainville's analysis, metempsychosis in Ulysses is a Celtic metempsychosis: it is not as a punishment that the Milesian/Wandering Jew/Hamlet's-ghost-of-a-father/Ulysses reappears as Leopold Bloom in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century. Rather, this reincarnation is a privilege and an affirmation of eternal verities, eternal values, eternal types, eternal—archetypal, Jung would say—situations. The Irish quality of the metempsychosis in Ulysses is also demonstrated by Joyce's attitude toward the body: the body is no encumbrance to the reincarnated figures of Ulysses . Bloom and Molly, in particular, have a kind of joyousness about the body that is notably lacking in Pythagorean conceptions.

In his analysis of the differences between Greek and Celtic ideas of reincarnation, d'Arbois de Jubainville goes on to say:

Thus the lofty idea of justice which dominates the doctrine of Pythagoras is absent from the Celtic conceptions . . . Pythagoras, who is already a modern, sees in the other life a sanction for the laws of justice respected or violated in this. But a more ancient doctrine than that of Pythagoras makes no distinction between justice and success, considering as just all that happens in this world, and seeing in the second life of the dead but a continuation of the joys and sorrows experienced in the first. This is the Celtic doctrine.

This conception of immortality differs widely from ours, whose philosophic nature, making a distinction between justice and the success of this world, includes the hope of a reparation beyond the grave. The Celtic race has not this hope. (198–99)

This analysis of Celtic ideas about reincarnation relates to the moral stance of Ulysses . Joyce works in the modernist tradition that can be traced back to Flaubert and others who refuse a bourgeois normative perspective on their material; but Joyce's choice of a Celtic framework for the reincarnation of his figures is a factor in the nonjudgmental treatment of Stephen, Bloom, and Molly. The characters and character types do not reappear in Ulysses either because they have sinned or because they have

won reincarnation: the return of these figures is inevitable because they represent the resurgence of eternal human verities. In the Celtic tradition of reincarnation, there is no ultimate balance or reckoning for the characters, no absolute scale on which they are judged. A Balor has as much chance of reincarnation as a Milesian chief.

Joyce himself alerts us to this aspect of reincarnation through the discussion between Buck Mulligan and Haines regarding Stephen's idée fixe about Hell. Mulligan has claimed, "They drove his wits astray . . . by visions of Hell . . . He can never be a poet" (10.1072–74), to which Haines responds: "Eternal punishment . . . I see . . . It's rather interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point out of that . . . He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth . . . The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea" (10.1076–84). This is a complex interchange, containing a great deal of information for the reader. On the one hand we are informed that Stephen is at odds with his Irish tradition because of the Christian concepts of retribution and judgment with which he is obsessed; he will not be a poet, certainly not an Irish poet, until he frees himself from these fixed ideas.

But on the other hand there is a metatextual sign here, guiding a reading of the theme of metempsychosis. The views, anachronistically attributed here to Julius Pokorny, go back to his predecessors, including d'Arbois de Jubainville, which were in circulation in 1904, though not at Pokorny's instance, and to which Joyce had been exposed to as early as 1902 by his reading of Best's translation of d'Arbois de Jubainville's Irish Mythological Cycle in the United Irishman .^[35] The textual reference to Pokorny emphasizes the fact that there is no hell or retribution driving me-

[35] See also, for example, the views of Windisch cited by Nutt, Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth 95–96.

In 1904 Julius Pokorny was seventeen and professor of nothing. Though Pokorny, who was privatdozent of Celtic philology at Vienna between 1914 and 1921 (Thornton, Allusions in "Ulysses " 237; cf. Gifford 181) did hold the views ascribed to him in Ulysses , he did not publish them until after Joyce's book had appeared; Joyce apparently knew of Pokorny's position from oral sources either in Ireland in 1912 (cf. Senn, "No Trace of Hell" 255–56) or in Zurich.

The reference to Pokorny in Ulysses is condensed, signaling explicitly to the reader Pokorny's influence on Joyce and implicitly the views of d'Arbois de Jubainville and others who had anticipated Pokorny. Joyce was no doubt receptive to Pokorny's views later precisely because he had been exposed to similar ideas in earlier days.

tempsychosis in the Joycean universe of Ulysses ; though the character Stephen may be obsessed with visions of Hell, Joyce as author of Ulysses is not.

The question of metempsychosis, identity through ever-changing forms, has a global or communal reflex as well as a personal one.^[36] Much of the action of Ulysses takes place as the characters walk about Dublin. The path captures, in part, a walk Joyce took with his friend Byrne on the eve of his departure from Dublin in 1909 (JJ 2 290), and it also mirrors the sea journeys of Ulysses as he attempts to return to Ithaca. But the motif of a sea journey is not confined to the Odyssey : it is a commonplace in much of world literature (in part for naturalistic reasons), it structures the Irish genre of the imram, which Joyce may have used (Sultan 42–48; Tristram 221 n. 4; see as well the discussion in ch. 6, below), and it is also found in The Book of Invasions . The invasion framework of Irish history and the insular geography of Ireland necessitate a great deal of journeying in Irish pseudohistory, and the Milesians in particular

[36] In Joyce's work the theme of metempsychosis is extended to questions of identity as well, and this extended form of the concept of metempsychosis is the fundamental presupposition behind the idea of biography as narrative in A Portrait of the Artist , in which, as Joyce says in his sketch of the same name (Scholes and Kain 60), "the past assuredly implies a fluid succession of presents, the development of an entity of which our actual present is a phase only." The point is embedded in a conversation between Stephen and Cranly in A Portrait of the Artist , in which Stephen claims, "I was not myself as I am now, as I had to become" (240). This aspect of metempsychosis is taken up again in Ulysses when Stephen counsels himself (9.89), "Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past." In Ulysses Stephen also muses about his own personal identity under such conditions, its change and stability over time as he thinks about a debt he owes A.E. (9.205–12):

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.
    Buzz. Buzz.
    But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms.
    I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
    A child Conmee saved from pandies.
    I, I and I. I.
    A.E.I.O.U.

Bloom takes up similar thoughts, his words anticipating those of Stephen (8.6o8): "I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?" Cf. 9.376–85, where Stephen incorporates the ideas into his aesthetic argument.

On themes in Ulysses related to metempsychosis, including the flux of being, see Kain, Fabulous Voyager ch. 14.

spend a long time in boats upon the sea. In the Irish story as in the Greek, the characters are not merely at sea; they have a goal for the journey's end, to wit, Ireland. The counterpart of that journey's goal in Ulysses , the ultimate goal of Bloom's travels, is 7 Eccles Street; thus, Bloom's home has both Ithaca and Ireland as its mythic counterparts.

In a symbolic sense, therefore, the journey in Ulysses is a journey to Ireland, and the Ireland aimed at is the New Ireland of Arthur Griffith's state as much as it is the geographical island or the old Ireland of The Book of Invasions . Entelechy, form of forms. The book is a sort of journey undertaken to a reincarnation of Ireland and for a reincarnation of Ireland; Ulysses is in part about the old Ireland becoming renewed, and the metempsychosis of Ireland is as much an operative in Ulysses as is the metempsychosis of mythic characters.

iv. Conclusion

Recognition of the connection between The Book of Invasions and the constellation of the main characters in Ulysses sheds light on a critical bone of contention: the level of irony and satire in Ulysses . Ellmann has detailed Joyce's concept of Ulysses and shown how Bloom fits these ideas: like Ulysses, Bloom is intelligent, prudent, sensitive, and of good will. His broadmindedness, love of life, curiosity, and kindliness mark him as special. Kenner speaks of Bloom as "the hidden hero" and shows that Bloom has the traits of a Homeric chieftain (Kenner, "Ulysses " ch. 5; cf. JJ 2 360–64, 368–69, 371–73). Nonetheless, if Ulysses is seen primarily within the framework of classical myth and European symbolism, the constellation of Jewish father, Greek son, and Spanish wife is at best bizarre and at worst a travesty. If only the Homeric parallels are considered, the text can be seen as primarily satiric or mock heroic: Molly becomes "faithful Penelope with a difference," and Bloom is "a legendary hero fallen upon evil days" (Levin, James Joyce 68, 73). Levin notes "the Homeric overtones do contribute their note of universality . . . but in doing so they convert a realistic novel into a mock-epic" (James Joyce , 71).^[37]

[37] Cf. Kain, Fabulous Voyager 36–37. Note, however, the possibility that Joyce's work reflects back on the classical epic itself, suggesting that "Homer's heroes were not quite so heroic as he painted them, and that Penelope like Molly Bloom, was no better than she should be" (Mercier, Irish Comic Tradition 213–14). Mercier also suggests that Joyce may have known an account of Penelope's infidelity. See also Herring, Joyce's "Ulysses" Notesheets 67 n.10, and Herring, "Bedsteadfastness of Molly Bloom" 49–61. Ellmann makes a similar point (JJ 2 360).

However, when the characters take their place in the context of Irish pseudohistory as well as Greek myth, the constellation of the main characters is perfectly clear; indeed, it is appropriate and natural. And Molly, following in the footsteps of Tailltiu and other women in early Irish literature and myth, should not be expected to limit herself to one man. The great female figures of Irish literature are forthright in their sexuality rather than physically chaste.

Paradoxically, Joyce's use of the Irish framework from The Book of Invasions is part and parcel of his insistence that Ireland must be European if Ireland is to be renewed, a viewpoint that was echoed in contemporary Irish politics. In the words of Thomas Kettle, Joyce's friend, "If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European" (see JJ 2 62–63; cf. Exiles 43). The import of Joyce's use of The Book of Invasions is that through its history of invasions Ireland has inherited the best from Egypt and Israel, Greece and the north of Europe, Belgium and Spain. Ireland's people and culture are the distillate of Europe and the Mediterranean world. In Ulysses this ideal is presented in a modern idiom; the Irish myth of The Book of Invasions is revived in the context of detailed, contemporary realism and a modern discourse. Joyce suggests the applicability of that myth to twentieth-century life: the myth is alive, universal, to be taken literally. Joyce suggests that Ireland's populace will tend toward the characteristics embodied in the main characters of Ulysses : Greek, Hebrew, sensual Mediterranean. Implicitly we can see Joyce's nationalistic statement—albeit a statement repugnant to most Irish nationalists. Joyce, the old Parnellite and later admirer of Griffith, puts forth a position reminiscent of both: to cease being "an unfortunate priestridden race" and to escape the straitjacket of colonial morality—British Victorianism—Ireland needed spiritual "home rule," a return to her own past and her heritage. Paradoxically, to achieve this end she could turn to a Continental outlook.

Used as it is in Ulysses, The Book of Invasions suggests that cosmopolitanism is Ireland's heritage as well as her goal—a heritage obliterated by the twin conquests of Christianity and the Sassenach. The Irish mythic parallels for Ulysses imply that neither an inward-turning insular men-

tality nor a stifling sexual asceticism is natural to Ireland. In holding these positions, Joyce stands apart from the studied insularity of most other Irish revival authors and their insistence that the peasantry of Ireland preserved a noble and natural moral purity that would redeem a corrupt, English-speaking world.^[38] In turning to The Book of Invasions for his typologies of Irish character and experience, Joyce gives his perspective on the Irish literary revival: that the best of Ireland never was and never can be inward turning. Ireland must reach out beyond Ireland and beyond England to the wisdom and experience and morality of all Europe and the wider world.

Joyce had a vision for Ireland that may yet be relevant: to transcend the crabbed, insular, prejudiced, political framework; to reach out to the world; to overcome priestly, puritanical morality; to assert the artistic and the rational and the moral rather than merely the pedestrian. These desiderata might be accomplished, he says, by reasserting the Greek and the Jewish and the sensual Mediterranean elements of the Irish heritage—in other words, by the Irish owning themselves as Irish, not as Anglo-Saxons or West Britons. Irish mythic elements in Ulysses are part of Joyce's attempt to create "at last a conscience in the soul of this wretched race" (Letters 2: 311; cf. PA 253). In 1906 Joyce wrote to his brother Stanislaus, "If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call myself a nationalist" (Letters 2: 187). Ulysses , written more than a decade later, is as nationalist as anything by Hyde or Gregory, Yeats or Synge: through an exploration of the Irish architectonics of his work, Joyce can be situated in the context of the Irish literary revival both in terms of his reuse of Irish literary material and in terms of the nationalist implications of his thematics.

Consonant with his aesthetic theories, Joyce does not present these views didactically. He "seeks a presentation so sharp that comment by the author would be an interference" (JJ 2 84; cf. 60). Bloom and Molly and Stephen speak in their own voices, the voices of Ireland's traditional history and myth. It is Molly who denigrates priestly morality in favor of nature and Bloom who has compassion and a large political outlook, who hates xenophobia (the great vice of both classical literature and the Irish heroic age). Joyce does not comment on these issues in his authorial voice. Instead, he "abandons himself and his reader to the material" (JJ 2

[38] Cf. W. Thompson 10ff.

84). Art, rather than nationalist polemic, is Joyce's goal. Whatever nationalist message there is to be found in Ulysses , "the nation might profit or not from his experiment, as it chose" (JJ 2 66).By and large, Ireland has chosen not to profit from Ulysses .

Joyce's method of inscribing ideology in Ulysses is also consonant with the aesthetic theory that Stephen develops in A Portrait of the Artist : "The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion . . . is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing" (205). Encoding archetypal perceptions about culture and humanity that transcend the views of any particular age, mythos is one of the stable or, we might say, static aspects of culture; a mythic poetics such as that used by Joyce is therefore a static poetics. Through his mythic architectonics and his reanimation (or reincarnation) of mythos, particularly Irish mythos, Joyce offers his observations about Ireland; he does not engage in polemics calculated to incite the kinetic emotions of desire or loathing, and his art becomes neither pornographic nor didactic. It is ideological nonetheless, for the mind is seized, arrested, by eternal verities about Ireland, its people, its ideals. The mythic structures predicate features about Ireland and, in fact, life in general; the linguistic (and mythic) mode of predication is static, but the predicates in turn have implications in the historical and political context in which Joyce writes. Joyce leaves the working out of these implications to the reader; it is not the artist's role to frame a (kinetic) program of action, though he may provide the rationale for the same.^[39]

After Joyce's death, his brother Stanislaus recollected Joyce's methods of literary creation (Recollections of James Joyce 19):"In all Joyce's work, the architectonic plan is dominant. He did not set to work until he had the plan clearly in mind."^[40] The architectonic structure of Ulysses has been perceived primarily in terms of its Homeric parallels and secondarily

[39] For other aspects of Joyce's politics, the ideological aspects of Ulysses , and the interaction of Joyce's politics and aesthetics, see Manganiello and Ellmann, Consciousness of Joyce 73–95.

[40] In part Stanislaus describes his brother this way as a counter to Matthew Arnold's claim that the Celt has no patience for architectonics in art. ("On the Study of Celtic Literature" 345).

in terms of Hamlet . But Stanislaus Joyce, who was more versed in Irish tradition than were most of his brother's Continental companions, wrote of Ulysses in 1941, "Whoever studies it in detail will find that a number of generations of Irish history have been superimposed one on another" (Recollections of James Joyce 19). This is an almost perfect description of the ways in which elements from The Book of Invasions and the mythic theme of reincarnation have been intertwined in Ulysses .

An architectonic structure is the work of an architecton , a "master builder." Structures, buildings, towers are recurring images in Joyce's work. In Finnegans Wake a controlling metaphor is the Tower of Babel (Stewart 201–2), and in Ulysses we also find the recurrent image of the tower. On the surface of the text there are the Martello tower in which Stephen and Mulligan live, O'Hara's tower in Gibraltar (under whose shadow Molly and Mulvey dally), and the towering hill of Howth. In the mythic substructure there are the Tower of Babel that the Goidels help construct, as well as the pharos in Spain from which Ireland is sighted. The inhabitants of the Dublin in Ulysses are preoccupied with towers: from the tower climbed by the two Dublin vestals out to see the sights of Dublin—a tower they fear will fall but that affords a sight of the (sterile) promised land dominated by the onehandled adulterer (7.918–1075)—to the tower of sand built by those terrors of the beach, Tommy and Jacky Caffrey (13.4off.). These towers are symbolic correlates of the verbal Tower of Babel that Joyce creates in Ulysses by conjoining, conflating, and compressing disparate mythic systems and literary traditions. As a Babel of mythic structures from different linguistic sources, Ulysses anticipates the construction of Finnegans Wake . Like his Goidelic ancestors in The Book of Invasions , Joyce became a master builder, dedicated to the fusion of languages and cultures, myths and literary systems, and the unification of diverse human experience, following blueprints that he created himself.