Ulysses : a critical and synoptic edition

What can I say about such a mind-blowing book? I could barely decide how many stars I would give it since it divided my opinion so. No wonder it's so controversial. There were a few chapters I absolutely hated (Scylla and Charbidis anyone?) and I thought I would end up disliking Joyce too for inflicting some of it and being such an arrogant know everything at times. Yet I find myself admiring him a great deal and wanting to re-read the book at some point if only to try and make some more sense of it. The technique astonishes, but I can't give it a glowing review because frankly I didn't like it that much. It grated in parts. Maybe that's why it's so revered though, and why I wanted to read it again, because it challenges in a way that very few other books manage.

I'd like to read it with some proper guides handy so that I don't have to keep flipping to the end notes. Nevertheless, I've found some good guides online.

Anyway, it got three stars in the end. I won't be going around boasting I've read it or attending the next Bloom's day, but I am glad to have read it and to have finished it, as I think if I'd given up half-way through I wouldn't have ever read it or finished it in the future. Glad to have read it in the version I did as well, the free ebook was apparently broken! Also, it had been edited. I know the text I read was full of a lot of mistakes (it was the 1922 version), but I'd rather that than something that has been edited in too heavy-handed a way.

“Grant me, Lord, the courage and the joy / I need to scale the summit of this day”, wrote Jorge Luis Borges of Ulysses.[1] Both are needed, courage and joy, since the most challenging works of literature should be enjoyable in their difficulty. When it comes to Joyce's great work, a colossus among the colossi, it's quite impossible to write about the reading experience succinctly, to the point, and well. I'm trying, though.In the words of Jeri Johnson in her excellent Introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of Ulysses, “Joyce's Book has so colonized twentieth-century Anglophone culture that we can never now enter it for the first time,” [2] also that “Jennifer Levine suggests imagining that this book is called Hamlet to ‘regain a sense of it as a text brought into deliberate collision with a powerful predecessor'.” [3]Indeed, it's rather impossible to just rush into the work headlong without the foreboding sensation that one is about to embark on a journey that's difficult and full of so many intertextual riddles that there are several volumes that simply trace all the references. But this is not how I've enjoyed reading Joyce. I think the need to find out specific meanings and references will come later, but for me the best way to exprience the work has been to discard all theories, annotations and commentaries. Their turn will come later, if at all. At some points I wholly forgot the Greek Ulysses aspect of it altogether, not a bad thing at the slightest. Because, truth be told, this is a massively entertaining book. Funny and witty. Yes, at times quite challenging, but isn't all of literature? It's our investment that makes things the way they are, most of the time.So, without delving too deeply into the abyss of literary criticism, I can only say that reading Joyce without any commentary than one's own is extremely gratifying. I have the beautiful Orchises edition – it's a facsimile edition of the first edition, and it's among the most beautiful books I own. It's nice to read, and unobtrusive.Is it a difficult novel, then? I think we will all be better off when we realize that such questions, ultimately, serve no great purpose. If the answer is “yes”, does it really dilute one's yearning to read it? Does it strengthen it? And should it? If the answer is “no”, what difference does it make? For me, parts of it are more demanding than others, yet when I eventually revisit it, they might not be. “See for yourself” is my friendly advice, and, above all, decide for yourself. But if there is anything I'm more certain of saying in terms of Joyce's work, it is to echo the wonderful and oft-quoted sentiment by Jorge Luis Borges that it is “rereading, not reading” what counts. Let's forget for a moment the hype and the fixation on difficulty, and instead try to read books like they were great friends: not only worthy of attention but so close to us that they know us better than we might think.I like reading Ulysses, but equally I love listening to it. There is something about Joyce's language and his way of expressing things that lends beautifully to oral performance. His words float, soar and swerve, and I think we are incredibly lucky to have an audiobook of the work that is without equal. The version I refer to is the one released by Naxos in 2008. Narrated by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan, it is an unabridged recording (27 hours and 21 minutes) that has not only been expertly read, it's actually recorded and mixed wonderfully, and it's amongst the best audiobooks I've ever encountered.Also, the [b:Complete Poems and Selected Letters 75493 Complete Poems and Selected Letters Hart Crane https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200646l/75493.SY75.jpg 24498213] of Hart Crane's complete poetry and selected letters has, in his correspondence with a friend, a fascinating contemporary perspective on the Ulysses ban in the United States, and how the book was ultimately successfully smuggled from Paris.Endnotes:[1] Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce in In Praise of Darkness (1969), collected in The Sonnets (Penguin Books, 2010), p. 125.[2] Jeri Johnson, Introduction, in James Joyce: Ulysses (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. x.[3] ibid., xi. Johnson quotes from Levine's essay Ulysses, in Derek Attridge, ed., The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 131–32.23 February,2o14

Really wanted to love it. Love reading about it more than reading it. Some of it will stay with me, but far too much was just a pointless slog (for me).

Update after a few months: ...but the parts that stay with me, making me return to the text and reframing my own life in a way that is impossible to ignore. I guess I sort of love it?

Success!!! I've finished. I certainly couldn't have done it or gotten as much out of it as I did if it weren't for the brilliant and masterful narration by [a:Jim Norton Riordan 6684912 Jim Norton Riordan https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. Not only are his voices varied and pitch perfect but he just makes everything clear, from who's talking, what they're going on about, or when we're just in someone's head. Plus he sings too! Perfection. I'd say unless you're super versed in EVERYTHING do yourself a favor and pair this book with the JN audio (there are others). You can thank me later.I'm fairly certain that I'm seriously under qualified to rate this book. Every page is packed or allusive to historical events, particularly late XIX and early XX Century Irish history, other literary works, or just the nature of language itself, that you could spend a goodly amount of time decoding the layers of what's going on. On the other hand nothing really happens. Kind of like an erudite Seinfeld episode. It's June 16th and Stephen Dedalus, a young poet, just returned from Paris (see: [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 7588 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388201200s/7588.jpg 3298883]) and Leopold Bloom, separately set about a day in Dublin. Their paths will cross and intersect given that they move in the same circle of friends: the pubs, the newspaper, a friend's funeral, a birth, a brothel. All the while we live in Leo or Stephen's heads. You may scratch your head at times, you may wonder what's going on, you'll laugh and you'll never be bored. What's it all about? Mostly sex. How to get it, where, when, how, the enjoyment of it, the types, with who, past sexual conquests, looking forward to and making plans for future romps. [a:James Joyce 5144 James Joyce https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1517863935p2/5144.jpg] lays all this out in a extravagance of of literary styles that leaves one in awe of the breath and depth of his knowledge. Bonus: It's Laugh-Out-Loud Funny. Extra Bonus: Molly Bloom! You'll have to wait for the last 60+ pages of the book to get her voice but it's totally worth it. She totally owns her sexuality. She is herself and unapologetically so. What a breath of fresh air. I don't know if that was Joyce's intention but Molly won't be denied.

It was Faulkner who said that you need to approach Joyce like an illiterate preacher to the Old Testament: with faith. I wouldn't call Ulysses a novel, because if you go into it thinking it's a novel, you'll get frustrated and give it up and maybe light it on fire. You've got to treat it almost like it's a religious text, read it carefully and apply your own meaning and life lessons to the passages. Joyce was trying to find a way to bridge ancient religious texts with the everyday lives that we all live, and he did it by writing this clusterf**k of a book. If you're even considering reading this, give it a try (but don't expect to get it immediately), and you need to recognize that this isn't a mere novel and that he wrote this to give a higher meaning to modern living.

Ufa!

Terminada minha segunda leitura de Ulysses, decidi escrever algumas considerações acerca dessa obra que, pra mim, devido à sua influência sobre minha maneira de encarar a literatura, possui um valor praticamente inestimável.

Por que ler Ulysses?

(1) Ulysses é considerado uma obra-prima que revolucionou a literatura moderna. É o romance dos romances do século XX e sem a menor dúvida um dos livros mais importantes da história. É possível dizer que Ulysses influenciou quase toda literatura que veio depois dele: de Mário de Andrade à T.S. Eliot; de Gabriel García Márquez a Carlo Emilio Gadda; de Anthony Burgess a Philip K. Dick.

(2) Ulysses, como a própria vida, é uma fonte inesgotável de interpretações que tende ao infinito por sua multiplicidade temática complexidade narrativa. O que Joyce consegue fazer é tornar o aglomerado complexo da existência moderna inteligível através da escrita sem reduzi-lo à categorias e tipos. Nesse sentido, o trabalho de Joyce diferente dramaticamente do trabalho do cientista. Joyce encontra sua eficácia e vitalidade não em sua capacidade explicativa ou em uma parcimônia implacável; mas em absorver todas as eminências da experiência humana e ordená-las através de uma organização que não define nem o livro em si nem o seu significado. É claro que os arranjos basilares estão nos conhecidos esquemas feitos para Stuart Gilbert e Carlo Linati, mas a maravilha de Ulysses está no que sobra quando derrubadas essas estruturas: uma narrativa engenhosamente cômica; um eruditismo gracioso; os múltiplos estilos (técnicas) que se formam e se dissolvem no fim de cada capítulo; as ilimitadas questões estabelecidas em um limitado espaço temporal e geográfico; a miríade de tudo que somos como humanos, refletidas em um único dia na existência quase banal de nosso protagonista. Nesse sentido, Ulysses é um livro indefinível por natureza.

(3) Joyce usa metáforas, símbolos, ambiguidades e conhecimentos diversos que se ligam gradualmente entre si para formar uma rede de conexões ligando toda a obra. Isso torna a leitura uma aventura atrás de significados e referências e uma jornada que exige um olhar atento a “leitmotifs” e detalhes que apenas tem a agregar ao conjunto total da obra. Todos os quebra-cabeças e enigmas dão ao leitor motivos para reler o livro e descobrir segredos que, talvez, nenhum outro leitor tenha descoberto - além, é claro, de abrir espaço para infinitas discussões acerca dos significados e mais significados subjacentes ao livro.

(4) A consequência disso é que Ulysses não é só grandioso como obra em si, mas também como objeto de numerosos debates ao longo da história. É quase como se os fanfiqueiros mais bem dispostos tivessem cruzado com os mais graúdos acadêmicos para formar uma espécie de liga de debates. Há interpretações de toda sorte e cada uma delas tem algo interessante a dizer sobre Ulysses.

(5) Ulysses também nos impõe como pouquíssimos livros a discussão acerca dos impactos que o estilo/técnica pode ter sobre as múltiplas dimensões de uma obra literária; ou, de maneira mais ampla, da relação entre forma e conteúdo.

(6) Apesar de agridoce, é um livro otimista e frequentemente hilário.

Como ler Ulysses?

Não poderia deixar de endereçar o elefante no meio da sala: a dificuldade da obra. Não é um livro para leitores de primeira viagem e não é um livro que eu consideraria fácil. Ulysses exige resistência, atenção, pesquisa e uma capacidade interpretativa que vai exigir, por vezes, horrores de sua imaginação. Por isso resolvi apresentar aqui certas dicas para encarar a obra:

- Não comece pelo original. Recomendo fortemente a tradução do Caetano W. Galindo.
- Ulysses, apesar de sua estatura monumental, é um livro espirituoso, então tente não levar ele tão à sério.
- Você pode encarar a obra sem nenhuma leitura prévia, mas recomendo fortemente ler a Odisseia e Hamlet. É praticamente um pré-requisito para sacar os aspectos mais gerais da obra.
- Consulte os esquemas que o James Joyce fez pra ajudar o Stuart Gilbert e o Carlo Linati - mas não fiquem tão apegados a eles. São como andaimes na construção do grande edifício que é Ulysses.
- Tenha em mente que Ulysses é um livro irlandês, e, em certa medida, um livro feito para os irlandeses. Então ou você morre e reencarna irlandês, ou aceita que nunca vai pegar todas as referências.
- A intertextualidade do livro exige alguns conhecimentos cuja procura, por vezes, extremamente maçante; além do fato de que Ulysses é, por vezes, um livro fácil de nos engolir com seus detalhes. Para evitar qualquer desespero e entender melhor a obra, procure as anotações disponíveis em The Joyce Project, Sparknotes, UlyssesGuide.com, CliffsNotes e Shmoop; embora esses sejam os mais acessíveis, existe uma infinidade de sites e livros com ótimos comentários acerca de Ulysses. As introduções escritas por Cedric Watts e Declan Kibert são bastante úteis!
- Se quiser compreender bem o livro, leia o capítulo sublinhando as palavras desconhecidas; depois, anote o significado delas; por fim, leia o capítulo novamente.
- Se quiser uma compreensão ainda melhor, leia o texto original. Muitos dos capítulos oferecem trocadilhos, piadas e uma musicalidade intraduzível. Alerto que é uma leitura muito difícil, então recomendo ler o original em uma segunda visita ao livro.

Espero que essas dicas sejam úteis!

Conclusão? A vida é curta demais pra não (re)ler Ulysses.