新世紀的喬伊斯：政治，文本，倫理─尤利西斯之文本政治 (II-II)

行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫 成果報告

尤利西斯之文本政治 (II-II)

中 華 民 國 92 年 11 月 25 日

Linguistic-Political Imposture and De-Posturing in “Eumaeus”

Much down-rated, especially artistically, among the chapters of Ulysses—not unreasonably because it is paled against its preceding, extravagant episode of “Circe” and its succeeding, sui-generis chapters of “Ithaca” and “Penelope”—“Eumaeus” nonetheless deserves serious reconsideration. Swamped in abundance of clichés, not unlike “Nausicaa,” “Eumaeus” presents itself as a seemingly laughable chapter, as if deliberately calling for the downplaying and even dismissing of its significance and importance, although much against its overt verbal intention.1 Again, much like the sugary clichés which consisted of much of Gerty MacDowell’s phraseology, the time-worn clichés, together with deliberate, abundant classicism, in “Eumaeus” also aim at elevating the style and importance of the characters.

The pretentiousness of the diction of “Eumaeus” is no less noteworthy than the first part of “Nausicaa.” It is clear from the first sentence and the writing throughout the chapter that the style of “Eumaeus” shows “a love of elegant variation, convoluted phrases, and Latinate diction” (Lawrence 1981, 166). A description such as “En route to his … companion Mr. Bloom … spoke a word of caution re the dangers of

nighttown…” (16.60-64), with intrusive but nonetheless impressive Latinate diction, best demonstrates such a verbal intention to elevate its grandiosity even in the midst of apparent circumstantial banality. Such verbal flow to impress can be blown out of proportion when the barrenness of the context obviously does not justify it: “Mr. Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech … rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his protégé in an audible tone of voice a propos of the battle royal in the street which still raging fast and furious” (16.339-344). Not only is the Latinate diction maintaining to be impressive where such importance can be barely felt, but also the diction is stretched to become cliché-like. And indeed, Stephen’s subsequent revelation as to what the Italians are really arguing about directly points to the ridiculousness of the elevated but essentially cliché diction of the phrase “battle royal.” As if in continuation of this ridicule on the part of the narrative, the narrator indeed further satirizes this explanatory act of Stephen’s to Bloom by means of a cliché-like but nonetheless formalistically impressive expression: “this tête-à-tête” (16.354). Karen Lawrence has commented that “With its borrowed foreign and

literary phrases and elegant variation, the narrative conveys a sense of striving upward mobility, as if attempting to make ‘literature out of common currency’” (1992, 369). Thus there lies the justification for the affinity of “Eumaeus” to “Nausicaa” in their

1 _{Karen Lawrence has commented on the similarity between the styles of “Nausicaa” and “Eumaeus”:}

both Gerty MacDowell‘s and this chapter’s styles share in common “their pretense to some kind of fine writing” (1981, 167).

like-minded resort to the many cliché expressions (to name but a few examples from “Eumaeus,” “at the eleventh hour” 16.71; “That was the rub” 16.530; “I beg to differ with you” 16.780; “to all intents and purposes” 16.932; “to kick him upstairs, so to speak” 16.1857; “The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak” 16.1874) which also, as in the celebrated case of “Nausicaa,” attempt to add to the text a flavor of self-importance or even elegance on the strength of their pre-formularized shape as inherent in clichés themselves.

Trite as these may sound, they are part and parcel of the linguistic postures which the text adopts in order to generate an importance and even mystique not only of the literary-linguistic kind, but ultimately simulating the national-political kind. Although critics have long downplayed the seriousness or even value of the fund of clichés in “Eumaeus,” this trite linguistic deployment nonetheless signals the important maneuver this chapter makes to forge, first and foremost, Bloom’s writing style as a would-be writer in his own right. After his humiliated defeat in “Cyclops,” this chapter of “Eumaeus” provides Bloom with an opportunity to have his own say, especially to Stephen, and this time in a more triumphant tone than when he had to account for himself to the Citizen at Kiernan’s pub. Far more so than Gerty who was a self-styled “ladies letterwriter,” Bloom has been rather self-conscious of his would-be talent in literary writing. His envious response to Philip Beaufoy’s “Matcham’s

Masterstroke” is obviously a good indication of his keen interest in writing, especially when it can bring financial returns, say “at the rate of one guinea per column”

(16.1230-1). The narrator of “Eumaeus” acknowledges Bloom for “being a bit of an artist in his spare time” (16.1448-9). And indeed, “Eumaeus” can be dubbed as “Bloom’s proposed sketch of My Experiences in a Cabman’s Shelter,” to use Bloom’s own title (Thomas 16; 16.1231)—though bear in mind, much like “Nausicaa,” this rather Bloomian account of “Eumaeus” is told still from a combination of the third-person narrative and interior monologue. Karen Lawrence also glosses that “Eumaeus” “gives us a travestied form of Bloom’s stream-of-consciousness,” the style of which “exaggerates the qualities of the more educated, garrulous talk of the storytellers, would-be rhetoricians, and resident Dublin wits at their worse moments” (1981, 170-1, 166). Brook Thomas observes that Bloom’s “humanity and classical temper” best characterize his style, albeit “In striving for complexity it succumbs to cliché” (16).

Adopting such a pretentious posture in his writing style, or rather, in the third-person narrative which underscores this distinctive quality of Bloom’s, Bloom forges—and impostures—for himself an image of the man of letters schooled in a semi-classical education worthy of his companion’s intellectual salt, so to speak (to appropriate and replicate the ubiquitous clichéd style of “Eumaeus”). While the text

works on his behalf to impress—by means of the aforementioned various linguistic performances—“Eumaeus” falls prey to becoming “a kind of encyclopedia of received phrases” (Lawrence 1981, 168). Gerald L. Bruns has famously criticized Bloom’s or the narrator’s lack of creativity after all, for their speech is composed of “locutions reçues,” rendering merely “worn expressions” which come from “idées

reçues” (366), speaking nothing but “the impoverished language of his [the narrator’s]

tribe” (367).

The stale and public inventory of language to which Bloom and his narrator resort corroborates the strenuousness of a collective, “linguistic memory” which is a store of “a transpersonal repository of received ideas” recording the “public,

anonymous ‘voice of culture’” (Lawrence 1981, 168) which we first heard in the captions of “Aeolus” and then in the advertising slogans scattering the Dublin of 1904 as Joyce records them in Ulysses and which infuses the chapter of “Nausicaa.” Karen Lawrence has started her book by announcing that “Somewhere in the middle of

Ulysses, style goes ‘public’, as language is flooded by the memory of its prior use”

(1981, 8). Indeed, “Eumaeus” dramatizes the inundation by this store of public memory as deposited in language itself when the visitors to the cabman’s shelter, inclusive of the proprietor, engage in a gossipy talk about Parnell and his affair: the Irish people then at the time of the affair and now in the cabman’s shelter both enjoy “the talk of the town” (16.1366) and the intimacies of the affair because “the thing was public property all along” (16.1368-9). Dubliners obviously enjoy such publicity of scandals which make their way into their daily talk.2 Newspaper publicity plays a vital role in circulating these gossips and making them into “public property.” Bloom is made aware of and reflects on the “allembracing” tyranny newspapers exert on modern people’s lives—the nature of which we already witnessed in the chapter of “Aeolus”—especially making private love affairs into public scandals: “his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his special province the allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes…Lovemaking in Irish, £200 damages” (16.1236-1240). It is significant here that he jumbles the Christian prayer and modern advertising slogan in reproducing a stale slogan: “give us this day our daily press,” hinting that modern advertising has taken the place of religion in the

2 _{Note that Gayatri Spivak has made a famous remark on the subversive, or even anti-colonial, effect}

of rumor, albeit being illegitimate, because

Rumour … belongs to every “reader” or “transmitter.” No one is origin or source. Thus rumour is not error but primordially (originarily) errant, always in circulation with no assignable source. This illegitimacy makes it accessible to insurgency. (213)

Also see Luke Gibbons’ gloss that “Yet if it [rumor] presupposes a face-to-face setting, it cannot be taken at face value for, unlike the phonocentric voice, it does not carry with it its own authenticity” (110).

sense of not only of dominance and perhaps hegemony but staleness due to outworn circulation among the public.

The same act of re-digesting the stale and public store of language occurs in fact rather early in the chapter when the narrator renders Bloom’s interior monologue sparked by the “smell of James Rourke’s city bakery” which gives off “the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke’s the baker’s it is said” (16.55-9). It is typical that the cliché expressions or set phrases that “our daily bread” is the “staff of life” and one must earn one’s bread trigger Bloom’s like-minded association with the also formulaic advertising slogan which Rourke’s the baker puts up. Thus, one can see that in

striving for sophistication, Bloom or the narrator invariably succumbs to clichés or the inventory of public and stale expressions readily available—as explicitly accounted for in the phrase “it is said” in the above example—around Dublin of 1904.

While it is true that these easy and lazy recourses to clichés and stale expressions eventually result in the sorry state that “any authentic feeling that Bloom may be supposed to have for Stephen remains undramatized, deflected into formula” (Bruns 367) and beg Bruns’ complaint that “Its language [of “Eumaeus”] is limited, not amplified, and its antagonisms are underplayed, muted, which is to say undramatized” (372), these undramatized verbal expressions can sometimes become important tools to throw political and metafictional reflection on the linguistic (dis-)guises to which our daily language use inadvertently resorts. After hearing and reflecting on all the gossipy talk of Parnell and his affair, Ireland and its pride, and what not, Bloom and Stephen leave the cabman’s shelter and Bloom leads Stephen on with Bloom’s left arm in Stephen’s right (16.1721). Chatting about music on the way, Bloom inquires Stephen whether or not he ever sings Martha, M’appari and on this topic Stephen mentions several music practitioners whom he knows or from whom he wanted to buy instrument. One of their names is John Bull. The English musician-professor has exactly the same name as the personification of the English nation derived from John Arbuthnot’s satirical History of John Bull (see Gifford 561). This triggers Bloom’s inquisitiveness: “He inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence” (16.1774-6). Much like scandals of well-known political figures such as Parnell to which the average people enjoy easy access by means of gossips or newspaper publicity, here the random and coincidental name-dropping of someone who happens to share the same famous name also testifies to the existence of this freely-circulating bank of proper names including clichés.

impinging of common fund of received language and ideas, but, more important, it echoes the political discussion much in the air in this chapter. The fact that John Bull is a type representing the English nation renders this name coincidence in a music person impregnated with political overtones. It is this accidental name dropping which can even enlist an association with the English colonizer that makes Bloom marvel at their “striking coincidence.” This incident demonstrates that where language does not claim to be political, such an apolitical guise proves to be illusory after all. Even in the most unlikely place, Joyce demonstrates for us, the Dubliners of 1904 must still be reminded of their colonial status.3

The other name coincidence which occurs in this chapter has less to do with the political reflection than the cognitive act and self-reflexive reflection on textuality. This is the name of Simon Dedalus who the sailor Murphy claims to have known. It turns out that this person whom Murphy has known is someone other than Stephen’s father. It is Bloom again who makes a remark of “Curious coincidence” to Stephen “unobtrusively” (16.414). It certainly is a curious coincidence not only for Bloom and Stephen, but also for the readers of Ulysses. Such a name coincidence appeals to the readers’ foreknowledge of the characters and the text of the novel. By having the sailor first present and then take away the mystery of the name which means a lot to the readers of Ulysses, Joyce is actually laying bare the process of novel reading and cognition. In fact, like in the case of the name coincidence of John Bull, here the two separate Simon Dedaluses also bear witness to the store of public and stale language circulating around people of that time, so much so that even proper names are at the risk of losing their uniqueness. This may recall an earlier occurrence of a similar name coincidence confusion-joke in “Wandering Rocks.” This time it concerns our main hero Bloom’s name. In section 17 of “Wandering Rocks,” Cashel Boyle

O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell bumps into the blind stripling as he strides “past Mr Bloom’s dental windows” (10.1115). The solution to this significant name

reference is suspended until two chapters later in “Cyclops.” In the pub conversation, after picking up the rumor of Bloom’s connection with Sinn Fein on his Hungarian origin, Jack Power is curious “Isn’t he a cousin of Bloom the dentist?” (12.1638) and Martin Cunningham replies that this coincidence is “Only namesakes” (12.1639). Thus, in a similar jocular vein, here in “Eumaeus” the John Bull is not the John Bull in the popular personification of England, but it seems so in appearance, and the Simon Dedalus in Murphy’s tale is not the Simon Dedalus in Ulysses, but for a

3 _{Len Platt reminds us of another incident in “Lestrygonians” wherein such cranky free association}

with proper names can be endowed with a political meaning. It is Bloom’s manipulation of George Russell’s appelation of AE: “A.E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire” (8.528-30). Jesting with the name of a key figure of the Anglo-Irish revivalism, Bloom is voicing Joyce’s disengagement from the movement (118-9).

moment they seem identical. Both names invariably evoke someone else who also shares the same name. Rendering political or metafictional associations as they may be, they both point to the linguistic predicament of forcibly partaking of a fund of commonly shared—thus not autonomous—language and ideas.

Whereas the superficial name coincidences aim at soliciting self-reflexive

reflection and divulge problematics on the nature of public-ness—within the text itself or among speaking citizen-subjects—of language, the narrator of “Eumaeus”

furthermore puts on an unusually circumspect mask underscoring its distinct but problematic linguistic quality. Of a piece with the ostensible erudite guise of the textual quality in the Bloomian narration, the deliberately circumspect language permeates the entire chapter of “Eumaeus” to show off the scientism-mindedness of Bloom, of which we were already given a taste through the exaggerative

dramatization of “The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft” (12.468) in “Cyclops.”4 As said, from the beginning of “Eumaeus,” the text

immediately marks itself out as ridden with clichéd qualification as well as Latinate erudition. Moreover, it is also marked by a distinctly circumspect style. This can be clearly detected in the beginning two sentences of the chapter: “Preparatory to anything else Mr. Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion he very badly needed. His (Stephen’s) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady…” (16.1-5). “Preparatory to anything else,” “orthodox,” and “not exactly” are three successive qualifiers meticulously defining the meaning of the sentences produced here. As if these are not exact and precise enough, even the pronoun—“His”—requires additional parenthetical qualification lest that its predicate is not clearly identified. Thus, throughout “Eumaeus” qualifiers such as “inasmuch as” (16.12, 116), “So far as” (16.14), “or, more properly” (16.21), “the socalled” (16.366), “meaning” [as in “Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work”] (16.1147) abound. These express a textual desire to clarify and then fix

meaning, an impetus of which we have already seen the more political and ideological version in the Conmeeist style in “Wandering Rocks.”

Indeed, so far the resemblance in the Bloomian pseudo-scientific style of “Eumaeus” to the meaning-fixing impetus in “Wandering Rocks” is obvious. This characteristic in “Eumaeus” also prepares for the extreme scientism in the catechist style of the following “Ithaca” chapter. However, the submission to the use of clichés, the lavish resort to Latinate diction, the harking to public fund of language, and the

4 _{Len Platt has given a detailed account and analysis of Bloom’s scientism (122-4) which he proposes}

as Joyce’s way to challenge the Yeatsean revivalist distaste of science: “For Yeats the ‘man of science’ had ‘exchanged his soul for a formula’” and science supports the “ideology of bourgeois cultural imperialism” (122).

deliberate adoption of the circumspect style of narration contribute to forging a rather heterogeneous linguistic gesture of on the one hand laying bare but invariably being confined to received language and ideas, and on the other, while being trapped in this stale and commonly shared language, of the gesture enacting a strict tendency to formulate, qualify, and exact it. This urgent desire to formulate and fix meaning is particularly acute in “Eumaeus” because this chapter heralds the beginning of

“Nostos,” the home-returning section proper of the Odyssean myth on which Joyce’s

Ulysses structures. Starting from as early as “Aeolus,” the precarious unity of

meaning of Ulysses is constantly sabotaged by meaning-diffusing and -undermining stylistics. This converges around “Cyclops,” “Nausicaa,” and “Oxen of the Sun” and culminates in “Circe.” After the thematic and stylistic big bang of “Circe,” the text of

Ulysses paves the way for its happy ending by actively building a serene guise of

form and content, rather evident here in “Eumaeus,” starting right from its first

sentence. As shown above, the form of “Eumaeus” clearly pertains to building a sober, cool-headed style with which the major male character, i.e. Bloom, accounts for

himself. Thus, the tendency on his part to qualify his statements to the extent of replicating mere clichés is decisively important, because this helps produce a guise of his surpassing clarity, logic, and significance worthy of the epic-hero model.

While this tendency to profess lucid exactness remains evident and strong, more often than not the style of “Eumaeus” seems encumbered by the narrator’s task of over-qualifying his statements, so much so that the opposite effect of

qualification-resistance proves closer to the truth and brings about destablization or demystification in not only the guise of rationality in its style but mystique in its content. Much in tune with the circumspect style is the text’s constant qualification of especially pronouns. This is also evident right from the beginning of the chapter. As mentioned above, the second sentence already carries a meticulous pronoun

qualification: “His (Stephen’s) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady…” (16.4-5). And throughout the chapter one notices such explicit intrusion of the qualifying parentheses or qualifiers: “Alluding to the encounter [with Corely] he said, laughingly, Stephen, that is” (16.231-2); “And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, he (B.) couldn’t help feeling…” (16.1048-9); “Her (the lady’s) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen…Dublin’s premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution” (16.1433-6); “He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin’s uncrowned king in the flesh”

(16.1495-6); “His hat (Parnell’s) a silk one was inadvertently knocked off”

(16.1513-4); “All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B’s) busy brain” (16.1652); “he purposed (Bloom did)” (16.1867). These examples show that “in a chapter so concerned with impostures, Joyce is showing how language conceals as

much as it reveals, how language always relies upon or requires a sort of parenthetical aside for true clarity. Ordinarily transparent pronouns are deliberately rendered

opaque and in need of interpretation in this chapter” (Culleton 23). In effect, in these above examples, ironically contrary to their intention to achieve a scientific precision, the qualifying parentheses are so intrusive that they even suggest a style which evokes that of a less controlling writer or even a beginner writer who relies more on

mechanical qualification than verbal competence. Such suspicious incompetence in rendering a controlled style signals a problematic competence in arriving at the truth claim with which the style of “Eumaeus” is clearly most concerned.

On closer examination, the text of “Eumaeus” not only swarms with suspicious qualifiers but presents a serious state in which the naming act is virtually problematic vis-à-vis or even discontinuous from the named objects or events. As if the

circumspect style, while intensifying the textual desire to qualify the narrator’s statements, goes to the extreme of vigilance, the text of “Eumaeus” poses a problematic stance of relativity and uncertainty. Phrases like “the propriety of the cabman’s shelter, as it was called” (16.8-9); “Lord John Corley some called him” (16.130); “a group of presumably Italians” (16.310); “the keeper of it [the cabman’s shelter] said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat” (16.323); “a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed” (16.356); “the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee” (16.360); “[Bloom] pushing the socalled roll across” (16.366); “assuming he was the person he represented himself to be” (16.495-6); “Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper” (16.596); “Our soi-disant sailor” (16.620); “Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he” (16.985); “the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera (16.1070); “the soi-disant townclerk Henry Campbell” (16.1354-5); “the jarvey, if such he was” (16.709); and sentences like “[Murphy] stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket” (16.587-9); “[Stephen] shoved aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it” (16.1169-70) all

underscore the crux of relativity in the narrative style. These send out a note of careful qualification to the extent of interrogating or even defeating the truth claim in these statements.

While the text of “Eumaeus” is most concerned with qualifying its pronouns and statements, sometimes it deliberately defies such law in that it poses ambiguity as to the reference of pronouns. The passage describing Bloom’s and Stephen’s arrival at the cabman’s shelter is rather typical: “Mr. Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual facts which quite possibly there was not one

vestige of truth in” (16.320-6). Whereas this passage has insisted on distinguishing Bloom and Stephen as “the former” and “the latter” and on carefully qualifying the keeper of the venue as the “said to be” invincible,” it suspiciously leaves the reference of the twice-appearing pronoun of “he” ambiguous. Such referential ambiguity can take on an adverse direction toward an ultimate volatility and dismissal of naming itself.

Personal testimony is given a highlighted place in “Eumaeus.” Primarily, D. B. Murphy and Bloom are the ones who claim to have had extraordinary experiences and “Eumaeus” is the chapter which gives them a forum to recount their experiences. Murphy’s seaman adventures are incredulous and sensational while Bloom’s accounts of his encounters with the Citizen and Parnell are politics-impregnated in theme. Both claim a sort of authority for their testimony, Murphy by showing his tattoo and knife and producing a postcard to bear witness to his adventures and cannibalistic encounter, and Bloom by insisting on his self-evident integrity. However, Murphy’s postcard proves to be a forgery because it does not match what and whom he claims to have encountered. Bloom claims his sobriety and rationality in his memory of political events; however, they are seriously flawed. Conjured by the setting of the cabman’s shelter is its proprietor’s rumored connection with the Phoenix Park murders of which Bloom claims to have clear memory: “He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land troubles… early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen” (16.604-8). The faulty information of “eightyone,” made more ironic on the insistence of its being “correct” as being borne witness to by the

as-clear-as-yesterday memory of Bloom’s, undermines the reader’s conviction in this statement, in spite of the narrator’s matter-of-fact tone. This recalls the similar irony and meaning-diffusing incident in “Aeolus” discussed above in my Chapter One where the editor Myles Crawford cited the great Gallaher as the exemplum of modern journalism. Crawford reinforced the truth and authority in his statement by testifying to his being witness to Gallaher’s feat: “Gallaher…You know how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born” (7.629-633). Both incidents mark out a destablizing irony in

pertaining to a truth-certifying tone and recourse to memory of history while deliberately laying bare the rupture of naming from its objects. To be specific, both errors have seriously undermined the political reference and even significance in them.

Similarly, another description also throws into relief problematics in the naming act, of political nature, too. This is the Skin-the-Goat’s curious lack of response to the

gossip and rumor of his murder weapon—knives. The narrator describes

“Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn’t understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very!” (16.596-600) when one customer mentions the foreignness of the knives used in the park murders on the basis of the claspknife which Murphy produces. The “very funny” comment on the narrator’s part indeed carries an incredulous tone as to the mismatch between people’s naming the keeper as the Skin-the-Goat and the evidence which suggests otherwise. It is actually after this expression of the incredulous tone that Bloom asserts his vivid memory as above, as if to expunge this disturbing inconsistency between naming and being.

All of the above touch on an important issue in “Eumaeus”—that is, the linguistic-political mystique conjured up during 1904 in Dublin, Ireland. It is

significant that “Eumaeus” is set in the cabman’s shelter whose proprietor is rumored to be “the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible.” This provides a very good opportunity for Joyce to re-trench some of the pre-circulating, especially

political, issues. Not this alone, “Eumaeus” in fact is a good occasion to re-digest and even resolve (albeit only in verbal terms) all the preceding important issues that have been brought up during the course of the novel, including, among other things, marital relationship, (domestic and political) home rule, and Irish nationalism. Heading the home-returning section, “Eumaeus” is expected and obliged to be concerned with the home-arrival of meaning and themes as well. It is then natural for it to be preoccupied with the themes of truth and falsehood, which are one or two of the most important thematic—as well as stylistic, as I will argue—concerns of this chapter.

In fact, the three chapters in “Nostos” are all concerned with either re-digesting or summarizing by re-naming the previous events which have occurred in the novel. “Ithaca” of course is the most apparent example whose entire summation in question and answer form throughout expresses the most of this absolutist defining intention among these three concluding chapters. Superficially a return to a more conventional narrative as it is, “Eumaeus” also features this preoccupation with re-telling the events and thereby delimiting their meaning. The aforementioned name coincidence of Simon Dedalus can be alternatively viewed as a mock re-introduction and also mock-summary of the previously appearing main character in Ulysses, although this time it is processed by a new character called D. B. Murphy in his own and actually irrelevant context. Then, most prominent of this re-telling impetus is of course Bloom’s accounting for himself to Stephen what happened in Kiernan’s pub, or “this synopsis of things in general” (16.1141-2). That is to say, “Eumaeus” embeds an important recycling of “Cyclops,” or to use our earlier analogy borrowed from

Bloom’s own philosophy, the former provides a parallax for the latter. One notices immediately that Bloom’s retelling of the event is tinted by his craze for and insistence on truth-finding. He gives his confrontation with the Citizen such a

retelling: “He [the Citizen] called me a jew …offensively. So I without deviating from

plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his

family like me though in reality I’m not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right?” (16.1082-7, emphasis added). Bloom’s statement maintains such an impressive lucidity and rationality in emphasizing his abiding by “plain facts” and “reality” and in resorting to consensus—“as everyone saw”—that his listener Stephen is ready to confirm and affirm Bloom’s divine nature, though typical of the latter’s habitual “timorous dark pride” (16.1087-8), he does this “in a noncommittal accent” (16.1091).5 The parallax provided here in “Eumaeus” indeed is filtered through a calm, truth-claiming perspective that has been established in the narrative insistence on clarity and precision. This clearly echoes Bloom’s intent to redefine himself once and for all. And indeed, as Daniel P. Gunn well analyzes, Bloom “is dragged into heroism by the violent and undisguisedly artificial activity of narration” (34). However, the reader of Ulysses is not too forgetful as to what happened in the

foregoing chapter of “Cyclops.” When Bloom’s version is set against “Cyclops,” then one will find more inconsistencies than truth-clarification. That the Citizen is said not to have “a word to say for himself” is at odds with the foregoing: the Citizen on the contrary has hysterically taken Christ’s name and blared at Bloom—“By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here” (12.1811-2). The only truth-attaining fact is perhaps that the Citizen’s following action of throwing the biscuit box at Bloom speaks louder than his threatening and rebuking words. Thus, set against its original happening, Bloom’s retelling poses some intriguing discrepancy, the presence of which signals the greater problematics—linguistic as well as political in nature—that this chapter underscores.

Besides the “Cyclops” vs. “Eumaeus” parallax,6 the other intra- (i.e. within the novel Ulysses) or inter- (i.e. between two separate chapter-texts) textual parallax, this

5

Christine van Boheeman-Saaf reminds us that while Bloom’s “apotheosis” at the end of “Cyclops” builds up a “sentimental self-image of the persecuted Jew as prophet and avatar or Christ,” this actually “partakes of the hyperbolic self-inflation of Celticist romanticism too” (92), thus opening up more problematics than what this bit of textual parody proffers.

6

Besides Bloom’s retelling of the event, “Eumaeus” also features a replica figure for the Citizen, that is, the proprietor of the cabman’s shelter, the rumored-to-be Skin-the-Goat. Almost as if breathing the same air as the Citizen, he also comes up with a “lengthy dissertation” about Ireland “as the richest country bar none on the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities…” (16.988-1009). The readers can easily detect their identical patriotic and exaggerative tone. Thus, the “Cyclops”-“Eumaeus” nexus stands out prominently.

time rendering a linguistic crux, is the re-telling of chapters like “Hades” and “Aeolus” in “Eumaeus.” In “Aeolus” we have been brought to the mise-en-scène of news printing, when its analytic process was laid bare before our eyes. However, it is not until “Eumaeus” do we see the end result of that news printing. In fact, it is the combined effort of several chapters—not “Aeolus” alone, “Hades” is the chapter in which the reporter Hynes took down the names of Bloom, M’Intosh, and M’Coy, the latter one of whom was not present but whose name was asked to be put down (6.880-898)—to finally produce the final piece of news of the society page, of the funeral of Patrick Dignam in “Eumaeus.” However, the finished version which Bloom as well as the readers get to read in the same breath, as it were, is full of flaws, which have been detected immediately by Bloom himself. He is first struck by the misprint of his name, L. Boom, and the “bitched type” whose cause he can locate clearly in the intrusive stream of consciousness of his as “(must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes’s ad)” (16.1258-9),7 and then “tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M’Coy and Stephen Dedalus B.A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M’Intosh)” (16.1263-5). The narrator satirizes the fact that the linguistic naming can take precedence of the essence of a person by deliberately misnaming Bloom as Boom as given in the newspaper: “Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments… with the …event at Ascot on page three” (16.1274-6). Here the reflection on discontinuity of naming from being is carried to its most dramatic moment. Hence, Gerald L. Bruns has pointed out a lack of correspondence and emphasized that “the discontinuity is between names and persons” (369).

As can be drawn from the above discussion, to retrench one of the most politicized chapters of “Cyclops” and the no less one of “Aeolus” naturally make “Eumaeus” partake of this politicization. It is then no coincidence that “Eumaeus” poses more of these political references to Irish politics, one of which is Bloom’s further disclosing his involvement in it. And this is his encounter with Parnell himself. In “Cyclops” the sacrificial Bloom already earned at least the readers’ sympathy from his stand on anti-treating, anti-persecution, and mostly, the rather unlikely rumor that “it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries”

(12.1574-7). In “Eumaeus” we are given Bloom’s disclosure of an insider’s account of his encounter with Parnell the person himself. The narrator gives this account

interestingly twice, the first being more brief than the second (16.1333-9; 1495-1528). Bloom had the close encounter with Parnell when the latter’s lot was declining

dramatically after the disclosure of his affair. The “point of fact” (16.1335) is that Bloom picked up Parnell’s hat which was knocked off accidentally. However, it is intriguing to juxtapose both accounts given by the narrator. In fact, both accounts are given in the spirit of rectifying truth, because both proclaim closeness to “point of fact” and “strict history” (16.1514)—much in line with as well as contributing to the circumspect and pseudo-scientific style preeminent in “Eumaeus.” However, they become “comepeting referential accounts” bewteen which there is no absolute determination (Riquelme 222), because the second much longer account gives more details which are unfortunately suspicious-sounding. Among other things, it claims knowledge of Parnell’s mind: “who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time” (16.1516-7). The addition of such a

suspicion-arousing detail easily invites the readers not only to detect inconsistencies when they place one narration against the other for comparison, which is necessitated by the parallactic function these two repetitions naturally solicit (cf. “history repeating itself with a difference” (16.1525-6)), but also lays bare the fictionality in their nature which is ultimately susceptible to overturning the truth and validity the narrator’s testimony aims at achieving. Mark Spoo’s incisive gloss is worth being quoted in full:

Bloom’s language flirts with the idea of a successful “return,” but he has told the story of Parnell’s hat twice now in the space of a few minutes, the second time with digressions and embellisments; even historiography cannot repeat itself without a difference constituted as it is by human vanity, faulty memory, and the differential webs of textuality. (76)

Brook Thomas also supports a similar view: “’Eumaeus’ alerts us to …fiction, not fact” (22), primarily because “in ‘Eumaeus’… we find Ulysses exposing its own linguistic forgery” (20), drawing his conclusion on the basis of the mistakes in the newspaper account of Paddy Dignam’s funeral.

It is indeed the fictionality which is embedded in language itself that brings down the mystifying aura surrounding Irish politics and the absolutist significance which Irish Nationalism attaches to the former. From the above three parallactic arrangements in “Eumaeus,” we are being demonstrated not only that “It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong” (16.1095-6), as Bloom explains to Stephen philosophically after his re-telling of the incident he met at Kiernan’s pub—in other words, it is more than “putting two and two together” (16.1196), albeit as Bloom’s mindset would work otherwise throughout this chapter—but also that the political mysteries are fundamentally demythified. Gerald L. Bruns has explained most usefully that “In Joyce’s Ireland…natural mysteries tend easily to be displaced by religious mysteries, and these in turn are inevitably displaced by those diverse and inimitable political mysteries that make up a kind of national fantasy life. This fantasy

life enters ‘Eumaeus’ chiefly by way of the keeper of the cabman’s shelter” (Bruns 373-4).8 As I emphasize in the above, it is strategic that “Eumaeus” is set in this shelter whose proprietor is rumored to be one of the murderers of the Phoenix Park assassination. His alias, Skin-the-Goat, is infused with the aura of terror and mystery, recalling Ireland’s bloody nationalist resistance against the rule of Britain. However, the text of “Eumaeus” keeps problematizing his fame by giving qualifiers such as “said to be,” “assuming he was he,” and “the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera.” In the

gossiping scene about the knives used in the Phoenix murders, the keeper is described as showing indifference to the gossips, which arouses adequate suspicion on the parts of the narrator and readers, not to mention Bloom. It is noteworthy that the keeper is presented as both being tied down by his rumored notoriety and escaping that naming at the same time. There is an unstable, elusive relationship between the naming and the being in the case of this extraordinary character newly introduced in “Eumaeus.” In problematizing this relationship, the narrator indeed introduces a defeatist attitude toward cognition: “the others seeing the least of the game” (16.1047).9 Moreover, granted Bruns’ observation that “the diverse and inimitable political mysteries” in Ireland feed the Irish “a kind of national fantasy life,” the problematic naming of the person playing a big role in the hearsay achieves an effect of dislodging such a national political fantasy on which the Irish otherwise were fixated.10

Bloom’s close encounter with Ireland’s uncrowned king, Parnell, is another incident in “Eumaeus” by which Joyce brings down the national political fantasy. The two accounts given in this chapter arouse enough suspicion about Bloom’s real

8

Note that from distinctly disparate perspectives, Christine van Boheemen-Saaf also uses the word “mystique” for emphasizing the collective, cultural participation of traditional Irish culture in producing a mystifying aura of “Irishness” around womanhood as well as nationhood (126), whereas Len Platt connects this “discourse of pseudo-mysticism” with Yeats’s cultural nationalism of an Anglo-Irish brand which features a set of “oppositional formulations” such as science vs. art, materialism vs. spirituality, urban vs. rural, etc. and ultimately good vs. evil (121). In a similar comment, Seamus Deane has also remarked on this essentialist set of oppositions “between a ‘spiritual’ Ireland and a ‘mechanical’ England” inherent in the nationalist imagination of the Literary Revivalist track (1982, 170). Trevor L. Williams notes there is much “pure mystification” contained in Ulysses, such as can be seen in the characters’ willing deception about the nature of reality or Joyce’s techniques reproducing the process of deception (136).

9 _{Contrast this with the more indulgent and narcissistic narrator of “Nausicaa” on a similar role of the}

spectator: “Onlookers see most of the game” (13.903).

10

Symptomatic of this fixation, especially collected among the Irish in nature, is the dramatization in “Eumaeus” of the gossip of Parnell’s return from the dead: Skin-the-Goat, who in being believed to be one of the Phoenix Park murderers, is an Irish nationalist (see Wicht on the Irish Nationalist

propagandist connection made between him and the Citizen, p. 141-2). He throws away a popularly-known speculation that “One morning you would open the paper… and read: Return of Parnell. …Dead he wasn’t. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general” (16.1297-1305). On the other hand, typical of his “irrepressible” (16.929) rationality, Bloom stands in suspicion of this popular wisdom,

questioning in the first place the validity of “their memories” (16.1307-8) because “it was twenty odd years” (16.1309-10), then rationalizing on their behalf that “Something evidently riled them in his [Parnell] death” (16.1312-3).

involvement in the incident, though the narrative claims otherwise. This problematic as to the truth of the statements made concerning Bloom’s involvement also puts in abeyance the mystery of Parnell’s role in Irish politics, or at least his significance as some Irish nationalists (such as the rumored Skin-the-Goat) attach to him.11 The narrator’s reminder of “his [Parnell’s] starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart” (16.1323)12 ironically juxtaposes Ireland’s national hero with the mundane, or non-political characters in this chapter who also go under several aliases such as the shelter keeper, the sailor D. B. Murphy (who, though having no aliases per se, is narrated in such diverse ways as having pseudo ones, such as “the doughty

narrator” 16.570, “the globetrotter” 16.575, “the rover” 16.615, “the exhibitor” 16.677, “friend Sinbad” 16.858, “Shipahoy” 16.901, “the ancient mariner” 16.1669, “the sefarer” 16.1676), and even Bloom himself (who at one time—actually twice—goes under his new misnomer Boom, as satirized by the narrator). Their partaking of several aliases in their identity, some of which are questionable and shady, is the common denominator ironically set up by the narrator of “Eumaeus.” By so doing, he levels up the political and non-political, the heroic and the non-heroic, the significant and the insignificant, and finally the true and the false.

As if speaking on Joyce’s behalf, Stephen makes a remark on problematics of names and their correspondence to metaphysical truth: “Sounds are impostures… like names. Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr. Goodbody. Jesus, Mr. Doyle. Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What’s in a name?” (16.362-4) (Cf. Stephen has earlier in “Scylla and Charybdis” repeated Shakespeare’s famous line questioning “What’s in a name?” 9.928 in support of his theory of the self-creating ability of the artist). The entire chapter of “Eumaeus” sets to throw questions at naming and the identities behind it. Just as its Greek title suggests the story that Odysseus finally approaches Ithaca but in the disguise of an old man, seeking temporary refuge in the dwelling of Eumaeus at the counsel of Athena (see Gifford 534), so “Eumaeus” toys with the idea of the returning hero. However, from the above inconsistencies that have been

demonstrated to exist between the claimed heroes, political, adventurous, or otherwise, and the naming of such. They testify that Shakespeares can indeed be as common as Murphies, inasmuch as the type name of England can turn out to be the John Bull of the composer, or the once famous Skin-the-Goat can be the person other than who he is supposed to be. Though having extraordinary names, both of them are therefore “as common as Murphies”. Even the Simon Dedalus whom the sailor D. B. Murphy (a Murphy, too!) claims to have known similarly has an extraordinary name, but his

11 _{According to Brook Thomas, by accounting for the popular beliefs that Parnell would return to save}

Ireland, Ulysses blends history with myth (18).

12

On this, Gerald L. Bruns comments that “Parnell… is figured as the man of masks in a sentimental tale of adultery” (376).

name also turns out to be as common as any ordinary name, no longer the name well known to the readers of Ulysses. Consequently, as Brook Thomas summarizes, “all claims to returning heroism are not to be trusted, nor is a name proof of one’s identity” (19). Structurally speaking, it turns out that the two returning heroes in “Eumaeus”—Murphy and Bloom—are not to be trusted.

That a parallel is attempted between the two mock heroes—“the Odyssean Bloom and the pseudo-Odyssean Murphy” (Lamos 1999, 249)—is clear in

“Eumaeus,” the most apparent point of connection being that both are on their way to their wives. After D. B. Murphy explains that he is returning to his wife who he left behind for seven years because of sailing, Bloom conjures up an empathetic reflection: “Across the world for a wife” (16.424), imagines an extended sentimental story of the wife who thought she became a grasswidow (16.433), and concludes with the

sentimental line on the errant husband’s behalf—“I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband D. B. Murphy” (16.439-40). However, Murphy turns out to be most likely a fraud and this is clear early on. His intention to sweep the audience off their feet with his heroism by boasting that he has seen “maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and livers of horses” (16.470-1) and proving his statement by means of a postcard which he claims a friend sent him is immediately detected by Bloom to be falsified: “having detected a discrepancy between his name… and the fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend’s

bona fides” (16.495-8). In a word, Joyce demonstrates in “Eumaeus” that “this

historical figure [of Skin-the-Goat]… may be a fiction within a fiction” (Fairhall 1993, 37). However, having shown suspicion toward the claimed hero, ironically Bloom draws the readers’ attention to his close parallel to the sailor by throwing reflection on the mock heroic journey he would like to undertake: “nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some Wednesday or

Saturday of travelling to London via long sea…but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber” (16.499-503). Here is the most apparent point of analogy established by the text between Bloom and Murphy.

Whereas Murphy’s heroism keeps being challenged by Bloom subsequently, the latter confronting the former with the interrogation “Have you seen the rock of

Gibraltar?” (16.611) and the former giving a disappointing but suspicious answer that “I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea… and boats and ships. Salt junk all the time” (16.622-3), Bloom’s mock-heroic posture as a returning hero to claim his sovereignty over his home remains undecided. His heroic status is also constantly being

questioned or overthrown. Ironically, no sooner than Bloom attempts to set the record straight by giving a rather self-righteous account of the happening at Kiernan’s pub to

Stephen who at one time is able to see into Bloom’s holy nature, does the text poke fun at this ad-hoc heroic posture of Bloom’s. This is Bloom’s name being incorrectly represented by the Telegraph. Though, according to Brook Thomas, the misnomer of Boom may recall and echo Stephen’s earlier definition of God as a shout in the street (21) and thus add to Bloom yet again a divine quality in echo to the divine reference previously hinted in Stephen’s response, his incorrect naming is the last straw, as it were, to his bankrupt heroic posture. Having been taken away the key letter of “l” in his name—the one letter which has loomed large in Martha’s misspelling of “world” for “word”—Bloom’s identity as well as potential world-scale, heroic stature default, so to speak. Indeed, one is tempted to echo Juliet and Stephen in repeating “What’s in a name?” However, as of his many other alternative or false names, such as the tentative “Bloowho” when he was reading the circular of “Blood of the Lamb” (“Lestrygonians”) or the pseudonym of Henry Flower he took up in his secret correspondence with Martha, the novel Ulysses plays with the questionable

correspondence between naming and identity, which turns out to be a major concern in “Eumaeus.” Here in “Eumaeus,” the narrator delights in toying with the temporary dislocation and defunctness of the hero’s name.

The embarrassing misprint given by the Telegraph, thus, becomes our

mock-hero’s temporary name: twice Bloom is temporarily but seriously known as L. Boom as the paper calls him—“L. Boom pointed it [the newspaper article which contains misprints] out to his companion B. A.” (16.1265-6); “While the other was reading it [Deasy’s letter to the editor on the foot and mouth disease] on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side” (16.1274-7). Afterwards, even when the narrative goes back using Bloom’s name proper, the narrator comically apologizes for doing so: “All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories [of Parnell’s case]” (16.1307-8). This means that for some time not only Bloom’s misnomer but Stephen’s rather awkward title is treated seriously. In doing so, the narrator can be said to

ironically—or metafictionally13—substantiate and thus honor the identity established for the characters albeit based on incorrect or false information.

Thus, the above-demonstrated volatility or uncertainty in the correspondence between naming and identity and the concern with the dialectic between truth and

13

Carla Marengo has brilliantly demonstrated that including historical figure like Parnell, the characters in “Eumaeus,” so-called real or fictional alike, cannot escape “their fictional story that will determine their fortune with posterity, even their resurrection (“One day you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read, Return of Parnell”). She points out that “the power of the press to

manipulate reality” makes “Journalism become a metaphor for metafiction—the discontinuous discourse from which fiction is generated anew, dehumanized and desensualized, free from ideological bounds and disentangled from all codes” (84).

falsehood, consciously spawned throughout the text of “Eumaeus,” culminate in the parallel default of the supposed heroism of our two pseudo-heroes. Joyce’s own emotional comment on heroism can be relevant not only here in “Eumaeus” but also already in the most hero-bashing chapter of “Cyclops,” for instance: “I am sure that the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned lie” (Letters II 81). The problematics thus generated can be summarized by those inherent in Bloom’s own phrase, whose importance and relevance in this case can square with those of other memorable words or phrases he has produced or coined throughout the novel Ulysses (such as “parallax” and his self-styled cat talk “Mkgnao!” “Mrkgnao!” and

“Mrkrgnao!” (“Calypso”))—that is, “genuine forgeries” (16.781). In a passage which foreshadows the catechist style of the next chapter of “Ithaca,” Bloom and Stephen are arguing about the existence of the soul and then “a supernatural God” (16.771). Characteristic of his scientific temperament, Bloom counters Stephen’s mock-populist assertion that the existence of God “has been proved conclusively by several of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence” (16.772-3) with “My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably” (16.780-2). While highlighting his faith in “the candid truth,” Bloom nonetheless poses for himself a paradox in which his

negative-sounding phrasing fails to convey and contain the negative message which he suspects. The phraseology of “genuine forgeries” contains a self-defeating logic because it solicits self-divided, irreconcilable double moves. As Patrick MgGee analyzes, on the basis of Derrida’s play with the speech act theory which emphasizes language’s oscillation between “use” and “mention” (1989, 214), “Joyce’s work capitalizes on the tension between the referential function and the rhetorical

dimension of language” (1989, 212). The emphatic adjective of “genuine,” intended to qualify the falsifying aspect of “forgeries,” however, can rightfully send out its own literal meaning and thus carry and create a verbal impetus questioning exactly that falsifying aspect. Thus, the verbal intention of the word “genuine” goes counter to that of “forgeries” and when placed next to each other, the two words virtually cancel each other out.

The dilemma as posed and inherent in this phrasing of “genuine forgeries” can serve as an analogy for that of the linguistic-political (im-)posture and de-posturing at large in the chapter of “Eumaeus.” That is to say, the double-headed, irreconcilable directions dictating the paradox of “genuine forgeries” also liken those of the textual and political moves in the chapter. The linguistic guises in “Eumaeus” are created by the superficial coincidence of significant proper names of John Bull and Simon Dedalus. Coincident with the archetypal representation of Britain and the fictional (or arguably real) name of one of the main characters in the novel Ulysses, the repetition

of these now in different contexts must bring to the fore the dialectics of sameness vs. difference, posture, or rather, imposture vs. the opposite move toward de-posturing. The textual dwelling or emphasis on a circumspect style creates a stance of scientism and a gesture of clinging to truth concern. However, the opposing strand of textual gesturing toward volatility of truth and identity looms even larger in the text. The co-existence of both these two diverse linguistic-textual moves impacts on the supposed distinction between truth and falsehood, rendering each stance provisional, merely superficial, and at most, gestural.

Linguistic gesturing toward a seeming truth invariably involves the intention to substantiate and legitimate political truth in the case of Ireland in 1904, just before the pseudo decolonization took place in the establishment of the Irish Free State in

1922,14 which was also actually the aftermath year Ulysses was completed. In “Eumaeus” political posturing and imposture stand out prominently. According to rumor, the keeper of the cabman’s shelter assumes the posture as well as mystique of the notorious Skin-the-Goat, the truth of which, the text of “Eumaeus” is keen on demonstrating, remains much dubious. The keeper’s nationalist rhetoric inevitably revives people’s memory of their uncrowned and fallen king, Parnell. However, by way of Bloom’s memory of a close encounter with Parnell which is told twice with some suspicious variations, “Eumaeus” eventually questions the truth in people’s perception and evaluation of Parnell’s heroic status. Volatility in the perception as well as nature of political figures and events, insofar as the latter can gesture and imposture, thus, features as another main theme of “Eumaeus.”

The ability on the part of language and politics to disguise and imposture and the dubiousness in both linguistic and political facts and truth(s) are therefore the two most challenging aspects which “Eumaeus” proposes to its readers.15 Faced with the treacherous political as well as linguistic givens in Ireland at the turn of the century, Joyce’s readers must have shared the lure of “Onlookers see most of the game” (13.903) but suspected that “the others seeing the least of the game” (16.1047) at the same time. Such is the ambivalence galvanized by the textual performance of

“Eumaeus” which directly engages itself in the political aspect of the Irish society at the time of the novel’s writing. The textual and the political reinforce and rebuttal each other in “Eumaeus,” the dialectic of which constitutes the most challenging textual politics as well as produces for itself a political text in its own right so far in

Ulysses.

14 _{Actually it remains a question when Ireland is said to be decolonized, or for that matter, when}

Britain first colonized Ireland. Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes ask these questions in their “Introduction” to their co-edited book, Semicolonial Joyce (5, 6).

15 _{It is ingenious of Andrew Gibson to have used the metaphor of “imposture” for analyzing the}

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