Bloomsday Centennial.
It has been exactly 100 years since Leopold Bloom left his house on 7 Eccles Street in Dublin on June 16th, 1904, and the 20th century fiction has never looked back. Joyce has written “Ulysses” between 1914 and 1921, yet the world does not celebrate the day the novel was completed or published in any particular country. It is the day detailed in the novel - an unprecedented occurrence in the world literature - that is being widely celebrated today around the world and especially in Dublin. There is a “Bloomsday” breakfast - the same one Leopold had 100 years ago - on the streets of Dublin today, there are numerous lectures, tours, exhibitions, concerts. You go to the official Bloomsday site (http://www.bloomsday100.org), and the array of activities is dazzling. No wonder: Nothing written before “Ulysses” showed us the living, breathing Dublin with all its colors, sites, smells, hustle and bustle. Dublin comes alive in this novel, and it’s Joyce who put Dublin on the literary map.
What is it that makes “Ulysses” such a seminal work in the world literature? More importantly in this particular context, what makes it my favorite book? While “Ulysses” is loosely structured around Homer’s “Odyssey”, it is a uniquely 20th century novel. It’s about one day - and the eternity, one city - and the whole world, two men (and one woman) - and the entire humankind. It’s 100 years in the past - and yet very relevant. It fascinates and astonishes like no other. Joyce himself suggested that while Homer marks the beginning of Western literature, “Ulysses” was to be its culmination. He wrote: “The task I set myself technically in writing a book from eighteen different points of view and in as many styles, all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen, that and the nature of the legend chosen would be enough to upset anyone’s mental balance.”
“Ulysses” is a book that belongs in the English language. I don’t know of any other work of literature (excluding poetry) that loses so much in translation. Is there a way to translate a witticism about Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway: “If others have their will, Anne hath a way”? Cait Murphy of ‘The Atlantic Monthly’ conducted the following experiment: he took a passage from “Ulysses” and asked a professional translator to find this passage in the Chinese version of the novel and then translate it back into English (without referring to the original). Here is the original passage:
“Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepy-crawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold on to me now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”
Here is what became of it after the reverse translation:
“How about laying bare your dagger-like definitions? That which is the nature of a horse is the essense of all horses. They revere the up-down flow and surging-beginning. God: cries in the street. Downright leisure school of thought. Space: the thing you are bound to see. They slowly crawl towards eternity, boring through spaces smaller than man’s red blood cells, chasing after Blake’s buttocks. This vegetable world is only but its shadow. Hold tightly to the here and now; all of the future shall surge into the past through it.”
OK, this is not fair, but it illustrates the point. Joyce is not the same in translation: he is, for one thing, far too intelligible. There are numerous other examples of “untranslatables”: someone’s voice is described as “bass barreltone”; Joycespeak for “prostitute” is “smutty moll for a mattress jig”; cat’s meow becomes, alternatively, “mkgnao”, “mrkgnao”, “mrkrgnao”, “miaow”; and so on and so forth. Joyce in translation becomes just rude, bared-down essence of meaning with abundant footnotes to explain puns, wordplays, place-specific Irish humor, and various allusions. To truly appreciate Joyce’s magic, he has to be read in English. However, very few people (and I am not one of them) possess enough mastery of the English language, not to mention vocabulary and pertinent knowledge, to read “Ulysses” unassisted. Great rewards await those who plow through this book, but the plowing process is quite involved indeed. The main characters lack motivation and achieve almost nothing at the end, there is no single narrative voice or conventional plotting, time is manipulated mercilessly, and many of the questions are never answered. The whole novel is about wandering and returning. Yet, hence lies its magic: we are all wanderers who know what it means to return. We can all learn from the novel that virtually exploded the form in the early 20th century: the language in incomparable, the style is dazzling, the lessons are timeless.
The Teaching Company (my favorite source of wonderful college-level courses on tapes) makes a course on Joyce’s “Ulysses” that helps tremendously in appreciating the novel:
http://www.teach12.com/store/course.asp?id=237&d=Joyce’s+Ulysses
100 years ago Leopold Bloom had quite a day. The world has changed beyond recognition since, but there is no better way to travel back in time that to open “Ulysses”. There is also no better way to appreciate what English language can do in the hands of a Master. Happy Bloomsday, everyone!
What is it that makes “Ulysses” such a seminal work in the world literature? More importantly in this particular context, what makes it my favorite book? While “Ulysses” is loosely structured around Homer’s “Odyssey”, it is a uniquely 20th century novel. It’s about one day - and the eternity, one city - and the whole world, two men (and one woman) - and the entire humankind. It’s 100 years in the past - and yet very relevant. It fascinates and astonishes like no other. Joyce himself suggested that while Homer marks the beginning of Western literature, “Ulysses” was to be its culmination. He wrote: “The task I set myself technically in writing a book from eighteen different points of view and in as many styles, all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen, that and the nature of the legend chosen would be enough to upset anyone’s mental balance.”
“Ulysses” is a book that belongs in the English language. I don’t know of any other work of literature (excluding poetry) that loses so much in translation. Is there a way to translate a witticism about Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway: “If others have their will, Anne hath a way”? Cait Murphy of ‘The Atlantic Monthly’ conducted the following experiment: he took a passage from “Ulysses” and asked a professional translator to find this passage in the Chinese version of the novel and then translate it back into English (without referring to the original). Here is the original passage:
“Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepy-crawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold on to me now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”
Here is what became of it after the reverse translation:
“How about laying bare your dagger-like definitions? That which is the nature of a horse is the essense of all horses. They revere the up-down flow and surging-beginning. God: cries in the street. Downright leisure school of thought. Space: the thing you are bound to see. They slowly crawl towards eternity, boring through spaces smaller than man’s red blood cells, chasing after Blake’s buttocks. This vegetable world is only but its shadow. Hold tightly to the here and now; all of the future shall surge into the past through it.”
OK, this is not fair, but it illustrates the point. Joyce is not the same in translation: he is, for one thing, far too intelligible. There are numerous other examples of “untranslatables”: someone’s voice is described as “bass barreltone”; Joycespeak for “prostitute” is “smutty moll for a mattress jig”; cat’s meow becomes, alternatively, “mkgnao”, “mrkgnao”, “mrkrgnao”, “miaow”; and so on and so forth. Joyce in translation becomes just rude, bared-down essence of meaning with abundant footnotes to explain puns, wordplays, place-specific Irish humor, and various allusions. To truly appreciate Joyce’s magic, he has to be read in English. However, very few people (and I am not one of them) possess enough mastery of the English language, not to mention vocabulary and pertinent knowledge, to read “Ulysses” unassisted. Great rewards await those who plow through this book, but the plowing process is quite involved indeed. The main characters lack motivation and achieve almost nothing at the end, there is no single narrative voice or conventional plotting, time is manipulated mercilessly, and many of the questions are never answered. The whole novel is about wandering and returning. Yet, hence lies its magic: we are all wanderers who know what it means to return. We can all learn from the novel that virtually exploded the form in the early 20th century: the language in incomparable, the style is dazzling, the lessons are timeless.
The Teaching Company (my favorite source of wonderful college-level courses on tapes) makes a course on Joyce’s “Ulysses” that helps tremendously in appreciating the novel:
http://www.teach12.com/store/course.asp?id=237&d=Joyce’s+Ulysses
100 years ago Leopold Bloom had quite a day. The world has changed beyond recognition since, but there is no better way to travel back in time that to open “Ulysses”. There is also no better way to appreciate what English language can do in the hands of a Master. Happy Bloomsday, everyone!