Bloom & Stephen (Un)Arranged
Below, you will find the interior monologue of Bloom and Stephen filtered out of the text of “Aeolus”, and two of the arranger’s headings that directly refer to the two shifts between Bloom and Stephen’s voice in the chapter. Applying this “filter” creates a lengthy interior monologue, the style of which is highly reminiscent of chapters like “Proteus” and “Penelope.”
This filter shows that the three layers at the arranger’s disposal throughout the novel – objective action, free indirect discourse, and interior monologue – clearly are experimented with by the arranger as the novel progresses. The chapters at the beginning of the Telemachiad, the Odyssey, and the Nostos, on the other hand, are chapters in which the arranger lets the objective action dominate the narration, and those that conclude the three parts are dominated by interior monologue. To better understand the interior monologue chapters like “Penelope” or “Proteus,” imagine that the arranger is withholding objective action and/or free indirect discourse from you, the reader. Having to follow the action without access to these narrative components is what makes these chapters so challenging.
In other blog posts or annotations, you may see the Aeolus (Un)Arranged team reference the connection between Stephen and the arranger. Filtering the text in the way below also draws a striking parallel between the arranger’s intrusion into the text and Stephen’s intrusion. Stephen’s abstract, opaque interior monologue punctuates the more matter-of-fact interior monologue of Bloom throughout the novel in the same way that the arranger intervenes with certain actions like his imposition of the headings in “Aeolus.” Finally, the return of Bloom’s consciousness to domination at the end of “Aeolus” matches Bloom’s (and Odysseus’s) return home at the end of the entire narrative arc.
The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of papers under his cape, a king's courier.
Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.
We.
Dullthudding Guinness's barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.
The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.
Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.
Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart. In Martha.
But will he save the circulation? Thumping. Thumping.
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in.
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It's the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish.
The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head.
Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say.
Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.
Hell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. Maybe he understands what I.
think he has a touch of jaundice,
Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things.
Better not teach him his own business.
I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry.
I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.
Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.
Time to get out.
Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists over for the show.
Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads, speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.
Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.
Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.
Who the deuce scrawled all over those walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door when I was there.
Citronlemon? Ah, the soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket.
What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.
Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is.
High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see. Rather upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say. Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap. That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in the wind, I wonder. Money worry.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hail fellow well met the next moment.
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the stomach.
EXIT BLOOM
Bit torn off.
On swift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes, pale vampire,
Mouth to my mouth.
Bullockbefriending bard.
A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni.
See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
Nightmare from which you will never awake.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it then?
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the same, two by two.
........................ la tua pace
.................. che parlar ti piace
Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.
But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.
And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs?
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don't ask.
And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of porches. The tribune's words, howled and scattered to the four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.
I have money.
Dublin. I have much, much to learn.
Crawford will follow.
Dubliners.
Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records. Quicker, darlint!
On now. Dare it. Let there be life.
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.
RETURN OF BLOOM
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm. Lenehan's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.