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I have just finished reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. I had read the poem before for other classes and for my own enjoyment, but as I read this time I was struck by how much Prufrock reminded me of Bloom. The way that both men thinking scientific, "phenomenal" thoughts ("I have measured out my life with coffee spoons") and the way they are quiet and pascifistic ("Do I dare?"). Prufrock and Bloom could be one and the same man. They represent the older gentleman character, the one you can't help loving because he appears so helpless and out of place. Bloom is the father figure with no one to father, he is constantly oppressed, picked up, picked apart, and set aside, very often misunderstood like Prufrock is. He is Joyce's modernist expression, I believe, because, unlike Stephen, Bloom is almost complacent is his alienation. He survives from day to day and keeps on going. He has learned to cope with everything that makes him uncomfortable or that would normally make one uncomfortable. Stephen is obsessed with the past but Bloom doesn't dwell, as we have already seen.
Coincidentally, it appears that Eliot also understands that there can be an eternity in a day ("And time yet for a hundred indecisions/And for a hundred visions and revisions/Before the taking of a toast and tea") |
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What do I know about James Joyce NOW that I didn't know before?
I know that while it may seem like Joyce is a crazy, lying drunkard he is, in fact, a genius. His memory is extraordinary and his intellect the same. Finding all the literary references and religious implications in Ulysses alone is a job that would keep a scholar busy for years. And even amidst these references, he is able to construct a real story about real people. It takes someone special to be able to capture the essence of what it is to be a normal person in the everyday world. I feel that Joyce goes above and beyond this by creating someone's entire life in one book. And the amazing part is that Bloom's life is believeable. However, I still sometimes find Joyce depressing because of the realism. Bloom's life is honest but honest to the point of utter humiliation at times. Ulysses becomes hard to read when we find that Molly did indeed cheat on Bloom with Blazes Boylan and many many many other men.
Other things I know about Joyce: He had Samuel Beckett as a secretary. His wife's name is Nora. He went blind. He was a Modernist who knew around 20 different languages. He lived in Paris for a while. And his daughter once saw a psychotherapist.... |
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BLOOM IS A: stick in the mud, dirty old man, middle-aged gentleman, hero, lover, father, son, worker, dreamer, scientist, phenomenologist, husband, thinker, Jew, Irishman, Catholic too, quiet and caring man, introvert, lover of the innards of animals (which he ate with relish), king, woman, new womanly man, someone with flatulence, voyeur, musican or at least music appreciator, outsider, pig, surrogate father, cuckold, man named Henry Flower, mourner, shadow in the door, EVERYMAN. |
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