Below are a couple of excerpt from the Proteus episode in Ulysses.
The Proteus episode is an inner monologue, everything having to do with philology.
It is also very interesting because it is from the point of view of Stephen, who, Joyce tells us ONCE in the 800 page book, has broken his glasses .
So from inside Stephen’s world, everything is blurry and introspective, because he cannot see clearly. God forbid that Joyce would ever remind us of this or give us clues, or just flat out say, “What with having a pair of broken glasses, Stephen squints down the shoreline”. Of course, if he gave us bone-headed clues like that, it wouldn’t be considered a great book.
And so — You are left in this blurry subjective world. You don’t know why it’s blurry – or, if you miss the clue that Stephen’s glasses are broken – you have no idea why the entire thing is written overwhelmingly using SOUND cues. There are no visibles. It’s all about the SOUND. Of course. Because if you can’t SEE, then the sense of hearing will take over.
The first paragraph of the Proteus section is rightfully famous. I will lead off with it below.
Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot, Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: colored signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.
Now I realize I am biased (OBVIOUSLY), but that writing takes my breath away.
Read the sentence below, and see what Joyce is doing here. He never states the obvious: “I have lost my glasses, I can’t see“. And yet – he tells you everything.
The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back.
I am blind as a bat myself, and that is a perfect description of the experience of sound, when I am without my glasses
And lastly, from Proteus:
His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the fartheset star? darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sitst there with his augur’s rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now. Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more.
