Bloomsday: “yes I said yes I will Yes”

The ending of the book Ulysses:

(And here’s just a small story: a couple of years ago I went to a Bloomsday celebration at a bar in the financial district called, appropriately, Ulysses. During the day-long celebration, my friend Aedin read the last 2 pages of Molly’s 40-page run-on sentence monologue that closes the book. And as she approached the end – which I have printed below – many of those in the crowd there listening – started reciting along with her – many of them without looking down at their books. And of course – the last triumphant phrase is memorized by all – and we all just SHOUTED it up into the canyons of Wall Street. One of my most memorable New York memories. Joyce is NOT solemn. Joyce is NOT abstract. That is how Joyce is meant to be read.)

Without further ado, here’s Molly (for those of you who haven’t read the book – if you read this out loud – it will become immediately apparent what is going on):

the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

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15 Responses to Bloomsday: “yes I said yes I will Yes”

  1. tracey says:

    I have shied away from this book for years, Sheila … but oh, GOD!

    And, really, I mean God.

  2. red says:

    tracey – I know, right??? It never fails to just GET me. There’s FORTY PAGES of that that closes the book. It’s tough at first – but once you get into it, the whole thing feel as natural as speech.

  3. MikeR says:

    I’ve shied away from Joyce since I was a teenager (an interval of increasingly melancholic length).

    I want to resist this crazed, monumental assault Sheila has mounted, but I’m not sure I have the strength of will or hardness of heart to pull it off. Ms. O’Malley is a formidable adversary…

  4. tracey says:

    MikeR — I know. I have NO idea how to fend her off. Our only hope is to … “RELEASE THE CRACKEN!!”

    (And that’s from?)

  5. red says:

    Now, now – like I said: I am no evangelist!! Joyce doesn’t work if you feel FORCED to read him. I read him because I wanted to and because of my dad’s enthusiasm for him. It was a BLAST to read Joyce.

    But this onslaught is not meant to convince anyone!!

    This onslaught has one purpose and one purpose only: to show the entire world what an enormous GEEK I am!!

    hahahahaha

  6. tracey says:

    Passion is persuasive, Sheila … ;-)

  7. red says:

    Now THAT is very true!!

    That’s how I succumbed to American Idol and Patrick Dempsey after years of resistance.

    hahahaha

  8. tracey says:

    Hahahahaha!

    See? I’m just sayin’, is all.

  9. tracey says:

    I have to say — this line gave me a lump in my throat:

    /and O that awful deep down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire/

  10. red says:

    Oh tracey. :) that part kills me too.

    Look at how different it would have been if he had written “Oh” instead of “O”. Totally different, although I can’t really say why.

    I mean, that “O” just … makes it so primal, so … human. It’s not language, it’s feeling.

    gulp!!!!

  11. MikeR says:

    Passion is persuasive. Combine it with reason and eloquence and you have something very powerful – and a thumbnail description of our host.

  12. red says:

    Don’t forget “raging autistic geek”!

  13. MikeR says:

    But such a consistently entertaining raging autistic geek…

  14. tracey says:

    Yes, the O is just … raw somehow.

    /It’s not language, it’s feeling./

    Exactly!

  15. Nicholas Pierotti says:

    Sheila, you’re my Gerty MacDowell!

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