Ulysses by James Joyce Chapter 5 “Lotus Eaters"

all right it's Alexander Lawrence the portable infinite we're reading ulyses today chapter five the Lotus Eaters yeah don't remember what I said about the pre previous uh chapter but um but you know ulyses is a book that everyone should read I mean if you want to read and I am going to read all the great books from the 20th century um the uh you know probably yeah maybe 10 books or so you know we we'll read we'll read them all we'll start with this one uh it's not it's not really a difficult book if you just kind of like figure out what's going on Lotus Eaters it's a very it's a it's a good chapter it sets it sets off uh a lot of things that go on later in the book it's like you know a lot of you know so far we get deist and Bloom kind of Meandering kind of like just like thinking in their in their minds and um and this this one you know he's they're running there's more characters that are becoming more important because um you know like you know they're it's they're get they're kind of get they're getting out of the head and getting into the real world so let me read the first page and just kind of talk about what happens in this so you get like a sound of the the book by Lor's along Sir John rogerson's Quay Mr Bloom walks soberly past Windmill Lane leaks the lined Crusher the postal telegraph office could have given that address too and pass the sailor's home he turned from the morning noises of The Quay side and walked through Lime Street by Brady's Cottage cage is a boy for the Skins L his bucket of ofal linked smoking a chewed butt a smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him listlessly holding her battered Cas hoop tell him if he smokes he won't grow or let him his life isn't such a Bed of Roses waiting outside PBS to bring duh home come home to M slack hour won't be many there he crossed Townsen Street pass the frowning face of bethl L yes House of Alf Beth and pass Nicholls The Undertaker at 11: it is time enough dare say corny Keller bag the job for O'Neal singing with his eyes shut corny met her once in the park in the in the dark what a lark police tout her name and address she then told with my tul room tul room T oh surely he bagged it bury him cheap in a what you may call with my tuler room tuler room tuler room tuler room in West in Westland row he halted before the window of the of the Belfast and the Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of lead paper packets Choice blend finest quality family tea rather warm tea must get some from Tom Karan couldn't ask him at the funeral though while his eyes still read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hair oil and sent his right hand with slow graze over his brow and hair very warm morning under their Dro Lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the leather headband into inside his highgrade ha just there his right hand came down into the bowl of his hat his fingers found quickly a card behind the headband and transferred it to the waste coat pocket so warm his right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair then he put on his hat again relieved and read again Choice blend made of the finest Salon Brands the Far East lovely spot in must be the garden of the world big lazy leaves to float on about on cactuses flowery Meads snaky Lanas they call them wonder if it is like that those singes lobbing about in the Sun and do Dolce far not doing a hand turn all day sleep 6 months out of 12 too hot to quarrel influence of the climate leth lethargy flowers of idleness the air feeds most azotes hot house in Botanic Gardens sensitive plants water lies pepal too tired to sleeping sickness in the air walk on rose leaves imagine trying to eat tripe and cow heel where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere ah yes in the Dead Sea floating on his back reading a book with his parasol open couldn't sink if you tried so thick with salt because the weight of the water no weight of the body in water is equal to the weight of what or is it the volume is equal to the weight it's a lot uh something like that Advance the high school cracking his finger joints teaching the college curriculum cracking curriculum what is the weight really when you say the weight 32 feet per second per second law of falling bodies per second per second they all fall to the ground the Earth it is the force of gravity of the earth is the weight okay so that's pretty good that's that's the first uh page and a half of lotus eaters James dce ulyses is um came out in 1922 so over a 100 years ago and he wrote this during the War uh you know he it's not a very political book and I just might add and um and you know there's a lot of it get it gets more involved there he's kind of walking around I mean I'll kind of summarize the um the chapter a little bit okay here we are um so um let's see so let's see where we going to start here okay so Bloom's uh he's walking around on the um and he's thinking about people he's passing and he's ready he's getting ready to attend the funeral that happens in the next chapter he's reading packets of the Tea Company and uh he takes out so he later um picks up a card for his student and he he's he's writing some woman and he's using the name Henry flower his alter ego and so he's reading that that uh letter like I guess this is like kind of like people used to write pen like pen pal letters or you know like Al they would do Tinder these days but people used to write letters you love love letters to people you didn't know you know so he's he's Henry flower and this alternate life and he people used to pick up their uh letters at the post office makes sense and then he um he runs into McCoy okay so yeah in this chapter Bloom is like is sober I think it's like in the first sentence and pretty much everyone he runs into is is drunk so he runs into McCoy and they're talking and they're talking about going to the talking about paty dignum and let's see and he's looking at the newspaper and um Bloom oh McCoy's wife is also a singer so they they have that in common aspiring singer and but not that good like not as good as Molly bloop and then uh Bloom season advertisement um and oh U marur I guess Marthur Clifford's the person he's Henry flower is writing to and he's reading the letter now because McCoy kind of interrupted him and then he tears up the envelope and Bloom steps into the back door of a church and he's like thinking about church or sitting down and he's thinking about Martha and uh other things and let see what else oh and then he goes to a chemist and he runs into lions and is or no is that is that who it is yeah he runs into bantom lions and they're talking about the horse race and he was going to throw it away he he mentioned he was going to throw it away and then Li thought he's me talking about the horse there was a horse called throwaway that was in there so so he go he he's Lions want to see wants to see the paper and and bet on a race and Bloom has no clue so this comes up later when they meet later at the bar okay so episode five it's like uh up until now I mean these I mean we call this chapter lotus eaters and we talked about the Calypso but I mean th those like I said before those are only lightly applied but here's it's more kind of the Lotus Eaters kind of comes is describes the whole chapter because like he's like B like the Lotus Eaters are the people in in the Odyssey the Lotus Eaters are the people that kind of um you know are are complacent and because they eat these flowers and then in Ireland and the ulyses below seeders are the people who drink before funerals at 11:00 and stuff so and uh probably maybe they don't even eat any food okay so so let's see let me see okay so you think major tweeties mentioned again Martha Clifford let's see the scenario of the Martha Bloom correspondence offers another Motif related to the drug escapism of the lotus flower eaters the M of flowers themselves Bloom chooses the sum Henry flowers it kind of synon for Bloom and Martha encloses a yellow flower so there there's kind of like these this imagery of uh of flower throughout this book so let's see let me just kind of look and see if there's any so yeah so he's he's talking to McCoy here and we get plum trees potted meat you know there there's a lot of ads that kind of repeat and T room to room I think we've said that before and um you know then you get and then there's the letter and this this is a short chapter I mean it's only uh 10 or 15 pages too and um the cold smell of the Sacred Sone colon so uh yeah lotus eaters and so let's see oh yeah and then yeah the the throw it away it comes like in the last part and then he's talking about taking a bath maybe at the end of the chapter and and um and there's just I mean Joyce's kind of observation of characters in London and I mean in Dublin and um and then we get to chapter six and we're only I mean this this book is kind of moving like real like at a rapid Pace you know we're already to the funeral it's like it's like it seems like a lot of stuff have happened in their minds we get a lot of um detail and Joyce wrote this whole thing from from uh the Continental Europe and um you know nothing and uh you know it's it's pretty brilliant it's like I like I said before modernism is is not I mean we a straightforward novel would just have the characters like they you know they're they're a young person and they grow up like David Copperfield ulyses uh because we got ulyses because it's Joyce and it's modernism there's a times a factor this takes it place in one day it's like it's like every every but one day and all the all these references to like things that happen past and future and just the in the minds of the characters and you get all that too um so it's it's there's a like a play with time I mean each chapter I mean they're they're supposed to take um you know like maybe it's it's an hour I starts at 8 8 910 and then 8 910 again and then we get to the funeral at 10:00 but you know time you know when we get later to some of the chap some of the longer chapters you know it's like time it's like the you know well there'll be like a different sense of time passing in those chapters and stuff and that's Joyce and that's like a modernist thing that that you know nothing nothing could happen and you know in some of books in some books in the back it and there's very little happening but you know there's so there's so much going on in the mind of the characters so that's what's kind of interesting about Joyce and Lotus Eaters um let's see let me see where we're at here okay so 15 it's not very yeah I was just going to say like I haven't done one of these for a while because I've been going to a lot of shows I've been reading other books to prepare for my interviews and um and I have a book coming out pretty soon like and um so yeah I got a a book of collective poetry the the analog body and I'm also doing two chatbooks uh the Deep circuit and the New Spain and they're all coming out in August 2024 so but uh you know of course I like to read ulyses uh anytime you know it's like uh I guess I I guess I started this on July 1st and I'm not I'm not really I mean besides like some summary kind of material kind of I'm kind of like just kind of winging this I'm reading from the chapter just to kind of give you a feeling of what it's about and then I'm kind of like just kind of commenting on it you know like as a you know like like a a writer I mean I think people I mean sometimes they you know it's like you know people looking at abstract expressionism you know they maybe they look at that they don't see that as painting or or you know the minimalism of 1970s they just think what is this because the they're they're going with what they know you know already it's like okay what do you what do you know it's like okay well before all abst exp American experimental painting there was a lot of representation and you know um expressionism and uh you know that's always pretty popular but you know like this is I mean this is where we in the 20th century is it's very experimental like you know Stravinsky was exploring with music with uh the right of spring uh Picasso was around at the same time um and doing all sorts of Styles um you know then and you could look in like a lot of the Arts like painting poetry dance and there was a lot of rule Breakers there was a lot of rule Breakers in the early 20th century and I think that's really important to understand that the that um people were trying to expand the art trying to include a lot of other stuff that wasn't really in the novel because like I said before before I thought I think the the the the typical 19th century novel had been perfected by by Dickens doski um Tolstoy and the French like I I think I I stendall was like early 19th century not not 18th century like I I was like thinking but but I but I read I I read the red and the black so long ago and maybe I didn't really know too much about novels at the time but um he seemed like a kind of like a French uh Dickens or at least um tell the two cities Dickens and we'll get to Dickens because Dickens gets parody in this novel so uh when we get to that one chapter where he goes through all the styles of of all literature and that's when you gets more experimental and like stuff and you know and this is like 100 years ago I mean people were still reading um real conventional novels at the time and and uh you know there W you know there wasn't like movie you know movies video games you know music coming from every uh speaker there was no distraction so you know like um there was like there was like the free for a while there was the freedom to um let me hold on hold on a bit oh yeah I was just reminded because um I did write a lot about this book uh the tri qu Le but this is about finin wake but these this was about a lot of writers who were writing post joy and um I will I mean I I did spend when I was younger I spent a lot of time like memorizing there there's two recordings of Joyce one from reading a speech from ulyses and then he reads aniv Olivia plel and stuff and so like I was able to listen to that tape and pretty much memorize it when I was like 19 or 20 and so I'm going to probably do a tape see if I could still um uh if I still have it memorized I have a lot of n b liia plur Bell memorized but and I'm going to talk about a lot of the writers that are kind of the post wake I mean I maybe I'll do a little section about the writers in this book that are kind of post Joyce and how Joyce had to influence I mean not just on academics and not just Becket and um you know fan O'Brien or um you know Santino and others but uh a lot of writers a lot of uh mainly French writers uh in the in the 50s and 60s so we'll talk about that okay so that's the Lotus Eaters um and uh I hope you enjoyed that chapter like I did and we'll be back soon with the the next chapter Hades or the the funeral chapter okay thanks for listening we'll be back soon

Channel: Alexander Laurence

Views: 4

Keywords:

Id: rOJvusEV8lY

Length: 21min 23sec (1283 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 17 2024