Ulysses: A Textual Explication

ELT 46 : 2 2003 leave the source of language in science unknown. Given that the starting point of the chain of reception (modern physics itself) is left unknown (and in point of fact obscure), the book hangs on a precipice. This would be acceptable were it acknowledged, which it is not. Science may be constituted through metaphors, which might or might not change their meaning when popularized, but until the issue is grappled with, there is no line of circulation established from science, through popularization (with its own excess of figuration), and again into literature. Moreover, sometimes Whitworth seems to understand that scientific popularization is already literature of a kind, other times not. There is no sustained discussion of this point. Nor is there any discussion of the amazing character of literary detachment from science, of the huge avoidance of science by the very texts which also solicit it. What one can learn from this book is a great deal about the popularization of science at the time, about ideas "in the air" and in the social milieu , and about their direct effect on writers of the importance of Conrad, Woolf and Lewis. Einstein's Wake is a good start at limning pathways of information and figuration from science to literature. The deeper work remains. Daniel Herwitz ______________ University of Michigan Ulysses: A Textual Explication Sebastian D. G. Knowles. The Dublin Helix: The Life of Language in Joyce's "f/Zysses."Gainesville:UniversityPressofFlorida,2001. xvi + 176pp. $55.00 IN The Dublin Helix, Sebastian Knowles focuses on Ulysses as a book to be read, played with, savored for its verbal exuberance. Written in an engaging, often hilarious, style, the book begins with "Directions," a sort of preface that outlines the rules of the game. For Knowles, Ulysses is a gigantic puzzle consisting of small pieces that fit together in various ways which in turn illustrate the novel's basic strategies. Taking as his motto E.M. Forster's "Only connect . . ." (from Howards End), Knowles invites us to watch as he makes connections among the parts of this puzzle. These connections include some which we can assume Joyce intended, others which he almost certainly did not (but which can nonetheless illustrate the book's openness to connection), and still others that fall into a middle area: maybe they are intentional, maybe not. For example, take this item, located in what the text enigmatically calls Bloom's "first drawer": "the transliterated name and address of the 218 BOOK REVIEWS 3 letters in reversed alphabetic boustrophedontic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N.IGS./WI.UU.OX/W.OKS.MH/Y.IM" (17.1799-1801/ 721; Ulysses references cite chapter and line numbers for any edition of Ulysses edited by Hans Walter Gabler, followed by page numbers for the 1961 Random House/ Modern Library edition or subsequent texts with the same pagination, including the 1990 Vintage International Edition which Knowles uses as his "default text"). Knowles's discussion of this cryptogram (19-26) is brilliant. He begins by calling the phrase "first drawer" a non sequitur because it literally does not follow anything in the text: not only does Joyce not prepare us for the contents of the drawer, he does not even name the piece of furniture that includes the drawer. Moreover, if the purpose of the cipher is to keep Molly from finding out about Bloom's epistolary relationship to Martha Clifford, it is undercut by the presence of three typed envelopes bearing Martha's unencrypted name and return address. So this is a puzzling and disconnected passage in a very real sense, yet it is one that leads to important connections. The cipher, Knowles observes, is based on a simple principle in which the order of letters in the alphabet is reversed, so that A = Z (and vice versa), B = Y, and so forth. Vowels are suppressed and alternate lines read first left to right, then right to left, the pattern being "boustrophedon [t]ic" because it resembles the pattern in which someone would use an ox (Greek bous) to plow a field. (Unfortunately, the final line reads left to right, just like the preceding one, an error attributable to Bloom.) The...