Tel Aviv University

Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of the Humanities

Department of English and American Studies

Leopold Bloom’s Melancholic Incorporation

Psycho-Rhetorical Study in James Joyce’s Ulysses

MA Thesis Submitted by

Talia Abu

Prepared Under the Guidance of

Prof. Shirley Sharon-Zisser

August, 2015

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This thesis focuses on paternal loss in James Joyce's Ulysses, as manifest

mostly in the character of Leopold Bloom who suffers the loss of both his father,

Rudolph, and his son, Rudy. This is examined through Bloom’s melancholic

incorporation and its manifestations in textual fragmentation.

Chapter one examines the affects produced upon Bloom by each loss. First,

there are implications of Bloom's guilt revolving his refusal to enter the suicide scene.

At the same time, Bloom's self-reproaches concerning his accountability for the death

of 11-day-old Rudy are revealed throughout the novel. Bloom's self-reproaches soon

culminate in suggesting a murderer's accountability for Rudy's death.

Bloom's losses of father and son are alluded to in the novel in proximity to one

another. That, alongside the association produced by their namesake (both are named

Rudolph) indicate that these two losses are, for Bloom, intrinsically connected. I

suggest that these losses operate by means of the same psychic mechanism. This

mechanism is accounted for in psychoanalysis as melancholic incorporation, a

psychic reaction to loss, as conceptualized by Sigmund Freud and developed by

Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. Accordingly, I will suggest that Bloom's painful

and bewildering self-reproaches concerning his alleged responsibility in the death of

his son, are in fact reproaches directed towards the incorporated lost object, i.e. his

father.

Representations of Bloom's enactment of incorporation often involve

linguistic tropes such as synecdoche and metonymy. As argued in the third chapter,

the novel's extended use of these tropes suggests that fragmentation is inherent in

Bloom's subjective incorporation. As fragmentation occurs whenever Bloom

encounters paternity in the real, it becomes evident that fragmentation allows Bloom

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to deny the loss of his father and to maintain the father forever present in his psychic

reality.

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Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5

Chapter One: Melancholic Self-Reproaches ................................................................... 17

Second Chapter: Incorporation ..................................................................................... 38

Chapter Three: Fragmentation and the Father ............................................................... 55

Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 73

Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 76

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Introduction

The present thesis stems from an insistent difficulty in James Joyce's Ulysses

with regard to the older of the two male protagonists. Leopold Bloom, a middle aged

advertisement canvasser walking the streets of Dublin, is constantly preoccupied with

two fundamental losses: the loss of his father, Rudolph, and the death of his eleven-

day-old son, Rudy. Each of the losses produces an affect that will be accounted for.

First is Bloom's guilt concerning his own refusal to enter the scene of his father's

suicide, guilt which is crucial but not nearly as bewildering as the affect generated by

the second loss, that is, Bloom's self-reproaches concerning his son's premature death,

which at times go as far as to imply murder. Whereas Bloom's guilt is supplied with a

stimulus as mentioned above, namely, his refusal to behold his dead father's face, the

source of his self-reproaches is more obscure, and is central in the following thesis.

The novel insistently links those two losses: Bloom's allusions to father and

son, more often than not, appear in proximity to one another. This proximity,

alongside the clear homonymy (both are named Rudolph), suggests that, for Bloom,

these losses are intrinsically connected. I shall put forth a hypothesis that the

mechanism at stake for Bloom, in both these losses, accords with Freud's

conceptualization of melancholic incorporation: Bloom's ego has incorporated the lost

object, his father Rudolph, hence, all consequent self-reproaches concerning the death

of his son are, in fact, reproaches made against the incorporated father. However, as I

will suggest, in the case of Bloom, incorporation of the father is predicated on the

fragmentation of his representations. The repeated use of figures of speech as

metonymy and synecdoche when the father is in question, indicates that for Bloom

fragmentation of the lost object is crucial for the operation of incorporation.

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Bloom's position with regard to these two losses sheds further light on two of

Ulysses' central themes: paternity and guilt. The father-son theme is widely

considered to be the dominant idea of the book. Richard Ellmann asserts: "Paternity is

a more powerful motif in the book than sexual love." (James Joyce 371). W.Y.

Tindall too acknowledges the paternity theme and says that while maternity opens

Ulysses, paternity soon proves to be dominating the action in the novel: "Ulysses

commences with Stephen's mother. In the first chapter, however, the theme of

paternity is introduced and the quest [for a father] suggested." (26) William Peery, in

his review of the "Scylla and Charybdis" episode, claims that Stephen's analysis of

Hamlet confirms that the "Hamlet myth makes an extremely important

contribution…to the development of one of the most significant aspects of Joyce's

thought, the paternity theme." (115)

Claire A. Culleton too approaches the paternity theme as central in Ulysses

through her study of onomastics in Joyce's works. Culleton argues that Joyce's

onomastic technique proves one of its functions to be a neutralization of the role of

the father. Culleton argues that the "Oxen of the Sun" episode, for example, presents

"the progression and consequent mutation of the genealogical patronymic." (54)

Since, she claims, Joyce's "works feed upon our notion that naming reveals identity"

(29), then mutation of patronymics is crucial in order to contradict the immanency of

the father in the formation of one's identity.

The "Scylla and Charybdis" episode, says Culleton, also partakes in the

challenging of the role of the father in the formation of one's identity, by Stephen's

rupture of his listeners' surnames. Stephen's modification of his listeners' names

signals the cessation of regeneration and hence of paternity.

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What Stephen tries to do to his audience this hour on 16 June

1904 is rid them of their fathers, and he does this first by

breaking down their surnames, and by consequently

emasculating them so that they cannot increase their family

lines. Through retributive nameplay, Stephen halts regeneration,

ending the possibility of fatherhood altogether, an institution

that Stephen argues "may be a legal fiction" anyway [.] (99)

Culleton's observations regarding Joyce's onomastics as challenging paternity

are beneficial for the following thesis, in which the issue of nomination leads to a

discussion of proper names. Alterations and modifications of Bloom's name (Culleton

says Bloom gets over 70 different names in Ulysses), as I argue in the first chapter,

fragment his proper name and in doing so open up a gap in nomination. Moreover, the

fragmentation of the one proper name calls into question Bloom's position as a proper

son, as well as Rudolph's position as a father.

Culleton argues that for Bloom names point out the decline of his paternal

lineage. By changing his name from Virag to Bloom, Rudolph extracts not only

himself but also Bloom from the Virag patriarchy. For Bloom, therefore, his "surname

is a fraud" (61), for it conveys no past and no future:

The name change, then, signals for Bloom not only the end of

Virag patriarchy, but the impeding end of the Bloom

patriarchy…the guilt for which particularly haunts Bloom,

especially since his only son died shortly after birth. (63)

Culleton introduces here the novel's second theme that is crucial for my thesis: guilt.

For Culleton, Bloom's guilt generates from his failure to procreate male descendants

that will carry on the patronym.

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While Culleton does not elaborate on Bloom's sense of guilt regarding his son,

Rudy, nor relate to Bloom's guilt concerning his father's suicide, her indication of the

impossibility of regeneration as wrongdoing is an idea approached to by Tindall as

well. In his discussion of myths and symbols in Joyce's work, Tindall argues that the

bee that had stung Bloom three days before June 16 expresses "the major theme of

fertility and infertility" (115) and that "[r]ecollections of this bee-sting, throughout

Ulysses, symbolize Mr. Bloom's sin against fertility and its punishment." (115) For

Tindall, guilt is rather associated with Stephen, as is indicated in a scene from "Circe"

in which the figure of the Irish ballad The Croppy Boy appears to Stephen, saying:

"Horhot ho hray ho rhother's hest." Tindall claims that the Croppy Boy's attempt to

say "forgot to pray for my mother's rest" helps "to establish the theme of Stephen's

guilt." (119)

In the following thesis, however, I relate guilt in the novel with Bloom's

refusal to enter the scene of his father's suicide. As discussed in the first chapter,

Bloom concludes his refusal to behold his dead father with the following remark: "I'm

glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face." (Ulysses 93)1 In Bloom's

recollection of the day of his father's suicide guilt is denied but, nevertheless,

implicated. In fact, this recollection takes place in a scene occupied with nomination,

in which Bloom tries to recall the name of his father's favorite play by Mosenthal. The

scene is important because it illuminates Bloom's failed attempt to do away with his

guilt: Bloom's entire attempt to recall the play's actual title (proper name of a woman)

ends with an inner monologue concerning his father, the very monologue where

Bloom denies his guilt.

1 Penguin Books Ltd., 1992.

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While Bloom claims that he is "glad" about not beholding his father's dead

face, other faces insist in Ulysses, particularly when Bloom confronts paternity. The

insistence of the fragment "face" is evident when Martin Cunningham diffuses a

heated discussion concerning suicides (for consideration of Bloom's feelings who is

present at the scene) and when Bloom attempts to retell the story of Reuben J. Dodd,

the father who had saved his son's life, who is mentioned several times throughout the

novel. Bloom's preoccupation with faces, as discussed in the third chapter, suggests

that the insistence of the signifier "face" reveals an unconscious failed attempt to

reject the intolerable signifier, also indexed by Bloom’s conscious refusal to enter the

suicide scene.

We will also see that Bloom's recollections of his father often involve a textual

phenomenon of intertwining voices. One example occurs in "Hades" when a sentence

of Rudolph's suicide note intertwines with Bloom's inner monologue: "Poor old

Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them

in the grave." (112, my emphasis) This textual phenomenon of intertwining voices is

referred to by Dorrit Cohn. In her book Transparent Minds Cohn suggests this

intertwining of narrating voice and figural voice by means of a technique she terms

"psycho narration". Cohn provides an example from A Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man where she speaks of "stylistic contagion", when the "vocabulary and

rhythm [of the narrator] is so vividly colored by Stephen's poetic idiom in-the-

making" (32-33). She adds that this phenomenon is enhanced in monologues which

share "the keywords and images from the narration that precedes it" (33).

Besides "psycho narration", Cohn discusses another technique of representing

consciousness in fiction: "quoted monologue". With this technique, Cohn argues,

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Ulysses follows the increasing tendency in literary realism to correlate inner language

with third person narration so as to create an effect of psychological veracity. By

applying stylistic choices such as the omission of quotation signals and corresponding

idioms of narrator and character, Joyce's Ulysses binds inner language with third

person narration to such an extent that distinguishing one from the other is made

possible only by "close inspection" (62). Subsequent to Joyce, Cohn attests, "the

unsignaled quoted monologue became a hallmark for stream-of-consciousness

novels" (63). Cohn's review of the structural features indicating "stylistic contagion"

between narration and characters contribute to my discussion of Bloom's recollections

of his father, in which Rudolph's voice intertwines with Bloom's. However, what

Cohn terms "symbiosis between narrating and figural voices" (33) I will show to be

predicated on the psychic mechanism of incorporation.

The concept of incorporation is central to my thesis firstly because it indicates

Bloom's enactment of the melancholic structure as formalized in Freud's "Mourning

and Melancholia". Freud teaches that the melancholic subject incorporates the lost-

object, "…someone whom the patient loves or has loved or should love" (248), in his

ego, and that all consequent self-reproaches of the subject are in fact directed towards

the incorporated object. Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok develop Freud's

conceptualization of incorporation in The Shell and the Kernel, where they argue that

incorporation is a fantasy that results from one's inability to articulate grief. The

authors say that as "the ego is not always ready to accommodate" to loss (124), the

fantasy of incorporation protects it from unsatisfying external circumstances.

Understanding Bloom as a subject bound in melancholic incorporation

illuminates, for example, Bloom's pseudonym, "Henry Flower", in his concupiscent

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correspondence with Martha. In "Flower", Bloom's incorporation of his paternal

legacy is implicated, since, as Culleton points out, "Virag means flower in Hungarian,

hence, the Bloom into which Rudolph changed it" (26). At times, Culleton argues,

characters' self-naming "attempts to break with the father through pseudonymity,

attempts to shape for themselves a separate destiny." (105) Bloom's self-given

pseudonym proves the opposite, since "Flower", by way of semantic association,

reinforces Bloom's ties to his paternal origins and his incorporation of both his

grandfather's and his father's name emerges from it.

Whereas I understand Bloom's pseudonym as another manifestation of his

incorporation of his father, for Culleton, "Henry Flower" proves the association

between names and identity. Ellmann too, in his review of the major themes in the

"Cyclops" episode, discusses names and their relationship to identity. In "Bloom

Unbound", Ellmann attests to the function of names and namelessness in creating or

denying identity.

The Citizen is never named, and Bloom in large stretches of the

chapter, especially beginning and end, is referred to without

being named. (41)

The destruction of Bloom's name by the Cyclops of Ulysses, Ellmann argues,

functions as one of several attacks against the protagonist, all meant to deprive him of

identity:

he is not Bloom but Virag; he is not a man; […] he is no

Irishman but […] a Jerusalem cuckoo; he is no patriot, the

Citizen insists; he is no husband, being a cuckold; no father (his

child must be a bastard) […] These are all aspects of Odysseus

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as outis, attempts to make him embody no-ness. (41, italics in

original)

Ellmann correlates Bloom's response to the Cyclops' attempt to deprive him of

identity (his identification as a Jew) with Odysseus' employment of his father's name

when facing hostile forces. According to Ellmann, Odysseus' reply to the Cyclops'

inquiry of his name, "Outis" (No one), "disdain[s] any identity" (41). Safe from the

Cyclops, however, Odysseus "crie[s] out…his full name, including its other half,

Zeus" (41). In a like manner, Bloom, although not a Jew, cries to the Cyclops that "I

belong to a race too…that is hated and persecuted" (Ulysses 431), and thus triggers

the Citizen's attempt to injure Bloom.

Joyce could easily see that in the "Cyclops" episode he must

have Bloom, nominally a Christian, avow himself to be a Jew,

and do so at the expense of prudence. ("Bloom Unbound" 41)

For Ellmann, Bloom's identification with his father's origin contributes to the action in

the episode which culminates in a physical attack on Bloom: "Up to now Bloom has

confronted hostile forces chiefly in his mind. Now he must meet them directly." (42)

What Ellmann acknowledges as a stimulus for action, I understand to be yet

another manifestation of Bloom's incorporation of his father. Acknowledging Bloom's

enactment of melancholic incorporation explicates his acts of identifying with his

father's religion ("at the expense of prudence") and of employing the pseudonym

"Flower" which maintains a correspondence to his father's name. Since both instances

of incorporation presented here are achieved by language, it is necessary to examine

how language determines Bloom's subjective form of incorporation. I will suggest, in

the third chapter, that several textual manifestations indicate that Bloom's subjective

incorporation is made possible by the fragmentation of the incorporated object.

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Fragmenting language is discussed by Ellmann in "The Consciousness of

Joyce", where he argues that language allows Bloom and Stephen alike to dismantle

the rigid authority of State and Church. Regarding Stephen's confrontation with

Private Carr in the "Circe" episode, Ellmann emphasizes the verbal dimension of

Stephen’s attack on Church and State: "(He taps his brow) But in here it is I must kill

the priest and the king." (Ulysses 688) He claims that with Stephen as his agent,

Joyce's "attempt to destroy space and time through art becomes a similitude of the

attempt to overcome State and Church through language" ("The consciousness of

Joyce" 69).

As for Bloom, Ellmann argues, his verbal attack on the rigidity of the Church

is expressed by "anatomizing the rites of confession, communion and extreme

unction" (68). Ellmann does not provide a textual reference but his observation may

apply to Bloom's contemplations on Paddy Dignam's funeral in the "Hades" episode.

Bloom, on hearing the priest praying, dissects the perceived occurrence:

Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin.

Requiem mass. Crepe weepers. Blackedged notepaper. (130)

And, as he walks the funeral procession, the scene apparent to Bloom is dismembered

into fragments of visions:

Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened

angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes

praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. (143)

While for Ellmann Bloom's speech is fragmenting, Cohn describes it as

fragmented. According to Cohn, Bloom's fragmented speech reinforces a "high

individualization of monologic language" (93) in a novel which impedes recognition

of distinct voices. Indeed, Bloom's inner monologues (termed by Cohn "quoted

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monologues") are characterized first and foremost by fragmentation, achieved by the

increased use of full stops shortening sentences.

In discussing fragmenting language, Ellmann reaches a seemingly paradoxical

conclusion, namely that fragmentation produces unity. Fragmentation, Ellmann

argues, is linguistically manifested in punning which proves that the action in the

novel strives towards uniting Bloom and Stephen: "For a moment Bloom and

Stephen, coming from the two ends of the alphabet, can become Blephen and Stoom."

("The consciousness of Joyce" 75) He claims that while a precondition for such

punning is dissolution of proper names, the outcome, however, carries a message of

unity: "Words are fractioned by ineptitude, yet the force that fractions also draws the

world together." (77) For Ellmann, a pun as such complies with metempsychosis, a

concept discussed by Bloom and Molly in their first scene together. He says that like

metempsychosis, punning on the protagonists' names suggests that the "spirit of one

word enters another, as is the spirit of one situation, or of one being." (76)

One of the manifestations of Bloom's fragmented speech, I will argue, is his

use of synecdoches and metonymies whenever paternity is at stake. Culleton

elaborates on these tropes only as a specific function of names: some character's

names serve a physiognomic metonymies, "which suggest the physical characteristic

of their counterparts", as with names like "Heron" and "Cranly" (35); some names,

especially male characters' nicknames, "are often synecdochic – representing the total

person by one of his properties, most often that which is most prized (or most

feared)", like sexual prowess (79-80), as with the name "Cuck Mulligan" given to

Buck Mulligan by Stephen in "Scylla and Charybdis".

As for Bloom, in the same monologue in "Hades" where he incorporates a

fragment of Rudolph's suicide note ("Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold"),

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he refers to his father by way of fragmenting language: "A dying scrawl". The

"scrawl" is a synecdoche for the suicide note but the "dying scrawl" becomes a

metonymy for the father. We see, therefore, that in Bloom's enactment of melancholic

incorporation his father is present through fragmenting tropes.

We will also see that Bloom's melancholic incorporation operates not only

when the actual father, Rudolph, is at stake, but also when Bloom is encountered with

other figures related to paternity. Encounters with male characters such as Martin

Cunningham and the Irish patriot Robert Emmet, as discussed in the third chapter,

involve fragmentation and incorporation. What accounts for this is Lacan's teaching in

"On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis". In the case of

psychosis, Lacan says, the signifier of the Name-of-the-Father is not registered in the

unconscious. Hence, when the subject encounters "a real father, not all necessarily

[…] the subject's own father, but […] One father [Un-père]" (481) he is confronted

with nothing but a hole.

Therefore, when Bloom encounters paternity in the real, he is confronted with a

hole that, as Lacan teaches, is "excavated in the field of the signifier by the foreclosure

of the Name-of-the-Father" (470). Into the hole emerges the signifier "face" which is

intolerable for Bloom. This intolerability of the signifier "face" is proved in Bloom's

refusal to behold his father's face in the scene of the latter's suicide. However, despite

this attempt to reject this signifier, it surfaces whenever contingent encounters

associated with paternity (what Lacan calls an encounter with "Un-père") present

themselves to Bloom. This occurs, for instance, in relation to Martin Cunningham and

to Reuben J. Dodd, a recurrent father figure in the novel. The signifier "face" is thus

established as a synecdoche for the father as too real. Its insistence in the novel,

therefore, is nothing but a failed attempt to reject the intolerable signifier.

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This insistence of "face", as signifier in the real, whenever Bloom confronts

paternity, indexes not only the hole in signification for him, but, also, fragmentation in

language. The use of synecdoches, a stylistic trope predicated on fragmentation, in

Bloom's attitude towards Cunningham and Reuben J., characterizes Bloom's

encounters with what Lacan names Un-père (one father). In the final chapter of my

thesis I shall examine the essential function of fragmentation in Bloom's subjective

melancholic incorporation of his father, showing how it allows Bloom to maintain his

dead father as literally present.

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"Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse?"2

Chapter One: Melancholic Self-Reproaches

In 1932, on his 50th

birthday, James Joyce wrote "Ecce Puer", a poem brought

about by the recent birth of his grandson, but also commemorating the recent death of

his father. Already in the first stanza, contrasting sentiments, "joy and grief", oppose

two life experiences: birth and death. In the following two stanzas the beginning of

new life is celebrated, but the last stanza, again, brings forth death.

A child is sleeping:

An old man gone.

O, father forsaken,

Forgive your son!

The son's plea for the father's forgiveness indicates the former's guilt and marks guilt

as inherent to the experience of paternal loss in Joyce's writing. In Ulysses, too, guilt

is fundamental to father-son relations, especially since, for Leopold Bloom, father-son

relationships involve loss. Bloom has experienced the loss of both father and son: his

father, Rudolph, committed suicide and his son Rudy died a newborn, at eleven days.

When the father is at stake, Bloom's guilt is implied in a recollection in

"Lotus-Eaters" of his own refusal to enter the scene of the father's suicide. However,

guilt is not admitted and, instead, Bloom avows his contentment with his avoidance of

the scene: "I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face". On the other hand,

when concerning the premature death of his son, indications of Bloom's guilt are

2 "Ithaca", 853.

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apparent in self-reproaches throughout the novel, which climax in an implication of

accountability for murder.

Bloom's intriguing self-reproaches evoke Freud's conceptualization of

melancholia. Self-accusations are what enabled Freud to distinguish melancholia as a

response to object loss which differs from that of mourning. According to Freud,

"when the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhibited

again." ("Mourning and Melancholia" 245) However, Bloom's severe allegations

against himself confirm Freud's understanding of melancholic self-reproaches as

deviating from "the normal, conscious sense of guilt (conscience) [which] presents no

difficulty" (The Ego and the Id 41-41).3

One of Bloom's self-accusations regarding Rudy's death is found in the

mentioning of the Childs murder case in "Hades". The scene in which Bloom and his

carriage companions, on their way to Paddy Dignam's funeral, discuss the actual

murder case that occurred in 1899, will be discussed below. For now, I shall point out

that the discussion of the Childs murder case, in its very name and by its textual

proximity to Bloom's contemplations of Rudy, indicates Bloom's self-reproaches.

Moreover, Joyce's use of the murder case exemplifies his utilization of onomastics in

the novel to further interrogate Bloom's position with regard to the paternal losses he

had experienced.

Another manifestation of Ulysses' nominal operation relevant to Bloom's

losses of father and son is their homonymic association: Rudolph and Rudy bear the

same name. This homonymy, alongside the recurrent proximity in the textual

sequence of Bloom's recollections of them, indicates that, for Bloom, these losses are

3 See Freud's discussion of melancholia and obsessional neurosis where the ego-ideal overwhelms

the ego with its severe condemnations. The Ego and the Id, section V, 38-49.

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mutually dependant. In the following discussion I will claim that Bloom responds to

the two separate losses by means of the same psychic mechanism, namely

melancholic incorporation as formulated by Freud in "Mourning and Melancholia"

and developed by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok in "The Shell and the Kernel".

Once Bloom's relation to his son and father is illuminated by the operation of

melancholic incorporation, Bloom's seemingly out of place self-reproaches regarding

the premature death of Rudy become much clearer.

The two losses experienced by Bloom mark a void in his psychic reality, a

void discernible in one of the novel's uses of nomination: the abundance of names

applied to Bloom. In the "Circe" episode, for example, the play's stage directions

avoid Bloom's proper name and, instead, provide the following modifications:

Booloohoom, Bloom for Bloom, Jollypoldy (563-564). These substitute names, I

argue, are made possible by a pre-existing hole in signification where Bloom is

concerned. In fact, the textual phenomenon of the excess of names is an attempt to

conceal the textual void which manifests the void opened up in Bloom's psychic life.

Moreover, the excess of names resulting from the pre-existing void puts into

question Bloom’s position as a proper son, just as it challenges the precision of the

one proper name. In terms of Culleton's analysis, the excess of names in the novel

suggests that Joyce's onomastics draws from his contemporary revolutions in physics

which carried a "message of cosmic uncertainty" (44). Consequently, she says, "Joyce

discovered that language, too, was a matrix of complex dynamics, and that the written

word exposes inconsistencies and defies any attempt at precision." (45) In my view,

however, Bloom's substitute names challenge the precision of the one proper name in

order to challenge his position as a proper son. These names function as synonyms:

the altered names differ from the Bloom's proper name but, nevertheless, share the

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function of referring to the protagonist. If, as Isobel Armstrong claims, a synonym

challenges the authority of a single word (406)4, then the synonyms of Bloom's proper

name put into question the "precision" in language manifested by the authority of the

one proper name, just as they challenge Bloom's position as a proper son. In "Circe",

for example, Bloom's sonship is put into question by Bloom's mental impression of

his father. In the following passage a question concerning Bloom's proper name

becomes a question concerning Bloom's position as a proper son:

Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you

not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left

the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob? (569)

The father's outcry allegedly affirms a correspondence between proper name

and position in patrilineage by stressing his name, "my son Leopold". However, such

correspondence is disputed by a twofold structure: question and negativity. In the first

place, the interrogative form puts in question the very position of Bloom as a proper

son. Secondly, the question is uttered by means of negation. Instead of using a

positive form, as in "are you my son Leopold", Bloom's mental image of the father

asks: "Are you not my son". The negative question form serves as an indication for

Bloom's uncertainty with regard to his own position in the patrilineage.

Furthermore, while the structure of the father's outcry destabilizes Bloom's

position as a proper son, the nominal operation of the passage puts in question

Rudolph's position in the said patrilineage. A stronger association between Bloom and

his grandfather is achieved by namesake (both are named Leopold) whereas the name

4 Armstrong, in her discussion of late Nineteenth Century poetry, claims that "anarchic language of

excess" is a reaction against attempts to arrest and fix language and against the contention that the

"disappearance of synonym and the triumph of the 'one' proper name is a condition of civilization"

(402-420)

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Rudolph is missing, indexing the void in Rudolph's position as a father. Interestingly,

Bloom's mental image of Rudolph also subtracts the name of the second patriarch,

Isaac, from the other generational chain specified in the passage (Abraham-Isaac-

Jacob), an extraction isomorphic with the omission of Rudolph from the Virag-Bloom

patriarchy (Leopold-Rudolph-Leopold). Joseph Prescott, in "Mosenthal's Deborah

and Joyce's Ulysses" relates to the omission of the second patriarch:

It is typical of Bloom, who is hazy about his Jewish origins, as

well as tired at that moment, that, in his father's words, which

merely externalize Leopold's thought, he omits one of the

patriarchs. […] At the same time, considering Joyce's methods,

it may not be too fanciful to suggest that he has Bloom mention

Jacob, and not Isaac, in this conjunction with Abraham, because,

unlike Abraham and Jacob, Isaac did not leave his father's

house. (335)

Prescott does not acknowledge that if we juxtapose the two orders of

succession (Leopold-Rudolph-Leopold and Abraham-Isaac-Jacob) then the name of

the second father is omitted. The omission of both Rudolph's and Isaac's names

creates a void where the name of the second patriarch might have appeared, leaving

the impression that, for Bloom, neither his position as a son nor Rudolph's position as

a father, is ascertained.

Jacques Aubert5 lays emphasis on Bloom's response to the outcry of his

father's image ("Are you not my son Leopold?"), which reveals his uncertainty with

regards to his position in the patrilineage: "I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's

5 "Jacques Aubert's intervention", The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII, Joyce and the Sinthome.

Seminar V. 20.1.76. Lacan In Ireland. Web.

22

left of him." (569) Aubert connects Bloom's response to the Credo where the proper

position of the one and only son is to the right of the father. Thus, claims Aubert, it is

not a statement of what remains of the son but of the position of the son, on the left of

the father. To be to the left is a position of "something which is not in any case a true

son." (Lacan, XXIII, V, 12)

Aubert also points out that Bloom's mental representation of Rudolph in

"Circe" corresponds to an earlier recollection of the father in "Lotus-Eaters". In the

earlier scene, Bloom recalls his father's reaction to a play by Salomon Hermann

Mosenthal, in which the father-son relationship particularly appealed to Rudolph:

Nathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who

left his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the

house of his father and left the God of his father. (93)

However, Bloom fails to remember the name of the play his father loved, and,

as Aubert indicates, there begins a series of questions regarding the name of the play

("What is this the right name is?", "Rachel is it?"). Aubert argues that the questions

about the name of the play are "about the name which is in fact just as much the name

of the father, of his father" (Lacan, XXIII, V, 9). For Aubert, any question about

names relates to the father, because "the suicide of the father […] has this other

characteristic, which is precisely that he has changed his name." (9) Aubert’s claim,

that the change of name is a form of suicide is borne out in the "Cyclops" episode

where Martin Cunningham tells Jack Power about Rudolph's origin: "His name was

Virag. The father's name that poisoned himself." (438) Aubert thus connects nominal

confusion with paternal suicide, teaching that in the novel, the series of questions

concerning Mosenthal's play are "not simply about being and the name, but about

existence and suicide." (9)

23

Bloom's confusion regarding the name of Mosenthal's play, manifest in the

series of questions referred to by Aubert, follows an advertisement poster he observes

in a street corner: "Leah tonight. Mrs Bandman Palmer." (93) Weldon Thornton6

informs that the poster notifies Augustin Daly's play, Leah, the Forsaken which is

"one of several current adaptations of S.H. Mosenthal's play, Deborah." (78-79)

Bloom is aware of this connection between Leah and Deborah because the name

Mosenthal immediately surfaces. Although Bloom remembers it was Rudolph's

favorite play, he fails to recall the name of the original German play by Mosenthal:

What is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it?

No. (93)

In Bloom's search for the proper name of Mosenthal's play, three names are at

stake: "Lea", the name on the advertisement poster that is the name of Daly's

adaptation for Mosenthal's play; "Deborah", the name of Mosenthal's play which

Bloom tries to recall to no avail; and "Rachel", the name emerging for Bloom instead

of the proper name "Deborah". That all three names refer to women figures of the Old

Testament (Rachel and Leah, Jewish Matriarchs, and Deborah, an Israelite

prophetess) makes it easier to disregard Bloom's confusion concerning the name of

the play his father loved. However, Freud tells us that the inability to recall proper

names expresses a failure beyond that of the function of conscious memory.

In "Forgetting of Proper Names"7 Freud explains that the forgetting of a name

is induced by a process of repression which has not quite failed but has not been

fulfilled. What is at stake is not only the forgotten name but, also, the name emerging

instead, because what fails to be repressed, Freud teaches, is indicated in the emerged

6 Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List, 1968.

7 Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901.

24

erroneous name. To illuminate the significance of displacing a consciously sought

proper name with another, Freud recounts his own experience of forgetting a proper

name while travelling to Herzegovina. In brief, the name Freud forgets, "Signorelli",

and the two names that emerge instead, "Botticelli" and "Boltraffio", pertain to the

same linguistic paradigm: names of Italian painters. The forgotten name, as well as

the two names emerging instead, will prove to be associated with an incident Freud

wished to drive out of his conscious mind: a few weeks before the trip to

Herzegovina, Freud temporarily stayed in Trafoi, Italy, where he received a message

that one of his patients has committed suicide "on account of incurable sexual

disturbance." (37)

In retrospect, Freud connects this incident to a story about a colleague's patient

who said: "For you know, Sir (Herr), if that [sexual pleasure] ceases, life no longer

has any charm." (36) "Herr", the German word for "sir", enables Freud to account for

the emergence of the assertion made by his colleague's patient specifically at the time

of travelling to Herzegovina. It is also connected with the name Freud was not able to

recall, "Signorelli", which contains in it the Italian correlative for "sir" ("signor"). The

assertion made by the colleague's patient stands as the reason for Freud's own patient's

suicide, the incident he wishes to forget. Instead of "Signorelli" the name that emerges

is "Boltraffio" and Freud notes that "the agreement between Trafoi [where his patient

had committed suicide] and Boltraffio forces me to assume that this reminiscence was

at that time brought into activity despite all the intentional deviation of my attention."

(37)

25

Bloom, like Freud, fails to recall one name, "Deborah", and displaces it with

"Rachel", a name he immediately recognizes as false ("Rachel is it? No."8). Following

Freud's assertion that "a suppressed element continually strives to assert itself in some

other way, but attains this success only where it meets with suitable conditions" (39),

I shall examine the circumstances that led Bloom to confuse the name of the play.

Bloom, standing in a corner, observes an advertisement poster of Daly's play,

after which ensues a recollection of his father. I shall argue that in spite of the

connection between Daly's play and the father (Leah is an adaptation of Deborah, the

father's favorite play), what establishes the suitable circumstances for Bloom's

forgetting of the name "Deborah" is a casual encounter with an acquaintance, C.P.

M'Coy. Shortly before Bloom's reminiscence at the street corner, he comes across the

quite talkative M'Coy, who asks Bloom to put down his name on the attendant list in

Paddy Dignam's funeral:

I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning

case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself

would have to go down if the body is found. (92, my emphasis)

The word "coroner" indicates the connection between M'Coy's explanation for

not attending Dignam's funeral and Bloom's location where the recollection of his

father initiates: "Mr Bloom stood at the corner his eyes wandering over the

multicoloured hoardings." (93, my emphasis) Here, the consonantal alliteration of

"coroner" and "corner" creates a homophonic relation which suggests that M'Coy's

"drowning case at Sandycove" resonates at the moment Bloom is standing at the

corner observing the advertisement poster. Yet, what resonates is not simply death,

8 Ulysses, 93.

26

but a death related to father-son relations: M'Coy's "drowning case" is retroactively

charged with paternal import through Reuben J. Dodd's story of rescuing his son from

drowning. Reuben J.'s story is introduced in "Hades" and is referred to several times

throughout Ulysses, and is the story which establishes drowning as pertaining to the

question of the function of paternity. However, while Reuben J.'s story ends with the

father saving his son's life, the case mentioned by M'Coy results in death. Bloom's

position at the "corner", a place of a homophonic relation to M'Coy's "coroner",

suggests that, for Bloom, the question of paternity is connected with death. What

follows Bloom's standing in the "corner" is the forgetting of the plays proper name,

which is just as much a failed attempt to forget something related to his father's death.

As stated above, when Bloom attempts to recall the name of Mosenthal's play,

"Deborah", the name "Rachel" emerges instead. Thornton proposes that the "name

Rachel may have been suggested by her being Leah's sister" (80), "Leah" being the

name Bloom notices on the "multicoloured hoardings". As Thornton's proposal of a

sibling association is understandable, it is what is related to Rachel's figure of a

matriarch which accounts for the emergence of her name in Bloom's mind. In

Genesis, Rachel bore Jacob two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. Joseph was preferred by

Jacob over his other sons: "Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children" (King

James Bible, Gen. 37.3). As for Benjamin, he carries a name given him by his father:

"his father called him Benjamin." (35.18) The Hebrew name for Benjamin is "Ben

Yamin" which denotes in English "son" and "right" (as opposed to left).

"Ben Yamin" brings back Aubert's observation regarding Bloom's answer to

his father's cry in "Circe" ("Are you not my son Leopold?"9). Again, Aubert claims

9 Ulysses, 569.

27

that Bloom's reply ("All that's left of him"10

) positions him to the left of the father, a

position that, according to Christian Credo, is "not in any case [of] a true son."

(Lacan, XXIII, V, 12) Bloom's immediate rejection of the substitutive name "Rachel"

is just as much a dismissal of the signification of the name "Rachel", the name of the

procreator of two proper sons. Accordingly, Bloom can neither position himself in the

place of Joseph (the son loved most by his father) nor in the place of Benjamin (the

son to the right).

Although Bloom dismisses the name "Rachel", the proper name "Deborah"

never surfaces. Following Freud's scheme, this implies that what the name "Deborah"

signifies is intolerable for Bloom to recall. Here, too, the biblical text proves potent:

"And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time. And

she dwelt under the palm tree…" (Judg. 4.4-5, my emphasis). The name "Deborah" is

elided from the metonymic chain of names in Bloom's mind but the scripture shows

that an allusion to Deborah the Prophetess is nevertheless present in the name Bloom

notices on the advertisement poster. This name is Mrs. Bandman Palmer, a name that

includes the prophetess' dwelling place. This applies to what Lacan calls in Seminar V

"metonymical approximation" (24). In this way the name "Deborah" is present in the

name "Mrs. Bandman Palmer" despite Bloom's attempt to resist its emergence. Since

the metonymical approximation rests on the position of Deborah the Prophetess, palm

tree, then the forgetting of the proper name is an attempt to resist the position that

stands for the distribution of judgment.

What in Bloom's psychic life resists judgment is suggested in an ensuing

passage rendering Bloom's recollection of the day of Rudolph's suicide.

10

Ulysses, 569.

28

"Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look

at his face. That day! Oh dear! Oh dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it

was best for him." (93)

Bloom's proclamation, "I'm glad I didn't go", is an attempt to push away guilty

sentiments concerning his refusal to enter the suicide scene. However, this attempt is

disputed by the following exclamation of clear agitation, "Oh dear! Oh dear!" At this

point Bloom's former intention to reject guilt, indexed by the unrecalled proper name,

"Deborah", proves inadequate. In other words, by not recalling the name "Deborah"

Bloom attempts to reject something related to the death of his father, i.e. his own

guilt.

That Bloom's failure to recall the name "Deborah" is related to his attempt to

reject his own guilt is indicated when the series of questions concerning the name of

the play is concluded with a recollection of his refusal to enter the suicide scene. This

also proves Aubert's claim that a question concerning the unrecalled name of the play

is a question concerning his father (Lacan, XXIII, V, 9). Moreover, that the encounter

with M'Coy resonates in Bloom's location which precipitates Bloom's attempt to

reject something of his father's death (his own guilt) is suggested in the inner

monologue following the recollection of the day of his father's suicide11

:

Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags

of the hazard. No use thinking of it anymore. Nosebag time.

Wish I hadn't met that M'Coy fellow. (93, my emphasis)

As argued, Bloom resists judgment for his refusal to witness his father's dead

face in order not to make his guilt conscious. Interestingly, shortly after concluding

11

The fact that the present scene is Bloom's first reference to Rudolph in Ulysses emphasizes even

more the importance of his encounter with M'Coy.

29

with "perhaps it was best for him" and "No use thinking of it any more", Bloom is

reproached as a subject worthy of the infliction of punishment. He is thus reproached

by Martha, a woman with whom he conducts an epistolary correspondence of a

concupiscent tone, under the pseudonym "Henry Flower". Twice in her letter Martha

expresses her desire to punish Bloom, of whom she also inquires: "Are you not happy

in your home you poor little naughty boy?" (95)

In fact, the correspondence's concupiscent tone is mostly the result of Martha's

two indications of her wish to punish Bloom:

I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for

that…Please write me a long letter and tell me more.

Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know

what I will do to you if you do not write. (95, my emphasis)

It is implicit from her letter that Martha's repeated wish to punish Bloom

operates as a sexual stimulant for her as well as for Bloom. The repetition of her wish,

as well as her frequent use of "naughty", should be understood in light of her explicit

confession: "I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad

about." As for Bloom, when "he read the letter again…[w]eak joy opened his lips."

(95)

Although punishment serves here as sexual stimulation, what should be

accounted for is displacement of self-reproaches. Despite her expressed physical

attraction and explicit indication of guilt ("I feel so bad") Martha positions not herself

but Bloom as a subject deserving punishment. Martha's displacement of guilt as

expressed in her letter should be utilized to illuminate Bloom's subjective position

with regard to guilt, firstly because of the particular location of her letter in the novel,

30

immediately after Bloom's disclaiming of guilt, and, secondly, because of the shared

structural feature between her letter and Bloom's inner speech.

The identical structural feature is revealed in Martha's unfinished sentence: "I

feel so bad about." The missing objective "it" renders the sentence grammatically

deficient. Similarly, Bloom's interior monologues include unfinished sentences, two

of them in proximity and in direct reference to Martha's letter. "A flower. I think it's

a." (94), says Bloom when he feels Martha's sealed envelope. He soon realizes it is

indeed a flower sent by Martha, and the denotation he omits is not only the noun

"flower" but also the pseudonym he undertakes for their correspondence.

The second unfinished sentence is made when Bloom paraphrases Martha's

concluding sentence: "P.S Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want

to know." Soon afterwards, in a shop where Bloom buys Molly her lotion, he ponders

Martha's inquiry: "But you want a perfume too. What perfume does your?" (104) In

both unfinished sentences provided above, as in the case when Bloom forgets the

name Deborah, Bloom cannot utter the one signifier which would make his guilt

conscious. The signifier "flower" denotes his pseudonym which stands for his

infidelity12

, while the signifier "wife" stands for the one with whom Bloom is

disloyal. For Martha, the missing objective "it" refers to her confessed attraction for

Bloom. Thus, all three signifiers, in the context of Martha and Bloom's concupiscent

correspondence, are the material which may manifest their guilt as conscious. By

12

There is no evidence for adultery. On the contrary, Martha's question "Dear Henry, when will we

meet?" implies that the two have never even met. However, the fact that Bloom picks up her letter

from the post office (while other letters arrive at his doorstep), hides it in his newspaper and opens it

only when alone ("The lane is safer." P. 94), provide his interaction with Martha a tone of infidelity.

31

being rejected from Bloom's articulations, both signifiers maintain his sense of guilt

unconscious13

.

As suggested above, the similarity in one structural feature, namely the

unfinished sentences, may confirm a further complementary feature between Martha

and Bloom: displacement of punishment and reproach. Martha's displacement of the

object to be punished is explicit: on the one hand she claims to feel bad about her

attraction to Bloom, whom she knows is a married man ("I feel so bad about."), but on

the other hand she states that it is Bloom she wishes to punish and not herself.

However, the displacement of punishment is not to tell us about Martha, but about

Bloom. The textual proximity between her address to Bloom as an object of reproach

and Bloom's first reported contemplation about his father (and his denial of guilt) is

what charges her letter with significance. This proximity establishes a position of guilt

and self-reproach which Bloom cannot articulate. In other words, insofar the father is

concerned guilt is not articulated by Bloom but implied by his denial as well as by the

textual proximity to Martha's letter. In an intriguing contrast, Bloom articulates guilt

with regard to his son's all too early death. As mentioned above, and as will be

demonstrated below, Bloom holds himself responsible for Rudy's death, and his self

accusations culminate in implying murder.

In "Hades" we find several manifestations of self-reproaches which strongly

suggest that Bloom holds himself responsible for Rudy's death. In this episode Bloom

rides to Paddy Dignam's funeral with three other men: Mr. Dedalus, Mr. Power, and

Mr. Cunningham. As they enter the cemetery they witness a carriage carrying a child's

13

According to Freud "a great part of the sense of guilt must normally remain unconscious because

the origin of conscience is intimately connected with the Oedipus complex, which belongs to the

unconscious." (The Ego and the Id, p.42)

32

coffin. The first reference to the coffin is made in Bloom’s narrated monologue: "A

tiny coffin flashed by." (119) While Bloom's visual imagery articulates only the size

of the coffin, tiny, the one to verbalize that it is a child lying inside the coffin is

Martin Cunningham, a significant character in "Hades": "Sad, Martin Cunningham

said. A child." (119)

Following Cunningham, Bloom articulates a link between the dead child in the

"tiny coffin" and his own dead son by imagining a similarity between their faces.

Then, in the ensuing narrated monologue we find an explicit indication that Bloom

assumes himself in the position responsible for Rudy's death:

Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If

it's healthy it's from the mother. If not the man. Better luck next

time. (120)

For Bloom, then, if the child is born incapable of maintaining life it is the man’s fault.

Now, Rudy died when he was eleven days old, and the reason for this death is never

rendered in the novel. Since there are no indications of some sort of an accident, he

was most likely born with some physical defect. Hence, Bloom's perception of the

man as responsible for any genetic defect causing the child's death implies that he

puts himself in the position (proper to a man) of the one who has transmitted the fault

leading to Rudy's death. Indeed, this perception ("If it's healthy it's from the mother",

my emphasis), albeit following an explicit mentioning of Rudy ("Our. Little. Beggar.

Baby."), is made impersonal through the use of the pronoun "it" which turns the

sentence into a kind of universal observation of the destructive position of the father.

Bloom's account of the natural destructiveness of man provides a general conceptual

framework functioning to ground his sense of accountability in Rudy's death,

implying Rudy was possibly destroyed, murdered.

33

The first implication of murder is provided in the text immediately after the

appearance of the anonymous child's coffin, as the men in the carriage start a

discussion about suicides. While Mr. Power and Simon Dedalus harshly condemn

suicides, Cunningham is agitated as of the beginning and concludes the discussion

with a sympathetic remark.

- But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his

own life.

Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and

put it back.

- The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.

- Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said

decisively. We must take a charitable view of it. (120)

Cunningham's agitated gestures (he draws out his watch and coughs) and his

moderation of Mr. Power's reproaches cannot, at this point in the text, be understood

as compassion for Bloom, since Rudolph's suicide has not yet been explicitly

mentioned. Only Bloom's account of Cunningham’s good nature14

implies that suicide

is related with Bloom.

In the same inner monologue which renders Bloom's account of Cunningham

we find the following intriguing statement: "They have no mercy on that here or

infanticide." (120) While "on that" obviously refers to suicides, it is unclear whereof

the concept "infanticide" arose. Infanticide might apply to the conceptual reference, as

suicides, of sins, and thus carry no significance with regard to Bloom. However, in the

14

"Martin Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent.

Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say." (120) The synecdoche in Bloom's account will be

discussed in the following chapter.

34

light of Bloom's judgement of the natural destructiveness of the male progenitor and

the male’s responsibility for any physical defect of his descendant, the term

"infanticide" becomes an augmentation of Bloom's previous judgment. What was

responsibility independent of one's will now becomes an act of malice. Moreover,

when juxtaposed with the ensuing report of the Childs murder case, the term

"infanticide" further underscores Bloom's sense of accountability in the death of

Rudy.

The Childs Murder Case is mentioned shortly after the companions' discussion

about suicides. It is, as Thornton annotates, the true 1899 murder of Thomas Childs,

for which his brother Samuel was charged, only to be later acquitted. Stephen

considers the case in Scylla and Charybdis where his Hamlet theory is unfolded, but

for Stephen the Childs murder case is related to a prevailing theme in Shakespeare's

work, namely the usurping and murderous brother.15

However, in the context

provided in "Hades", i.e. Bloom's self-reproaches concerning Rudy's death, the most

striking feature of the case is the name itself: “Childs”. "The Childs murder case" is

homophonically identical to "the child's murder case" in which the apostrophe (an

inaudible typographical mark) reveals Bloom's charges against himself.

Unlike his companions, Bloom does not participate in the following discussion

of the murder case, and is only reported to conceive as follows:

Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the

eye of the murdered. (125)

15

Ellmann informs that Joyce attended the Samuel Childs trial, in October 1899. However, Ellmann

refers only to the role the case played in “Scylla and Charybdis” and to the aspect of fratricide: "The

Childs murder case served Joyce in Ulysses as a parallel to the betrayal of Shakespeare, as Stephen

alleges, by his two brothers." (91-92)

35

Bloom's imagery of the murderer in the eyes of the murdered is striking when one

realizes it is a repetition of an earlier image in "Hades", one directly referring to

Rudy. We find the earlier image when Bloom notices Stephen from the carriage

window and informs Simon Dedalus: "There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus"

(109).16

In response to Simon's consequent chattering about Stephen we are informed

that Bloom "smiled joylessly". He then ponders, with some agitation, the importance

Simon ascribes to Stephen, but soon enough his irritation shifts to sympathy as his

mind turns to Rudy:

Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to

hand on. If little Rudy had lived. (110)

At this point Bloom turns to speculate what Rudy would have been like alive,

and ends with an image of intimacy: "My son. Me in his eyes." (110) The correlative

visual imagery is quite clear: a reflection of one figure in the eyes of another. The

latter image ("The murderer's image in the eye of the eye of the murdered")

retroactively establishes the frame of the former: it is now the reflection of the victim

in the eyes of his executioner. In other words, "Me" is equivalent to "The murderer's

image" and Rudy's eyes correspond in the correlative structure to "the eye of the

murdered".

The correlative structure of the two imageries suggests, again, Bloom's sense

of accountability, which reach their apex in an analogy to a murderer's liability. Only,

Bloom's sense of accountability is provided alongside expressions of grief for his

son's all too early demise. Bloom's grief is usually indicated with "Poor Rudy" which

16

Interestingly, Bloom avoids referring to Stephen as Simon's son ("a friend of yours"). However, I

deem Bloom's fatherly sentiments towards Stephen, well acknowledged by scholars, irrelevant for the

present paper. For a discussion about Bloom's filial sentiments for Stephen and the latter's quest for a

father see: Tindall, W.Y. James Joyce, p.25-30.

36

is often repeated in his mentions of the son. More openly expressed grief, however, is

evident after the aforementioned brief appearance of Stephen outside the men's

carriage. Bloom is then overcome by fancies of what life would have been like had

Rudy not died: "If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the

house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son."

Bloom's acute sense of loss renders him as a man desiring a son and capable of

loving him. We know that he is a loving father for his daughter Milly who loves him

in return. Heartwarming evidence is a letter Milly sends Bloom on her birthday,

whose opening lines illustrate an affectionate relationship between the two:

Dearest Palpi,

Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me

splendid. (79)

How is it possible to explain insisting accusations for alleged wrongdoing in a man

perceived to be a loving father? Or, to repeat a question already asked, why does

Bloom, a loving father, hold himself responsible for Rudy's death when it is clearly

not the case?

In "Mourning and Melancholia"17

Freud accounts for subjective self-

accusation which severity seems inappropriate with the circumstances of the subject:

…a melancholic's many and various self-accusations, one

cannot in the end avoid the impression that often the most

violent of them are hardly at all applicable to the patient himself,

but that with insignificant modifications they do fit someone

17

"Mourning and Melancholia". The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of

Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV, p. 243-258

37

else, someone whom the patient loves or has loved or should

love. (248)

The predominant effect of melancholia according to Freud is "a lowering of

the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-

revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment." (244) The

turning of the ego against itself indicate that a split has occurred in the ego, and that

"one part of the ego sets itself over against the other, judges it critically, and, as it

were, takes it as its object." (247) Hence, Freud concludes, the libido once invested in

the object is now withdrawn into the ego, and consequently serves "to establish an

identification of the ego with the abandoned object." (249) The self-accusations made

by the melancholic are, therefore, "reproaches against a loved object which have been

shifted away from it on to the patient's own ego." (248)

To try and resolve the question of Bloom's inappropriate self-reproaches of

accountability for the death of Rudy I shall put forth a hypothesis, in accordance with

Freud's conceptualization of the melancholic's disorder: Bloom's ego has incorporated

the lost object, his father, Rudolph. Once the father is dead, Bloom's libido that was

attached to the father is withdrawn into his ego. The ego is thus split, and one part of

it turns against the other part, which, now, identifies with the lost object. Therefore,

Bloom's self-reproaches concerning his position as a father, are no other than

reproaches against the actual father, Rudolph.

In order to deem Bloom a subject incorporating his father, as I shall attempt in

the ensuing chapters, it is prerequisite to establish a twofold assertion: that Bloom is

engaged in the process of incorporation and that the ultimate object incorporated will

prove to be his father, Rudolph.

38

"Did the man reappear elsewhere?"18

Second Chapter: Incorporation

In the previous chapter I put forth the proposition that Bloom incorporated his

dead father into his ego. In order to establish that hypothesis it is necessary to define

incorporation and to examine what is at stake for a subject involved in the process of

incorporation. To do so I rely mostly on Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's study of

incorporation and introjection as presented in The Shell and the Kernel. This will

enable me to show that Bloom enacts what Abraham and Torok, in their

conceptualization of the "fantasy of incorporation", describe as psychic "swallowing"

(126). This enactment foreshadows Bloom's fantasy of incorporating an unattainable

object. This incorporation will ultimately be revealed to be related to Bloom's

experience of his father’s suicide.

To begin with, Abraham and Torok discuss introjection and incorporation as

two counter-effects of an objectal loss demanding libidinal reorganization19

. They say

that introjection allows the subject to replace the presence of the object with speech

articulating its absence. Incorporation, on the other hand, emerges when the subject

cannot employ language in order to acknowledge the emptiness experienced

following a loss. The authors claim that when the subject is not ready to accommodate

the new organization of object relations following a loss, incorporation (psychic

swallowing) allows the subject to deny that loss has occurred:

18

"Ithaca", 780.

19 In the chapter "The Illness of Mourning" Torok explains that an objecal loss generates a libidinal

reorganization which usually marks periods of subjective transition, when the ego experiences

libidinal disturbance that "forces the ego to reorganize itself and its objectal relations." (124)

39

Because our mouth is unable to say certain words and unable to

formulate certain sentences, we fantasize, for reasons yet to be

determined, that we are actually taking into our mouth the

unnamable, the object itself. (128)

In the chapter "Mourning or Melancholia: Introjection versus Incorporation",

the authors claim that incorporation is a fantasy, in that fantasies are "essentially

narcissistic" (125) and protect the psyche from unsatisfying external circumstances.

Since a fantasy "tends to transform the world rather than inflict injury on the subject"

(125), the fantasy of incorporation, the authors argue, allows the subject to shun the

psychic readjustments required by loss:

So in order not to have to "swallow" a loss, we fantasize

swallowing (or having swallowed) that which has been lost, as if

it were some kind of a thing. (126)

Since incorporation results from one's inability to articulate grief, the unutterable

words, say Abraham and Torok, are "swallowed and preserved" in a special construct

within the psyche they term "a crypt". The crypt is founded when "[i]nexpressible

mourning erects a secret tomb inside the subject", within which the fantasy of

incorporation is satisfied (130).

Bloom is positioned as a subject bound in the fantasy of incorporation as of his

inauguration into the novel. One of the most intriguing indices of this is his

contemplation on the term "metempsychosis", literally, the incorporation of souls of

those once alive in those living in the present. In "Calypso", the chapter introducing

Bloom, Molly asks her husband about the meaning of metempsychosis, a term she

had encountered in a book:

40

- Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek.

That means the transmigration of souls.

- O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words. (77)

Bloom's reaction, "frowning", indicates displeasure and implies that he is made

uncomfortable by the concept of a soul "living in another body after death" (78). In

fact, immediately following Molly's inquiry is Bloom's recollection of a visit to the

circus where, for Bloom, people enjoy the sight of cruelty towards animals. This inner

monologue illuminates the reasons for Bloom's displeasure in his perception of

metempsychosis:

Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our sides.

Families of them. Bone them young so they metempsychosis.

That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he

dies. Dignam's soul… (78, ellipsis in original)

First, Bloom considers young animals whose souls are bound in

metempsychosis. Although Rudy has not yet been introduced to the readers, and

though Bloom concludes his contemplation with the name Dignam, retroactively the

"young" mentioned in this inner monologue can be perceived as referring to Bloom's

own dead baby. Later in the novel, the death of a young being is repeatedly associated

with his son, as in "Hades", for instance, where Bloom associates the dead anonymous

baby with Rudy. The metempsychosis mentioned in the context of the circus, then, is

the possible metempsychosis of Rudy. However, the principal basis for Bloom's

displeasure seems to be his psychic conflation of metempsychosis and violence.

When contemplating metempsychosis of the circus animals, Bloom is

concerned with the pleasure the audience derives from the killing of the animals. In

the first place, the audience is thus made accomplice to the cruelty performed upon

41

the young animals and consequently correlated with Bloom who feels responsible for

the death of his son. However, although for Bloom Rudy's death is registered as

filicide, such is not the factual case, as Rudy died of natural causes. On the other

hand, the one who is associated with violent death is Rudolph. Suicide is violence

directed inwards and not outwards, as in Bloom's circus recollection, but it is

nevertheless a violent act. In this way, Bloom – who perceives Rudy's death as violent

and whose father had actually died a violent death – inscribes violent death as

preliminary to metempsychosis. Since metempsychosis, by denoting the

transmigration of souls after death, complies with the psychoanalytic concept of

incorporation, then for Bloom incorporation is bound up with paternal loss.

Despite Bloom's agitation when he confronts the idea of the transmigration as

incorporation of souls, earlier in the novel, the opening passage of "Calypso"

positions Bloom as a subject already enacting incorporation. The detailed description

of Bloom's devouring of animal body parts, the inclusion of parts of objects in one's

own body, and the explicit pleasure derived from this, indicate Bloom's enactment of

Abraham and Torok's metaphor of "swallowing" that they employed in their

conceptualization of incorporation.

Mr Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.

He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart,

liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of

all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a

fine tang of faintly scented urine. (65)

The minute description of kinds of meat prompts a consideration of the

passage as more than a mere depiction of a breakfast routine. Even more so, the

explicit focus on Bloom's enjoyment implies the subject's satisfaction in enacting the

42

fantasy of incorporation. Interestingly, Bloom particularly enjoys the savor of "faintly

scented urine" made by the grilled kidneys. Urine should be understood here as an

index (in Pierce's sense) 20

for the body incorporated, since the sensory feature of

urine indicates the body that excretes it. It is explicit from the text that Bloom's

favorite part swallowed into his body is the part that leaves a sensory trace, "a fine

tang of faintly scented urine", as an index in his mouth to the body as incorporated.

The narration of Bloom's gastric incorporation of dead animals also

foreshadows metaphoric incorporation in the visual field. The metaphoric devouring

is illustrated in his coming into the butcher shop where sausages and forcemeat "fed

his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig's

blood." (70) Bloom then notices a female neighbor, with whom, at first, he imagines a

rivalry over the remaining piece of kidney:

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the

last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy

it too, calling the items from a slip in her hand. (70)

At first, Bloom's encounter with the girl is understood as rivalry, for it is

emphasized that the kidney Bloom craves is "the last", and that the girl, being yet

nothing but "the nextdoor girl" might deprive him of that last piece of kidney.

However, the rivalry over the kidney ends when Bloom's gaze replaces his mouth.

Then the girl herself becomes the object of Bloom's appetite as his gaze cuts up her

bodily image into separate sections.

20

In the "Three Trichotomies of Signs" Pierce says: "An Index is a sign which refers to the Object that

it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object…In so far as the Index is affected by the

Object, it necessarily has some Quality in common with the Object, and it is in respect to these that it

refers to the Object." (Peirce, 102)

43

The dismembering of the girl's body is one of several correlations between the

girl's body and the butcher's meat which establish her as the object of Bloom's fantasy

of swallowing. However, this also points out a peculiar characteristic of Bloom's

incorporation, to be thoroughly discussed in the third chapter: a precondition for

Bloom's subjective incorporation is fragmentation. In the butcher shop scene, the

dismembering of the girl's body is repeatedly emphasized. "His eyes rested on her

vigorous hips" (70) the narrator says as the text shifts into Bloom's inner monologue

considering the interaction between the pork butcher and the girl:

Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New

blood. (70, my emphasis)

Again, Bloom's perception of the girl as "new blood" conceptually links her to

the pigs' blood that excited him when entering the shop. Moreover, Bloom makes a

cause and effect association between the girl's image and the butcher's cuttings of the

meat when he reports of the "way her crooked skirt swings at each whack." (70) In

this repeated image which links the "swinging" of the skirt with the "whacking" of the

butcher's knife, the knife is replaced with Bloom's gaze which disintegrates the girl's

cohesive bodily image into the fragments which it conceals21

and, not only correlates

the girl's body with the animal meat, but marks fragmentation as immanent in Bloom's

fantasy of incorporation.

Indeed, the following interaction between Bloom and the butcher is rendered

briefly, for Bloom's interest is no longer in the animal parts but in the girl's body

21

Lacan teaches that the image of the human body as a whole is not innate but assumed by the

subject. Moreover, the total form of the body is "given…only as a gestalt, that is, in an exteriority in

which…this form is more constitutive than constituted". (Écrits, 76) The scene at the butcher shop

describes a reverse movement to Lacan's teaching of the gestalt's "formative effect" (77) of unifying

the initial sense of fragmentariness into a cohesive whole, in that Bloom perceives the girl's body as

constituted of parts instead of as a unified image.

44

parts. "For you, please?" the butcher turns to Bloom who does not even utter a

response: "Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went

slowly, behind her moving hams." (71, my emphasis)

Nearing the end of the butcher shop scene, one narratorial remark indicates

that Bloom's fantasy of incorporation includes the fantasy of the object for re-

incorporation. Before leaving the store, the girl, paying the butcher, was "smiling

boldly, holding her thick wrist out." (71) The girl's bold smile is retroactively charged

with meaning, when at his return from the butcher shop, Bloom delivers to Molly a

letter from Blazes Boylan, with whom, as Bloom is well aware, Molly is scheduled to

meet later that day. When Bloom realizes the letter addressed to Molly carries

Boylan's handwriting, he is clearly disturbed: "His quick heart slowed at once. Bold

hand." (74) Evidently, the adjective "bold" is attributed by Bloom to an object that is

to be incorporated in another's body, as Boylan will be incorporated into Molly

through sexual intercourse. Bloom's qualifying of the girl's smile as "bold" positions

her, like Boylan, as an object that destined to be incorporated by the subject and

complies with Abraham and Torok's teaching that fantasies of incorporation include

the fantasy of the object which strives for re-incorporation.

Moreover, Abraham and Torok argue that the subject's fantasy of the object's

wish for re-incorporation is what produces the subject's self-reproaches. In the

subject's fantasy, the object suffers from its detachment from the subject. The object,

therefore, reproaches itself for its separation from the subject. When the object is re-

incorporated into the subject's ego, the subject satisfies the object's imagined wish for

punishment by self-reproaches which satisfy both subject and object, who are now

bound in "cryptic identification". Abraham and Torok illustrate "cryptic

identification" with an account of a patient's identification with her father. As a little

45

girl, the patient, who was deserted by her father, used to daydream: "Someone was

charged with child murder and I finally realized that the defendant was myself." (147-

148) The girl imagines herself as accused of murder because she identifies with the

father who had abandoned her and who, according to her fantasy, "forever

disconsolate, accuses himself of the worst of crimes, since he had to be subjected to

the punishment of losing her" (147). The essence of the endocryptic identification,

therefore, is that "the 'I' is understood as the lost object's fantasied ego." (148)

Endocryptic identification, for Abraham and Torok, proves that incorporation

begins when introjection fails. The authors argue that introjection is a metaphoric act,

substitution of an objectal loss with words. Accordingly, they conceptualize the

metaphor of "empty mouths". They claim that signs of introjection appear in infancy

when the baby's mouth, empty of the maternal object (the breast), fills itself, at first,

with cries and sobs, until the mouth is capable of articulating words demanding the

mother's presence. The authors say that in incorporation, as distinguished from

introjection, the subject is "reduced to a radical denial of the loss, to pretending that

we had absolutely nothing to lose." (130) In introjection, articulating the loss would

mean to fill the "empty mouth" with words acknowledging the loss. But when

introjection fails, the subject cannot realize its loss by articulating its grief, and

introjection regresses to "inserting in the mouth, swallowing, eating." (131)

Following Abraham and Torok's teaching, the minute depiction of Bloom's

devouring of animal parts can be regarded as the breaking point of the metaphoric act

of introjection and Bloom's regression into incorporation. Moreover, the novel also

exemplifies Abraham and Torok's claim that the "empty mouth" is a precondition for

the "swallowing" of incorporation in those instances where Bloom's mouth is devoid

of words. One of the indications of Bloom's empty mouth are incomplete sentences,

46

as demonstrated in Bloom's previously discussed correspondence with Martha: when

Bloom repeats Martha's question about his wife's perfume, Bloom fails to complete

the sentence with the required denotation. "What perfume does your?" (104), he asks,

leaving a void in articulation instead of the proper word "wife".

In another instance, rendered in "Hades", Bloom's mouth is emptied when

Blazes Boylan is seen walking down the street by the men's carriage. Bloom's

response to the sight of Boylan and his admission that his mind is occupied with his

wife's lover is lacking the proper name of the man being observed:

- Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff.

Just that moment I was thinking. (115)

The last sentence transcribing Bloom's inner speech is incomplete because Bloom

cannot articulate the name "Boylan", particularly in light of Mr. Power's presentation

of Boylan as "airing his quiff". "Quiff" has a two-fold meaning: one is a lock of hair

on the forehead and the other – a promiscuous woman. In "Hades", then, Bloom is

already aware of a relationship between Boylan and his wife which is first implied in

"Calypso", when Bloom delivers Molly a letter addressed by Boylan. In "Calypso",

too, Bloom cannot employ Boylan's proper name, and is able to relate to him only by

means of metonymy ("Bold hand"). Interestingly, this metonymy involves

homophony which is not incidental. While "hand" is a metonymy for Boylan22

,

"Bold" produces a homophonic relation to Boylan with the consonance "bo".23

The

22

Umberto Eco in Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1986) defines metonymy as

substitution founded on contiguity. In Bloom's metonymy the substitution relies on container/content

association. See fn. 29.

23 This homophonic association of syllables between one name and its substitution (here the

substitution is the metonymy "Bold hand") is present also in Freud's account of his forgetting of the

name "Signorelli", as discussed in the first chapter. What Freud terms as "an inner determinant which

adheres to the psychic material" (35) is founded upon several homophonic associations between the

47

homophonic association between "Boylan" and "Bold" extends Bloom's metonymy

from sense to sound. While in "hand" it is the sense of the word that creates the

metonymy for Boylan, in "bold", it is the sound that serves the metonymic

association: "bo", the opening syllable of "bold", is contained in the name "Boylan".

This homophony, then, functions as metonymy which substitutes for the name

"Boylan" that Bloom cannot articulate.

The use of homophonic metonymy presented in "Calypso" not only

emphasizes Bloom's inability to articulate Boylan's name but also indicates that in

Ulysses fragmentation is preliminary to incorporation. Notwithstanding, it is not

Bloom himself who incorporates Boylan. By fragmenting Boylan's name using a

metonymic sound, Bloom molds Molly's incorporation of Boylan according to the

characteristics of his own subjective incorporation. In other words, the object Molly

will incorporate at 16:00 is fragmented beforehand by Bloom's speech.

Accordingly, when the men's carriage comes upon Boylan in "Hades", Bloom

does not say the name that, through another of Joyce's agents, is associated with a

promiscuous woman (Molly as a "quiff"). Instead, he turns to contemplate his

fingernails, as informed by the following narration:

He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent

his vacant glance over their faces. (115, my emphasis)

Following the chance meeting with Boylan, in which Bloom sees Boylan but cannot

utter his name, the text paradoxically indicates Bloom's "vacant glance" and not a

vacant mouth. However, the seemingly paradoxical statement only reinforces what

has become evident in the narration of Bloom's visit to the butcher shop: that his gaze

forgotten name and the repressed elements from the incident Freud had wished to drive out of his

consciousness.

48

substitutes for his mouth. Moreover, Bloom is said to be "satisfied" immediately

before sending his "vacant glance". This satisfaction implies the subject's consent to

empty his mouth from the unnamable and is an indication of the subject's failed

introjection, marking the subjective regression into incorporation.24

Later in "Hades" Bloom's mouth again remains empty when, in a previously

discussed incident, he attempts to communicate the story of Reuben J. Dodd, an

incident which associates his empty mouth with the novel's dominant father-son

theme. Trying to communicate the story, Bloom's companions repeatedly interrupt his

speech and, eventually, it is Cunningham who delivers the story instead. Rhetorically

speaking, to indicate the hindering of Bloom's speech the text employs ellipsis. This

device stands in contrast to the incomplete sentences of Bloom's inner monologues,

which despite their incompleteness end with a period. Through familiarity with the

novel's use of punctuation, the readers assume that Bloom would have communicated

the story unless "Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely." (118). However,

although Bloom is deprived of the opportunity to communicate Reuben J.'s story by

external agents, what should be accounted for is the fact that his mouth remains void.

Bloom's inability to communicate the story of Reuben J. illuminates the

boundaries of Bloom's speech as determined by his melancholia. Communicating the

story of the father who had saved his son's life would have opposed Bloom's self-

reproaches concerning his son's death. Bloom cannot tell the story of life-giving

paternity but only the story of a father who fails to save his son's life, as manifest in

Bloom's mental impression of Reuben J. in "Circe". There, during Bloom's trial,

24

Abraham and Torok argue that the metaphoric act of introjection is made possible "by virtue of the

intervening experiences of the empty mouth." (127) When the subject cannot articulate grief,

introjection fails, and the mouth remains voided of "what is now nameless" (128).

49

Reuben J. enters the scene not as a father who had saved his son but as a father

carrying a dead son:

(Reuben J. Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing

on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the

pillory) (617, italics in original)

Besides unfinished articulation, another textual manifestation of Bloom's

empty mouth (a mouth incapable of expressing grief) is the filling of Bloom's mouth

with words that are not his own. This is demonstrated, for instance, in a short passage

from "Hades" following the men's previously discussed encounter with a child's

coffin. The passage immediately following the narration of that encounter begins with

an informative prosaic sentence depicting the present location of the carriage.

However, the ensuing sentences, which are short and rhyming, create a contrasting

rhythm which destabilizes the prosaic:

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square.

Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.

The short sentences which end the paragraph and subvert the informative

function opening the paragraph are taken from Thomas Noel's poem "The Pauper's

Drive", with alterations in punctuation: "Rattle his bones over the stones!/ He's only a

pauper whom nobody owns!" are repeated two lines in Noel's poem depicting the

funeral of a forsaken man, a pauper, for whom no one mourns ("Oh where are the

mourners? alas! there are none"). The poem’s textual function, then, is to indicate a

move from narration into Bloom's inner speech. This is one instance among many in

the novel in which shifts between narratorial voices are marked by the use of poetic

50

devices.25

In this case, however, the full sentences drawn from Noel's poem also

emphasize the replacement of Bloom's genuine voice with that of the poet. This

replacement serves to illustrate how facing paternal loss Bloom's mouth is emptied of

his own words.

Noel's words substitute for Bloom's genuine speech again in a succeeding

inner monologue, referring to his father's suicide. Joyce's text makes it clear that in

both cases these fragments of Noel's poem appear in relation to paternal loss.

However, close inspection of the text suggests that although the first invocation of

Noel's poem appears almost immediately after the encounter with the child's coffin,

which Bloom explicitly associates with Rudy, what leaves Bloom incapable of

genuine speech is a confrontation with something related to the father's death. What

causes Bloom to lose his voice is Simon Dedalus' remark considering the dead

anonymous child which immediately precedes Noel's poem and thus challenges Rudy

as the invocator of Noel's poem: "Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of

it." (120, my emphasis) The invocation of the poem after Dedalus' remark is

significant, because Dedalus' conclusion corresponds to Bloom's when he

contemplates his father's suicide in "Calypso": "Well, perhaps it was best for him."

(93) What Dedalus' statement rendering the idea of an individual being better off dead

25

One example of the use of poetic devices to indicate a shift from third-person narration into

Bloom's inner speech is provided in "Calypso". In a previously discussed scene depicting Bloom's trip

to the butcher shop, the shift into Bloom's inner speech is illuminated by the use of alliteration and

assonance, produced mostly by the repeated letter W: "His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods

his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New blood." (70) I shall not dwell on the novel's use

of this technique for indicating moves into inner monologues. In the context of this thesis, my

intention is only to emphasize that the rendering of Noel's poem serves a twofold function. First, it

demonstrates an adherence to this technique used throughout the novel. Second, that in the context

of this scene the poem also serves to imply the substitution of Bloom's genuine voice when loss is at

stake.

51

incites for Bloom is his conscious position with regard to the death of his father.

Consequently, Bloom's mouth is emptied and filled with Noel's poem because it is the

father's loss that Bloom cannot articulate with genuine speech.

Moreover, besides Bloom's loss of his voice once the father is insinuated and

his employing another's words, there is also the content of Noel's poem. The poem

speaks of a pauper whom no one acknowledges in his life nor after his death. In

Noel's poem the absence of mourners proves that the pauper's death is meaningless to

others. In a like manner, Bloom was never present in the death place of his father (he

refused to enter the room at the Queen's Hotel) and the meaning of Rudolph's death,

which is loss, must remain unacknowledged for Bloom in order to deny the loss itself.

Indeed, that Bloom substitutes his genuine voice with Noel's words in order to

relate to Rudolph's suicide is proved again in the ensuing discussion of suicides. Mr

Dedalus' and Mr. Power's harsh judgment against those who commit suicides brings

to Bloom's mind the circumstances of Rudolph's death, and one fragment of Noel's

poem ("Nobody owns") repeats itself:

…Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For

my son Leopold.

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns. (121, my

emphasis)

Once more it is suggested that Bloom cannot perceive his father's death as a loss:

while the signifier "own" denotes possession, it also means to acknowledge. For

Bloom, nobody (and in "nobody" Bloom is himself implied) acknowledges the loss

that is most crucial in Ulysses, the loss of his father.

52

That Bloom applies another's words in order to allude to loss supports the

hypothesis that his case is one which Abraham and Torok would describe as a mouth

emptied of expressions of grief, indexing the subject's psychic incorporation.

However, in Bloom's peculiar subjective incorporation, as illustrated in the

incorporation into his speech of Noel's poem, fragmentation must take place: Noel's

poem is incorporated into Bloom's speech insofar it is fragmented by the excessive

use of periods, which marks the difference of these fragments from Noel's original

poem. Another fragment emerging at this scene is a line of Rudolph's suicide note:

"For my son Leopold". The lack of quotation marks in the passage, conservative

punctuation indicating digression from one voice to another, suggests a merger

between Bloom's voice and fragments of Rudolph's voice, another textual index of

Bloom's incorporation of his father.

What is once again illustrated here is that Bloom's subjective incorporation of

his father depends on fragmentation. In the "Sirens" episode the act of fragmentation

is augmented, in that linguistic units smaller than sentences, i.e. words, are fractioned.

In the scene from "Sirens" Bloom follows Boylan to the Ormond Hotel as he is

persuaded to have dinner in the bar with Richie Goulding. In the Ormond bar, Bloom,

who is well aware of the time of Boylan and Molly's approaching meeting ("Sirens"

takes place between 16:00 and 17:00), is preoccupied with Boylan's rendezvous with

Molly. Then, as Bloom receives his dinner, the text brings back Bloom's introduction

into the novel:

Leopold cut liverslices. As said before he ate with relish the

inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cod's roes. (347)

53

Shortly afterwards the text reports as follows: "Bloom ate liv as said before." (349)

Shortly after that, further fragmentation of what Bloom incorporates into his mouth

occurs: "Bloom over liverless bacon" (350). Here, too, fragmentation of speech and

fragmenting speech are associated with loss if we bear in mind that the mood

dominating this scene from "Sirens" is determined by Bloom's possible loss of his

wife. This sense of loss is repeatedly made explicit by name of the aria played in the

bar, "All is lost now."26

It is not by chance that the passage introducing Bloom's enactment of

incorporation returns in a scene dominated by the idea of loss. In the first place, the

encounter with loss is followed by incorporation, as Bloom again incorporates animal

parts into his body (he eats liver slices). Secondly, in this novel, incorporation

necessarily includes fragmentation and involves the father. In the case of the

fragmentation of the word "liver", appearing here in the fragmented form "liv", what

is at stake is the act of deleting letters, which in this context stands not only for the

letters of the alphabet, but also for Rudolph's suicide note, what is referred to by

Bloom in "Hades" as "The letter". That Rudolph's letter is implied in the by the act of

omitting alphabetical letters, suggests that fragmentation in this context serves to veil

the loss of his father.

Evidently, when paternal loss is at stake, Bloom does not incorporate a whole

but a part of the whole. In the following chapter I will extend the discussion of

fragmentation as essential in Bloom's subjective incorporation. In order to do so I will

26

Thornton informs that the correct allusion is to Vincenzo Bellini's aria "Tutto e sciolto" ("All Is

Lost"). See Thornton, p.240, 246. Following Thornton's annotation, seeing that the word "now" is

artificially added in the title notes Bloom's awareness of the exact time in which the scene occurs –

the exact time of Molly's meeting with Boylan.

54

indicate those instances in which Bloom's subjective incorporation is manifested in

the text by rhetorical devices based on fragmentation such as synecdoches and

metonymies, and show that this incorporation operates whenever Bloom faces

paternity in the real.

55

"What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently recall?"27

Chapter Three: Fragmentation and the Father

In the ensuing chapter I shall explore the means by which fragmentation

proves to be bound in incorporation in the instances where Bloom confronts

manifestations of paternity. Whereas in the previous two chapters I focused my

discussion on establishing Bloom as a subject enacting incorporation throughout the

time spam of the novel and on presenting fragmentation as inherent to his subjective

incorporation, in this chapter I shall focus on the connection between his encounters

with paternity and his acting of psychic incorporation. One instance in which such a

connection is manifest appears in "Hades", where Bloom incorporates a fragment of

his father's suicide note. In between short sentences transcribing Bloom's quoted

monologue, there is one sentence retroactively acknowledged as a line from

Rudolph's last letter to his son:

Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don't

miss this chance. Dogs' home over there. Poor old Athos! Be

good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We

obey them I the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined

away. Quiet brute. Old men's dogs usually are. (112)

Bloom's incorporation of the fragment of Rudolph's suicide note is made clear

by means of what Cohn terms "stylistic contagion" (32). Even though Cohn does not

discuss incorporation, her idea of "stylistic contagion" as indicative of symbiosis

27

"Ithaca", 861.

56

illuminates the means wherein the integration of Bloom's voice with that of his

father's is achieved in the novel. To begin with, in the quoted segment there are no

quotation marks, a conservative form of punctuation indicating transition from one

voice to another. Secondly, there is proximity between the two sentences in which the

name "Athos" appears: "Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos". This is the very point

where Rudolph's words enter Bloom's speech. The first part of the quotation is in

Bloom's voice while the second is in the father's voice. The assonance produced by

"poor" and "good", alongside the identical rhyme made by the repetition of "Athos",

creates a rhythm peculiar to these two sentences, which is not retained in the rest of

the paragraph. This increases the sense of merger between Bloom's voice and the

penetrating voice of the father. Cohn's conception of symbiosis between narrative

voices as demonstrated in Bloom's rendering of his father's voice, therefore, suggests

that in that a process of incorporation is operative in Bloom.

In his formal study of quotation in literature, Meir Sternberg discusses

incorporation and synecdoches whenever a literary agent is quoted by another: "the

discourse-event that does the quoting and incorporates the quote" is related to the

event from which the quote is drawn by means of "structural (part/whole) relations."

(108) Moreover, Sternberg argues, the discourse-event that incorporates the quote

aims to accurately represent the original event. However, "the impression that precise

mimesis is possible" (137) is misleading since the "transplanting and framing [of the

quote] in a new environment would impose on it a new mode of existence." (108)

According to Sternberg, any evaluation of the accuracy of a quoted speech

must consider the quoter's access to the information concerning the original discourse-

event. Omniscient narrators, for example, possess unlimited access, unlike literary

57

agents within the text who cannot "report even external acts of expression at which

they failed to be physically present." (140) Bloom's report of his father's speech as

rendered in "Hades", which lacks any reference to the suicide note, gives the

impression that Bloom was "physically present" in the discourse-event in which his

father had produced the original speech. However, in the "Ithaca" episode which

provides the fullest account of Rudolph's suicide note (though still fragmented by

ellipses28

) the reader realizes that what Bloom reports in "Hades" is an excerpt of his

father's suicide note. The misleading impression of physical presence in Bloom's

report of his father's speech suggests that although Bloom was not empirically present

in the scene of his father's suicide, and despite Bloom's assertion that he is "glad"

about not entering the suicide scene (discussed in the first chapter of this thesis), he

has incorporated this scene in his subjectivity.

In fact, the "Ithaca" account of Rudolph's suicide note challenges Bloom's

report of his father's speech in "Hades" ("Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last

wish") as mimetically accurate. Half of Rudolph's speech as quoted by Bloom in

"Hades" ("… is my last wish") is replaced in "Ithaca" by ellipsis. Hence, we cannot

verify whether "… is my last wish" is a reproduction of Rudolph's original speech.

This suggests that it is Bloom who produces these last words. What is then realized is

that by applying the first person possessive pronoun "my" Bloom assumes the

character of the father. Bloom's assuming the character of the father and producing

speech that pretends to originate in the father, again indicates Bloom's subjective

incorporation.

28

Rudolph's suicide note is reported in the "Ithaca" episode as follows: "Tomorrow will be a week

that I received…it is no use Leopold to be…with your dear mother…that is no more to stand…to

her…all for me is out…be kind to Athos, Leopold…my dear son…always…of me…das

Herz…Gott…dein…" (853, ellipses in original)

58

Sternberg's claim that quotations hold a part/whole relation to the original

event supports Bloom's subjective incorporation as involving fragmentation.

However, the discourse-event in which Bloom incorporates the fragment of his

father's suicide note is not related to the original discourse-event only by means of

synecdoche. The words "… is my last wish" are not verified in "Ithaca" as originating

from Rudolph's suicide note, but since they are associated with Rudolph's speech and

substitute his original speech, they hold a metonymic relation to the father. Another

fragment in the passage, "dying scrawl", retroactively understood as referring to

Rudolph's note, functions both as a metonymy and as a synecdoche. The "scrawl" is

not only a synecdoche for the suicide note, but a metonymy for the father.29

The use

of metonymy emphasizes once more that Bloom's subjective incorporation operates

insofar the father is present by way of fragmentation.

That the father is present for Bloom by means of fragmentation is evident in

the "Ithaca" account of Rudolph's suicide note. The suicide note, a textual index of the

father, exists for Bloom only as fractions. When the agent posing the questions in

"Ithaca" refers to the inscription on the envelope containing the note, "To my Dear

Son Leopold", he inquires: "What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five

whole words evoke?" (853, italics in original) Indeed, the report of the letter that

follows is characterized by unfinished sentences and ellipses (see fn. 28). In a similar

29

The present use of the concepts synecdoche and metonymy follows Eco's review in Semiotics and

the Philosophy of Language. Eco defines both terms as substitution, each of different kind:

synecdoches are substitution of the form whole/part or genus/species, while all other kinds of

substitutions based on contiguity (object/purpose, container/content, cause/effect, etc.

subject/instrument) are metonymies. Thus, "dying scrawl" is a synecdoche for the note since a scrawl

is a species of the genus 'handwriting'. Moreover, "dying scrawl" is applied by Bloom to a fragment of

the father's suicide note, thus establishing a relation between a part and the whole. On the other

hand, "dying scrawl" is a metonymy for the father for it involves a subject/instrument association: the

scrawl is an instrument that is a substitute for the subject Rudolph.

59

manner, Bloom incorporates fragments of another man's last reported speech. The

man is Robert Emmet, an Irish patriot who was executed for treason whom Bloom

mentions twice, once in "Hades" and once in "Sirens".

In both instances Emmet emerges for Bloom in the context of the obscurity of

the whereabouts of his remains. As Thornton writes, details concerning Emmet's

"execution and burial are hazy, and for many years the place of his burial was

unknown." (105) Nevertheless, in "Hades", Bloom who comes upon Robert Emery's

grave imagines, due to alliterative correspondence, Emery's grave to be instead the

burial place of the lost Irish patriot: "Robert Emmet was buried here by torchlight,

wasn't he?" (145) Bloom could not have come upon Emmet's actual grave, because, as

Thornton states, in 1903 (a hundred years following Emmet's execution) attempts

were still being made to locate it. However, in "Sirens", where Bloom incorporates

Emmet's last speech, he is still convinced that, a few hours earlier, he had stumbled

upon the actual grave.

This scene occurs at the closing of "Sirens", which, as stated, takes place at

16:00, the hour of Molly and Boylan's rendezvous. The whole of "Sirens", therefore,

revolves around Bloom's sense of loss, the repeated line "All is lost now"

reverberating through it. That Bloom recollects his alleged encounter with Emmet's

grave and that he incorporates Emmet's speech in "Sirens", an episode which

emphasizes Bloom's personal loss, make the circumstance of Emmet's death

instrumental for Bloom's subjective incorporation. During Bloom's incorporation of

fractions of Emmet's speech30

, at times unintelligible, Bloom's own speech breaks off:

30

For the full close of Emmet's speech, from which Bloom draws fragments, see Thornton, p.254,

entry 290.34/286.3.

60

When my country takes her place among.

Prrprr.

Must be the bur. (375-376, italics in original)

The syllable "bur" is senseless but charged with meaning a few lines

afterwards, as Bloom asserts: "I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes." Both "bur" and

"burgund" pertain to the missing signifier "burial ground". The first sign ("bur") is a

fraction of the missing signifier. The second ("burgund") consists of this fraction

amalgamated with other vowels and consonants ("gund") homophonically related to

"burial ground". At this point in the novel Bloom is clearly preoccupied with Emmet,

yet as Bloom fragments the speech he incorporates, his own speech is

correspondingly fragmented. The remainders of the fragmentation of Bloom's speech,

"bur" and "burgund", index his preoccupation with the whereabouts of Emmet's burial

ground, but also suggest Bloom's incapability of articulating this preoccupation.

Moreover, these fractions will prove to bear a metonymic relation to the lost object.

To demonstrate this, I turn to Lacan’s discussion of the operation of metonymy in

Seminar V.

In Seminar V, Lacan discusses the function of the signifier in the formation of

the unconscious. The signifier, Lacan argues, is essential in Freud's theory of the

parapraxis, one of the mechanisms of the unconscious, as exemplified for instance in

Freud's forgetting of the name "Signorelli" in "Forgetting of Proper Names". Lacan

says that what is crucial in the mechanism presented by Freud is not the hole in

speech where the name "Signorelli" should have appeared but the metonymical

substitutes for the proper name.

61

Everything is going to center around what we can call a

metonymical approximation. Why? Because what will re-

emerge at first, are replacement words [.] (23)

What is in question in Freud's forgetting of the name Signorelli, Lacan argues,

is death. The name Signorelli slips out of Freud's consciousness while travelling to

Bosnia Herzegovina because the signifier Herr (Signor), which is, for Freud, related

with the death of a patient, "was in danger of being too present" (24). The syllable

"bo" of Bosnia also comes into play in the substitution of names, as Freud recalls the

name Boltraffio instead of Signorelli. Thus "bo" is combined with the name of the

city in Italy, Trafoi, where Freud received the news of his patient's suicide. Lacan then

explains that "Bosnia" and "Herzegovina" are therefore "the metonymical ruins of the

object in question [the patient]" (24). The object (the patient) is not present because of

death, and in Freud's unconscious the presence of the object is concealed behind

signifiers, i.e. substitute names.

For Bloom, the senseless signs "bur" and "burgund" function as "the

metonymical ruins of the object in question" that Lacan discusses. These metonymical

ruins serve to conceal for Bloom the inability to reach the dead object. The dead

object referred to by the metonymies "bur" and "burgund" is Emmet. However,

Emmet is referred to by the metonymic ruins insofar Emmet substitutes for the lost

object that is in question throughout the novel, Bloom's father. Emmet thus becomes

metonymic of the father, as is also evident by Bloom's incorporation of Emmet's

speech. In the end of "Sirens" Bloom incorporates the word ending Emmet's speech,

"Done", that will associate Emmet with Bloom's father:

Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaa. Written. I have.

62

Pprrpffrrppfff.

Done. (376, italics in original)

The last words given in the novel from Rudolph's suicide note, "das Herz…

Gott…Dein…" are German for "the heart", "God" and "yours" respectively. Emmet's

"Done" corresponds with Rudolph's "Dein" by means of homophony. An association

between Emmet and Bloom's father rests partially on the homophonic relation

between Emmet's last word and the last word reported in Rudolph's letter. The

importance of such homophony is supported by Jacobson’s conceptualization of

"sound symbolism". In his discussion of figures of sound as a constitutive principle of

verse, Jacobson teaches that in poetry "any conspicuous similarity in sound is

evaluated in respect to similarity and/or dissimilarity in meaning." (87)

In this case, however, the words "done" and "dein" are not evaluated only with

respect to their similarity in sound but also with respect to their position as last words

of a reported speech. The fragmentation both of Rudolph's suicide note and of

Emmet's last reported speech allows for a rhetorical manipulation that produces the

correspondence between the two men. Whereas Emmet's last word is "done",

Rudolph's last word is reported to be "dein", but the ellipsis following the word "dein"

in the report of the suicide note (see fn. 28 above) suggests that it was not, de facto,

Rudolph's last word. The words that followed "dein" were omitted in the process of

fragmentation, leaving "dein" in the place of the last word.

Their correspondence as last words that are also similar in sound is artificial

since, as I argued above, "dein" is manipulated into its position as Rudolph's last word

by Bloom's fragmentation of the latter's suicide note. The significance of Bloom's

rearrangement of Rudolph's letter should be perceived in light of Jacobson's teaching,

63

in his review of aphasic disorders, that linguistic units in the act of speech are

determined by "an ascending scale of freedom" (98):

Freedom to combine phonemes into words is circumscribed; it is

limited to the marginal situation of word coinage. In forming

sentences with words, the speaker is less constrained. And

finally, in the combination of sentences into utterances, the

action of compulsory syntactical rules ceases, and the freedom

of any individual speaker to create novel contexts increases

substantially (98).

The rearrangement of Rudolph's suicide note is not as trivial as a speaking agent's

freedom in "combination of sentences into utterances" because Rudolph's speech is

fixed by virtue of being a written text. Fragmentation in this context subverts stable

lingual utterances (the letter) for it allows freedom in arranging Rudolph's fixed

(written) message to Bloom. This rearrangement of the suicide note that positions

"dein" in correspondence with Emmet's "Done" turns Emmet into a metonymy for the

father.

Once Emmet is made a metonymy for the father, the circumstances of his

death become relevant to Bloom's subjective incorporation. Not only is Emmet's

unknown burial place a literary actualization of Abraham and Torok's concept of

cryptic identification, the psychic process occurring when "[i]nexpressible mourning

erects a secret tomb inside the subject" (130). Also significant is the fact that Emmet's

body was not buried as a whole. Thornton points out that "Emmet was hanged and

beheaded…The severed head was taken" (105-106), during which time the headless

body was coffined. The allusion to an actual beheading augments the role

64

fragmentation plays for Bloom in the novel, because the physical sundering of

Emmet's body foreshadows the sundering of the Irish patriot's speech in Bloom's

incorporation of it. In other words, a sundering that occurs outside the text serves as a

reification of Bloom's metaphorical fractioning whenever incorporation is at stake.

Another act of beheading, which also connects the sundering of a body with

paternal loss, appears in the "Ithaca" episode. This beheading appears in "Ithaca" at

the conclusion of the anti-Semitic poem Stephen recites for Bloom shortly after what

appears to be a forming of a bond between them. This bond seems to be produced by

their exercise of comparing phonic symbols of the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish

languages. The comparison between the two linguistic systems seemingly bonds

Bloom's and Stephen's ancestries. However, the poem Stephen recites, which depicts

a conflict between an elderly Jew and Christian kids, undermines the possibility of

such a bond in the present if we compare the elderly Jew in Stephen's poem with

Bloom who was himself ridiculed and even menaced for his Jewishness in the

"Cyclops" episode.

The aforementioned beheading appears as the conclusion to the conflict

depicted in Stephen's poem when the Jew's daughter captures one of the boys who

hassle her father and acts her revenge:

She took a penknife out of her pocket

And cut off his little head,

And now he'll play his ball no more

For he lies among the dead. (810, italics in original)

65

Although Bloom is not reported to be affected by the violence acted upon the boy, he

is reported to be affected by the image of the girl: "Unsmiling, he heard and saw with

wonder a jew's daughter, all dressed in green." (810) In fact, the poem elicits several

passages concerning Bloom's daughter, Milly, her long gone childhood and her recent

departure from home.

These acts of beheading, then, appear as forms of fragmentation which occur

in the novel whenever Bloom confronts paternity. This is evident also in the case of

Martin Cunningham, in a previously considered scene from "Hades", in which

Bloom's companions discuss suicides. Cunningham is agitated by Mr. Dedalus' and

Mr. Power's insistent condemnations of suicides in the company of Bloom, since he

knows about Rudolph's suicide, as Bloom suspects, and as the readers are soon

informed. When Cunningham concludes that all "must take a charitable view of it"

(120), Bloom is overcome with affectionate and appreciative sentiments:

Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin

Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic man

he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's face (120, my emphasis).

The simile offered by Bloom rests on synecdoche, as Bloom isolates one

feature (Shakespeare's face) out of the whole. Shakespeare is thoroughly discussed

later, in "Scylla and Charybdis", where Stephen unfolds his theory of the playwright

and insists that Shakespeare is not, as his companions maintain, simply Hamlet. For

Stephen, that both Shakespeare's and Hamlet's fathers died should not entail

parallelism between Shakespeare and the avenging son. On the contrary, since the

playwright is no longer a son he can only be paralleled with the father of the play. As

Stephen asserts: "being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his

66

race" (267). Since for Stephen Shakespeare is nothing but a father, then the fragment

in Bloom's simile "Like Shakespeare's face" serves not only as a synecdoche for

Shakespeare but as a metonymy for fatherhood.

Bloom's association of Cunningham with paternity, then, is achieved by a

metonymic simile. This metonymy not only fragments the representations of

Cunningham but, even more poignantly, it foreshadows Bloom's incorporation of

Cunningham's speech later in the novel. This incorporation of Cunningham's speech

occurs in Bloom's trial in "Circe", where Bloom faces several accusations of

concupiscence. In the trial, Bloom argues for "Mistaken identity", and reminds the

court of the Childs murder case: "You remember the Childs fratricide case31

…I am

wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully

condemned." (583) Here Bloom confuses Cunningham's allusion to the acquitting of

Samuel Childs in the Childs Murder Case, as rendered in "Hades": "Better for

ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be wrongfully

condemned." (125)32

Interestingly, Bloom's revision of Cunningham's assertion

maintains self-reproaches as inherent to his subjective incorporation: that Bloom talks

of "one guilty" person (instead of "ninetynine") in a scene where he is the one on trial

signals his alleged self-defense as incrimination.

So far, fragmentation has been established as either foreshadowing Bloom's

incorporation (as is the case with Emmet and Cunningham), or as manifesting it (as in

Bloom's incorporation of fragments of his father's suicide note). It remains to be asked

why fragmentation is so essential in Bloom's subjective incorporation whenever

32 Thornton also acknowledges Bloom's self-defense as drawn from Cunningham's words: "Bloom

confusedly remembers Mr. Cunningham's early observation about the Childs case." (entry

456.24/448.19)

67

paternity is at stake. To answer this question, I shall follow instances in which

fragmentation achieves a common outcome: an isolation of the fragment "face".

"Face", as I will argue, is in the novel a signifier related to paternity. One example is

the previously discussed fragmenting simile, "Like Shakespeare's face". This simile is

synecdochic by referring to a part of the whole, and is also metonymic of paternity

since in the "Scylla and Charybdis" episode Shakespeare is established as "the father

of all his race" (267). This allows Bloom to associate Cunningham with paternity

while applying fragmenting figure of speech. Also, Bloom applies this fragmenting

simile following a conversation about suicides, as suicide is, for Bloom, necessarily

related to his father.

In fact, the likening of Cunningham to Shakespeare's face precedes in

Dubliners. In "Grace", Martin Cunningham, who is a key character, is told to be

respected by everyone and that his friends "considered that his face was like

Shakespeare's". (114) In "Grace" the narration compares Cunningham's face with

Shakespeare's face, while in Ulysses it is Martin himself, and not just his face, that

Bloom compares with Shakespeare's face: "Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent.

Like Shakespeare's face." (120) This means that Bloom's likening of a whole

(Cunningham) to a part of the whole (Shakespeare's face) allows Bloom to

deconstruct Cunningham in a way different from the likening in "Grace" of two

equivalent parts, and in a way that is characteristic of his melancholic incorporation

In another instance in "Hades", the signifier "face" is again isolated in Bloom's

attempt to communicate the story of Reuben J.'s son who tried to commit suicide by

drowning. The narration which reports Bloom's attempt of communicating the story

provides an intriguing redundancy: "Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness

to his companions' faces." (117) Although "faces" contributes nothing to the level of

68

action, it does create a synecdoche which fragments Bloom's listeners at this

particular moment. Thus, once Bloom attempts to communicate the story about the

father saving his son's life his companions are present in a fragmented form. That this

synecdoche appears in the speech of the narrator, unlike in the previous incident in

which the synecdoche "Like Shakespeare's face" is articulated by Bloom, presents no

difficulty if we consider Cohn's term "psycho narration"33

. Cohn's term refers to forms

of narration which vehicle something of the characters' unconscious. This means that

with the synecdoche "companions' faces" the narration transmits Bloom's unconscious

inclination towards fragmentation upon his encountering paternity.

Like the metonymic simile "Like Shakespeare's face", the synecdoche

"companions' faces" also contributes to the isolation of the fragment "face". We can

account for the insistence of the fragment "face" in the novel through Bloom's first

recollection of Rudolph in the preceding chapter, "Lotus-Eaters". As Bloom observes

an ad for Leah, the forsaken, he remembers that its leading actress had played Hamlet

the previous night. Having Hamlet in mind, Bloom is concerned with Ophelia's

suicide and it is she which immediately incites for him his own father: "Why Ophelia

committed suicide? Poor papa!" (93) Then Bloom remembers the specific scene from

Leah, Rudolph's favorite play, that excited his father most of all. It is a scene in which

the father of the play, Abraham, is reunited with his son Nathan, who, according to

Rudolph, "left the house of his father and left the God of his father" (let us not forget

that it is Rudolph himself that left the God of his father by converting to Christianity):

33

Cohn, 21-57.

69

The scene he was always talking about where the old blind

Abraham recognizes the voice and puts his fingers on his

face. (93, my emphasis)

In Bloom's recollection of Rudolph's favorite scene, the blind Abraham identifies his

long lost son after recognizing his voice. According to Bloom, this recognition elicits

a gesture of familiarity expressed by a touch on a face.

In almost immediate succession, Bloom forsakes the memory of the living

father and returns to the memory of the father's suicide and his own refusal to witness

the dead face: "I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face." (93, my

emphasis) Bloom's resistance to behold his dead father's face ensues from the

significance with which with the signifier "face" is charged in Bloom's report of the

father's favorite scene from Leah. Because, for Rudolph, the signifier "face" indexes

familiarity and paternal affection then, for Bloom, this signifier becomes charged with

too much meaning and therefore becomes intolerable. Bloom's rejection of the

signifier "face" in the suicide scene is a result of this intolerability as determined by

the father's excitement of his favorite scene.

Despite its intolerability, the signifier "face" is clearly repeated in those places

where Bloom confronts paternity. As in Bloom's metonymic simile referring to

Cunningham and in Bloom's approach to his "companions' faces", the signifier is also

implicated in Bloom's encounter with Robert Emmet: in the actual case of Emmet the

face was also isolated from the whole by the beheading of the body. In the "Ithaca"

episode, the signifier "face" is explicitly associated with paternity. A while after the

departure of Stephen, the agent posing the questions in "Ithaca" inquires about

Bloom's thoughts as he is about to leave the living room and enter the bedroom where

70

Molly is asleep. When he asks about what "imperfections in a perfect day" (860) are

at that moment meditated by Bloom, the last "imperfection" specified in the answer is

"the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandman Palmer" (861, italics in original). Then, a

question concerning a face is posed, and an answer associating face and paternity is

provided:

What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently

recall?

The face of her [Molly's] father, the late Major Brian Cooper

Tweedy[.] (861)

The question concerning a face is posed immediately after Bloom is reported

to contemplate Mrs Bandman Palmer's performance in Leah. The play Leah, as

discussed in the first chapter, alludes to the father whose favorite play by Mosenthal is

the source for the remake Leah. Furthermore, in "Lotus-Eaters" it is with relation to

Leah that Bloom recalls his father's excitement of his favorite scene, the one in which

a father recognizes his son by a touch on his face, and in which the signifier "face" is

charged with too much meaning. Although in "Ithaca" an explicit connection is made

only between the "absent face" and Molly's father, the signifier "face" is evoked by

the allusion Bloom's father who is present by virtue of the previous question which

alludes to Leah as one of "imperfections in a perfect day". That Bloom's father is not

named in answer to the question about the "absent face" but only implicated by the

mentioning of Leah suggests another attempt by Bloom to detach the signifier "face"

from what has initially charged it with too much meaning, his father.

71

The insistence of the signifier "face" following Bloom's rejection of his

father's face in the suicide scene is further clarified by Lacan's teaching. In his study

of the Schreber case, Lacan discusses the relation between the signifier and the

subject in the case of psychosis.

In the locus where the unspeakable object was rejected into the

real, a word made itself heard because, in coming to the place of

what has no name, it was unable to follow the subject's intention

without detaching itself from it [.] ("On a Question Prior" 448)

Following Lacan's observation, it seems that the signifier "face" insists for Bloom in

his encounters with paternity because the signifier is detached from Bloom's

conscious intention to reject this signifier, as is apparent in his rejection of the dead

father's face. Unconsciously, however, the signifier "face" persists in order not to

efface the memory of the father.

The isolation of the "face", achieved by fragmenting linguistic tropes,

produces a signifier that emerges whenever Bloom encounters paternity. However, it

is also the very act of fragmentation that maintains the father present for Bloom. This

idea of fragmentation as preserving is presented in the "Ithaca" episode. It is reported

in "Ithaca" that Bloom maintains the idea of division to no end, insofar as every

fraction divided is in itself divisible. Although Bloom's quasi-scientific observation of

never-ending division follows one of the chapter's several astronomical allusions, it is

in fact applied by Bloom to human anatomy. As reported by the respondent agent,

Bloom contemplates the "universe of human serum", in which serum, as being human

substance, functions as a synecdoche for the whole of the human body:

72

[…] universe of divisible component bodies of which each was

again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies,

dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division

till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was

never reached. (820)

It is appropriate that Bloom's observation of endless division is rendered in

"Ithaca", a chapter divided by its very structure of an exchange of questions and

answers34

, and that his observation would conclude the novel's preoccupation with

fragmentation. Fragmentation, we have seen, is often at the foreground of the

prominent paternity theme of Ulysses. It is not only that by fragmentation the signifier

"face" is isolated and indexes the hole in the real that has opened up by the missing

signifier of the Name-of-the-Father. In this novel, it is the commitment to

fragmentation which allows the father to be forever present for Bloom. In other

words, to draw from Bloom's conclusion as reported in "Ithaca", through

fragmentation the hole in the real produced by the loss of the father is "never

reached."

34

Avrom Fleischman, in his review of scientific allusions in "Ithaca", acknowledges the fragmentation

inherent in the structure of "Ithaca": "The form by its very nature is a discontinuous one: the

questions divide up reality into segments". (381)

73

Conclusion

In the “Oxen of the Sun” episode, Bloom and other Dubliners visit Mrs.

Purefoy in the hospital where she is about to deliver a son. During his stay there,

Bloom thinks of his lack of a son: “No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now

to be for Leopold, what Leopold was Rudolph.” (541) In the context provided by the

first sentence of the quotation, the second sentence expands on Bloom’s loss of his

son. However, the nominal operation present in the second sentence contributes, also,

to the main argument of this thesis, namely that the losses experienced by Bloom, of

father and son, are inseparable. This indivisibility of the two losses is manifest in this

sentence by nominal ambiguity: Leopold is not only Bloom’s proper name but also

his grandfather’s name (Leopold Virag)35

, and Bloom’s father and son, also, share a

proper name, Rudolph. Thus, more than one meaning may be derived from the

paternal lineage indicated by this sentence: that there is no one to be for Bloom what

he himself was for Rudolph, i.e. a son, or that there is no one to be for Bloom what

Leopold (Virag) was for Rudolph, that is, a father. This nominal duplication in the

Virag/Bloom patrilineage strengthens my claim that Bloom’s losses of father and son

operate in the same psychic mechanism. This psychic mechanism is formulated by

Freud in “Mourning and Melancholia” as melancholic incorporation.

In his essay, Freud identifies a melancholic subject by his self-reproaches

which, Freud explains, are nothing but reproaches meant against the loss object who

was incorporated into the subject’s ego. Freud’s theory is essential in my account of

Bloom’s self-reproaches concerning the death of his son. These self-reproaches,

which culminate in a murderer's accountability, are meant for the incorporated father.

35

In “Circe” the apparition of Bloom’s father reveals this nominal association: “Are you not my son

Leopold, the grandson of Leopold?” (569)

74

They are reminiscent of Abraham and Torok's account of the clinical case of a girl,

who was abandoned by her father, and was having dreams of being charged for child

murder. Like in this girl's case, Bloom's self-reproaches are the incorporated father's

voice who, now being lost for his descendant, "accuses himself of the worst of

crimes" (Abraham and Torok 147)

What Abraham and Torok, who expanded on Freud’s theory of melancholic

incorporation, demonstrate with this girl's case is endrocryptic identification with the

lost object, which is essentially an unconscious identification. As I have demonstrated

in the first chapter, the first mention of the father in Ulysses occurs in the context of

denial of guilt: Bloom's assertion that "I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his

face." (93) The memory of the father is thus embedded in denial. This denial is crucial

for the failure of introjection and the consequent regression into incorporation, as

argued by Abraham and Torok. As discussed in the second chapter, Abraham and

Torok claim that incorporation occurs when the lost object cannot be replaced with

words expressing the loss and that, hence, the subject is bound to enact the metaphor

of “swallowing”.

In Ulysses, Bloom repeatedly enacts this metaphor. The "Sirens" episode, for

instance, is dominated by an acute sense of loss. In it Bloom explicitly re-enacts his

initiation into the novel in which he relishes the animal parts he incorporates into his

body. In the hospital chapter, too, Bloom is described as engaged in a continuing

digestion: “…Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence”

(540). What Bloom attempts to swallow, that is, to incorporate into his ego, keeps

surfacing, leaving Bloom bound in an ongoing attempt to swallow the loss of the

father which affects he cannot verbally express.

75

This "swallowing" is an enactment of the psychic incorporation in which

Bloom is bound whenever he faces the issue of paternity. Bloom's psychic

incorporation is manifest in the text as incorporation of speech. However, as I have

argued in the third chapter, in the novel what is incorporated must appear in

fragmented form. Fragmentation is textually expressed in unfinished sentences,

metonymies and synecdoches. This is because fragmentation allows Bloom to remain

bound with the object he lost early on, his father. It is for this reason that Rudolph's

suicide note appears only in a fragmented form. Through this fragmentation,

Rudolph's last words commend the father to his son in a way the son is unable to

resist: "…my dear son…always…of me…das Herz…Gott…dein…" (853, ellipses and

italics in original). Significantly, what Rudolph commends to his son is not simply

himself, but a part of himself: this heart, it is said in German, is yours. Fragmentation,

I conclude, is not only a peculiarity of Bloom's subjective incorporation, but is

functional in maintaining the father’s written words as a command for Bloom to have

a part of the father (his heart) , and thus, in a sense, not to completely lose him.

76

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78

הפקולטה למדעי הרוח ע"ש לסטר וסאלי אנטין

המחלקה לאנגלית ולימודים אמריקניים

אינקורפורציה מלנכולית בדמותו של ליאופולד בלום

של ג'יימס ג'ויס יוליססרטורי ב-מחקר פסיכו

באוניברסיטת תל אביב .M.A –חיבור זה הוגש כעבודת גמר לקראת התואר "מוסמך אוניברסיטה"

על ידי

טליה עבו

העבודה הוכנה בהדרכת

זיסר-פרופ' שירלי שרון

2015אוגוסט,

79

של ג'יימס ג'ויס, ועוסקת בעיקר יוליססעבודת התזה להלן מוקדשת לאובדן הקשור באבהות ב

בליאופולד בלּום, אשר חווה את אובדנם של אביו, רודולף, ובנו, רודי. אבחן אובדן זה הקשור באבהות

נקורפורציה המלנכולית בה קשור בלום ואשר באה לידי ביטוי בצורות טקסטואליות הכרוכות דרך האי

בפירוק.

הפרק הראשון מתייחס לחותם הרגשי שנִתבע בבלום על ידי כל אובדן. קודם כל, משתמעת

בבלּום תחושת אשמה הנובעת מסירובו להיות נוכח בזירת ההתאבדות של אביו. במקביל, ביטויי תוכחה

ימים, 11לּום מפנה כלפי עצמו ומתייחסים לתחושת האחריות שהוא נושא למותו של רּודי בעודו בן שב

שזורים לכל אורך היצירה. תוכחות אלה מצד בלּום במהרה מגיעות לשיא כאשר הן מדמות את האחריות

שלכאורה נושא בלּום במות בנו לזו של האחראי לרצח.

ן בסמיכות טקסטואלית לִאזכורים הנוגעים באובדן הבן. ִאזכורים לאובדן האב מופיעים ברומ

סמיכות זו, לצד הִמְקשֹור הנוצר ביניהם על ידי שמם המשותף )שניהם נקראים רודולף(, רומזים כי מיתֹות

אלה קשורות זו בזו. בהמשך לכך, אציע כי אובדן האב ואובדן הבן, מתפקדים אצל בלּום באותו מנגנון

כואנליזה כאינקורפורציה מלנכולית. זו היא תגובה נפשית לאובדן אשר הּומשגה נפשי אשר מוגדר בפסי

על ידי זיגמונד פרויד ופותחה במחקרם של ניקולאס אברהם ומריה טורוק. כיוצא בזה, אציע שתוכחותיו

של בלּום התייחסות למות בנו, הן, למעשה, תוכחות המכוונות כלפי האובייקט האבוד שהתמזג באגו של

ם, כלומר, האב. בלּו

ייצוגים של בלּום ככרוך באינקורפורציה מלנכולית לעתים קרובות כוללות צורות לשוניות כמו

סינקדוכה ומטונימיה הכרוכות בפירוק. כפי שנטען בפרק השלישי, השימוש הרב הנעשה הרומן בצורות

של בלום. בעוד פירוק אלה מצביע על כך שפירוק )פרגמנטציה( קשורים באינקורפורציה הסובייקטיבית

בא לידי ביטוי במפגשים של בלּום עם אבהות בממשי, מתברר כי פירוק זה מאפשר לבלּום להכחיש את

עצם אובדן האב ולשמר את האב נוכח במציאות הנפשית שלו.