I've picked up on the Ulysses
reading the last few days. I just read Lotus Eaters, one of my favorite
chapters. Bloom is so distraught by his own impotence in his wanderings he
cannot go five minutes without hearing or thinking about the diffculty of
getting it up and keeping it up. In Calypso, though his Odyssean namesake is
one whom Calypso desires, who desires him?, in Dublin he can only speculate
about that letter that Molly is hiding not that well beneath her pillow and
wonder about Milly's blooming about which he can do nothing but hope for the
best. His own attempts at blooming as Henry Flower, while it keeps his
sexual life alive, is so less real, fleshy and satisfying. To Martha, he is a
mere "boy." His sexual life has been reduced to masturbatory
fantasies in the bathhouse. Why is this interesting, sensual man so
reduced to voyeurism and epistulatory seduction that is hardly heroic? Is it
merely that Molly prefers Blazes Boylan? Is it because that at 41 Bloom is
physically declining? The Hades chapter will provide more answers to this
quesiton. I can't wait to read it today.
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