"Mary,
star of the sea."
At 8am,
Buck Mulligan performs a mock mass for Stephan Dedalus using his shaving bowl,
razor and mirror. At 8pm, the actual flesh and blood (so to speak) mass
commences in a chapel by the sea. After the mass is over, Cissy Caffrey exposes
her holy sanctuary while gazing up at fire 'cross the sky, and Leopold Bloom,
peering deep into its Mysteries, casts his seed into his shirt which is tucked
into his pants. Blessed sacrament.
Kineta Chien
suggested to me, years ago, that Leopold and Stephan represent (among several
other things) the Yod and Vau of Tetragrammaton, with Molly and Milly standing
in for the first and final Heh. Interestingly, the only difference in name
between Molly and Milly is a Vau and a Yod (respectively). Of further interest
is the fact that Milly is absent from the book, only her name is mentioned, and
the only part of Molly that we see outside of bed is her arm sticking out the
window as she throws a coin to a one-legged sailor in the Wander Rocks
chapter.
Somewhat
of a big deal has been made about the phrase that Leopold begins to scratch
into the sand, "I AM A..." I would suggest that Bloom is misspelling
"AIMA", the Great Mother of the Kabbalists (per Isaac Luria) and the
Heh of Tetragrammaton. AIMA is perfectly represented by the vastness of the
sea, as is illustrated several times in the Proteus chapter, wherein Stephan
wanders around this very area musing on various subjects, not the least of
which is the blissful yearning for final dissolution in the sea or in the
starry heavens (where AIMA is concerned, these are more or less the
same).
I think
that attributions of Heh and Heh final here leave some room for ambiguity. On
the one hand, Molly and Milly are perfectly suited to represent them. On the
other hand, Odysseus and Penelope never had a daughter, so where does Milly fit
in? Also note that Molly Bloom does double duty here, on the one hand she's
Penelope, but in the fourth chapter she appears as Calypso in the navel of the
sea (opposite Buck and Stephan's tower). Molly doesn't seem to fit so well as
Stephan's spiritual mother, and Milly is curiously absent for a sister
(besides, Stephan has several perfectly legitimate sisters, at least one of
whom he has not disowned). Perhaps the Heh of Tetragrammaton is also
represented by the sea, and Heh final by Dublin itself.
Joyce's
structure is never rigid or definite, I think it's clear that there is no one
key by which any part of the book may be unlocked. Rather, there are a
succession of keys, may of which are interchangeable. Stephan and Bloom are
both key-less wanderers, and while we as readers are given no shortage of keys,
yet still they remain enigmatic, we can never quite make them fit perfectly, and
there are always further doors left to be found.
"That
was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none
to know or tell save the little bat who flew so softly through the evening to
and fro and little bats don't tell."
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