Ulysses: What was Stephen's auditive sensation?
I wish I could quote here all of "Episode 17 - Ithaca" from Joyce's Ulysses, but in print, the section is forty-some-odd pages long. Here's a very, very short excerpt:
"What was Stephen's auditive sensation?
He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of the past.
What was Bloom's visual sensation?
He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future.
What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities?
Visually, Stephen's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair. Auditively, Bloom's: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of catastrophe.
What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with what exemplars?
In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian Osmond Tearle(died 1901), exponent of Shakespeare."
How intimately do you know the characters in your own writing?
Labels: characters, James Joyce, Leopold Bloom, Stephan Dedalus, Ulysses

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