I Ep.Testi It. e Ingl. e links a tutti i posts


Per una visione d'insieme
Indice dei video con link ai testi relativi
  1°Quadro:Telemaco
  2°Quadro: Dedalus
  3°Quadro:morte della madre
  6°Quadro : Recriminazioni di Stephen
  8°Quadro : Servitore di un servo
  9°Quadro: Nel tinello della torre
10°Quadro: Entra la lattaia 
15°Quadro: Alla scogliera
16° lettura ad alta voce del commento di Giulio De Angelis "Telemaco" la torre

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Da Guida alla lettura degli schemi di "Ulisse" di Giorgio Melchiorri
in
"Ulisse Guida alla lettura" Oscar Mondadori 2014 Pagina 41
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Nella parte I di "Ulisse" la Telemachia"(Episodi 1-3) non ci sono ancora relazioni con gli organi del corpo umano. Joyce commenta: " Telemaco non soffre ancora il corpo"
e circa le relazioni con le ore del giorno, lo schema "Linati" li indica genericamente come ALBA alludendo all'emergenza della figura ancora immatura di Stephen Dedalus.
Comunque il Primo Episodio "Telemaco" si svolge fra le 8 e le 9 del mattino.
Scena e azione: Stephen nella torre discute con Buck Mulligan, esce e decide di non farvi più ritorno
Significato: Il figlio spodestato si prepara alla lotta.
Equivalente omerico: Telemaco parte da Itaca in cerca del padre (Odissea I-III)
Tecnica: narrazione, monologo interiore, dialogo a 3 e a 4
Scienza o Arte: Teologia

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Film Ulysses
Gran Bretagna, USA 1967Genere: Drammaticodurata 132'b/n
Regia di Joseph Strick
Con Barbara Jefford, Milo O'Shea, Maurice Roëves, T.P. McKenna, Martin Dempsey, Sheila O'Sullivan, Graham Lines, Peter Mayock...

 spezzone  del film relativo al 1° Episodio di Ulisse

                                                                         La recensione di sasso67 su

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 Lettura del commento al Primo Episodio :"Telemaco" la torre  
dalla sezione
Commento a "Ulisse" di Giulio De Angelis 
nel libro 
Classici moderni degli Oscar Mondadori 
"Ulisse Guida alla lettura " 
a cura di Giorgio Melchiorri e Giulio De Angelis
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playlist su YouTube con la lettura ad alta voce  dell'intero 1° episodio, 

Se si vuole ascoltare 
la lettura ad alta voce, 
seguendo il testo sottostante:
dopo aver aperto la playlist
che si aprirà in un'altra scheda
attivare "Riproduci tutto" 
e tornare velocemente alla pagina del blog
cliccare sull'immagine per aprire la playlist
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                                                                   Testo italiano   

                                                                           Trascritto dalla Traduzione di:  

                                                              Giulio  de Angelis - Medusa Mondadori 1970

1°Quadro: Buck Mulligan 

Solenne, il paffuto Buck Mulligan comparve dall'alto delle scale, portando un bacile di schiuma su cui uno specchio e un rasoio erano posati in croce. Una vestaglia gialla, discinta, gli veniva sollevata delicatamente sul dietro dalla mite aria mattutina. Levò alto il bacile e intonò:
Fermatosi, scrutò la buia scala a chiocciola e chiamò berciando:
- Vieni su, Kinch. Vieni su, pauroso gesuita.
Maestosamente avanzò e ascese la rotonda piazzuola di tiro. Fece dietrofront e con gravità benedisse tre volte la torre, la campagna circostante e i monti che si destavano. Poi, avvedutosi di Stephen Dedalus, si chinò verso di lui, tracciò rapide croci nell'aria, gorgogliando di gola e tentennando il capo. Stephen Dedalus, contrariato e sonnolento, appoggiò i gomiti sul sommo della scala e guardò con freddezza la tentennante e gorgogliante faccia che lo benediceva, cavallina nella lunghezza, e i chiari capelli senza tonsura, marezzati color quercia chiaro.
Buck Mulligan sbirciò per un attimo sotto lo specchio e poi coprì lestamente il bacile.
- Rientra in caserma!, disse severo.
Poi con tono da predicatore:
- Perché questo, o miei diletti, è la genuina Cristina: corpo e anima e sangue e angue. Musica adagio, di grazia. Chiudete gli occhi, rispettabile pubblico. Un momento. C'è un piccolo guaio con quei corpuscoli bianchi. Silenzio, a tutti.
Sogguardò di sghembo e lanciò un lungo sordo fischio di richiamo, poi con rapita attenzione fece una pausa, e i denti bianchi e regolari gli brillavano qua e là di schegge d’oro. Crisostomo. In risposta due forti fischi acuti attraversarono la quiete.
- Grazie, vecchio mio, gridò vivacemente. Così non c’è malaccio. Stacca la corrente, ti dispiace?
Saltò giù dalla piazzuola e guardò gravemente il suo osservatore, raccogliendosi intorno alle gambe le pieghe volanti della vestaglia. Il nereggiante viso paffuto e la proterva mascella ovale rammentavano un prelato, protettore delle arti nel medio evo.

Un amabile sorriso si diffuse pacatamente sulle sue labbra.
- Che canzonatura, disse gaio. Quel tuo nome assurdo, da greco antico.
Lo segnò a dito con amichevole celia e si avviò al parapetto, ridendo tra sé. Stephen Dedalus venne su, lo seguì stancamente per un tratto e si sedette sull'orlo della piazzuola continuando a guardarlo mentre lui appoggiava lo specchio sul parapetto, intingeva il pennello nel bacile e si insaponava guance e collo.
La gaia voce di Buck Mulligan continuò: - Anch'io ho un nome assurdo: Màlachi Mùlligan, due dattili. Ma ha un certo qual suono ellenico, vero? Saltellante e solare proprio come un cerbiatto. Dobbiamo andare ad Atene. Ci vieni se riesco a far sborsare venti sterline alla zia?
Mise giù il pennello e, ridendo di gusto, urlò:
- Verrà lo sparuto gesuita?
Chetatosi, cominciò a sbarbarsi con cura.
- Senti, Mulligan, disse piano Stephen.
- Parla, amor mio.
- Quanto tempo starà ancora Haines in questa torre?
Buck Mulligan mostrò una gota rasata al di sopra della spalla destra.
- Dio, ma quello è tremendo, no? disse con franchezza. Un sassone ponderoso. Non ti considera un gentiluomo. Dio, questi dannati inglesi. Crepano di quattrini e di indigestione. Perché lui viene da Oxford. Sai, Dedalus, tu hai tutto il tono di Oxford. Non arriva a capirti. Oh, ma il nome che ti ho dato è l’ideale: Kinch, lama di coltello.
Si faceva una cauta passata sul mento.
- Ha delirato tutta la notte di una pantera nera, disse Stephen. Dov'è la fonda del suo fucile?
- Un miserabile pazzo, disse Mulligan. Hai avuto fifa?
- Eccome, disse Stephen con energia e con crescente paura. In un posto simile al buio con un uomo che non conosco, che delira e geme tra sé di sparare a una pantera nera. Tu hai salvato uomini che stavano per affogare. Ma io, non sono un eroe. Se resta qui lui me ne vado io.
Buck Mulligan guardò accigliato la spuma sulla lama del rasoio. Saltò giù dal suo trespolo e cominciò a frugarsi in fretta nelle tasche dei pantaloni.
- Taglia la corda, gridò con voce spessa.
Si avvicinò alla piazzuola e, cacciando una mano nel taschino di Stephen, disse:
- Mollaci in prestito il tuo moccichino per asciugare il rasoio.
Stephen tollerò che tirasse fuori e tenesse in mostra per un angolo un fazzoletto sporco e gualcito. Buck Mulligan pulì diligentemente la lama. Poi, percorrendo con lo sguardo il fazzoletto, disse:
- Il moccichino del bardo. Nuovo colore pittorico per i nostri poeti irlandesi: verdemoccio. Sembra di sentirselo in bocca, vero?
Risalì sul parapetto e percorse con lo sguardo la baia di Dublino, i biondi capelli querciapallida lievemente mossi.
- Dio, disse tranquillamente. Il mare è proprio come dice Algy: una dolce madre grigia, no? Il mare verdemoccio. Il mare scrotocostrittore. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, i Greci. Ti devo erudire. Li devi leggere li devi leggere nell’originale. Thalatta! Thalatta! È la nostra grande dolce madre. Vieni a vedere.

Stephen si alzò e si accostò al parapetto. Appoggiatosi abbassò lo sguardo sull’acqua e sul postale che usciva dall’imboccatura del porto di Kingstown.
- La madre nostra possente, disse Buck Mulligan.
Girò bruscamente i grandi occhi indagatori dal mare al viso di Stephen.
- La zia pensa che tu abbia ucciso tua madre, disse. Per questo non vuole che io abbia a che fare con te.
- Qualcuno l'ha uccisa, disse Stephen con mestizia.
- Ti potevi inginocchiare, Kinch, porca miseria quando tua madre te l’ha chiesto in punto di morte, disse Buck Mulligan. Sono iperboreo quanto te. Ma pensare a tua madre che con l’ultimo respiro ti supplicava di inginocchiarti a pregare per lei. E tu hai rifiutato. C’è qualcosa di sinistro in te...
S’interruppe e si rifece una leggera insaponata sull’altra guancia. Un sorriso tollerante gli increspò le labbra.
- Ma un meraviglioso mimo, mormorò a se stesso. Kinch, il più meraviglioso dei mimi.
Si radeva pulito e meticoloso, in silenzio, seriamente.
Stephen, con un gomito sul granito scabro, appoggiò la fronte a una mano e guardò l’orlo sfilacciato della sua manica nera lustra. Una sofferenza, che non era ancora la sofferenza amorosa, gli rodeva il cuore. Silenziosamente, in un sogno era venuta a lui dopo la morte, il corpo consunto nello sciolto sudario scuro spandeva un sentore di cera e di legno di rosa, l’alito che, muto, rampognante, si era chinato su di lui, un lieve odore di ceneri bagnate. Oltre il polsino sfrangiato egli vedeva il mare che la ben pasciuta voce al suo fianco salutava come grande dolce madre. L’anello della baia e dell’orizzonte conteneva una fosca massa verde di liquido. Presso il suo letto di morte posava un bacile di bianca porcellana contenente la verde bile vischiosa che con accessi di vomito altogemente ella aveva divelto al fegato in putrefazione.

Buck Mulligan nettò di nuovo la lama del rasoio.
- Ah, povero corpo d'un cane, disse con voce gentile. Ti devo dare una camicia e qualche moccichino. E che ne è delle brache di seconda mano?
- Mi vanno abbastanza bene, rispose Stephen.
Buck Mulligan attaccò l'incavo sotto il labbro inferiore.
- Che canzonatura, disse soddisfatto, si dovrebbero chiamare di seconda gamba. Dio sa quale sifiletilico le ha smesse. Io ne ho un bel paio con un righino,grige. Con quelle farai faville. Non sto scherzando Kinch. Fai un figurone quando ti vesti bene.
- Grazie, disse Stephen. Non le posso portare se sono grige.
- Non le può portare, Buck Mulligan disse alla sua faccia nello specchio. L'etichetta è l'etichetta. Ammazza la madre, ma non può portare pantaloni grigi. Chiuse diligentemente il rasoio e con carezzosi polpastrelli si palpeggiò la pelle liscia.
Stephen girò lo sguardo dal mare alla faccia paffuta dai mobili occhi azzurrofumo.
- Quel tale che era con me al Ship ieri sera, disse Buck, dice che tu hai la p.g.a. Lui è a Cretinopoli con Conolly Norman. Paralisi generale degli alienati!
Sventagliò a semicerchio lo specchio nell'aria per lampeggiare all'intorno le notizie nella luce del sole adesso raggiante sul mare. Le labbra sbarbate e increspate risero, e così pure i bordi dei denti bianchi, scintillanti. Il riso s'impadronì di tutto il suo torso forte, ben piantato.

- Guardati, disse, o tremendo bardo.
Stephen si chinò in avanti e scrutò lo specchio lui offerto, rigato da un'obliqua incrinatura, ritti i capelli. Come mi vedono lui e gli altri. Chi mi ha scelto questa faccia? Questo corpo d’un cane da spidocchiare. Lo domanda anche a me.
- L'ho pizzicato nella stanza della sguattera, disse Buck Mulligan. Per lei va benissimo. La zia tiene sempre serve brutte per Malachi. Non lo indurre in tentazione. Si chiama Orsola.
Tornato a ridere sottrasse lo specchio agli occhi scrutatori di Stephen.
Tirandosi indietro e puntando il dito, Stephen disse con amarezza:
Improvvisamente Buck Mulligan allacciò il braccio a quello di Stephen e si mise a passeggiare con lui attorno alla torre, il rasoio e lo specchio stridenti nella tasca dove li aveva cacciati.
- Non sta bene tormentarti così, vero Kinch? disse bonariamente. Lo sa Dio che vali più di tutti loro.
Un'altra parata. Teme la lancetta della mia arte come io temo quella della sua. Il freddo acciaio della penna.
- Specchio incrinato di una serva. Diglielo a quel bue del piano di sotto e prova a cavargli una ghinea. Puzza di soldi lontano un miglio e dice che non sei un gentiluomo. Il suo vecchio ha fatto il gruzzolo vendendo scialappa agli Zulu o con qualche altro porco imbroglio del genere. Dio mio, Kinch, basterebbe che io e te lavorassimo insieme, potremmo far qualcosa per la nostra isola. Ellenizzarla.
Il braccio di Cranly. Il suo braccio.
- Pensare che devi chiedere la carità a questi porci. Io sono il solo a sapere quel che vali. Perché non mi dài più fiducia? Che cos'è che ti fa torcere il naso contro di me? Haines? Se fa tanto di piantare baccano qui porto giù Seymour e gli diamo una lezione peggio di quella che hanno appioppata a Clive Kempthorpe.
Giovani urla di voci danarose nella stanza di Clive Kempthorpe. Visipallidi: si tengono la pancia dal ridere, sorreggendosi a vicenda. Oh, c'è da crepare! Recale la notizia con riguardo, Aubrey! Qui io muoio! Con la camicia ridotta a fettucce staffilando l'aria saltabecca e brancola intorno al tavolo, i pantaloni calati alle calcagna, rincorso da Ades di Magdalen con le cesoie da sarto. Faccia di vitello sgomento dorata di marmellata d'arance. Non voglio essere messo a culo nudo! Non fate gli stupidi con me!
Dalla finestra aperta gridìo che sconcerta la sera nel cortile. Un giardiniere sordo, in grembiule, mascherato con la faccia di Matthew Arnold, spinge la falciatrice nel prato in ombra aguzzando le ciglia verso lo svolìo dei fili d'erba.
- Che resti pure, disse Stephen. Niente da ridire sul suo conto eccetto di notte.
- Allora che c'è? domandò Buck Mulligan spazientito. Sputa fuori. Io con te parlo chiaro. Che cos’hai adesso contro di me?
Si fermarono, guardando verso il capo smussato di Bray Head che si stendeva sull'acqua come il grugno d'una balena addormentata. Stephen liberò piano il braccio.
- Vuoi che te lo dica? Domandò.
- Sì, che c'è? rispose Buck Mulligan. Io non ricordo nulla.
Scrutava Stephen in faccia così parlando. Una lieve brezza gli passò sulla fronte, sventagliandogli mollemente i biondi capelli spettinati e suscitandogli argentei luccichii d'ansia negli occhi.
Stephen, avvilito dalla propria voce, disse:
- Ti ricordi il primo giorno che sono venuto a casa tua dopo la morte di mia madre?

Di colpo Buck Mulligan si accigliò e disse:
- Che cosa? Dove? Non mi ricordo di niente. Ricordo soltanto idee e sensazioni. Perché? Che cosa è successo in nome di Dio?
- Stavi facendo il tè, disse Stephen, ed io ho attraversato il pianerottolo per prendere un altro po' di acqua calda. Tua madre uscì dal salottino con qualcuno ch'era venuto a trovarla. Ti domandò chi c'era in camera tua.
- E allora? disse Buck Mulligan. Che cosa ho detto? Non me ne ricordo.
Un rossore che lo fece apparire più giovane e attraente salì alla guancia di Buck Mulligan.
- Ho detto così? domandò. Be? che male c’è? Si scrollò nervosamente di dosso il proprio impaccio.
- Che cos’è mai la morte, domandò, quella di tua madre o la tua o la mia? Tu non hai visto morire che tua madre. Io li vedo crepare ogni giorno al Mater o al Richmond e tagliati a lasagne in sala anatomica. È una cosa bestiale, e nient'altro. Non ha importanza, ecco tutto. Tu non hai voluto inginocchiarti a pregare per tua madre sul letto di morte quando lei te l'ha chiesto. Perché? Perché c'è in te quella maledetta vena di gesuita, solo che è iniettata a rovescio. Per me non è che una canzonatura, e bestiale. I suoi lobi cerebrali hanno smesso di funzionare. Lei chiama il dottore Sir Peter Teazle e coglie ranuncoli dall'imbottita. Assecondala finché dura. Tu hai contrariato la sua ultima volontà in punto di morte e adesso mi tieni il broncio perché non metto su una mutria da piagnone presa a nolo da Laluette. È un'assurdità. Magari l'ho anche detto. Non volevo offendere la memoria di tua madre.
Via via che parlava si era imbaldanzito. Stephen, facendo schermo alle ferite aperte nel suo cuore da quelle parole, disse molto freddamente:
- Non mi preoccupo dell'offesa fatta a mia madre.
- Di che cosa allora? domandò Buck Mulligan.
- Dell'offesa fatta a me, rispose Stephen.
Buck Mulligan girò sul calcagno.
- Oh, che uomo impossibile! Esclamò.
Si allontanò veloce costeggiando il parapetto. Stephen rimase al suo posto, vagando con lo sguardo sul mare tranquillo verso il promontorio. Mare e promontorio adesso si offuscavano. Gli occhi gli pulsavano, velandogli la vista, e si sentiva la febbre alle guance.
Una voce da dentro la torre urlò:
- Sei lassù, Mulligan?
- Vengo, rispose Mulligan.
Si voltò verso Stephen e disse:
- Guarda il mare. Che cosa gliene importa delle offese? Piantala Loyola, Kinch, e vieni giù. Il Sassone reclama le sue trance mattutine di bacon.
La sua testa tornò a fermarsi per un momento in cima alla scala al livello del tetto.
- Non mugugnarci sopra tutto il giorno, disse. Io parlo a vanvera. Desisti da codeste ruminazioni.
La testa scomparve ma il bòmbito della sua voce discendente emergeva rombando dalla cima delle scale:
Ombre silvane attraversavano fluttuando silenziose la pace mattutina dalla cima della scala verso il mare dove egli teneva fisso lo sguardo. Sulla spiaggia e più al largo biancheggiava lo specchio d'acqua sommosso da piedi frettolosi dai leggeri calzari. Bianco seno di fosco mare. Vocaboli paralleli, a due a due. Mano che pizzica le corde dell'arpa congiungendo gli accordi paralleli. Biancondose appaiate parole baluginanti sulla fosca marea.
Una nuvola cominciò a coprire lentamente il sole ombreggiando la baia di verde più fondo. Era alle sue spalle, bacino d'amare acque. La canzone di Fergus: la cantavo da solo in casa, tenendo in sordina i lunghi cupi accordi. La porta della sua camera era aperta: lei voleva sentire la mia musica. Silenzioso di sgomento e pietà mi avvicinai al suo capezzale. Piangeva nel suo letto sciagurato. Per quelle parole, Stephen: l'amaro mistero dell’amore.
E ora dove?
I suoi segreti: vecchi ventagli di piume, carnets di ballo con le nappe, incipriati di muschio, un fronzolo di chicchi d’ambra nel cassetto chiuso a chiave. Una gabbia da uccelli era appesa alla finestra soleggiata di casa sua quand'era bambina. Aveva sentito il vecchio Royce cantare nell’operetta di Turko il terribile e riso con gli altri quand'egli cantava:
Fantomatica gioia, piegata e messa via. profumata di muschio.
Non appartarti più per ruminare.
Piegata e messa via nella memoria della natura con i suoi balocchi. Ricordi gli assalivano il cervello rimuginante. Il bicchier d'acqua del rubinetto di cucina quando si era accostata al sacramento. Una mela svuotata, piena di zucchero caramellato, a rosolarsi per lei sul focolare in una buia sera d'autunno. Le sue unghie affusolate rosse del sangue di pidocchi strizzati di sulle camicie dei bambini.
In un sogno, silenziosamente, era venuta a lui, il corpo consumato nel molle sudario spandeva un sentore di cera e di legno di rosa, l'alito chino su di lui con mute segrete parole, un lieve odore di ceneri bagnate.
I suoi occhi invetrati, fissi da oltre la morte, per scuotere e piegare la mia anima. Su me solo. La candela fantasma a illuminare la sua agonia. Luce spettrale sul viso tormentato. Il forte respiro rauco rantolante d'orrore, mentre tutti pregavano in ginocchio. I suoi occhi su di me per abbattermi. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: jubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
Lemure! Masticatore di cadaveri!
No, mamma. Lasciami stare e lasciami vivere.

- Oh issa Kinch!
La voce di Buck Mulligan cantava di dentro la torre. Si avvicinò al sommo della scala, ripetendo il richiamo. Stephen, ancora tremando al grido della sua anima, udì un caldo scorrere di luce solare e parole amiche nell’aria alle sue spalle.
- Dedalus, scendi, da bravo marmocchio. La colazione è pronta. Haines fa le sue scuse per averci svegliati la notte scorsa. Tutto è in regola.
- Vengo, disse Stephen volgendosi.
- Forza, per amor di Gesù, disse Buck Mulligan, per amore di me e per amore di tutti noi.
La sua testa sparì e riapparve.
- Gli ho detto del tuo simbolo dell'arte irlandese. Dice che è molto ben trovato. Spremigli una sterlina, ti va? Una ghinea, piuttosto.
- Mi pagano stamattina, disse Stephen.
- Quel casino di scuola? disse Buck Mulligan. Quanto? Quattro sterline? Prestacene una.
- Se ti serve, disse Stephen.
- Quattro sovrane splendenti, gridò Buck Mulligan con gusto.Faremo una grandiosa bevuta da sbalordire i druidici druidi. Quattro onnipotenti sovrane.
Agitò le braccia in aria e caracollò giù per gli scalini di pietra, cantando stonato con accento londinese:
Calda solarità in festa sul mare. Il bacile di nichel brillava, dimenticato,sul parapetto. E perché dovrei portarlo giù? Oppure lasciarlo là tutto il giorno, amicizia dimenticata?
Si avvicinò, lo tenne un po' tra le mani, sentendone il fresco, annusando la bava collosa della schiuma in cui stava impegolato il pennello. Così reggevo il bossolo dell’incenso in quel tempo a Clongowes. Ora sono un altro eppure sempre lo stesso. Sempre un servo. Il servitore di un servo.

- Finiremo asfissiati, disse Buck Mulligan. Haines, apra quella porta, le spiace?
Stephen posò il bacile sulla credenza. Un’alta figura si levò dall'amaca dove stava seduta, andò alla bussola e spalancò i battenti interni.
- Ha la chiave? domandò una voce.
- L'ha Dedalus, disse Buck Mulligan. Mondo cane, soffoco.
Berciò senza alzare gli occhi dal fuoco:
- Kinch!
- È nella toppa, disse Stephen, venendo avanti.
- Mi sto sciogliendo, fece, come disse la candela quando... Ma zitti! Non una parola di più su questo argomento. Kinch, sveglia. Pane, burro, miele. Haines, entri. Il rancio è pronto. Benedici noi, o Signore, e questi tuoi doni. Dov'è lo zucchero? Cribbio non c'è latte.
Stephen andò a prendere dalla credenza la pagnotta e il vasetto del miele e la vaschetta del burro. Buck Mulligan si sedette con improvvisa stizza.
- Che casino è questo? disse. Le avevo detto di venire dopo le otto.
- Possiamo prenderlo scuro, disse Stephen. C'è un limone nella credenza.
- Al diavolo te e le tue manie parigine, disse Buck Mulligan. Voglio latte di Sandycove.
Haines abbandonò la soglia e disse tranquillamente:
- Sta salendo quella donna col latte.
- Haines, Iddio la benedica, gridò Buck Mulligan saltando su dallaseggiola. Si sieda. Versi il tè. Lo zucchero è nel sacchetto. Forza, ne ho abbastanza di giostrare con queste uova della malora. Trinciò in lungo e in largo la frittata nel piatto e la sbatté su tre piattini, dicendo:
Haines si sedette per versare il tè.
- Vi do due zollette a testa, disse. Ma dico, lei Mulligan, lo fa forteil tè,vero?
Buck Mulligan, tagliando spesse fette dalla pagnotta, disse con una voce da vecchietta smancerosa:
- Quando faccio il tè faccio il tè, come diceva nonna Grogan. E quando faccio acqua faccio acqua.
- Per Giove, questo è tè, disse Haines.
Buck Mulligan continuò a tagliare e a parlare smanceroso.
- Proprio così, Mrs Cahill, dice lei. Perdinci signora, dice Mrs Cahill, Dio vi conceda di non farli nello stesso vaso.
Tese via via a ognuno dei suoi commensali una spessa fetta di pane, impalata sul coltello.
Si voltò verso Stephen e domandò con tornita inflessione dubitativa, alzando i sopraccigli:
- Ti sovviene, fratello, che il vaso del tè e dell'acqua di nonna Grogan si trovi menzionato nel Mabinogion ovvero nelle Upanishad?
- Ho i miei dubbi, disse gravemente Stephen.
- Davvero? disse nello stesso tono Buck Mulligan. E le tue ragioni, di grazia?
- Immagino,disse Stephen mangiando,che non sia mai esistito né dentro né fuori del Mabinogion.Nonna Grogan era, si suppone, consanguinea di Maty Ann.
Il viso di Buck Mulligan sorrise di piacere.
- Incantevole, disse con voce da preziosa, mostrando i denti bianchi e strizzando amabilmente gli occhi. Credi proprio? Incantevole davvero.
Poi, rannuvolando d’un tratto tutta la faccia, grugnì con voce roca e rasposa mentre tornava ad affettare vigorosamente la pagnotta:
Il vano della porta fu oscurato da una figura che entrava.
- Il latte, signore.
- Avanti, signora, disse Mulligan. Kinch, prendi il bricco.
Una vecchia si fece avanti e si fermò accanto a Stephen.
- È una bella giornata, signore. disse. Sia gloria al Signore.
- A chi? disse Mulligan, dandole un'occhiata. Ah sì, naturalmente.
Stephen si sporse all'indietro e prese il bricco del latte dalla credenza.
- Gli isolani, disse Mulligan a Haines come di passata, parlano spesso dell'esattore di prepuzi.
- Quanto, signore? domandò la vecchia.
- Due pinte, disse Stephen.
La guardò mentre versava nel misurino e di lì nel bricco il pingue latte bianco, non il suo. Vecchie mammelle avvizzite. Ne versò un'altra misura colma e una giunta. Vecchia e segreta era entrata da un mondo mattutino, forse ma messaggera. Vantava la bontà del latte, nel versarlo. Accoccolata presso una vacca paziente all'alba nel pascolo lussureggiante, strega sul suo fungo velenoso, dita grinzose alacri sui capezzoli sprizzanti. Muggivano intorno a lei che ben conoscevano, le bestie seriche di rugiada. Seta delle mucche e povera vecchietta, nomi che le si davano nei tempi andati. Una vegliarda errante, umile forma di un'immortale che serve chi la conquise e chi allegramente la tradì, loro druda comune, messaggera del segreto mattino. Se per servire o per rampognare, lui non avrebbe saputo dirlo: ma sdegnava di sollecitarne i favori.
- Proprio così, signora, disse Buck Mulligan, versando il latte nelle tazze.
- Lo assaggi, signore, disse lei.
Egli bevve al suo invito.
- Se soltanto potessimo vivere di cibo buono come questo, le disse a voce piuttosto alta, non avremmo il paese pieno di denti guasti e budella marce. Si vive in una palude infetta, si mangia cibo da pochi soldi con strade lastricate di polvere, merda di cavallo e sputi di tisici.
- Lei studia per medico, signore? domandò la vecchia.
- Sì, signora, rispose Buck Mulligan.
Stephen ascoltava in sdegnoso silenzio. Quella china la vecchia testa a una voce che le parla forte, il suo conciaossa, il suo stregone: me mi sdegna. Alla voce di colui che la confesserà e che ungerà per la tomba tutto quel che resta di lei salvo i lombi immondi di donna, di carne d'uomo non fatta a somiglianza di Dio, preda del serpente. E alla voce alta che ora le impone di tacere con occhi stupiti incerti.
- Capisce quel che le dice? domandò Stephen.
- Parla francese, signore? disse la vecchia a Haines.
Haines tornò a parlarle, un più lungo discorso, sicuro di sé.
- Irlandese, disse Buck Mulligan. Mastica il gaelico lei?
- Mi pareva che fosse irlandese, disse lei, dal suono. Lei è dell'ovest, signore?
- Sono un inglese, rispose Haines.
- È inglese, disse Buck Mulligan, e pensa che dovremmo parlare irlandese in Irlanda.
- Certo che dovremmo, disse la vecchia, e io mi vergogno di non parlarlo. Mi dicono quelli che se ne intendono che è una gran lingua.
- Grande non è la parola, disse Buck Mulligan.È semplicemente meravigliosa.
- Versaci un altro po' di tè, Kinch. Ne gradisce una tazza, signora?
- No, grazie, signore, disse la vecchia, infilandosi il manico del bidone nell'avambraccio e disponendosi ad andarsene.
Haines le disse:
- Ha portato il conto? Sarebbe meglio pagarla, vero,Mulligan?
Stephen tornò a riempire le tre tazze.
- Paghi col sorriso sulle labbra, gli disse Haines gaiamente.
Stephen riempì una terza tazza, il denso ricco latte colorandosi debolmente d'una cucchiaiata di tè. Buck Mulligan cavò fuori un fiorino, lo rigirò tra le dita e gridò:
- Miracolo!
Lo fece passare lungo la tavola verso la vecchia, dicendo:
Stephen le depose la moneta nella mano passiva.
- Dobbiamo ancora due pence, disse.
- C'è tempo, signore, disse la vecchia prendendo la moneta. C'è tempo. Buongiorno, signore.
Fece la sua riverenza e se ne andò, seguita dalla tenera cantilena di Buck Mulligan:
Si voltò a Stephen e disse:
- Sul serio, Dedalus. Sono all'asciutto. Fa una corsa a quel casino della tua scuola e portaci un po' di soldi.

Oggi i bardi devono bere e sollazzarsi. In questa giornata l'Irlanda si aspetta che ognuno faccia il suo dovere.
- A proposito, disse Haines, alzandosi, ho da fare una visita alla vostra biblioteca nazionale oggi.
- La nostra nuotata prima di tutto, disse Buck Mulligan.
Si voltò a Stephen e domandò soavemente:
- È questo il giorno del tuo lavacro mensile, Kinch?
Poi disse a Haines:
- L'immondo bardo si picca di farsi il bagno una volta al mese.
- Tutta l'Irlanda è bagnata dalla corrente del golfo, disse Stephen facendo gocciare il miele su una fetta di pane.
Haines dall'angolo in cui stava placidamente annodando una sciarpa sul colletto floscio della camicia da tennis disse:
- Quello sullo specchio incrinato di una serva come simbolo dell'arte irlandese è maledettamente buono.
Buck Mulligan diede un calcio a Stephen sotto la tavola e disse con molto calore:
- Aspetti a sentirlo parlare di Amleto, Haines.
- Be, parlo sul serio, disse Haines sempre rivolto a Stephen. Ci stavo giusto pensando quando è arrivata quella povera vecchia.
- Potrei farci quattrini? domandò Stephen.
Haines rise e, prendendo il cappello di feltro grigio dal piolo dell’amaca, disse:
- Non saprei, davvero.
Si avviò verso la porta d’uscita. Buck Mulligan s, chinò verso Stephen e disse con ruvida energia:
- Hai sfasciato tutto con le tue zampe adesso. Perché l’hai detto?
- Be? disse Stephen. Il problema è di far soldi. Da chi? Dalla lattaia o da lui. Testa o croce, mi pare.
- Io ti faccio la piazza, disse Buck Mulligan, e poi arrivi tu con quel tuo schifoso sogghigno e i tuoi lugubri scherzi da gesuita.
- C’è poco da sperare, disse Stephen, sia dall’una che dall’altro.
Buck Mulligan sospirò tragicamente e posò la mano sul braccio di Stephen.
- Da me, Kinch, disse.
Poi con tono improvvisamente cambiato soggiunse:
- Per dirti la sacrosanta verità credo che tu abbia ragione. Non servono a un accidente d’altro. Perché non te li giostri come faccio io? Il diavolo se li porti. Usciamo da questo casino.
Si alzò, solennemente discinto si spogliò della vestaglia, dicendo rassegnato:
Vuotò le tasche sui tavolo.
- Ecco il tuo moccichino, disse.
E mettendosi il colletto duro e la cravatta ribelle parlò a loro, rampognandoli, e alla catena dell’orologio ciondolante. Le mani si affondarono e frugarono nel baule mentre reclamava un fazzoletto pulito. Agenbite of inwit. Dio, non rimane che vestirsi in carattere Ho bisogno di guanti color pulce e di stivali verdi. Contraddizione. Mi contraddico? Benissimo, sì mi contraddico. Mercuriale Màlachi. Un missile floscio e nero partì in volo dalle sue mani parlanti.
- Ed ecco il tuo cappello da Quartiere Latino, disse.
Stephen lo raccattò e se lo mise. Haine li chiamò dalla soglia:
- Venite, giovanotti?
- Io sono pronto, rispose Buck Mulligan, andando verso la porta.Vieni, Kinch. Hai mangiato tutto quel che abbiamo lasciato, immagino. Rassegnato uscì con gravità di parole e di incedere, dicendo quasiché con dolore:
- E sceso in campo simbatté in Butterly. Stephen, prendendo il bastone di frassino dal luogo d’appoggio, li seguì e, mentre scendevano la scala a pioli, si tirò dietro la lenta porta di ferro e chiuse la serratura. Mise la grossa chiave nella tasca interna.
Ai piedi della scala Buck Mulligan domandò:
- Hai preso la chiave?
- Ce l'ho, disse Stephen, precedendoli.
Camminò avanti. Sentiva dietro di sé Buck Mulligan percuotere col pesante asciugamano le cime più alte delle felci o delle erbe.
- Giù, cuccia. Come ardisci, canaglia?

Haines domandò:
- Pagate l'affitto per questa torre?
- Dodici sterline, disse Buck Mulligan.
- Al ministro della guerra, aggiunse Stephen voltando la testa.
Si fermarono mentre Haines contemplava la torre finché disse:
- Piuttosto desolata d’inverno, direi. Martello la chiamate?
- Le ha fatte costruire Billy Pitt, disse Buck Mulligan, quando i francesi correvano il mare. Ma la nostra è l'omphalos.
- Qual è la sua idea di Amleto? domandò Haines a Stephen.
- No, no, gridò Buck Mulligan dolorante. Non sono all’altezza di Tommaso d'Aquino e delle cinquantacinque ragioni che ha inventato per sostenerla. Aspetti che mi sia messo qualche pinta in corpo.
Si voltò verso Stephen, dicendo mentre si tirava giù con cura le punte del panciotto color primula:
- Non ce la faresti con meno di tre pinte, vero, Kinch?
- Ha aspettato tanto, disse Stephen noncurante, che può aspettare ancora.
- Lei stuzzica la mia curiosità, disse amabilmente Haines. Si tratta di un paradosso?
- Puah! disse Buck Mulligan. Ci siamo svezzati da Wilde e dai paradossi. È semplicissimo. Dimostra con l'algebra che il nipote di Amleto è nonno di Shakespeare e che lui stesso è il fantasma di suo padre.
- Cosa? disse Haines, abbozzando un cenno verso Stephen. Lui stesso?
Buck Mulligan si buttò l'asciugamano attorno al collo a mò di stola e, piegandosi in una aperta risata, disse all'orecchio di Stephen:
- Oh,ombra di Kinch il vecchio! Giafet in cerca di un padre!
- Al mattino siamo sempre stanchi, disse Stephen a Haines. Ed è un discorso un po' lungo.
Buck Mulligan, tornando ad avviarsi, alzò le mani.
- Voglio dire, spiegò Haines a Stephen mentre si rincamminavano, che questa torre e questa scogliera mi ricordano un po’ Elsinore. Che strapiomb sulla sua base nel mare, non è vero?
Buck Mulligan si voltò repentinamente per un attimo verso Stephen ma non parlò. In quello splendido attimo di silenzio Stephen vide la propria immagine in misere polverose gramaglie tra i loro vestiti vivaci.
- È una storia meravigliosa, disse Haines facendoli fermare un'altra volta.

Occhi, pallidi come il mare che il vento aveva rinfrescato, più pallidi, fermi e prudenti. Signore dei mari, guardava a sud attraverso la baia, vuota con solo il pennacchio di fumo del postale, vago sulla linea luminosa dell'orizzonte, e una vela che bordeggiava dinanzi ai Muglins.
- Ne ho letto in qualche posto un’interpretazione teologica, disse meditabondo. L'idea del Padre e del Figlio. Il Figlio che tenta di riconciliarsi col Padre.
Immediatamente Buck Mulligan assunse un volto lieto dal largo sorriso. Li guardò, la ben modellata bocca aperta giovialmente, gli occhi, dai quali aveva fatto scomparire a un tratto ogni accento di furbizia ammiccanti di folle gaiezza. Ciondolava in qua e in là una testa da pupazzo, con la tesa del panama che palpitava, e cominciò a salmodiare con voce quieta beata sciocca:
- Sono il più gran fenomeno di cui si sia mai detto.
Per Beppe il Falegname son di parer contrario
Perciò beviamo a tutti discepoli e Calvario
Alzò un indice ammonitore.
- A chi non crede ancora nell’esser mio divino
Non darò a bere gratis quando farò del vino
Ma dovrà bere l’acqua, e chiaro gli sarà
Che faccio. quando il vino in acqua tornerà.
Dette un vispo colpetto di commiato al bastone di Stephen e, correndo verso un ciglio della scogliera, sventolò le mani sui fianchi a mo' di pinne o ali di chi sta per alzarsi a volo, e salmodiò:
- Addio, cari. Scrivete quello ch’ho raccontato
E dite a Tizio e a Caio che son resuscitato.
Data la mia ascendenza certo volerò anch’io,
E sul monte Oliveto c’è vento... Addio, addio.
Saltabeccò davanti a loro giù verso il Balzo dei Quaranta Piedi, sventolando le mani come ali, con agili salti, il pétaso di Mercurio palpitante nella fresca brezza che portava loro le sue brevi strida d'uccello.
Haines, che aveva cautamente riso, sempre camminando accanto a Stephen, gli disse:
- Non dovremmo ridere, forse. piuttosto blasfemo. Non che io sia credente, intendiamoci. E poi in ogni caso la sua allegria toglie alla cosa ogni malizia, vero? Come l'ha chiamato? Beppe il Falegname?
- La ballata di Gesù Giullare, rispose Stephen.
- Oh, disse Haines, l'aveva sentita altre volte?
- Tre volte al giorno dopo i pasti, rispose seccamente Stephen.
- Lei non è credente, vero? domandò Haines. Voglio dire credente nel senso ristretto del termine. La creazione dal nulla e i miracoli e un Dio personale.
- La parola ha un solo senso mi sembra, disse Stephen.
Haines si fermò per tirar fuori un lucido astuccio d’argento su cui brillava una pietra verde. Fece scattare la molla col pollice e lo porse.
- Grazie, disse Stephen, prendendo una sigaretta.
Servitosi, Haines ne riabbatté il coperchio. Lo rinfilò nella tasca laterale ed estrasse dal taschino del panciotto un acciarino di nichel, fece scattare anche questo e, dopo aver acceso la sua sigaretta tese a Stephen l'esca fiammeggiante nella conchiglia delle mani.
- Sì certo, disse, mentre proseguivano. O si crede o non si crede, vero? Personalmente non potrei mandare giù quell'idea di un Dio personale. Lei non l'accetta, immagino.
-Lei contempla in me, disse Stephen con un ostico disgusto, un orribile esempio di libero pensiero.

Seguitò a camminare, aspettando che gli si rivolgesse la parola e trascinandosi dietro il bastone. Il puntale lo seguiva leggermente sul sentiero squittendogli alle calcagna. Il mio spirito familiare, dietro di me, che chiama Steeeeeeeephen. Una linea ondulata lungo il sentiero. Ci cammineranno sopra stasera, venendo qui al buio. Vuole quella chiave. È mia, ho pagato io l'affitto. E ora mangio il suo pane che sa di sale. Dàgli anche la chiave. Tutto. La chiederà. Questo era nei suoi occhi.
- Dopo tutto, cominciò Haines...
Stephen si voltò e vide che il freddo sguardo che lo aveva misurato non era del tutto malevolo.
- Dopo tutto, direi che si è sempre in grado di liberarsi. Si è padroni di se stessi, mi pare.
- Italiana? disse Haines.
Una babilonica sovrana vecchia e gelosa. Inginocchiati davanti a me.
- E ce n'è un terzo, disse Stephen, che mi vuole per lavori spiccioli.
- Italiana? ripeté Haines. Che vuol dire?
- Il governo imperiale britannico, rispose Stephen, accendendosi in volto, e la santa chiesa cattolica apostolica romana.
Prima di parlare, Haines si staccò dal labbro inferiore qualche filo di tabacco.
- Capisco perfettamente, disse calmo. Un irlandese deve pensarla così, direi. Noi in Inghilterra sentiamo di avervi trattato piuttosto ingiustamente. Parrebbe che la colpa sia della storia.
Gli alteri, possenti attributi fecero rimbombare nella memoria di Stephen il trionfo delle loro bronzee campane: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: il lento evolversi e mutare del rito e del dogma simili ai suoi peregrini pensieri, alchimia di stelle. Simbolo degli apostoli nella messa di Papa Marcello, le voci fuse, ciascuna cantando forte nell'asserzione: e dietro il loro cantico l'angelo di scolta della chiesa militante disarmava e minacciava gli eresiarchi. Una torma di eresie in fuga con le mitrie a sghimbescio: Fozio e la genìa di schernitori uno dei quali era Mulligan, e Ario, che aveva battagliato tutta la vita sulla consustanzialità del Figlio col Padre, e Valentino, che spregiava il corpo terreno del Cristo, e il sottile eresiarca africano Sabellio che sosteneva che il Padre era Figlio di Se Stesso. Parole che Mulligan aveva detto un minuto prima per canzonatura all'estraneo. Vana canzonatura. Il vuoto incombe certamente su tutti quelli che tessono il vento: minacciati, disarmati e sconfitti dagli angeli della chiesa schierati in battaglia, l'oste armata di Michele, che la difende sempre nell'ora del conflitto, con lance e usberghi.
- Naturalmente sono un britanno, disse la voce di Haines, e sento da britanno. E non voglio neanche vedere il mio paese cadere in mano di ebrei tedeschi. Attualmente, è questo il nostro problema nazionale temo.

Due uomini ritti sull’orlo della scogliera, guardavano intenti: uomo d'affari, barcaiolo.
- È diretta verso Bullock Harbour.
Il barcaiolo accennò verso il nord della baia con una certa degnazione.
- Son cinque tese laggiù, disse. Sarà trascinato da quella parte quando salirà la marea verso l'una. Sono nove giorni oggi.
L’uomo che era annegato. Una vela virava nella baia vuota in attesa che un gonfio fagotto venisse a galla, rivoltolasse al sole un volto tumefatto, bianco salino. Eccomi.
Scesero lungo il sentiero serpeggiante fino alla caletta. Buck Mulligan era ritto su un masso, in maniche di camicia, la cravatta senza fermaglio sventolante su una spalla. Un giovanotto aggrappato a uno sprone roccioso vicino a lui muoveva lentamente a guisa di rana le gambe verdi nella fonda gelatina dell'acqua.
- Tuo fratello è con te, Màlachi?
- È giù a Westmeath. Coi Bannon.
- Ancora là? Ho avuto una cartolina da Bannon Dice che ha trovato una piccola dolce pupetta laggiù. Ragazza da foto la chiama lui.
- Istantanea, eh? Posa breve.
Buck Mulligan si sedette per slacciarsi le scarpe. Un uomo anziano cacciò fuori dallo sperone della roccia un viso rosso ansimante. Arrancò su per le pietre, con l'acqua che gli brillava sulla zucca e sulla ghirlanda di capelli grigi, acqua ruscellante sul petto e sul pancione e sgorgante a fiotti dal pendulo nero cingilombi.
Buck Mulligan si scostò per lasciare che si arrampicasse e, con un'occhiata a Haines e Stephen, si fece platealmente il segno di croce con l’unghia del pollice sulla fronte e sulle labbra e sullo sterno.
- Seymour è tornato in città, disse il giovane riafferrando il suo sperone di roccia. Ha piantato la medicina e si dà alla carriera militare.
- Oh, va con Dio, disse Buck Mulligan.
- Parte la settimana prossima per fare la sgobbata. Conosci quella rossa di Carlisle, Lily?
- Sì.
- Filava con lui ieri sera sul molo. Il padre è fradicio di soldi.
- Si è fatta inguaiare?
- Bisognerebbe domandarlo a Seymour.
- Seymour fottuto ufficiale, disse Buck Mulligan.
Annuì a se stesso mentre si sfilava i pantaloni e, alzandosi in piedi, diceva l'adagio:
- Le rosse di pelo cozzano come capre.
S’interruppe spaventato, palpandosi un fianco sotto la camicia svolazzante.
Si districò dalla camicia e se la gettò dietro le spalle dove si ammucchiavano i suoi vestiti.
- Ti butti qui, Màlachi?
- Sì. Fai posto nel letto.
Il giovane si spinse a ritroso nell’acqua e arrivò in mezzo alla caletta con due magistrali bracciate.
Haines si sedette su una pietra, a fumare.
- Lei non si butta? domandò Buck Mulligan.
- Più tardi, disse Haines. Non subito dopo colazione. Stephen si volse per incamminarsi.
- Io me ne vado, Mulligan, disse.
- Dacci quella chiave, Kinch, disse Buck Mulligan, per tenere distesa la camicia.
Stephen gli porse la chiave. Buck Mulligan la posò di traverso sul mucchio dei vestiti.
- E due pence, disse, per una pinta. Buttali lì.
Stephen buttò due monete sul soffice mucchio. Vestirsi, svestirsi. Buck Mulligan eretto, con le mani giunte davanti a sé, disse solennemente:
Il suo corpo paffuto si tuffò.
- Ci rivedremo, disse Haines, voltandosi e sorridendo dei pazzi irlandesi mentre Stephen risaliva il sentiero.
Corno del toro, zoccolo del cavallo sorriso del sassone.
- Bene, disse Stephen.
Si incamminò per l’erta del sentiero zigzagante.
L’aureola grigia del prete nella nicchia dove si rivestiva pudicamente. Non dormirò qui stanotte. Neanche a casa posso andare.
Una voce, dolcecanora e tenuta, lo chiamò dal mare. Alla svolta egli sventolò la mano. Quella chiamò ancora. Una testa bruna liscia, di foca, al largo sul mare, tonda.
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Link al testo dell'intero 1° episodio con testo inglese a fronte e link alle note

da joyceproject.com

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei............... continua su
link al testo dell'intero 1°ep. con testo inglese a fronte 

***
Lettura del testo in Inglese 
Fra diverse, ho scelto  questa lettura dal canale YT 
Free Audio Books for Intellectual Exercise  1441 video 
che è senz'altro da preferire
Ulysses Part 1; a Masterpiece of English Literature, by James Joyce, Audiobook
***
Questa è ancora meglio

Questa lettura è la migliore scaricata da
https://archive.org/details/Ulysses-Audiobook/
Telemaco:45'53''
***

il testo scritto qui sotto è stato copiato da 
http://www.joyceproject.com/
1°Episodio
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit.
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.
— Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher's tone:
— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answeredthrough the calm.
— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?
He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
— The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!
He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.
— My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
— Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
— Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
— Yes, my love?
— How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
— God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
— A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
— I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.
Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.
— Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket, said:
— Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.
Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:
— The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you?
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.
— God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in theoriginal. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboatclearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
— Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his great searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face.
— The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you.
— Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
— You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you...
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.
— But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across thethreadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
— Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
— They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
— The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're dressed.
— Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.
— He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.
Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
— That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
— Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
— I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
— The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
— It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.
— Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly's arm. His arm.
— And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
— Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night.
— Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite frank with you. What have you against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.
— Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
— Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything.
He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.
Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
— Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
— What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?
— You were making tea, Stephen said, and I went across the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room.
— Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
— You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.
A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek.
— Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
— And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend the memory of your mother.
He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
— I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.
— Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.
— Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
— O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.
A voice within the tower called loudly:
— Are you up there, Mulligan?
— I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
— Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenachwants his morning rashers.
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the roof:
— Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the stairhead:
And no more turn aside and brood 
Upon love's bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.
Where now?
Her secrets: old feather fans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing  in the pantomime of Turko the terrible and laughed with others when he sang:
I am the boy 
That can enjoy 
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
No, mother. Let me be and let me live.
— Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm running sunlightand in the air behind him friendly words.
— Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.
— I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.
— Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes.
His head disappeared and reappeared.
— I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.
— I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
— The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.
— If you want it, Stephen said.
— Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:
O, won't we have a merry time, 
Drinking whisky, beer and wine! 
On coronation, 
Coronation day! 
O, won't we have a merry time 
On coronation day! 
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
— We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
— Have you the key? a voice asked.
— Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!
He howled, without looking up from the fire:
— Kinch!
— It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
— I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler  from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
— What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
— We can drink it black, Stephen said. There's a lemon in the locker.
— O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove milk.
Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
— That woman is coming up with the milk.
— The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can't go fumbling at the damned eggs. He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying:
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
— I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don't you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's wheedling voice:
— When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogansaid. And when I makes water I makes water.
— By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
— So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you don't make them in the one pot.
He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:
— Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
— I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
— Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
— I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.
— Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
—  For old Mary Ann 
She doesn't care a damn. 
But, hising up her petticoats... 
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
— The milk, sir!
— Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.
An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.
— That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
— To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
— The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the collector of prepuces.
— How much, sir? asked the old woman.
— A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger.She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
— It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
— Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
— If we could only live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits.
— Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
— I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
— Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
— Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
— Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
— I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?
— I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
— He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland.
— Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.
— Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?
— No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
— Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets.
— Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:
— A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.
— We'll owe twopence, he said.
— Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant:
—  Heart of my heart, were it more, 
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
— Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty.
— That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
— Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
— Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
— The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.
— All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf.
Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
— That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth of tone:
— Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
— Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.
— Would I make money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the hammock, said:
— I don't know, I'm sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and said with coarse vigour:
— You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?
— Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.
— I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
— I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.
— From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
— To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good for. Why don't you play them as I do?To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying resignedly:
— Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
— There's your snotrag, he said.
And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.
— And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the doorway:
— Are you coming, you fellows?
— I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
— Did you bring the key?
— I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
— Down, sir! How dare you, sir!
Haines asked:
— Do you pay rent for this tower?
— Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
— To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
— Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
— Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
— What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
— No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me first.
He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat:
— You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
— It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
— You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
— Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
— What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear:
— O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
— We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
— I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his base into the sea, isn't it?
Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.
— It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.
— I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hatquivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
—  I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard. 
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird. 
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree. 
So here's to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning.
—  If anyone thinks that I amn't divine 
He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine 
But have to drink water and wish it were plain 
That i make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:
—  Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said 
And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead. 
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly 
And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdlike cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said:
— We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
— The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
— O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
— Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
— You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.
— There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.
Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in whichtwinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
— Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.
— Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?
— You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread.Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes.
— After all, Haines began...
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind.
— After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me.
— Italian? Haines said.
— And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
— Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
— The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.
— I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
— Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines' voice said, and I feel as one. I don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.
— She's making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
— There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
— Is the brother with you, Malachi?
— Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
— Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.
— Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piouslywith his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone.
— Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
— Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
— Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
— Yes.
— Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
— Is she up the pole?
— Better ask Seymour that.
— Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.
He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely:
— Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay.
— Are you going in here, Malachi?
— Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking.
— Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
— Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
— I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
— Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.
Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes.
— And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:
His plump body plunged.
— We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
— Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium. 
Turma circumdet. 
Iubilantium te virginum.
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the water, round.
Usurper.Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit.
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.
— Back to barracks! he said sternly.
He added in a preacher's tone:
— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answeredthrough the calm.
— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.
— The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.
Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.
— My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?
He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:
— Will he come? The jejune jesuit!
Ceasing, he began to shave with care.
— Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.
— Yes, my love?
— How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?
Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.
— God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.
He shaved warily over his chin.
— A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?
— I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.
Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

— Scutter! he cried thickly.
He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket, said:
— Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

— The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you?
He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.
— God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in theoriginal. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.
Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboatclearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.
— Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.
He turned abruptly his great searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face.
— The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you.
— Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.
— You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you...
He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.
— But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!
He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across thethreadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.
— Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?
— They fit well enough, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.
— The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're dressed.
— Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.
— He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
— That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!
He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
— Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
— I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
— The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.
— It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.
Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.
— Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.
Cranly's arm. His arm.
— And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.
Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!
Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.
— Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night.
— Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite frank with you. What have you against me now?
They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.

— Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.
— Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything.
He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.
Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:
— Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?
Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:
— What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?
— You were making tea, Stephen said, and I went across the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room.
— Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.
— You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.
A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek.
— Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?
He shook his constraint from him nervously.
— And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend the memory of your mother.
He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:
— I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.

— Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.

— Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.
Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.
— O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.
He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.
A voice within the tower called loudly:
— Are you up there, Mulligan?
— I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered.
He turned towards Stephen and said:
— Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenachwants his morning rashers.
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the roof:
— Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the stairhead:

And no more turn aside and brood 
Upon love's bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery.
Where now?

Her secrets: old feather fans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing  in the pantomime of Turko the terrible and laughed with others when he sang:
I am the boy 
That can enjoy 
Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.
And no more turn aside and brood.
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.
No, mother. Let me be and let me live.
— Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm running sunlightand in the air behind him friendly words.
— Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.
— I'm coming, Stephen said, turning.
— Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes.

His head disappeared and reappeared.
— I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.

— I get paid this morning, Stephen said.
— The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.
— If you want it, Stephen said.
— Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.
He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:

O, won't we have a merry time, 
Drinking whisky, beer and wine! 
On coronation, 
Coronation day! 
O, won't we have a merry time 
On coronation day! 
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friendship?
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.
— We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you?
— Have you the key? a voice asked.
— Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!

He howled, without looking up from the fire:
— Kinch!
— It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.
The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.
— I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when... But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk.
Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler  from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.
— What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.
— We can drink it black, Stephen said. There's a lemon in the locker.
— O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove milk.

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:
— That woman is coming up with the milk.
— The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can't go fumbling at the damned eggs. He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying:
Haines sat down to pour out the tea.
— I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don't you?
Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's wheedling voice:
— When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogansaid. And when I makes water I makes water.
— By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
— So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you don't make them in the one pot.

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife.
He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:
— Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?
— I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.
— Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?
— I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.
Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight.
— Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!
Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:
—  For old Mary Ann 
She doesn't care a damn. 
But, hising up her petticoats... 
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.
The doorway was darkened by an entering form.
— The milk, sir!
— Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.

An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow.
— That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.
— To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!
Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.
— The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the collector of prepuces.
— How much, sir? asked the old woman.
— A quart, Stephen said.
He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger.She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.
— It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.
— Taste it, sir, she said.
He drank at her bidding.
— If we could only live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits.
— Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.

— I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.
— Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.
— Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.
Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.
— Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?
— I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?
— I am an Englishman, Haines answered.
— He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland.

— Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.
— Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?

— No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go.
Haines said to her:
— Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we?
Stephen filled again the three cups.
Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets.
— Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling.
Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:
— A miracle!
He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:
Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.

— We'll owe twopence, he said.
— Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir.
She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant:
—  Heart of my heart, were it more, 
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said:
— Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty.
— That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
— Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.
He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:
— Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?
Then he said to Haines:
— The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.

— All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf.

Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:
— That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good.
Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth of tone:
— Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.
— Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.
— Would I make money by it? Stephen asked.
Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the hammock, said:
— I don't know, I'm sure.
He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and said with coarse vigour:
— You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?

— Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.
— I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.
— I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm.
— From me, Kinch, he said.
In a suddenly changed tone he added:
— To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good for. Why don't you play them as I do?To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip.
He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying resignedly:
— Mulligan is stripped of his garments.
He emptied his pockets on to the table.
— There's your snotrag, he said.

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.
— And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.
Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the doorway:
— Are you coming, you fellows?

— I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:
Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.
At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
— Did you bring the key?
— I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.
He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
— Down, sir! How dare you, sir!

Haines asked:
— Do you pay rent for this tower?
— Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.
— To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.
They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:
— Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
— Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.
— What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
— No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me first.

He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat:

— You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
— It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.
— You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?
— Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
— What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?
Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear:
— O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!
— We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather long to tell.
Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.
— I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his base into the sea, isn't it?

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.
— It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.
Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.

— I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.
Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hatquivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:
—  I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard. 
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird. 
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree. 
So here's to disciples and Calvary.

He held up a forefinger of warning.
—  If anyone thinks that I amn't divine 
He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine 
But have to drink water and wish it were plain 
That i make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:
—  Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said 
And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead. 
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly 
And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye!
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdlike cries.
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said:
— We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?
— The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
— O, Haines said, you have heard it before?
— Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.
— You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.
— There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in whichtwinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
— Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.
Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.
— Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?
— You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.
He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread.Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes.
— After all, Haines began...
Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind.
— After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me.
— Italian? Haines said.
— And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
— Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
— The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.
Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.
— I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.
The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.
— Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines' voice said, and I feel as one. I don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.
— She's making for Bullock harbour.
The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.
— There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.
The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am.
They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.
— Is the brother with you, Malachi?
— Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
— Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

— Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.
Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piouslywith his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone.

— Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.
— Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.
— Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?
— Yes.
— Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.
— Is she up the pole?
— Better ask Seymour that.
— Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely:
— Redheaded women buck like goats.
He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.
He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay.
— Are you going in here, Malachi?
— Yes. Make room in the bed.
The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking.
— Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.
— Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.
Stephen turned away.
— I'm going, Mulligan, he said.
— Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat.

Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes.
— And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.
Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:


His plump body plunged.
— We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.
Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.
— Good, Stephen said.
He walked along the upwardcurving path.
Liliata rutilantium. 
Turma circumdet. 
Iubilantium te virginum.
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the water, round.
***
MAPPE

                                                                  Luoghi in cui si svolge l'azione 


                                                    La Torre sulla mappa di Dublino

                                      Percorso a piedi di Stephen

     Cartoline odierne della torre
lo scoglio di Mulligan
Il tuffo di Mulligan dal 40 foot
Fonte: http://www.dalkeyhomepage.ie/aerial.html
Torre e Sandycove beach
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Nel tentativo di mettere ordine in "Google foto" ho combinato il bel pasticcio di cancellare foto anche dal blog e da altri collegamenti google. Non mi pare valga la pena di ripristinarle tutte. D'ora in poi starò più attenta a segnare sul mio archivio personale il titolo e la fonte delle foto pubblicate sul blog
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2014 pellegrinaggio alla torre








*********************************
 Personaggi          presenti nei           Luoghi in cui si svolge l'azione      

Buck Mulligan, Stepen Dedalus                               sul terrazzo della torre
Buck Mulligan,Stepen Dedalus,Haines,la Lattaia  nel tinello della torre,    
Buck Mulligan, Stepen Dedalus, Haines                sul sentiero che porta al mare,
Buck Mulligan, Stepen Dedalus, Haines,               alla scogliera
Uomo d'affari e Barcaiolo parlano dell'annegato
un amico di buck e un prete che nuotano   
   Stepen Dedalus                                               Sandymount Beach 
                                            Indici                                     
***
Links ai miei archivi Joyce 1° episodio
Album su Facebook
Albun su Foto G+ 
Testo inglese annotato con traduzione italiana a fronte su su Google Drive
Mia lettura ad alta voce su Playlist di YT
***
Note Tradotte:
l'Uerbermensch. JP 2016 010129ubermensch.htm
Usurpatore.                                   JP 2011   010137usurper.htm

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