Ulisses

It is the heroic tale stripped bare from any misguiding suggestion of glory. In Ulysses life is not glorious, it's trivial. Should there be anything close to heroism, look for it in the muddy context of ordinarity. For heroic deeds emerge from everyday life. Like Nietzsche dismantled the existence of a living God, and encourages us to confront the seeming horror of His death in order to set ourselves free, Joyce in Ulysses fillets our delusional hope for The Exceptional. Whether struggling with Olympians, searching for a Holy Grail or just out on the town for the length of one day, we all think our silly, disturbing, unrelated thoughts. We can be generous, compassionate, involved and inspired. And we know violence, prejudice, narcissism, envy and a whole range of petty egotistical and shortminded sensations from within; we all need to relieve ourselves in more than one way and we all just go on with whatever it is we were doing once we were finished. Joyce is the first to wonder why all the trivialities were left out from the stories of old. How can anyone ever really relate to a hero lacking the most primal human idiosyncracies, let alone live up to his standards? I noticed that a lot of people who've read it encourage us to read Ulysses as a sort of literary comedy. I disagree with that. Yes, it can be quirky, it has wit, irony and sarcasm, funny, creative wordplay and it is not hard to find something to smile about on every page if that's what you're looking for (just looking at yourself struggling to make sense of it all should crack you up), but in it's core this is a profound book about compassion and love for mankind. With all its flaws. If that's too raw for you, if you are not prepared to let go of the Heroic Dream that our tradition has carefully been constructing ever since the tale of Gilgamesh up to his modern day equivalents, the idols of popular culture, than Ulysses can't be anything but obscene. With that regard I see a straight line from James Joyce to the rogue story tellers of our time. These days (anti-)heroes are perpetually encountering the trivialities of life, be it Woody Allens constant neurotic babble and a (poorly masked) libido or the insignificant fascinations of Quentin Tarantino's tough guys that live in front of a backdrop of branding and advertising. I'm not going to say this is my favourite book. There were times that I've cursed it. But I did love living in it. Sometimes it was torture, and I felt so lost. But: to read Ulysses is to study Ulysses. I combined reading the Everyman's edition with a dutch translation and also kept the internet at hand. I had to take heed not to get lost in the labyrinth of annotations and hold course. But I also wanted to make sure not to miss out on too much of the subtext. Navigating between Scylla and Charibdis indeed! Exploring footnotes and episode reviews enhanced my experience and helped me to catch my breath when necessary. Reading Ulysses is really like being out on your own, caught in a literary variation of Odysseus travels. Like your fellow exile, you will find yourself seriously considering to give in or give up, telling yourself you're probably too stupid to pull this off or coming up with a thousand better reasons to spend your precious time. These are the temptations you're dealing with on the quest you've embarked on: sirens calling out to you from every corner to keep you from finding your way home and bringing in your ship. But when in doubt, always remember: if a two-dimensional hero can do it, why not you? And lo, there is joy, waiting at the close! To Leopold Bloom, to Molly and Stephen and to early 20th century Dublin: I'll be missing you terribly...