Thursday, 15 September 2016

The last reading stopped only a couple of pages away from the end of the episode: BLOOM: Night. (15.4907)

Catherine Meyer sends a picture to illustrate the last reading and writes:

At one point we experienced two voices: that of the blessed and that of the damned; the left side and the right side, the good ones and the bad ones, hell and heaven.

The voice of all the damned: “Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!” (15.4708); and the voice of all the blessed: “Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!“ (15.4713). Then Adonai (meaning ‘Lord‘ in Hebrew) punned with Doooooooog and Gooooooood. (15.4710 ff.)

The “Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth“ is from Händel’s Oratoria “Messiah“. In an earlier chapter we had learned that this famouse Oratoria was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742.

While I was thinking about how to put this scene on paper, I realized that right and left, bad and good can be reversed – it depends only on the angle from which you're looking. From the painter’s point of view, right is on the right side. From  the painted Allmighty's point of view, facing the beholder, right is on the left side.

You can see from the picture which angle I have chosen and, of course, not only the many familiar characters that  appeared in the chapter but also the dogs (do all those different appearances of dogs mean that there could be many other Gods?) are captured in my painting.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich