Thursday, 10 November 2016

The group has reached the end of episode 16 (“Eumaeus”) and will start episode 17 (“Ithaca”) this week.

Catherine Meyer, local artist and long-standing member of the reading groups, sends her rendering of the last reading. The passage that held her attention and tickled her creative energy most this time was:

“Und alle Schiffe brücken” (16.1884). She explains: 

Fritz said he thinks this could have something to do with the German term “Schiffbruch”, and what came to my mind immediately was the disastrous shipwreck of the Medusa (1816) and Géricault's large and well-known rendering of it: He painted the ca. 5 x 7 m  Raft of the Medusa in 1818 and it became a great scandal. It is hanging in the Louvre. But even more important is the fact that Friedrich von Flotow wrote an opera called Le Naufrage de la Méduse (1839 Paris) (Ge, Die Matrosen, 1845 Hamburg). 

“Schiffbruch” in German is also used as an image to express personal failure in the phrase “Schiffbruch erleiden” (similar to the image of the shipwreck in English). Also “in die Brüche gehen“ (going to pieces) is a negative statement and, at least in sound, is close to “Brücken“ (in meaning, though, it would express the opposite of “to bridge”). Anyway, something goes wrong here, this much is probably agreed.

To underline this statement  Joyce has Stephen say that he does not understand why they put the chairs upside down on the tables. In Züri- and Berndeutsch we use the expression “usestuele“ meaning “jemanden vor die Tür setzten, kündigen, feuern etc. auch oft benützt für den Rauswurf in einer Beziehung” (to kick someone out, to fire them, also with regard to a relationship).

Granted, this may all be a little far-fetched but after all, Joyce forces you to think around the corner (to translate directly from the German idiom for “to think outside the box”).

My small-sized picture shows the chairs, the “Schiffbruch” and the two men walking home to 7 Eccles street.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016