Thursday, 21 December 2017 (10.798)

The last reading stopped at: 

          “What a pity!”

                    (Wandering Rocks U10.798)

(the next section begins with “Stephen Dedalus watched”)


Please note that there will be no reading during the Christmas holidays. The group  will pick up Ulysses again on Thursday, 4 January 2018.

Catherine Meyer sends another great drawing for this week's blog post. While revisiting the last few pages read with the group, she was particularly taken with one small scene. Here are her words to all of you:

I especially enjoyed catching the moment when Bloom and Chris Callinan are on one side of the car and Molly and Lenehan on the other (10.554 ff.). I first painted the background with watercolours, scratched out the “weeny weeshy” star that Molly has spotted in the sky and then, with easy charcoal strokes, I drew Molly singing and pointing to the star and Lenehan,  being in a good mood, “settling her boa all the time”.

This much to close the last reading sessions for this year. After the reading we gathered for drinks and snacks, with very good wassail (Glühwein), a delicious Linzertorte made by Brigitte and some excellent nibbles. Thank you to those who took the initiative and organised it – we all enjoyed eating, drinking and having a good time talking and discussing the current chapter of Wandering Rocks. I wish you all a Happy New Year and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 14 December 2017 (10.551)

The last reading stopped at:

          “Lenehan linked his arm warmly.”

                    (Wandering Rocks U10.551)

(about one page before the section closes with the words “old Bloom”)

Catherine Meyer sends a picture to illustrate this week's entry. She writes:

For a change I drew a very little sketch, showing the view Fritz Senn has when he looks toward his attentive and interested audience.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 7 December 2017 (10.256)

The reading group has started episode 10 and stopped at:

          — There, sir. 

                    (Wandering Rocks U10.256)

(end of the 3rd section, the next beginning “Katey and Boody”)

Catherine Meyer sends a painting that captures both scene and mood from the opening episode. She writes:

My watercolour shows Father Conmee walking and reading in his breviary. “His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of Clongows field” (10.185). The sky shows him a flock of small white clouds carried slowly down by the wind. “Moutonner, the French said” (10.182). I made a sketch with charcoal and coloured it with French ultramarine, burnt ochre and a little bit white gouache for the clouds. 

You may see Father Conmee’s thoughts about “that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for man’s race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways” in the clouds (10.171).

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 30 November 2017 (end of episode 9)

The reading group has now reached the end of episode 9 “Scylla & Charybdis”.

Catherine Meyer, local artist and long-standing member of the reading groups at the Zurich Foundation, sends a picture to capture the the mood of this closing episode. She writes:

While looking out of my window into the snowy landscape I also watched attentively the little smoke coming out of my neighbour’s chimney and saw many variously shaped figures, ascending and disappearing in almost no time. This made me think of the beautiful sentence at the end of the chapter, “Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown” (9.1218–20). So this became my topic for a little pastel, just a waft on the paper.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017