Friday, 29 August 2025

Ulysses Reading Group

The Ulysses readings with Fritz Senn are held on Thursdays 5-6 pm at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, Augustinergasse 9, 8001 Zurich

Updates about the group's progress are given on this site (see below). 

New readers are always welcome! There is no need to sign up. Simply drop in with your own copy of the book, if you have one. 

The reading groups are sponsored by the Friends of the Foundation so that they can be held free of charge. To contact the Friends or become a supporting member please email friends@joycefoundation.ch.

Thursday, 28 August 2025 (8.563)

The last reading stopped at: “If you imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.” (8.563)

The numbers in 8.563 refer to the place in the text edited by Hans Walter Gabler (8 = chapter number; 563 = line number).

*  *  *

One of the group's favourite passages was:

“Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.” (8.638)


In his James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, Joyce's friend Frank Budgen remembers walking with him “one evening on the Bahnhofstrasse” in Zurich and asking him how his writing was going. Joyce replied, “I have been working hard on it all day”.

     “Does that mean that you have written a great deal?'" I said.
     “Two sentences,” said Joyce.
     I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of Flaubert.
     “You have been seeking the mot juste?” I said.
     “No,” said Joyce. “I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. There is an order in every way appropriate. I think I have it.”
     “What are the words?” I asked.
     “I believe I told you,” said Joyce, “that my book is a modern Odyssey. Every episode in it corresponds to an adventure of Ulysses. I am now writing the Lestrygonians episode, which corresponds to the adventure of Ulysses with the cannibals. My hero is going to lunch. But there is a seduction motive in the Odyssey, the cannibal king's daughter. Seduction appears in my book as women's silk petticoats hanging in a shop window. The words through which I express the effect of it on my hungry hero are: 'Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.' You can see for yourself in how many different ways they might be arranged” (19-20).

 

Thursday, 21 August 2025

Thursday, 21 August 2025 (8.390)

The last reading stopped at: “Trouble for nothing” (8.390).

The numbers in 8.390 refer to the place in the text edited by Hans Walter Gabler (8 = chapter number; 390 = line number).

Penguin (1992): p. 180

Thursday, 14 August 2025

Thursday, 14 August 2025 (8.154)

The last reading stopped at: “barbed wire” (8.154)

The numbers in 8.154 refer to the place in the text edited by Hans Walter Gabler (8 = chapter number; 154 = line number).

Penguin (1992): p. 195