Thursday, 2 March 2017

The reading stopped at: “Id like a new fellow every year” (18.782)

Catherine Meyer, local artist and long-standing member of the reading groups at the Joyce Foundation, sends a drawing to illustrate a favourite passage. She writes:

The “nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora” (18.773), who came up at the end of the reading, sparked the idea of dedicating a bouquet of flowers to “our” protagonist, Bloom. Bloom, flower, Virag, Flora – all of these words have accompanied us throughout the novel. “With muchibus thankibus” (7.780) to Bloom, who has entertained us every Thursday afternoon for more than two years.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 23 February 2017

The reading stopped at: “when was that 93” (18.555)

Catherine Meyer sends a painting to illustrate a passage from the last reading, which she describes as tricky and not all that easy to do in a group due to its intimacy and outspokenness (it mentions titties and thighs, a man's “two bags”, bodily actions etc.). For her picture she chose a description of Molly and Poldy discussing what kind of hat suits her, how much it costs and the advice he gives her while trying to buy one:

“if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes take that thats alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my backside on pins and
needles” (18.520)

The title of the watercolour is “Molly and the dishcover wedding cake hat”.

Molly and the dishcover wedding cake hat by Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 16 February 2017

The last reading stopped at: “alone in the carriage that day going to Howth” (18.371)

Catherine Meyer sends a painting inspired by the passage just read and adds: 

While reading through these pages, the words “he was shaking like a jelly all over” (18.315) caught my eye and the description of wobbly, pink jelly looking at Molly’s orange petticoat animated my imagination. I wanted to paint a Molly who enjoys being renowned and highly coveted. She is voluptuous, lifting her orange petticoat and aware of how her sex appeal is making Bloom shake. She is also recalling how he once wrote her “that letter with all those words in it” (18.318). We don’t know them, but we can imagine them.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 9 February 2017

The Thursday group stopped at: “cutting her teeth too” (18.159)

Catherine Meyer sends another great painting to illustrate last week's reading, accompanied by the following comment:

Once again and now from Molly’s perspective we read about oysters and their supposed aphrodisiac effect: “he must have eaten oysters I think a few dozen” (18.149).

Having read about oysters in previous chapters, I found notes about them and sketches in my notebook and of course a reference to Fritz’s joke about a man asking, “What’s all this mystic about oysters? I had a dozen and only nine of them worked”.

In my painting two ostyers are open and one is closed – as the joke has it, not all of them work. The open ones stand for “being able” (to eat etc.), the closed ones stand for “not being able” (to eat, being inedible etc.)

 

I enjoyed painting the oysters and the oyster eyes. It is, according to my previous notes, a word that appears many times in the book and it has now received a tribute from my side.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 2 February 2017

The group has reached the end of episode 17, “Ithaca”.

Catherine Meyer was inspired by the final large dot at the end of the text and sends her amazing painting for this week's blog entry:

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 26 January 2017

The reading stopped a few pages from the end of the chapter at: “the apathy of the stars” (17.2226).

Catherine has captured some of the reading in a painting. She writes: 

I tried to feel how words like envy, jealousy, abnegation and equanimity would reflect colours combined with a portrait of a nobody. This is how I see these different feelings worked into a portrait.

Catherine Meyer © 2017

Thursday, 19 January 2017

The group read down to: “the woolen mattress (biscuit section)” (17.2041)

Catherine Meyer takes the last lines of the reading as a lead for a watercolour: the idea that, when an iron is unavailable, one can still press trousers by folding them neatly and placing them lengthwise between two spring mattress. She writes:

My painting shows Bloom who enjoys the merits of an occupied bed, the female warmth and the trousers, which will be ironed in the morning.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 12 January 2017

The reading stopped soon after the description of the Wonderworker at, “a lady by origin” (17.1853).

The Wonderworker is described in more detail on http://www.jjon.org: It was a “small spade-shaped” device designed “for the insertion in the rectum, intended originally as a cure for hemorrhoids but later accepted for its talismanic properties in the treatment of all human ills” (http://www.jjon.org/joyce-s-environs/wonderworker, from Norman Lewis's autobiographyJackdaw Cake).

Thursday, 5 January 2017

The reading resumed again in the new year with some of “Ithaca's” long lists. The group was lively, the reading room packed and they progressed to: “all recalcitrant violators of domestic connubiality” (17.1633).

Catherine Meyer, Zurich artist and long-standing member of the reading groups, sends these visual contributions for the blog and writes:

For this painting I just had to choose a long list, describing either books or the interior or the exterior of Bloom’s imagined house. The result was a picture devoid of emotions but containing all the details mentioned in the list. Too boring. I made two other paintings with the same topic. I wasn’t successful and I didn’t like them.

So instead of going through the list again I said to myself, I have my own inspiration, and I made a watercolour depicting Bloom’s leisure activities.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2017

Thursday, 22 December 2016

The next reading will be on Thursday, 5 January 2017, resuming the “Ithaca” episode with the long list of books following the command “Catalogue these books” (17.1361).

Catherine Meyer sends a painting to render one of the scenes encountered during the last reading. She writes: 

For the first time I chose the topic of reunion (when Odysseus and Telemachos first meet again after 20 years) and of separation (of Bloom and Stephen) and painted the scene as an inverse relationship. I tried to capture a feeling of both joy and sadness and painted the white spot with a drive towards the interior and the green and orange surface with strokes leading horizontally out of the picture's margin.

Catherine Meyer © Zurich 2016

Thursday, 15 December 2016

The reading stopped at: “an insistent vesicle pressure” (17.1198)

Catherine sends a painting and a comments:

Like children who are full of anticipation for Christmas, Fritz couldn’t  wait to tell us that we were getting to the funniest part of the book: the peeing passage. He really was enthralled and told us all kinds of stories, such as how men stand and pee, how they look at each other while doing so, and how wonderful the many s‘s in the text make the sound audible. We laughed superbly and the women were more than impressed with all those different peeing-descriptions.

For this topic I painted a very romantic peeing-scene: in Bloom's garden, under the dark sky, with stars and the moon.

Looking at the moon, which is only a scythe, Bloom maybe thinks of his relationship with Molly: her splendour when visible, her attraction when invisible.

Catherine Meyer © Zurich 2016

Thursday, 8 December 2016

The reading has reached: “advanced by the latter to the former” (17.959)

Catherine Meyer sends a visual rendering with these words:

My picture depictes the following:

Bloom and Stephen in one person

God the Father as Bloom and Stephen as Jesus Christ

Past and future (Bloom looking back and Stephen looking to the right into the future)

Father and Son

Bloom with his mustache and hat, and of rather short height

Stephen tall, white skinned with winedark hair

Bloom down-to-earth and realistic

Stephen having his head in the clouds beeing intellectually out of touch with the real world

Sometimes I think that Stephen is not a real person but only imagined by Bloom.

 

Catherine Meyer © Zurich 2016

Thursday, 1 December 2016

The reading stopped at, “a rabbinical philosopher, name uncertain” (17.718).

Catherine Meyer sends an illustration for this blog-entry. She writes that for her (despite the complicated and somewhat confusing biblical and political references to ancient times and contemporary Dublin) “the most painterly scene was A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums” (17.640). About her painting she says:

In Bloom’s kitchen Stephen and Bloom are sitting apart from each other, separated by the plums that are lying on top of each other forming a pyramid.  In the background are Mount Pisgah and Nelson's Pilar.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 24 November 2016

The reading stopped after an account of ten year old Stephen inviting Bloom to dinner on a rainy Sunday in January 1892, which Bloom “very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret” in the end “declined” (17.476).

Catherine Meyer, still taken by the dominating question-and-answer structure of the episode, has made it the theme for this week's painting too. She writes: 

I chose four ladders with their rungs and the space between them as a symbol for question and answer and, at the same time, they stand for Bloom‘s  bloomy declining of the invitation (still the same ladder, but the space in between varies). We're in Bloom’s picturesque kitchen with all the stuff on the three shelves, the eye-catcher on the coralpink tissue paper half disrobed (slightly erotic) and the “double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid” (17.273). The observer under the shelf is me.

Catherine Meyer © 2016 Zürich

Thursday, 17 November 2016

The group has started episode 17, also referred to as “Ithaca”, and stopped at: “a wooden revolving roller” (17.235)

Catherine Meyer, although wary of the episode's foregrounded form – questions-and-answers, geometry, maths – was still curious to dwell on the opening lines, “What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?”, to try a response in image. She writes:

For the start Joyce chose a complicated term in the sense of maths, art and daily life. In mathematics, lines are parallel if they are always at the same distance from each other. They never meet. In art, you have a vanishing point where all parallel lines meet. So, the further away a track is the smaller it appears. And in daily life, “parallel” can also mean: more than one event happening at the same time.

My painting shows parallel lines depicting water in its universality, the kitchen in Bloom's home and, figuratively, the question-and-answer form of the catechism in the blue water's light and dark colours. Technique: watercolour.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

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

Thursday, 3 November 2016

The last reading stopped at: “The Arabian Nights Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She.” (16.1681)

The reading was another “exciting and enthralling one”, says Catherine Meyer, who sends a rendering of it in one of her own equally engaging paintings. She writes:

Earlier in the day Bloom had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed as works of art, and wondered whether they also had an anus or not. Thinking back to those perfect statues and looking at an old photograph of his singing wife which he has been showing stephen, he then remembers “the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray” (16.1472).

I chose these thoughts for a visual interpretation. It is an echo to the third chapter where Stephen thinks about the “ineluctable modality of the visible” (3.1).

Audible and written words = nacheinander

Visible and paintings = nebeneinander

So, you can see Bloom’s various thoughts in one picture. I had a lot fun with this subject and have thus painted it in lively colours.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 27 October 2016

The reading stopped at Bloom's utterance:

— Was she? … it was as she lived there. So, Spain. (16.1420)

Catherine Meyer sends a contribution for this blog. She comments: 

Last Thursday we read a long passage about the murder of Parnell, the court-case and all the dirty laundry washed in public about Kitty O’Shea and Parnell's affair. We didn’t read many pages but there were many attenders, some of whom had to sit beyond the row of tables, so that I had an inviting view of them. Here is a sketch.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 20 October 2016

The reading stopped at: “Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir” (16.1215)

Catherine Meyer's post-reading paintings reflect several themes encountered there, including the “untasteable apology for a cup of coffee” (16.1141). Thank you, Catherine, for letting us show your work!

1

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

2

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 13 October 2016

The reading stopped at: “a single one of her sons” (16.1009)

Thursday, 6 October 2016

The reading stopped at: “would confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned” (16.747)

Catherine Meyer sends her artistic contribution, a painting she made right after the reading. It shows a scene from the cabman's shelter where the sailor, who hasn't seen his wife for seven years, is talking to Stephen and to Bloom, who is in turn thinking of Molly as his belladonna. Catherine writes: 

If you look at the picture you can see a nude that provides the “light” with her pale skin and is looking through the window wearing a black hat . The sailor, Stephen and Bloom are sitting at the table. The sailor is showing his tattoo of Antonio, who is either cursing his mate or laughing at a yarn, depending on whether the sailor pulls his skin or not.

When I sat back to look at the finished painting I was pleased to see that what is given centre stage shows a clear narration of the situation, while the background consists of a depiction of hidden hints.

 

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 29 September 2016

The reading stopped at: “A friend of mine sent me” (16.471)

Catherine Meyer sends a painting she made to illustrate the last session and adds an explanatory note:

Again the picture of an interior space is set up.

As I was going through my pile of old drawings (to get some inspiration) I found a sheet of paper showing a crowd of people hanging around. Immediately I imagined the scene where Bloom and Stephen  entered the cabman’s shelter. That’s how I work. I painted over the previous scene but left the „old“ colours and some of the lines and added with strong strokes the table and the people sitting around it.

The so called cup of coffee and a roll of some description are already served – but Bloom still has to push the cup gradually nearer to Stephen so that he can take a sip. In the background the face of a streetwalker glazes through the door under a black straw hat.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 22 September 2016

The group has started episode 16, “Eumaeus”, and read to: “anyhow, he was all in” (16.154).

Catherine Meyer, local artist and long-standing member of the reading groups, has sent a painting for this blog with the following words:

Of course “Circe”, chapter 15, has to have a conclusion and a final depiction. At the beginning, I painted a picture showing the first stage direction for Mabbot Street, the night town being dark, full of stunted men and women and children and strange facilities such as an icegondola or a lighthouse.

The end result, though, is a totally different sight: calmly Rudy's dead soul appears as a feather and that nothingness will soon fly away. For once I did not render Joyce’s stage directions but have tried to capture only a faint feeling that I imagine Bloom must have had.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

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

Thursday, 8 September 2016

The last reading stopped with Stephen's words: “I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull” (15.4497)

Catherine Meyer has made a drawing to illustrate a passage. She writes:

My drawing for the blog shows a slightly drunken Joyce standing at a bar in Dublin and, as the joke goes, the barman says, “you have taken a drop too many Mr. Joyce. Non serviam”.

Of course Fritz told us this joke when we had read Stephen saying “with me all or not at all. Non serviam”. He added that Lucifer didn’t want to serve and Joyce certainly didn’t. The same goes for me – I don’t like it too much either.

So, in order to make a “non serviam“ drawing I chose to do Joyce standing at the bar. After all, this genius of man hasn’t appeared once on any of my paintings. Now is the time to show him in a casual posture.

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016

Thursday, 1 September 2016

The reading stopped with Stephen at, “he stops dead” (15.4154).

Catherine Meyer sends the painting she made for the last reading and a few words about it:

The Thursday afternoon is very well attended and the group is still in a jolly good mood, although Fritz Senn keeps telling us he is bewildered by this chapter. Nevertheless, he was amused by adverbs like “yellowly” and “japanesily” in, Bloom “smiles yellowly at the three whores”, and “Mrs Cunningham … in merry widow hat and kimono gown … she glides sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily” (15.3831–58).

I quoted “yellowly” and “japanesily” (the smile and the kimono) and combined the two words with what I liked most: “the morning hours run out, gold haired  slimsandalled, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands” and “the hours of noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their arms” and “the night hours … steal to the last place”. They are masked with “daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells” (15.4054–83).

The idea that the different hours are dancing and waltzing away is terrific, I think. They do that every day. They come and go in our common life, sometimes we appreciate their appearance, sometimes we hope they will never come. So, the picture is a mixture of all of these topics provided by Mr. Maginni, who “clipclaps glove silent hands” (15.4060).

Catherine Meyer © Zürich 2016