The first nine episodes of Ulysses are composed of third-person narrative, dialogue and internal monologue. The language, while poetically rich, innovative and at times self-parodic, never abandons a basic realism. In the latter half of the novel this initial style is infiltrated, expanded and confounded by a dazzling and sometimes bewildering array of stylistic innovations.

Joyce acknowledged this shift in a letter to his publisher and benefactor Harriet Shaw Weaver. In response to Weaver's unenthusiastic reception of a draft of "Sirens," Joyce wrote:

Ezra Pound, also in response to a draft of "Sirens," complained to Joyce that "a new style per chapter is not required." (Richard Ellmann 459)

The stylistic excursions of the latter episodes of Ulysses shift the focus to language itself. "Language begins a kind of insurrection, as style becomes increasingly opaque and self-dramatizing." (Lawrence, Odyssey 12). Language moves to the foreground and narrative, never fully abandoned, to the background. On one level this is done through lyricism: Joyce as well as anyone employs the poeticity and euphony of language to create esthetic pleasure through sound.

More radically, Ulysses in its second half explores the operations of language itself -- it parodies and explores itself as an artifact and exposes language in the process of making meaning. As when the Wizard of Oz thunders, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," we are simultaneously treated to spectacular displays of language and to the sight, in plain view, of the machinations behind the display.

In an astonishing variety of ways, Joyce explores the boundaries and delights of language. Syntax, semantics, sound, structure and style are all stretched, revealed, twisted and pushed to their limits, providing us with a radically deepened appreciation of language’s nature and possibilities.

Language comes into being at a strange, indefinable border of consciousness: the border between self and other, between individual imagination and social authority, between eros and intellect, between id and superego. Every act of language is both socially determined and fully individual: we are born into the language we speak, but no two people have ever said the same thing exactly the same way twice (not even cliches, as Joyce demonstrates in the "Eumaeus" episode).

Commenting on the autonomy of body parts in "Sirens," in which lips rather than people speak, eyes ask (886), busts hum (387), etc., Attridge notes that

The language of the second half of Ulysses continually undermines rigidity in service of social authority or a singular mastering self, favoring instead the liberating fluidity and free potency of language at its source.

Ulysses in its latter episodes plunges us into language as an "ungovernable potency," taking us beyond the surface and authority of language into the free play of energy that lies behind it.

The language of Ulysses is revelatory; it is also fun. Joyce swims the depths of language with delight. His deconstruction is not the cold eye of dissection but an explosive depth charge into the full ironic, erotic, comic and cosmic power of language.

Two episodes, "Sirens" and "Eumaeus," serve as valuable entry points into the language of Ulysses’ second half. "Sirens" occurs before the hallucinatory excursion of "Circe"; "Eumaeus" right after it. Both episodes ("Sirens" more often than "Eumaeus") have been cited as containing language that most fully anticipates Finnegan’s Wake.

In very different but complementary ways, these two episodes explore the depths of language, drawing us behind its conventions into an encounter with its primal and autonomous power.

In book XII of The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men sail past the island of the Sirens, who are known for "crying beauty to bewitch men coasting by." (Homer XII:49). Warning Odysseus of this peril, Circe tells him, "woe to the innocent who hears that sound . . . the Seirênês will sing his mind away on the sweet meadow lolling." (Homer XII:50-54). The two flirtatious barmaids in the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses can be seen as echoing these alluring sirens, but even more so it is the episode itself which sings. If there is a siren’s song in the episode, it is the text.

"Sirens" concerns itself with music in many forms, both explicit – songs sung, lyrics quoted, piano played, noises transcribed, and implicit – the dense music of the chapter’s language. Joyce told his friend Georges Borach:

While attempts have been made to map out the structure of the episode to show that it literally follows the structure of a fugue, it seems more fruitful to view the analogy loosely; to appreciate the complex web of musical performance evoked by and embodied in the episode.

Though there are glimpses of it in previous episodes, it is in "Sirens" that Joyce most dramatically shifts the focus onto language itself.

The screens of language that "Sirens" throws up for us are saturated with music; they also begin to examine and take apart the narrative strategies and language that the novel has used up to that point. "In ‘Sirens’ the book examines its own resources and plays with the kind of language it has once taken seriously." (Lawrence, Odyssey 98).

The next several sections of this paper will explore varieties of the "verbal antics" and musical performance of the "Sirens" episode.

"Sirens" begins with 60 fragments of language on 63 lines. A few of the fragments can be read as sentences ("A husky fifenote blew," 5), albeit without narrative context. Some of the fragments are syntactically sentences but seem to elude semantic interpretation ("Tink cried to bronze in pity," 11). The majority of the lines are not sentences, however, but fragments ("Blew. Blue bloom is on the.," 6 ; "A moonlit nightcall: far, far.," 31) and several are not words ("Fff! Oo!," 58; "Imperthnthn thnthnthn," 2).

This section is commonly referred to as the episode’s "overture," since it introduces the themes struck in the episode. The majority of the items in the overture are sounds, bits of the "music" of Dublin. The overture serves as an outline or highly condensed version of the whole episode: it begins with the first words of the main part of the episode ("Bronze by gold") and ends with the last ("Done."). The "done" of the overture is followed, in a bit of textual self-consciousness, by the imperative "Begin!"

The overture signals the reader that we are, indeed, leaving behind the now-familiar territory of the novel’s initial style.

One of the characteristics of language demonstrated by the overture is the degree to which meaning is created by context. "Imperthnthn thnthnthn" (2), for example, is uninterpretable in the overture, but is quite clear later in context as the busboy’s mocking imitation of Miss Kennedy’s "impertinent insolence" (100). It is conceivable that one might discern "my epitaph be writ" and/or the onomatopoeia of flatulence in the overture’s "My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt" (62) – conceivable, but unlikely lacking the context provided at the end of the episode. The fragment "Lid Ker Cow De and Doll" (56), cryptic in the overture, is clearly the first syllables of five names in the body of the episode (1271). Deprived of context, we are forced to appreciate or puzzle over the language of the overture for its own sake, to have its meaning illuminated only when it reappears later in the episode.

Roman Jakobson used the term "poeticity" to describe aspects of language which "promote the palpability of signs":

As Attridge points out, poeticity not only brings language to the foreground – making it more "opaque," distancing it from the objects it points to; at the same time it paradoxically is experienced as being "more like" the objects named – of sharing in some way the characteristics of its objects. Poetic language is simultaneously experienced as more independent of, and more directed connected with, its object.

Poeticity generally involves phonological patterning – repetition and variation of some kind of sound-based correspondence. Assonance, alliteration, rhyme, meter and repetition are all examples. Words form relationships and patterns based on their phonology, independent of any syntactic and semantic relationships – and in turn modify those relationships (i.e., phonological connections create semantic ones).

Assonance, alliteration, rhyme and repetition, never absent from the language of Ulysses, are especially prominent in the "Sirens" episode, appearing in a density more characteristic of poetry than prose and providing one of the sources of pleasure in reading the episode.

This begins in the overture and continues throughout. "A sail! A veil awave upon the waves" (21) contains rhyme; the triple repetition "A sail a veil a wave"; the repetition of "wave"; assonance of long ‘A’ and alliteration of ‘V’ – all in eight words. "By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow" (49) alliterates the initial ‘B’, the ‘Sh’ of ocean and shadow, and the ‘G’ of gold and green, and employs repetition ("by bronze, by gold") and assonance of the long ‘O’ sound; the line is also iambic pentameter, which further intensifies its poetic quality.

Longer passages in the main body of the episode are similarly poetic:

The first sentence employs alliteration ("sauntered," "sadly," "Miss," and "loose"; "light" and "loose"; "bright" and "behind"), rhyme ("bright light"), assonance ("twining," "behind"), and off-rhyme ("hair" and "ear"). The initial sentence is varied and repeated twice, providing further poeticity and repetition. The repetition serves no narrative function nor provides any new information; the text succumbs to the siren’s call of sound and dallies with language for its own sake. Citing this passage as an example, Dermot Kelly writes that in "Sirens" and "Scylla and Charybdis"

Another feast of rhythm, assonance and alliteration begins on line 317:

Some of the lines of the episode contain so much sound-play they might serve as tongue twisters. "Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone" (134) and "Lenehan's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle" (328) are fine examples.

Many different forms of repetition occur throughout "Sirens," the language frequently "harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement" (798). At times the repetition makes use of homonyms ("red rose rose slowly sank red rose," 1106) and/or explores variations of word form ("Pat, waiter, waited, waiting," 671). At other times the repetition is more typographical than phonological. "Flow" and "flower" are juxtaposed repeatedly throughout the episode (e.g., "Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet, " 685) – a juxtaposition that, among other things, suggests reading "flower" as "one who flows" in addition to its dictionary definitions.

Typographical feedback loops seem to operate in such constructions as "Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle" (984) and "carracarracarra" (987). Perhaps the densest example of local typographical repetition is the phrase "Imperthnthn thnthnthn," itself repeated twice – presumably the fullest exploration of the syllable "thn" in English literature.

Homonyms, explicit and implied, abound in "Sirens." "Blue" appears eight times; "blew" four and "Bloo" six. "Ah, lure!" immediately mutates into "Alluring." (26).

In addition to serving as a form of repetition, homonyms in "Sirens" introduce allusiveness and, at times, ambiguity into the text. "The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful" (791) invites us to read "cords" for "chords" (or the other way around: the Gabler edition has "chords" and the Vintage edition, "cords" ). "He sighed aside" (251) is easily misread as "He sighed a sigh."

For the most part, though, the remarkable thing about the homonyms in "Sirens" is that they do not produce semantic ambiguity, even where one might expect them to. The episode seems to explore ways in which syntax can make meaning clear even when vocabulary doesn’t. The phrases "red rose rose slowly sank red rose" (1107) and "her rose that sank and rose" (398) both contain closely juxtaposed, differing meanings of the word "rose." In both cases it is clear on first reading when "rose" means the flower and when it is the past tense of "rise."

The word "rose" appears 26 times in the episode; "roseate" and "rosary" each appear once. At times "rose" does double duty: "Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose." (920). "Bronze" is the episode’s nickname for Miss Douce, and rose is the rose she wears. Alternatively, the phrase invites being read as two colors, an equally valid reading: Miss Douce is called "Bronze" because of the color of her hair and the rose is, presumably, rose-colored.

Another example of unambiguous repetition is "Lenehan round the sandwichbell wound his round body round" (240); the different meanings of "round" employed in this sentence are clear.

At times homonyms are played with overtly, as when Bloom, or the episode’s text, muses, "Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. . . . A waiter is he." (917-919). At other times homonyms are suggested without appearing directly, as in the many musical allusions (bar, flat, sharp, measure) which appear throughout the episode.

Some of the repetitions in "Sirens" are more typographic than phonetic. "Liquor" and "Oblique" occur in the same sentence as the aforementioned "flow" and "flower": "Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?)" (365). "Liquor for his lips" also suggests the homophone "lick," which appears twice a few pages later:

This paragraph contains multiple "t-p" verbs as sexual references; these are echoed throughout the episode by the "Tap. Tap. Tap." (1119 and many other places) of the piano-tuner’s cane, as well as by miss Douce’s response to Simon Dedalus’ inquiry about her holidays: "Tiptop." (196). The waiter’s name, "Pat," is "tap" reversed.

This complex web of sound correspondences creates a kind of "invading flow" of accumulated meanings, so that the repeated "tap" of the piano-tuner’s cane, for example, evokes Boylan’s (imagined by Bloom) intercourse with Molly, as well as Boylan’s knock on the door of 7 Eccles Street – "One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock." (987).

The language of "Sirens" is often plainly erotic, especially when describing music, as when Bloom listens to Simon Dedalus sing:

At times the eroticism is thinly veiled, as in this description of Lydia Douce stroking the beer pull as she listens to Ben Dollard sing:

Just after this masturbatory image Bloom stands up, "feeling rather sticky behind" (1127). The description of the bar that follows evokes the post-ejaculatory walk on the beach he had earlier in the day:

"Sirens" is filled with language that carries sexual overtones: "Fill me. I’m warm, dark, open." (974); "I feel all wet" (182); "Find the way in. A cave. No admittance except on business." (943); Lydia’s "heaving bosom’s wave" (1106) and "fernfoils of maidenhair." (1108).

Musical allusions abound as well: Miss Kennedy "transposed" the tea tray (92); Miss Douce poured a "measure" of whiskey (215); Simon Dedalus took out his "pipe" and "blew through the flue two husky fifenotes" (217); they are all in a "bar." A few of the other numerous examples include, "Trousers tight as a drum," "Fall quite flat," "listen sharp," " with a sliding cord," "get women by the score," "mind your stops," "conduct himself," "a great tonic in the air," "made overtures," and many others. (555 836, 840, 463, 686, 343, 104, 200, 243; emphasis added).

As noted above, frequently musical and sexual allusions combine; the most erotically charged passages are descriptions of music. At times the play between musical and sexual allusion is overt:

Simon’s song climaxes in the exclamation "—Come . . .!" (744; emphasis in original) and Bloom muses: "Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to her, you too, me, us." (753-754).

It is not surprising that sex is on Bloom’s mind; he is trying desperately not to think about his wife’s tryst with Blazes Boylan, which he knows is taking place during this episode. Erotic overtones are not limited to Bloom’s thoughts, however; they pervade all of the language of "Sirens." Music and eros are both manifestations of libido, and it is this aspect of language that the "Sirens" episode emphasizes.

In "Sirens" Joyce gives us language fully connected with its living erotic origins: language as a liberating life-force that surges past limiting convention and spills over readily into sexuality, music, and humor – the "language of flow." (298).

Puns are an extension of the play of homonyms throughout "Sirens." Joyce puns freely in the episode, as elsewhere. As Derek Attridge points out, the pun is usually regarded with scorn as a debased, undignified form of word play.

It is no surprise to find Joyce indulging in the pleasures of punning, however; puns disrupt the authoritative stability of language, introducing ambiguity, humor and the opportunity to voice unsanctioned desires.

"Tenors get women by the score," Bloom muses (686), a double pun: "score" could mean musical score as well as a quantity, and is also slang for sexual conquest. "I heard you were round," (345) Boylan says to Lenehan who, we have just been told, is indeed round.

In a typically self-conscious manner, the "Sirens" episode comments on its own punning. Bloom considers the pun potential of the phrase "Chamber music": "Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that . . . Tinkling." (Chamber Music was the title of Joyce’s first book, a book of poems). In cutting off the end of the word "punish" while writing to Martha Clifford, Bloom asks "How will you pun? You punish me." (891) As the groans that usually follow puns attest, to pun is to punish.

"Words? Music? No, it’s what’s behind" (704) may point to the wellspring from which both the words and music of language flow. But it may also be a punning commentary on "Sirens" itself: the final statement in the episode, after all, is given to neither its words nor its music, but to "what’s behind": Bloom’s fart.

"Sirens" contains numerous collections of letters which are not words but typographical representations of sounds; Attridge calls these fragments "non-lexical onomatopoeia" (Attridge, Peculiar Language 136). The most memorable may be the "Prrprr," "Fff! Oo. Rrpr." and "Pprrpffrrppffff" (1286-1292) of Bloom’s flatulence at the end of the episode. There are numerous other examples: "Tschink. Tschunk" of clinking glasses (1280); "Pompedy" and "pom pom pom" of drums (1242, 1245); "Pwee little wee" of a shepherd’s pipe (1241); the sound of the tram that masks Bloom’s gas: "Tram kran kran kran. . . . Krandlekrankran." (1290); the previously discussed "Imprthnthn thnthnthn"; "Hufa! Hufa!" (142), etc. All of these involve typographical repetition as well as the representation of sound.

The episode, in fact, is rife with sound, even in addition to the singing and piano playing throughout and the recurrent tapping of the piano-tuner’s cane. Hoofs ring (65), coins clang (384), clocks whir and clack (380, 381), garters smack (412), Bloom’s rubber band, plucked, buzzes and twangs (796), the bar patrons applaud (echoing hoofs?) "Clapclipclip clap" and "Clapclopclap" (757) and cry, among their bravos, "Sound as a bell." (757). Blazes Boylan ("Boilin’"?) is represented throughout by his "Jingle. Jangle." In addition to speaking characters grunt, snuffle, shriek, huff, snort, sniff, sigh, ruffle splutter, cough and "plapper flatly." (135-144; 162-167; 247). "Sirens," appropriately enough, is an episode that asks to be approached first and foremost through the listening ear.

As Attridge demonstrates, onomatopoeia presents itself and is frequently perceived as having an unusually strong intrinsic physical relationship to its object – i.e., of being a non-arbitrary or "motivated" sign – while in fact even non-lexical onomatopoeia depends upon familiarity with a system of signs as much as any word. A reader who read only Chinese or Arabic would not see "ffff" as the sound of passing gas, for example; and the words for the sound of a bell in various languages frequently do not sound alike. (Attridge, Peculiar Language 136-157). Joyce’s use of lexical and non-lexical onomatopoeia in "Sirens," in addition to filling the episode with the varied music of the Ormond bar, explores one edge of the relationship between sign and object in language.

The episode’s other non-lexical (or super-lexical) elements explore the relationship between sign and signified as well. As Bloom rises to leave the Ormond bar, the text reads:

In the context of verbal exchange, "Yrfmstbyes" at first appears to be a transcription of hurried speech, similar to writing "jeet?" for a hurriedly spoken "did you eat?," and the presence of "bye" further suggests this. (I have been unable to decipher what this series of letters might represent, however). "Blmstup," though, is clearly a contraction of "Bloom stood up" (along with an echo of the aforementioned "tup"); just in case we didn’t get it this phrase appears in full a few words later. This is not the speech of any character, but the normally "transparent" language of the narrative. It is as if the author, who we rely on to invisibly tell us things like "Bloom stood up," is suddenly mumbling, and thereby, revealed. This kind of self-conscious intrusion of the text is discussed more fully below.

Three other super-lexical oddities are of interest: Molly’s "wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy" (809) hair, Bob Cowley’s "Lugugugubrious" (1005) piano chords, and the "endlessnessnessness" glimpsed in the climax of Simon Dedalus’ song. All of these are further examples of local typographic repetition of the sort discussed above ("carracarracarra," "thnthnthn," etc). In addition, in all three cases characteristics of the thing being named invade and mutate the word: "wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy" is itself "wavy" (and perhaps heavy and weavy) like Molly’s hair. This transference of characteristics from the object to the word is similar to onomatopoeia, but in this case the quality so transferred is a physical one (waviness, endlessness) rather than an acoustic one. In the case of "endlessnessnessness" we also have a pun – the word refuses to end when it should.

Invasion and transformation of language, "a curious process of contamination" (Ferrer 71), is an important element of the "Sirens" episode.

All language in the episode is subject to mutation through combination with nearby words or with the qualities of objects. This is especially true of names.

The complex and unreliable relationship between names and named is a significant focus of both the "Eumaeus" and "Sirens" episodes. In "Eumaeus," as will be discussed below, the emphasis is on imposture: all names are in fact disguises, like the disguise Homer’s Odysseus wears in the swineherd’s hut. In "Sirens" names are endlessly recombinant and receptive, combining freely both with characteristics of the objects they name, and with nearby language.

Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy, the two barmaids, are for the most part referred to as "Bronze" and "Gold," respectively; a single physical characteristic – hair color – becoming their "names." Similarly, bald Pat the bothered waiter is rarely referred to as simply "Pat" without the "bald," as if "bald" were part of his name, and in one instance – "over the bar where bald stood by sister gold" (464) – "bald" serves alone as his name. The busboy is named only "boots" (89-94); one of the bar patrons is referred to once as "tankard": "– Dollard, muttered tankard." (1169).

Frequently the barmaids’ hair colors combine with parts of their names, in various permutations, giving us "Bronzelydia," "bronzelid," "minagold," "Bronzedouce," "shebronze" and "girlgold" (48, 1213, 398, 365, 246). While the two women laugh together their names join: they become "goldbronze," "bronze gigglegold" and "bronzegold goldbronze" (158, 159, 175).

Names merge not only with stable physical characteristics such as hair color, but with actions and nearby language as well: Miss Kennedy laughing is "Kennygiggles" (165) and peeped at, "peepofgold" (10). When "the Boots" sniffs he becomes "bootsnout," Blazes Boylan’s azure eyes turn his name to "Blazure," and Tom Kernan’s drink turns him into "Tomgin Kernan" (1148).

Nor are names fixedly attached to single individuals: George Lidwell and Lydia Douce talking together become "Lidlyd" (38) and "Lidlydiawell" (820).

Consciousness is not required for one’s name to combine with nearby text; inanimate objects can have unstable names as well: "Mr Bloom reached Essex bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex." (228-229)

One of the mysterious, minor characters in Ulysses has the improbable name Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. Farrell is an insane man who wanders by now and then in most of the episodes from "Lestrygonians" through "Sirens." Based on a real character who wandered the streets of Dublin in Joyce’s day (Gifford 8.302; Richard Ellmann 365), Cashel Farrell is already more name than character, a fact commented on when he first appears:

Ulysses tells us little about this character other than his name, every part of which except for "Tisdall" also appears elsewhere in the novel as a proper name of someone or something else: "Cashel Cathedral" (10:445), "Rock of Cashel" (12:1460), "District of Boyle" (12:86), etc. In "Sirens" his name mutates to "Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall Farrell" (1125).

Bloom reflects directly on the mutability of names in "Sirens" as he reads a shop sign on Wellington Quay:

Bloom also makes the observation, "Hate. Love. Those are names." (1069).

Bloom’s own name tends to combine with pronouns: "Bloowho," "Bloowhose," and "Bloohimwhom" (87, 149, 309), and changes according to context. Most often he is referred to simply as "Bloom," but he is also variously named as "Mr. Bloom," "Leopold," "Leopold Bloom," "Poldy" and "Mr. Leopold Bloom." His several identities combine as he walks away from the Ormond:

Simon Dedalus sings Lionel’s air, "M’appari" from Flotow’s opera Martha, becoming "Lionel Simon" and "Simonlionel" in the process (774, 1210). At the climax of the song the names of Simon, Lionel and Leopold merge to produce the exclamation: "Siopold!" (752). Bloom’s identification with the Lionel in the song turns him into "Lionelleopold." It is significant to note that this Lionel-Leopold identification is located solely in the text itself, however: there is no indication that Bloom or any other character makes this association.

Similarly located in the text, but not in the narrative, is the combination of Bloom’s name with the epithet "greasy nose" that the barmaids apply to "that old fogey in Boyd’s":

Twice more in the episode Bloom is referred to as "greaseabloom." The associative leap from the lecherous "greasy-nose," the "old fogey in Boyd’s" is unflattering to Bloom, but more significantly, it is not clear where it is located: that is, in whose mind is this association made? Bloom has not yet arrived at the Ormond; he is at that moment walking on Wellington Quay. There is no indication that he is anywhere in the barmaids’ thoughts, or that it is they who make this association.

The line "Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom" is an example of a mysterious voice that intrudes upon "Sirens" periodically – a voice that might be called, for want of a more precise name, "the Intruder."

One of the most intriguing questions to ask about the "Sirens" episode is "Who said that?" in reference to intrusions such as "Married to Bloom. To Greaseabloom." It is a voice that exists outside the universe created by the text (Dublin in June, 1904 ). More significantly, the intruder’s attention is not on the universe created by the text, but on the text itself. Unlike an omniscient narrator, who comments on plot, setting, ideas or characters in the story, the intruder comments upon the telling of the story itself – almost as if it were the voice of someone who reads over our shoulders and makes occasional comments, or a voice inside our own minds as we read.

The comments of the intruder in "Sirens" are relatively few, but they have a large impact because they force us out of the familiar framework of a reader voyeuristically observing, but not participating in, the imagined, constructed reality of the novel.

It is tempting to regard the intruder’s presence as authorial, as when, for example, the text notes its own repetitiveness: "Leopold cut liver slices. As said before he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods’ roes . . ." (519-520; italics added); "Bloom ate liv as said before." (569; italics added). (Note "roes," yet another variation of the word "rose"). The second "as said before" refers to the first; the first refers back nearly 200 pages, to the first three lines of the fourth episode:

Similar self-referentiality occurs twice more in "Sirens," once abbreviated and once expanded:

The object of these "as said before" comments is not the tale being told, but the telling. These comments could be made by the teller, but some of the intruder’s comments read more like projections of the reader into the text than the author:

It is a reader who, upon encountering the ambiguous "he," might ask, "who?" – i.e. which "he" does the text refer to? – the author already knows. Similarly, the question "coffin?" is one of a perplexed reader, who has not yet grasped the text’s flight of metaphor, and "[oh! – it’s a] piano!" is a reader’s exclamation at the revelation provided by the "clue" of the triple wires. As readers, we suddenly find ourselves located inside the text, rather than comfortably outside it where we belong, and the effect is disturbing: are we constructing the text, or is it constructing us?

Another way to read these "readerly" intrusions is that they are the text regarding itself – that is, the text is reading itself along with us. This interpretation is consistent with the apparent source of the most mysterious of the intruder’s remarks – the "mocking, musical echoes" in the opening scene, of which "Married to Bloom. To greaseabloom," mentioned above, is one.

The first of these intrusions occurs the first time the narrative shifts from the Ormond bar to Bloom walking on Wellington Quay:

If we ask the question, "Who said that?" of "A man" in the passage above, it is difficult to answer. Certainly none of the characters, in word or thought, and not the narrator either – the comment is an aside or intrusion into the narrative.

The dialogue between Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy continues, punctuated every 20 or 30 lines with similar asides:

"Bloom" in the first excerpt and "But Bloom?" in the second echo the insistence of the intruder that we not forget about Bloom. They seem not to be the narrator reminding us about Bloom, however, but someone else reminding the narrator not to forget about him – asking, in essence, "but what about Bloom?" Again, this is the question of a hearer of the tale rather than of its teller.

The next such intrusion is "Of sin" (157), followed by "Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom," cited above. This is the last of these echoes that refer to Bloom; they continue, less blatantly, for a while, punctuating the conversation between Simon Dedalus and Miss Douce:

"Bronze whiteness" and "He was" are neither part of the third-person narrative nor the reported dialogue; along with the asides cited above they constitute a kind of counterpoint or chorus, commenting on the text as it moves along. Once the rhythm of this echoing counterpoint is noticed, it becomes clear that "With sadness" on line 80 is the first such echo; it has a less intrusive quality than the echoes that follow because it also functions reasonably as part of the narrative.

The rhythmic regularity of these echoes makes it clear that they represent a particular instrument in the narrative polyphony of the "Sirens" episode, playing off and echoing the main narrative.

These echoes are one of the ways the text reveals itself as self-aware. In exposing its own artifice the "Sirens" episode, paradoxically, becomes less of an artifact and more of a living entity: only living, autonomous beings exhibit self-awareness. By acknowledging its own artifice, "Sirens" becomes a golem, rising from the page and refusing us the comfortable position of regarding it as mere object.

Another characteristic of the "Sirens" episode is the instability of narrative mechanisms, the overwhelming of narrative structures by language:

In the "Eumaeus" episode this narrative difficulty is taken much further: the language, very different from that of "Sirens," threatens to overwhelm and bury the narrative altogether.

When Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca after ten years of wandering, he goes first to the hut of his swineherd, Eumaeus. Here, disguised by Athena as a beggar, he gathers himself, reunites with his son Telémakhos, and prepares for his triumphal return home; the episode marks the beginning of Odysseus’ homecoming. In the same way, the "Eumaeus" episode of Ulysses, the first chapter of the final section of the novel, marks the beginning of Bloom’s return home. In the cabman’s shelter Bloom recovers from the hallucinatory voyage of "Circe," connects with Stephen Dedalus, and starts off, at the end of the episode, for 7 Eccles Street. Themes of homecoming, imposture and the tale-telling pervade both the Eumaeus section of The Odyssey and the "Eumaeus" episode of Ulysses.

The most common early critical interpretation of the language of "Eumaeus" was that it was tired, reflecting the tiredness of the characters at 1 am, or even a lapse of Joyce’s powers. "Sympathetic readers assume Joyce must have been nodding after his exhausting effort with ‘Circe’ and offer an apology" writes Brook Thomas (15), adding that "we become as bored as Stephen and politely try to stifle our yawns when confronted with the style that would produce Bloom’s proposed sketch of My Experiences in a Cabman’s Shelter." (16). Frank Budgen begins his chapter on "Eumaeus" with

Hugh Kenner notes that "the episode has incurred the displeasure of those who don’t read closely, and imagine Joyce is conveying the sense of exhaustion by exhausting the reader for fifty pages." (quoted in Thomas 15).

More recent criticism has shown that Joyce’s language practice in "Eumaeus" repays close examination. Potentially confounding, infuriating and tedious on first reading, the language of "Eumaeus" is, in fact, dazzling in its virtuosity, and at times hilariously funny – "Wonder crowds upon wonder." (Kenner 36).

Derek Attridge lists ten varieties of "deviation from (or excessive adherence to) ‘good style’" in one 20-line extract from "Eumaeus." (Peculiar Language 175 ff.). It is a testament to the complexity of the episode’s language that Attridge’s list and that which follows here contain little overlap – and there is much more that could be said which is in neither list. For each of the language characteristics listed below, there are dozens of potential examples, of which only a few are given, despite the strong temptation to list more.

Expanded verbiage: The style of "Eumaeus" is riddled with circumlocution, with the kinds of puffy phrases commonly found in pretentiously "formal" writing – phrases that swell the text without adding any meaning. Examples include "not to put too fine a point on it" (60), "without being actually positive, it struck him" (530), "It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no small blame to our vaunted society that" (538), "Briefly, putting two and two together" and so on. "So to speak" occurs frequently, and, perhaps most to the point, "needless to say" occurs twice.

These empty phrases occur in such density that they bury the narrative and threaten. to almost completely obscure and overwhelm meaning. Here for example is how the "Eumaeus" episode says, essentially, "Bloom paid for the coffee and roll":

This remarkable passage of language-for-language’s sake also provides an illustration of the episode’s repeated misuse of the word "literally"; obviously Bloom’s pennies were not "literally" dying Indians.

Early in the episode Bloom, at Stephen’s request, removes a table knife "observing that the point was the least conspicuous point about it" (818) – a comment that frequently seems applicable to the text of "Eumaeus" itself.

Redundancy: Many phrases contain repeated words: "Stephen thought to think" (53), "The best plan clearly being to clear out"(1647) or redundancies of meaning: "Stephen’s at present morose expression of features" (301), "looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement" (1400) – the latter a phrase that also appears in "Sirens." Unlike the repetition in "Sirens," repetition in "Eumaeus" is not lyrical but ponderous and obfuscatory.

Self-contradiction: Phrases double back on and contradict themselves: "it was a warm pleasant sort of night now yet wonderfully cool" (was is warm, or cool?) (1461); "that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for." (1031)

Recycled language: Much of the language of "Eumaeus" is recycled from earlier episodes as well as other texts.

The just-quoted "that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for" (1031) combines two quotes from Hamlet’s soliloquy (Shakespeare III:i.56, III:i.63), one of the episode’s several references to Shakespeare. In the first sentence of the "Eumaeus" episode, Buck Mulligan and his shaving brush (from the first page of the novel) reappear, transformed: "Mr. Bloom brushed off the great bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally." (1-3; emphasis added). Molly is described as having "opulent curves" (1461) and "heaving embonpoint" (1468), phrases borrowed from the pornographic novel Sweets of Sin that Bloom purchased in episode ten (10.612).

Bloom looks away while Stephen looks at Molly’s photo, so as to avoid "increasing the other’s possible embarrassment while gauging the symmetry of her heaving embonpoint" (1466); in chapter seven we have "It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall" (7.166) – not only recycling language but comically associating Molly’s "embonpoint" with "a peeled pear."

Ironic inflation: Murphy’s quick drink and piss outside is "libation-cum-potation" (977); the late-night gathering of riffraff in the cabmen’s shelter is "the soirée" (978), "the séance" (1702) and "élite society" (1704).

Misplaced phrases: The episode’s language frequently separates phrases from their referents, often with comic effect: "Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap’s elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach." (The crowd lodged in Bloom’s stomach?) (1510).

Puns: As in "Sirens," the "Eumaeus" episode is rife with puns. In a double entendre typical of the episode, Bloom tells Stephen, "The only thing is to walk then you’ll feel a different man. Come. It’s not far." (1719). Soon Stephen does "feel a different man" – Bloom: the two link arms and set out for Bloom’s home.

Stephen’s "yes" here foreshadows the "Yes" that begins Molly’s soliloquy in the novel’s final episode.

Clichés: One of the most striking features of the language of "Eumaeus" is the prominence of clichés.

Much of the delight of this episode stems from the extensive misuse and mixing of metaphors and clichés. This ranges from simple inflation: "one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonored adage, gone the way of all buttons" (36) to comical, unintended images: "as if both their minds were traveling, so to speak, in the one train of thought," (1581) to truly strange hybrids: "others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps" (1213) and "[they] very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same way as the fabled ass’s kick." (1398).

After Murphy produces a "dangerouslooking claspknife" (578), "Eumaeus" refers to Murphy’s pocket as "his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket." (588). The language of "Eumaeus" is also a "chamber of horrors"; it is, in Hugh Kenner’s phrase, "copious in its fecund awfulness." "It is open to wonder whether any episode cost Joyce such pains, plumbing the depths of expressive infelicity most of us have not the talent even to conceive." (Kenner 38).

As they enter the cabman’s shelter, Stephen and Bloom overhear a group of Italians arguing "in their vivacious language" (311). Bloom responds with the clichéd idea of the suitability of this language for poetry:

But Stephen, who unlike Bloom understands Italian, punctures Bloom’s illusion: "– To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money." (350). This exchange is one of the episode’s many juxtapositions of poetry and money, of language in the service of poetry vs. language in the service of commerce. Early in the episode Stephen, the penniless artist, gives a half-crown to the jobless Corley:

The episode is riddled with commercial language, as when Bloom asserts that "A revolution must come on the due installments plan." (1101)

Bloom makes plans to capitalize on Stephen’s singing talent. He suspects that Stephen has "his father’s voice to bank his hopes on" (1658) and imagines "up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and seaside theaters, turning money away." (1653).

Odysseus returned to Ithaca "his ship laden with the treasures he has received in exchange for his colorful tales: his narratives have earned substantial rewards." (Osten 822). The swineherd Eumaeus dismisses the tales of the old beggar (Odysseus in disguise) with

As is evident throughout Ulysses, mere economic survival in 1904 Dublin was no easy matter; life really was "very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything" (1114). "Eumaeus" seems concerned with the question of how language, which is socially constructed and polluted by its utility in commerce, can be used for poetry – how it can be made to live again. In "Eumaeus,"

This relationship between the poetic impulse and the tired, commodified language of received culture is explored in "Eumaeus" not only thematically, but in the episode’s use of language itself. Once again names play a large part in this. Unlike the living, mutable names of "Sirens," however, names in "Eumaeus" are mere labels, distant from and in questionable relationship to the named.

When Odysseus first comes to Eumaeus’ shelter, he does so under an assumed name, spinning tall tales about his adventures to mask his true identity. Similarly, the name of the sailor D. B. Murphy, A.B.S. is in doubt: though he produces a seaman’s discharge (a sexual double entendre) to prove his identity (452), Bloom suspects him of being as much a forgery as his tales:

Whether or not the sailor is really named "Murphy," the episode enthusiastically invents dozens of nicknames for him, including "the communicative tarpaulin" (479), "the doughty narrator" (570), "the globetrotter" (575), "our soi-disant [so-called] sailor" (620), "the old seadog" (654), "friend Sinbad" (858), "shipahoy" (901), "the redoubtable specimen" (983), "the impervious navigator" (1011), and many others.

Again and again "Eumaeus" reminds us of the instability and unreliability of names: Bloom has become "L. Boom" (1260) in the Evening Telegraph; which the episode calls "tell a graphic lie." (1232). Parnell, it is rumored, "changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general" (1305) and went "under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart."(1322). Murphy speaks of a Simon Dedalus, which is the name of Stephen’s father, but Murphy’s story makes clear it is some other (probably fictitious) Simon Dedalus. The shelter’s proprietor may or may not be Fitzharris, a.k.a., Skin-the-Goat; "our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera." (1070). Bloom reflects that the proprietor "probably wasn’t the other person at all." (1048). "Christus or Bloom his name is or after all any other," Stephen thinks (1092). Even the name of Murphy’s murdered friend (and tattoo) is suspect: how likely a name is "Antonio" for "a Greek"? (679).

Names can form relationships as well: Parnell and Katherine O’Shea could not deny their relationship "since their names were coupled" (1370) while O’Shea and her husband had "nothing in common between them beyond the name" (1381) – i.e., they shared only a name, but also, they had a marriage in name only.

Objects as well as people have their names brought into question in "Eumaeus." Stephen’s coffee is "the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee" (360) or "his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it" (1169); the roll is a "socalled roll." (366). Evoking Juliet, Stephen declares that "sounds are impostures . . . like names. . . . Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What’s in a name?" (362) and Bloom responds, "Yes, to be sure. . . . Of course. Our name was changed too." (365)

The arbitrariness of names extends to the arbitrariness of language itself:

Words burrow into "different sorts of the same sand" where, maybe, they have "a home somewhere beneath." They change color, shift in meaning, exist independently of meaning or produce unintended meanings, as Joyce demonstrates wildly with his use of language in "Eumaeus."

Kenner argues that the language of "Eumaeus" is Bloom’s language, following what Kenner calls "the Uncle Charles Principle," which "entails applying the character’s sort of wording to the character." (35)

Other critics have followed Kenner’s lead. Brook Thomas, for example, writes that "The style of ‘Eumaeus’ is the style Bloom would like to adopt to impress his companion in intellect." (Thomas 16).

An argument can be made for this view; the language of "Eumaeus" and Bloom’s language do share certain characteristics – the habit of leaving off the second half of sentences, for example, and circumlocution, though the latter is much more exaggerated in "Eumaeus" than in Bloom’s speech and thought. And Bloom actually thinks about writing the episode:

But, Karen Lawrence argues, the language of "Eumaeus" "is not the sound of Bloom’s mind" (Odyssey 170). She compares two passages, one Bloom’s and one from "Eumaeus," to demonstrate their differences. Derek Attridge agrees, saying that attributing the style to Bloom "has always seemed to me to attribute both too little and too much to him (he would be capable neither of the dreadful pomposity on the surface nor of the brilliant parody and word play that underlies it)." (Peculiar Language 174).

Attridge’s solution is to look at the language of "Eumaeus" as independent language, without postulating a particular identity behind it. To ask whose voice speaks in the episode

Rather than representing a singular narrator or character, the language of "Eumaeus" seems to embody language as defined by collective social practice. In "Eumaeus," "Joyce focuses on received locutions, the ready-made phrases that express the received ideas of society." (Lawrence, Odyssey 169)

Bruns takes a similar approach, calling the "Eumaeus" narrator "a mind fabricated out of other minds" (Bruns 366). "The narrator in this episode is a figure of impoverished sensibility, a man unable to speak in his own voice but only in the impoverished language of the tribe." (Bruns 367).

This language threatens to submerge both characters and story. Meaning, character and narrative have to struggle to emerge from the overpowering weight of socially-determined, empty verbiage. "Joyce has built up a world of banal locutions within which both narrator and story struggle into being." (Hart and Hayman 268).

Stephen, Bloom, the narrative itself, and the reader all struggle to emerge from this fog of received, clichéd, collective language:

In different ways, Stephen and Bloom are each engaged in the struggle for identity, authenticity, and expression, in the face of the overwhelming pressures of the language, culture, economy and social environment in which they find themselves. This struggle is echoed and amplified in the two men’s struggle to make contact with one another, in the struggle for poetry in the face of commerce, and in the struggle of language to operate in creative, authentic, living ways in the face of received locutions and static, meaningless naming. In "Eumaeus," Joyce explores these polarities both thematically and in his language practice, and he places the narrative of Ulysses itself directly on the battlefield, forcing it to confront, as much as Stephen and Bloom must, the smothering, stultifying influence of received culture.

"One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot," Joyce once wrote to Harriet Weaver. (Letters III: 146). In the second half of Ulysses Joyce set himself the task of discovering language that could express and invoke such states – an endeavor he carried even further in Finnegan’s Wake.

In different ways, both "Sirens" and "Eumaeus" explore the relationship between the individual and society, and the ways that language functions to either liberate or enslave us: "Sirens" through the open invocation of language’s erotic, uncontrollable potential, and "Eumaeus" through parody and endless expansion of the strictures and habits of socially constrained language.

The experiments and flights of language enacted in these two episodes are only two of the directions Joyce explored in the second half of Ulysses; the language of the other episodes rewards similar engagement. Along with Finnegan’s Wake, the latter episodes of Ulysses represent an astonishing legacy – one whose full effects have not yet been absorbed by our culture.

Joyce’s remarkable intimacy and facility with language at its deepest and most shallow levels produces writing which is celebratory and deeply rooted in pleasure. The prose of the second half of Ulysses is a liberating, consciousness-altering substance: a celebration of words, music and the indefinable states that lie behind them.

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