- 1 Quotes from Ulysses are accompanied by the chapter and line numbers following Joyce, James, Ulysses(...)
- 2 The style Joyce employs in this chapter and its connections to musical expression are explored for (...)
1“Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone” (11.54):1 this sentence is taken from the first section of the eleventh episode of Ulysses by James Joyce, who, all the way through the novel, employs a variety of styles and narrative techniques. Each episode, with a few exceptions, especially the early ones, can be associated with specific practices and writing forms. Joyce did make such associations himself in two schemas he sent to close friends, Carlo Linati and Stuart Gilbert, while the novel was still being written. Here, the eleventh chapter is explicitly associated with music and hearing.2 In fact, the chapter begins with a proper overture, that is to say two pages where the essential motifs of the chapter are each captured in a few words or sentences and, as is the case for a musical overture introducing an opera, the atmosphere of what will follow is evoked. Every major theme that will be expanded later in this episode is summarized here in a few words or sentences, interspersed with brief bits of third-person narrative.
2The sentence quoted above condenses not only some threads that will be unwound in the following pages, but also encapsulates the intersection of three musical references that have punctuated Bloom’s day up to this point and that converge here, at 4pm, in the concert hall of the Ormond Hotel. These are Michael Balfe’s The Rose of Castile, an opera in three acts set in Medieval Spain, whose premiere took place in London in 1857; Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha, an opera in four acts that, despite being the offspring of a German author and having premiered in Vienna in 1847, is generally considered to be in the French tradition of Auber; and Thomas Moore’s The Last Rose of Summer, from the fifth volume of his Irish Melodies, which was published in 1813 and circulated widely in different settings and arrangements. Although Martha is not explicitly mentioned in the quote above, it is brought forth implicitly through The Last Rose of Summer, as Flotow gave this melody to Lionel, the opera’s protagonist, to be sung right before his aria in Act III.
- 3 Carney, George O., The Sounds of People and Places: Readings in the Geography of American Folk and (...)
- 4 Kearney, Daithí, “Listening for Geography: The Relationship Between Music and Geography”, Chimera, (...)
- 5 Gifford, Don, Seidman Robert J., Ulysses Annotated. Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses (Berkeley, CA: (...)
- 6 See for example Slote, Sam, Marc A. Mamigonian, John Turner, Annotations to James Joyce’s Ulysses ( (...)
3These three works appear throughout the central part of Ulysses, extending from the fourth to the fifteenth episode, and this paper will look closely at those occurrences in order to illustrate how and to what extent they are essential to the narrative economy of the work: because they all bear strong geographical connotations, they entail different and contrasting imaginative elements that become closely associated with specific characters and situations, and culminate in Molly’s betrayal of her husband in chapter 11. This paper’s main aim will be to dissect the musical geography that underlies some of the crucial events and people populating Joyce’s novel. The expression “musical geography” is usually understood to designate the geographical study of music, as it is outlined for example in George Carney’s The Sounds of People and Places.3 Here, a few possibilities for tackling the study of space-related research questions in musicology, or vice-versa, music-related research questions in geography, are put forward, including the “regional studies and the production of cartographic representations of the location of musical traditions and spaces,” the “examination of cultural hearths and patterns of diffusion,” and “the perception of place in music.”4 This is not the approach that this article intends to adopt. On the contrary, the phrase “musical geography” refers, in this context, to the spatial connotations of the musical references that punctuate Joyce’s novel, and to the description of the implications that these associations involve. It is important to note in this respect that this contribution aims to be an examination of the intersecting references that Joyce employs to construct his text around specific musical themes, but not necessarily a problematization of these uses, and that it is on that account a direct extension of the documentary work undertaken for example by Don Gifford5, among others.6 Therefore, the following sections will explore in turn the three major references mentioned above, while paying close attention to how they interact with each other to form striking networks of metaphorical associations. To do so, it is necessary to retrace their appearances over the course of the 16th of June 1904, in the life of Leopold Bloom.
- 7 To get a sense of Mario’s popularity see Vernet, Thomas, “Mario Giovanni Matteo Cavaliere di Candia (...)
4The first mention of either of the three references under scrutiny occurs at the beginning of the seventh episode, taking place around noon at the offices of two newspapers, the Freeman Journal, and the Evening Telegraph. Fittingly, the chapter is written as a parody of newspaper style: it is divided into relatively short sequences, each introduced by a title in capital letters. Bloom has come to arrange for the publication of an advertisement for Alexander Keyes, the owner of a liquor store, and interacts with various characters populating the offices. Among these are Red Murray and “William Brayden, Esquire, of Oaklands, Sandymount” (7.38-39). Upon the arrival of the latter, the former points out to Bloom that Brayden’s “face is like Our Saviour” (7.49). Bloom, however, forms a different association and, having perceived Brayden as entering the room “steered by an umbrella” (7.46), now superimposes this image with that of “Mario the tenor” (7.53) (Mario Giovanni Matteo Cavaliere di Candia, an extremely popular opera singer),7 who appears to be steered by his sword towards the spotlight while singing the role of Lionel in Martha. Thus, through their common resemblance to William Brayden, Mario and Jesus himself become a single figure (“Jesusmario”, 7.57), in a process of imaginative and morphological conflation that will recur frequently in Ulysses as a whole and, more specifically, in the eleventh episode. This new creature then intones the culminating couplet of Lionel’s aria in Act III of Martha, sounded here for the first time in the novel, if only in Bloom’s stream of consciousness.
5By contrast, the first occurrence of the The Rose of Castile materializes through actual singing. Not too long after the conversation about Mario, Myles Crawford sings the couplet “‘Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, / ‘Twas empire charmed thy heart” from Act III of Balfe’s opera, addressing it to professor MacHugh (7.471-2). In the context of the original musical work, a series of deceptions and disguises cause Elvira, the opera’s female protagonist, to believe that the muleteer Manuel is actually Don Sebastian, the king’s brother, whom she is supposed to marry. Upon discovering that this is not the case, Elvira believes that Manuel is nothing more than a muleteer and is horrified at the thought of marrying him. At this point, Manuel sings the ballad “‘Twas rank and fame that tempted thee,” and wins over Elvira, whom he will indeed end up marrying after revealing to her that he is the king himself. The “empire,” then, that the libretto refers to is a non-specified one and serves the purpose of representing the power and might that are associated with high-ranking aristocrats in the feudal society of Middle-Age Spain. However, when these two lines are quoted in Ulysses, their connotations are much less innocent. Crawford’s point in addressing MacHugh in this way is to make fun of his fondness for the Roman empire. The professor goes on to clarify that he is not particularly passionate about the Romans. Rather it is the Greeks he is enamoured of. However, before the mix-up is resolved, the mention of “empire” immediately recalls another colonial power, one that was much more present in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century, namely the British empire. This leads Myles Crawford to acknowledge—with some resentment and resignation—the subaltern condition he shares with his fellow Dubliners: “we haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell” (7.482).
- 8 Gibson, Andrew, Joyce’s Revenge: History, Politics, and Aesthetics in Ulysses (Oxford, NY: Oxford U (...)
6In parallel to this conversation between Crawford, J.J. O’Molloy and MacHugh, Lenehan announces his “brandnew riddle” (7.477), prompted by Crawford’s singing: “what opera resembles a railway line?” (7.514). It is, of course, “The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!” (7.591). This moment will be recalled very often during the rest of the novel, for example in the fourteenth episode: here, Madden O’Burke’s reaction to Lenehan’s quip (he “fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp. —Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness,” 7.593-4) is echoed by “Opera he’d like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted” (14.1510-1), preparing the incident to come in chapter 15, when Bloom asks “What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele,” occasioning Lenehan to spring up suddenly and yell “Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!” (15.1730-4). The allusion to Gibraltar is an explicit connection to Molly, who was born there. Not only that, but Gibraltar also emerges, especially in Molly’s monologue in Chapter 18, as bearing a strong resemblance to Ireland in relation to colonial dynamics involving the British Empire: both are British colonies “with a Catholic majority and a conspicuous British, military presence. [Both] had a history of military conflict, discriminatory legislation, the imposition of alien, administrative, educational, and legal systems, and devastating onsets of disease.”8 In this respect, Gibraltar appears as the prototype of British colonialism in Europe, and Molly’s roots, then, take on somewhat sinister overtones beyond the exoticism nestled within the Southern Mediterranean reference. As a matter of fact, Molly’s figure is central to the networks of musical and geographical references that this article sets out to unpack: as we will see, the “rose of Castile,” the “last rose of summer,” and Martha, the object of Lionel’s longing in the eponymous opera, all come to be identified with Molly during the eleventh episode, where they also sporadically refer to other women in Bloom’s life: Martha Clifford and a prostitute whom Bloom runs into in the street. It is time now to turn to this crucial chapter.
7As was briefly mentioned above, the eleventh episode of Ulysses takes place at 4pm. This is a particularly distressing moment for Leopold Bloom, because he knows that around this hour his wife, Molly, who is a singer, expects her impresario, Blazes Boylan, to go over to her house to bring her the program of her upcoming tour. Bloom has had a hunch since the morning that Boylan will become Molly’s lover, if he does not interfere. As it turns out, Bloom is quite right. Regularly in the chapter, Bloom will anticipate Molly’s betrayal and imagine that it occurs much sooner than it actually happens. He will stand corrected by the narrator, who describes Boylan’s factual movements through Dublin, and by Boylan himself, who appears at the Ormond Hotel as Bloom imagines that Molly is going to open her front door for him:
Lenehan’s lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy.
– But look this way, he said, rose of Castile.
Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped.
She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn, dreamily rose. […]
Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode. (11.329-38)
8In typical Joyce fashion, the narration is constantly interrupted by disconnected elements with different enunciative statuses: the narrator’s prose is regularly punctuated by the characters’ streams of consciousness, which proceed by association and analogy instead of following the chronological order of events, and from time to time the narrator himself seems to pick up portions of other people’s associative train of thought. Here, for example, Lenehan is speaking to Miss Douce, one of the waiters at the Ormond bar. He has been trying to get her attention for some time, without much success, and refers to her as the “rose of Castile.” In Balfe’s opera, the “rose of Castile” is clearly Elvira, the female protagonist, and Lenehan’s gamble is that Miss Douce will find the comparison flattering. Indeed, the description of the desired woman as a rose is by no means Lenehan’s invention, nor the creation of Michael Balfe’s librettist, but harkens back to classical mythology and, more to the point, to Medieval chivalric imagery. In any case, Lenehan will keep on being let down but, by having him casually represent Miss Douce as the “rose of Castile,” Joyce emphasizes the stereotypical nature of the epithet, which necessitates no further explanation to be understood as it alludes to an assortment of clichés around the theme of exotic beauty that are readily available to all.
9At this point, the mention of the “rose of Castile” gives rise to two separate streams of consciousness. The first, Lenehan’s, is caught by the narrator: although Lenehan is probably thinking about railway lines in connection to the joke he made a few hours earlier and of which he is evidently proud, he cannot be aware of the manoeuvres of the tram outside the hotel. Nevertheless, the narrator is certainly conscious of the events beyond Lenehan’s immediate horizon, and, seizing on the railway connection, goes on to announce that the tram “jaunted by the curb and stopped.” It is carrying Blazes Boylan, who will enter the bar in a moment and then will take the tram again to go see Molly. The second stream of consciousness belongs to Bloom. In this case, the “rose of Castile” does refer to Molly: a “rose” as she is longed for and “of Castile” as she is of Spanish descent. In Bloom’s imagination, she is already putting down her book and rising to go open the door for Boylan, who, if truth be told, is not even on his way yet.
10This set of circumstances is a prelude to a much more substantial and sustained presence in this chapter of the musical references under examination, corresponding to Simon Dedalus’s rendition of Lionel’s aria from Martha by popular demand (roughly 11.587-752). Later in the night, Bloom will recall having “overheard” this (from his seat placed relatively far from the stage in the Ormond bar), while he is walking home with Stephen from the cabman’s shelter:
he mentioned par excellence Lionel’s air in Martha, M’appari, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen’s respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. (16.1756-60)
11Surprisingly, the thought of what had happened while he was listening to Dedalus senior is banished from this recollection. However, Molly’s encounter with Boylan is incessantly present in Bloom’s mind while Simon is singing: his performance is relegated to the background of the narration, which focuses instead on what Bloom imagines to be happening back at his house and what the narrator knows to be really happening. In fact, he is not wrong about the essence of the matter, but rather about its development in time.
- 9 See Terrinoni, Enrico, Attraverso uno specchio oscuro. Irlanda e Inghilterra nell’Ulisse di James J (...)
12Simon’s singing, then, is only present in the scene as fragmentary lines scattered across Bloom’s stream of consciousness. This oscillates from his preoccupations with women to the present situation in the hotel bar, where Bloom remains very much a spectator just as he is a spectator of Simon Dedalus’s performance.9 He is in fact not only thinking about Molly, but also about Martha Clifford, with whom he is maintaining a romantic correspondence under the false name of Henry Flower. That morning, he has received a letter from her and answers it during the eleventh episode, when his nonsexual affair with Martha serves as counterpoint to Molly’s sexual encounter with Boylan. In her letter, Martha has asked Bloom when they will meet and, in the postscript, she presses him to tell her “what kind of perfume does your wife use,” adding “I want to know” (5.258). Bloom recalls the letter in a passage strewn with quotes from Those Lovely Seaside Girls, a popular song, which then gives way to a depiction of the hypothetical scene at Bloom’s house upon Boylan’s arrival:
Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flowers at his feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. […] Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at the mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent. (11.685-92)
- 10 The original lyrics read “Your head it simply whirls,” but Joyce often substitutes “swirls” or “swu (...)
13Upon setting out to reconstruct the chain of analogies eliciting Bloom’s broodings, it is clear that the starting point is still Simon Dedalus and his tenor voice. From here, and from the image of women throwing flowers at the feet of well-known opera singers, especially tenors who are usually entrusted with the role of the male lover protagonist, Bloom’s train of thought carries on to his pseudonym of Henry Flower, to Martha’s letter, to Those Lovely Seaside Girls,10 whose first mention in the novel occurs early in the morning as “Blazes Boylan’s seaside girls” (4.282-3), and then to Boylan’s journey, heard here via the tramline’s jingling. The jingling stopping abruptly signals Boylan’s arrival at Molly’s, and Bloom imagines his wife opening the door and greeting Boylan in the hallway. He then wonders where in the house the ultimate act of betrayal is going to occur (“There? What? Or?”). Nevertheless, Bloom’s anticipations are again untimely, as Boylan will not arrive at 7 Eccles Street before the end of the aria. As it will become clear, Bloom is thoroughly resigned to the inevitability of this event and does not remotely consider the possibility that it might not come to pass.
14As can be clearly gleaned from the passage above, many of the internal mechanisms of the stream of consciousness rely on associative relationships. However, the most obvious associative relationship only now dawns on Bloom as he realises that Martha Clifford shares her name with the heroine of Flotow’s opera: “Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel’s song. Lovely name you have. Can’t write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings, pursestrings too. She’s a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today” (11.712-5). While recalling snippets from Martha’s original letter (“Lovely name you have. […] I called you naughty boy,” originally from 5.244-5 and 5.248), Bloom begins to write his reply, albeit with some difficulty. His awkwardness is plainly perceivable in the broken sentences he composes and stands in striking contrast with the image Bloom has formed of Boylan, represented in his imagination as an accomplished and successful man, who is able to carry out to completion his intercourse with Molly, multiple times no less according to Bloom’s repeated replay of the scene.
15Another remarkable contrast is that between Martha and Molly, but it is essential to pause first on Simon’s performance, which has been going on in the background until now. In the passage above, the air is characterized as “Lionel’s song” and from this point onward until the end of his interpretation Simon will not be mentioned under his own name again, but rather under the name of Lionel. In this way, he comes to impersonate fully the operatic character and his longing for the woman he loves. There are multiple facets to be explored in this superimposition. On the one hand, Lionel is superimposed on Simon, who is such a good performer that he makes his public forget his own individual existence in favour of a complete identification with the character he is lending his voice to. On the other hand, Simon is superimposed on Lionel: the final lines of the aria, “Martha! Ah, Martha! / Come, thou lost one! / Come, thou dear one! / Come to me!” ring out with a new sense of depth in Simon’s mouth, whose wife has died not long before.
16Most importantly of all, however, Bloom is superimposed with both Lionel and Simon, as he borrows two lines from the aria, “When first I saw that form endearing / Sorrow from me seemed to depart,” to describe the night he first met Molly: “How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, […] won Pat Bloom’s heart” (11.719-20). Therefore, Simon, as Lionel crying out for Martha, is really Bloom crying out for Molly, and the irony cannot be lost on him that Molly is now being referred to as Martha. Finally, as the identification of these three characters is complete, the narrator sanctions it after the last note of the aria has sounded, by naming the performer “Siopold.” Later on, Bloom is again identified with Lionel, although this time Simon Dedalus is out of the picture: “Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses went Poldy on.” Here, the link between Lionel and Bloom is no longer an elegiac one, resting on the parallel between Lionel’s longing for Martha and Bloom’s for Molly, but is merely predicated on the coincidence that both Martha from the opera and Martha Clifford have the same name. “Lionelleopold” is really “naughty Henry,” walking “with sweets of sin”—that is, with something straight out of a salacious novel. Nevertheless, before the sentence is over, Bloom is back to being “Poldy,” the nickname that Molly has for him.
17Molly and Martha, although being shortly identified with one another, stand undoubtedly in a sharply delineated opposition. Martha appears in this chapter under the aegis of chance: it is coincidentally that Martha is also the title of Flotow’s opera, and it is coincidentally that Bloom is hearing an aria from said opera on the same day that he received Martha’s letter. Molly, on the contrary, and Bloom’s interactions, or lack thereof, with her, are guided by fate. As a result, Bloom feels incapable of intervening to stop her from meeting Boylan that afternoon: “Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. […] Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now” (4.447-9). Similarly, Bloom feels that destiny equally presided over his first meeting with his future wife: “First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon’s in Terenure. Yellow, black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her. Fate. […] Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes” (11.725-33). It would be unwise to understand the reference to Molly’s “Spanishy eyes” exclusively as an allusion to the Rose of Castile, although the opera has been mentioned in the chapter before and will be brought up soon after in connection with Simon’s poor relations with his brother-in-law (11.778-92), for her character’s connections with her Spanish descent are portrayed much more broadly in the novel, bestowing upon her the stereotypical imagery of the exotic and sensual Mediterranean woman. Nevertheless, it is interesting to observe that, so far, the Rose of Castile and Martha have made joint appearances in Ulysses, turning up together both in the seventh and eleventh chapters. They are therefore completely absent in Stephen’s day: they belong to the same repertoire of light operas, particularly cherished by Bloom, but foreign to Stephen’s sensibility. Furthermore, they are also both set in far-away lands, whether geographically and/or chronologically. One, then, conjures up the other, in a further connection between Molly, often identified as the “rose of Castile,” and Martha, with whom Flotow’s opera shares a name.
18Somewhat later in the chapter, Lionel’s aria is borrowed for still another purpose and serves now to indicate a prostitute Bloom passes on the street, once he has left the Ormond bar:
A frowsy whore with black straw hat askew came glazily in the day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. […] Off her beat here. […] Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day. (11.1251-59)
19This time, the “form endearing” that Bloom identified with Molly describes a sex worker, whom he does not seem to find so attractive after all and about whom he concludes that she “looks a fright in the day.” In these conditions, the reference to Martha has the function of bringing Molly and the prostitute together: despite their differences, Molly being an object of desire and affection, and the prostitute of contempt and denigration, they are combined in that the latter has acted as a buffer to the loneliness caused by the former. Furthermore, the comparison is even more straightforward because of Molly’s unfaithfulness, and the disdain and the disparagement Bloom brings to bear on the prostitute are now transferred onto her, however briefly. His feeling of loneliness is now brought to the fore, while this motif will be developed to a greater extent in connection with Thomas Moore’s The Last Rose of Summer.
- 11 Gibson, Joyce’s Revenge, 192.
20Outside of the scope of the eleventh chapter, but before the end of the novel, Bloom will be identified with Lionel once more. In the fifteenth episode, taking place between 11 pm and midnight in Dublin’s nighttown, Bloom is following Stephen to make sure he does not get into trouble and does not spend all his money, and is stopped by two soldiers patrolling the streets. To get himself out of this predicament, Bloom pretends to be involved in a “love entanglement” (15.742) and implies that the lady in question would be willing to make the acquaintance of the two servicemen: “I’ll introduce you, inspector. She’s game” (15.746-7). While saying this, he attempts to adopt the manners and turns of phrases of the Anglicized military, as “again and again, Englishness means status, even safety. Adopting English tones, styles, and manners is a way of laying claim to the moral, social, cultural and political high ground.”11 At this point, however, Martha Clifford, the “lady in the case” (15.742), appears “thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish Times in her hand” (15.752-3), and rebukes Bloom: “Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.” Her attire in this instance is perfectly fitting with her role as Bloom’s outraged beloved: the whole scene is drawing on highly stereotyped representational modes, stemming from conventional melodramatic roles in typical Victorian narrative plots.
21After the end of Simon’s exploit, his voice is still ringing in Bloom’s ears:
Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. […] Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. Human life. Dignam. […] Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too. And one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyayeavyheavyevyevyhair uncomb:’d. (11.802-9)
22“Thou lost one” is of course a quote from one of the last lines in Lionel’s aria and Bloom himself now remarks upon the conventional quality of the piece’s expression. The idea of separation then brings about morbid thoughts of death, which in turn lead to Paddy Dignam, whose funeral Bloom attended in the morning. The idea of death alerts Bloom to his own solitude, a particularly excruciating feeling when juxtaposed with Molly’s affair. The possibility of leaving her, which Bloom entertains for a moment, is immediately cast aside at the expectation of pain and suffering that this decision would cause. The image of Molly’s eyes, “goggling at nothing,” brings Bloom back to what he assumes to be happening at his house at that very moment, and to Molly’s uncombed hair. Once again, Bloom anticipates the actual course of events, as Boylan is still on his way.
- 12 Moore, Thomas, Irish Melodies, Complete, to which Are Added National Melodies (Brussels: E. Paul, 1 (...)
23The motif of Bloom’s loneliness is closely linked to and exemplified by The Last Rose of Summer, which begins by “‘Tis the last rose of summer, / Left blooming alone; / All her lovely companions / Are faded and gone,” and ends with “When true hearts lie withered, / And fond ones are flown, / Oh! who would inhabit / This bleak world alone?”12 Abandonment and isolation are then thematised explicitly in the song’s text, in line with a typically Romantic pathetic manner, drawing on the speaker’s self-absorption and identification with nature. It is also interesting to remark that Lionel is alone on the stage, when he sings this romance in Martha.
- 13 Spurr, David, “Joyce’s Debris,” Bloomsday 100. Essays on Ulysses, Morris Beja and Anne Fogarty ed. (...)
24The first occurrence in the chapter of a reference to The Last Rose of Summer has nothing to do with Bloom, nor with loneliness, and comes through the words of Mina Kennedy, one of the waitresses at the Ormond bar, as she is speaking to Ben Dollard, who has just delivered a rendition of the ballad The Croppy Boy: “Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely, murmured Mina. Mr Dollard. And The Last Rose of Summer was a lovely song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina” (11.1175-7). Moore’s piece, then, appears within a conversation between minor characters, describing it as “lovely.” This adjective stands out against the richness and diversity of Joyce’s vocabulary for its trite and vapid quality, further underscored by the fact that “Tankard” (in reality, Ben Dollard, identified here with a tall beer mug to imply that alcohol is speaking) “loved the song that Mina” (11.1177). It does not matter to Ben Dollard which song Mina mentions: he would tell her he loves it because she mentions it, independently of the actual identity of the piece. The Last Rose of Summer, therefore, comes into view for the first time in Ulysses as a prop in a side-plot, whose individuality first hinges on its platitudinous nature and is then taken away to make it interchangeable with virtually any other piece of music of Mina’s taste. It is, in this sense, thoroughly unremarkable and its treatment by Joyce resembles that of other unremarkable things throughout the novel, for example the crumpled throwaway Bloom throws into the Liffey (8.57). In both cases, the objects enjoy “a state of being beyond value,” which “trash shares with the sacred: the former bereft of use or exchange value, the latter transcendent of these, thus creating a kind of symbolic kinship between the two.”13
- 14 White, Harry, “Moore, Thomas,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, 11 September 2023, https://www.dib.ie (...)
- 15 Gibson, Joyce’s Revenge, 26-27.
- 16 Gibson, Joyce’s Revenge, 109.
- 17 Gibson, Joyce’s Revenge, 111.
25Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies testify to the renewed interest in folklore and Celtic culture that arose at the onset of Romanticism. Moore himself described them as “our national music,”14 in overt opposition to English dominance. The revivalist inclination, however, was not the exclusive prerogative of Irish nationalists, but was also shared by the Anglo-Irish. This attitude is exemplified in Ulysses by Haines, whose “sentimental Celticism, his interest in the Irish language and in Irish folklore all associate him with Anglo-Irish revivalism.”15 So, in this context, Moore’s Melodies are awarded the sacred aura of the authentic and primordial expression of the Irish people, where the borderlines “between history and mythology, legend, folklore”16 are blurred in a collective exercise of historical imagination, seeking “to revitalize or rather to reinvent not only the ancient legends but ancient modes of history-telling, specifically, those of the bards.”17 To Joyce’s eyes, on the contrary, these tendencies seemed abhorrent, and the merging of the sacred and the trash functions here as a form of resistance to and trivialisation of the revivalist conception of Irish music and history.
26The next reference to The Last Rose of Summer follows this same strategy of vulgarisation and ridicule and circles back to Bloom’s pitiful loneliness: “Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine. Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last sardine of summer. Bloom alone” (11.1219-20). Here too, the song’s plaintive qualities are derided through the substitution of a rose for a sardine, stripping Moore’s melody of all elegiac melancholy. If the last rose of summer is indeed blooming alone, Bloom’s solitude is not akin to that of the rose, but to that of a headless fish. In this way, The Last Rose of Summer becomes an instrument of scornful humour, bringing into sharp relief the immateriality of Bloom’s fantastical liaison with Martha in comparison with Molly’s disloyalty.
27The goal of this paper has been the examination of the musical geography underpinning some of the key moments in Ulysses, with a particular focus on the eleventh chapter and Molly’s betrayal of her husband. This episode is in fact the focal point where the three major musical references under scrutiny converge. By looking closely at their occurrences and by studying the context where they appear, it has been possible to highlight how and to what extent they participate in the composition of the novel.
28A first significant element is the association of Molly with Spain, exemplified through her connection with The Rose of Castile. Then, Martha plays a similar role in the development and the characterization of Molly’s infidelity and of Bloom’s feelings towards it and towards her, while touching upon the other women in his life. In addition, the colonial context of Ulysses breathes new and unexpected meanings into matters that are rarely brought to bear in such a framework. For example, the ballad “‘Twas rank and fame” from Balfe’s opera acquires a new significance against the backdrop of colonial Ireland, and the same can be said for Martha, particularly in the fifteenth chapter, where it becomes a metonymy for stereotypical Victorian drama, underscoring Bloom’s non-Englishness and his laughable attempts at mimicry of the colonizer. Finally, The Last Rose of Summer is also an object of trivialization and satire, broadly fired at Celtic revivalism in a plain act of subversion on Joyce’s part. As a matter of fact, the sardine, in spite of its ludicrousness, by shattering the symbolism of the rose owing to its merciless irony, does not undermine the power of the narrative to erode the dominant ruling structure and, on the contrary, finds fresh strength in its satirical quality.