No subject

[David Morris]

Benny Profane’s yo-yoing in the subways of New York are presaged by another 
half-Jew half-Catholic, Leopold Bloom, as he imagines leaving his home and 
wife without giving her any announcement, presumably with most of the 
household bank:

http://www.trentu.ca/jjoyce/ulys17.htm

Ulysses, Chapter 17

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“Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?
Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary 
orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, 
astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing 
from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he 
would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey the summons of 
recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he 
would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia 
and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, a 
wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with 
financial resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the 
silver king.

What would render such return irrational?
An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through
reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible
time.

What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable?
The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity of the 
night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughfares, rendering 
perilous: the necessity for repose, obviating movement: the proximity of an 
occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of warmth (human) 
tempered with coolness (linen), obviating desire and rendering desirable: 
the statue of Narcissus, sound without echo, desired desire. “

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Like Benny, Bloom is also a sort of schlemiel, at least he is considered so 
by those around him.  Unlike Benny, he only imagines throwing himself into 
orbit, chosing instead to climb into the depression in his bed next to his 
wife left by another man.

David Morris




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