The rage of Caliban

JOURNEY #17: TO THE CRACKED LOOKING-GLASS

"Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant."

-- Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Ulysses

Picasso's Girl before a Mirror

I'm delighted by how many people have told me they've recently picked up a copy of Ulysses and started reading. 

Yet some new readers have told me that they're finding it daunting to grasp everything that's happening in the novel, and they're thinking about giving up after a couple of chapters.  Rest assured, if you're feeling confused after embarking upon Ulysses, you're not alone.  

To those who find themselves stumped by Ulysses, my advice is simple: "Read on...and stop trying to understand everything that's happening. It's impossible to follow every element of the plot on first reading -- don't even try."  

As I've discussed in earlier posts, Ulysses moves away from traditional literary techniques and conventions.  Reading Ulysses is similar to viewing a cubist painting -- it's like you're looking at a reflection through a cracked looking-glass. Take, for example, Man with Guitar by Pablo Picasso:

Picasso's Man with Guitar

Here, Picasso breaks up the image of a guitar player into its constituent elements, and then reassembles the parts into a form that includes a variety of perspectives.  This cubist image has no single point of view.  While there are some identifiable images (like an ear, a nose, a collar, etc.), the entire picture is, on the whole, an abstraction.

Hypothetically, you could try to reconstruct this image back into a traditional perspective and figure out what the guitar player really looks like.  You'd end up with a photographic-like image of a man playing guitar -- but you'd lack the creativity and emotion of Picasso's cubist painting.  

Similarly, Joyce intentionally wrote Ulysses from various perspectives and points of view.  It should be no surprise that the reader would feel some confusion and discomfort. Ulysses isn't meant to be read like a traditional novel; rather, it's meant to be reread....and reread.  After each reading you gain more context, find new links and better understand how the pieces fit together.  If you're seeking to grasp every element of the plot of Ulysses in one reading, you're in for a rough ride.  

* * * * *

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that context isn't important in Ulysses.  The book becomes infinitely richer as you fill in the blanks and understand how everything fits together.  What I'm saying is that reading Ulysses is a process that entails looking first at the broad canvas and then, ultimately, bearing down and appreciating the fine brush strokes.

Here's an example of how context reinforces the power of Ulysses: in the first chapter, Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus have this conversation:

Laughing again, [Mulligan] brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.

—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:

—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.

-- James Joyce, Ulysses

Joyce assumes the reader is familiar with Caliban: the slave in Shakespeare's The Tempest whose name is synonymous with "monstrous" or "beastly."   Joyce also assumes that the reader is familiar with Oscar Wilde, as the Caliban quote comes directly from the Preface of Wilde's book The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Here's an excerpt from Dorian Gray that puts the Mulligan comment in context:

"The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wilde's quote, in isolation, is a clever comment on how art reflects the spectator as much as it reflects the subject.  Yet, once you consider the other references in Ulysses, you see that Stephen's comment has bite.  Stephen says that the Irish look at themselves through a distorted mirror -- and are really a Caliban-like race that serves the British.

That's powerful stuff for a book written almost a century ago!

But you don't get the reference unless you understand the context.

Bottom line: at first, it's okay not to understand every plot twist in Ulysses; at the outset you can let go of the details and concentrate on the big picture.  But, ultimately, the revolutionary power and pleasure of Ulysses intensifies as you gain insight and attain context -- and that takes time.