Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. (From Ulysses , part 2, section 4.)
So, Joyce introduces his main character. And isn't it glorious? As a vegetarian, it is not the aroma of bacon sandwiches which calls me back to the life of a carnivore, but this passage. Who can resist the fine tang of faintly scented urine?
Joyce writes not of the wealthy or the extraordinary. He writes of a common man who by degrees becomes anything but common. The world moves around him as he moves around Dublin. He is stranded on one day in the early twentieth century but also here and now.
Comments