#ulysses

When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing. ↗

— Raymond Queneau

#astonishing #continue #epic #hears #his

Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#heroism #poetry #ulysses #age

The book [Joyce's "Ulysses"] can just as well be read backwards, for it has no back and no front, no top and no bottom. Everything could easily have happened before, or might have happened afterwards. You can read any of the conversations just as pleasurably backwards, for you don't miss the point of the gags. Every sentence is a gag, but taken together they make no point. You can also stop in the middle of a sentence--the first half still makes sense enough to live by itself, or at least seems to. The whole work has the character of a worm cut in half, that can grow a new head or a new tail as required. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#joyce #ulysses #ulysses-novel #art

It [Joyce's "Ulysses"] plays on the reader's sympathies to his own undoing unless sleep kindly intervenes and puts a stop to this drain of energy. Arrived at page 135, after making several heroic efforts to get at the book, to "do it justice", as the phrase goes, I fell at last into profound slumber. ↗

— C.G. Jung

#joyce #ulysses #ulysses-novel #art

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. ↗

— Alfred Tennyson

#tennyson #ulysses #change

I, too, like to read. Once a month, I go to the local branch. For myself, I pick a novel and, for Bruno, with his cataracts, a book on tape. At first Bruno was doubtful. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he said, looking at the box set of “Anna Karenina” as if I’d handed him an enema. And yet. A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, ALL HAPPY FAMILIES RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER, nearly giving me a conniption. After that, he listened to whatever I’d brought him at top volume and then returned it to me without comment. One afternoon, I came back from the library with Ulysses. For a month straight he listened. He had a habit of pressing the stop button and rewinding when he hadn’t fully grasped something. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY. Pause. INELUCT. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#joyce #ulysses #business

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. ↗

— James Joyce

#james-joyce #meat #offal #ulysses #food

(...) You cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop. ↗

— James Joyce

#joyce #ulysses #humor

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength. ↗

— Ovid

#classics #greek #humans #intelligence #metamorphoses

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. ↗

— James Joyce

#life