The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 018

by James Joyce

— You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?

— It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.

— You pique my curiosity, Haines said aimiably. Is it some paradox?

— Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and
paradoxes. It’s quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is
Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.

— What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?

Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in
loose laughter, said to Stephen’s ear :

— O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!

— We’re always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is
rather long to tell.

Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.

— The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.

— I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this
tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o’er
his base into the sea, isn’t it?

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did
not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap
dusty mourning between their gay attires.

— It’s a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.

Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.
The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
smokeplume of the mailboat, vague on the bright skyline, and a sail tacking
by the Muglins.

— I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused.
The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.

Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at
them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had
suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a
doll’s head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to
chant in a quiet happy foolish voice :

— I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.

 My mother’s a jew, my father’s a bird.

 With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree,

 So here’s to disciples and Calvary.

Annotations

Elsinore

English name for the Danish city of Helsingør, where Shakepeare's Hamlet takes place

That beetles o’er his base into the sea

Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 4, spoken by Horatio.