Leopold Bloom on Death

Abstract

In Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom’s thought, rising in moments of lyric resonance, forms a sort of “oceansong” (U 11.378) that unites the opening three episodes, devoted to Stephen, to the closing episode, “Penelope,” devoted to Molly.1 Over this expanse, Bloom thinks about many things, and often about death. Joyce does not give to Bloom, as he does to Stephen, such polished lyric resonance as “Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide” (U 1.246–7), nor would Bloom think of anyone, as Stephen does of Mulligan, in observing “He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his” (U 1.152). But at certain moments Joyce subtly enhances Bloom’s thought, so as to give it a homespun eloquence of its own, one able to lampoon the high-flown oratory in “Aeolus” as “gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on” (U 8.381–2). When not mocked by others or undone by the intuition of imminent cuckoldry, Bloom is at home with linguistic play, as evinced by his lively sense of the English alphabet. In “Calypso,” we see this when he muses, “Fresh air helps memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou” (U 4.136–8); in “Hades,” when he recalls the song lyrics, “Has anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy” (U 6.373–4); and in “Aeolus,” when he reflects, “It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall” (U 7.166–9). In these reflections on language, often breezy and at times moving, we hear Bloom’s thought rise in moments of lyric expression. The theme to inspire most often this lyric resonance is human mortality: Bloom’s reflections on death move him to particular eloquence. While Stephen is haunted by a morbid preoccupation with death, particularly his mother’s, and while Molly recalls the pathos of her infant son Rudy’s