In perhaps the most ambitious evening’s reading so far, Navan Ulysses Reading Group will tackle two substantial chapters of Ulysses on May 17th. The group kicks off at 6:30pm sharp in Navan Library and all are welcome.
Nausicaa, the thirteenth chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses is set on Sandymount Strand and sets in parallel two arenas of action. Gerty McDowell, ‘in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see’, flirts with ‘the man in black’ close by on the beach. As things between the mutual voyeurs heat up, so also do the references to the other scene of action central to the chapter: the ceremony of Exposition and Benediction in the nearby Star of the Sea church. In a beautiful conflation of sex and spirit, the mid-summers day draws to the end of its daylight hours.
As we journey back into the city in the book’s fourteenth chapter – Oxen of the Sun – things take on a distinctly different hue. Set in a drinking cubbyhole secreted in a Maternity Hospital, the linguistic style of the chapter itself seems to gestate and develop from beginning to end. An immensely challenging read, we will be dipping into and out of the more decipherable bits of this mammoth literary achievement which brings Bloom and Stephen ever closer to their [re-]union.
See you there – Tuesday at 6:30!
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