In the library Stephen utters two of the most frequently
quoted sentences in all of Ulysses, which happen also
to be two of the most misunderstood: "A man
of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are
the portals of discovery." And the narrator, whoever that
might be, seems to think something memorable has been said,
because the following sentence reads, "Portals of discovery
opened to let in the quaker librarian,
softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous." This strange echo
of a character's words signals important changes that are
coming in the book's narrative method.
In one part of Hades Bloom seems unaccountably to be
responding
to something the narrator has said. Here in Scylla
and Charybdis the narrator seems to be responding to
something Stephen has said, with what seems a whiff of
ridicule. (Portals of discovery?? That's a bit grand,
isn't it? The only portals I see are made of wood.) These
passages, and another one which will
come early in Sirens, appear to exceed the unstated
limits of free indirect discourse.
According to those implicit rules, the style of the narrative
may approximate the thoughts or words of a given character,
sinking briefly into that person's orbit and helping readers
to see the world through his or her eyes. The narrator may
not, however, enter the cast of characters by engaging in
direct conversation. To do so would be to violate the reader's
expectation of receiving a detached, objective report of what
is happening. What would become of a novel if its trusted
narrative voice should suddenly fragment into a variety of
subjective viewpoints?
Readers of Ulysses are about to find out. In Wandering
Rocks the single source of reportage dissolves into a
fairly bewildering variety of objective viewpoints,
jumping all around Dublin, glancing now at this group of
characters and now at that one, and even mixing bits of some
scenes into the reporting of others. In every subsequent
chapter, subjective viewpoints proliferate. Parodic voices
alternate with objective narration in Cyclops and
Nausicaa, and in Oxen of the Sun and Eumaeus
such voices take over entirely. Circe adopts the form
of a drama, abandoning third-person narration in favor of
letting characters (and countless non-characters) speak for
themselves. The abandonment of third-person narration
culminates in the novel's final two chapters. Ithaca
takes the form of impersonal questions and answers, though the
catechism is shot through with subjectivity and whimsical
caprice. Penelope offers a pure monologue, neither a
narrative nor a drama but simply a woman thinking––or talking,
or writing.
"Portals of discovery" also announces the sharpening of
another narrative device––repetitions of previously used
phrases. This has been happening for a long time: Stephen
thinks, says, or hears something in Telemachus or Nestor
and that thing recurs in his thoughts, often with verbatim
recall, in Nestor or Proteus: "odour of
rosewood and wetted ashes," "history is to blame," "He proves
by algebra," "omphalos," "saved men from drowning," "oinopa
ponton," "Five fathoms," "one great goal," "burying his
grandmother." Similar phrases recur in Bloom's thoughts, and
Tom Kernan's fondness for the phrase "retrospective
arrangement" is noted and recalled by others. But in later
chapters such phrases escape the contents of characters'
thoughts and begin to figure prominently in the author's
narrative art. Sirens plays with them to form
quasi-musical variations on thematic motifs, and Circe uses
them to construct an industrial-scale recirculating mechanism
in which hundreds of previously heard verbal fragments whirl
about as if the whole day is being seen through the window of
a washing machine. For veteran readers of Ulysses one
of this chapter's pleasurable challenges is recalling the
source every time such a familiar string of words appears on
the page.
When the narrator of Scylla and Charybdis pointedly
repeats what Stephen has said, readers are put on notice that
the book itself is listening to, remembering, and thinking
about what happens in it. As in the akasic records that
preserve everything on the astral plane, anything heard, said,
or done on June 16 may come back to fill consciousness again
and perhaps open portals of discovery.
