Telemachus

The eighteen chapters of Ulysses have no numbers or titles. Readers usually refer to them by the handles that Joyce supplied in his two schemas: names of corresponding "episodes" in the Odyssey. In addition to offering brief introductions to the chapters, then, the headnotes on this website describe how they recast certain elements of Homer's story. Episode 1, "Telemachus," is set in a decommissioned military tower on the rocky coast of Sandycove, seven miles southeast of central Dublin, and it echoes the situation found in the palace on Ithaca at the beginning of the ancient epic. The chapter begins a little after 8:00 AM on 16 June 1904, and concludes at 8:45.

JH 2017

Cover of the 1922 first edition of Ulysses, which Joyce asked to be designed in blue and white to echo the Greek national flag.

Recent photograph of the Sandycove tower taken from the south, offering a glimpse of the white house built in 1937 by Irish architect Michael Scott, who bought the tower in 1954 and set about restoring it. Source: www.totallydublin.ie.

Statue of Telemachus carved by Ludwig Cauer in 1890, displayed in a niche at the foot of the Trillertreppe in the old part of Saarbrücken, photographed by Anna16 in 2014. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Photograph of Joyce taken by C. P. Curran ca. 1904 and reproduced by Ellmann courtesy of Curran. Ellmann reports that Joyce, asked what he was thinking when Curran posed him, replied, "I was wondering would he lend me five shillings."