Ulysses & The Odyssey - Wandering Rocks

‘Wandering Rocks,’” following immediately on Stephen’s theorizing, is Joyce’s most complete celebration of Dublin, demonstrating succinctly his conception of the importance of physical reality, meticulously documented, as the soil from which fictions may best grow.” - Clive Hart

The Odyssey - Book XII

Circe advises Odysseus on how to sail safely home. She warns him not to attempt sailing through the Wandering Rocks, a stretch of sea so difficult to cross that not even birds can fly over it and live to tell the tale. The only ship to ever pass through safely was the Argo, and that was only because Hera had the hots for Jason and protected his voyage. Odysseus and his crew decide not to sail through the Wandering Rocks, opting instead for the twin horror of Scylla and Charybdis, the lesser of two evils. The Wandering Rocks do not appear in The Odyssey.

“Wandering Rocks,” Ulysses’ tenth episode is arguably the least Homeric of all of the novel’s eighteen episodes, as it takes its name from a peril that just came up in conversation one time between Odysseus and Circe. According to Stuart Gilbert’s book Ulysses: A Study, even the name “Wandering Rocks” is off-base as their name in Greek (Planctae) is closer to something like “Clashers” than Wanderers. The Planctae were seaborne rocks drifting around a certain patch of sea, smashing up boats and exploding them into a million pieces. In the Argonautica, Jason and the Argo do pass through the Planctae, but only on the return journey once they’ve retrieved the Golden Fleece. On the way out to find the Golden Fleece, Jason had previously encountered an unrelated set of deadly rocks: the Symplegades, two enormous rocks on either side of the Bosphorus that collide on a regular cycle. Jason released a dove to fly between the Symplegades to help him predict their movement. The Argo followed the dove’s example and sailed between the rocks, incurring only minimal damage. After this, the Symplegades stopped moving (presumably out of embarrassment?)

The Symplegades don’t play a role in Odysseus’ journey, but they are symbolically resonant in the landscape of Dublin. Like Istanbul and the Bosphorus, Dublin is also bisected by a river flowing between two banks. North and South are significant designations in Dublin, dividing the city by class. South Dublin is predominantly made up of leafy green affluent neighborhoods, while North Dublin is a working class concrete jungle. South and North Dublin even have distinctive accents. The gulf between the haves and have-nots creates tension within Dublin, a tension keenly felt in “Wandering Rocks.” This tension is further reflected in Ulysses’ Linati schema, which lists the meaning of “Wandering Rocks” as “the hostile environment.” Dublin’s Bosphorus even has a tiny Argo navigating its waves in this episode – the crumpled Elijah throwaway that Bloom has tossed in the river back in “Lestrygonians.” The Elijah-Argo is eventually borne out to sea by the tide, passing unscathed between the Dublin docks. Turning back to The Odyssey one final time, Gilbert points out that Dublin’s Odysseus, Leopold Bloom, “excels his great precursor” as he not only attempts to pass the Wandering Rocks that Odysseus avoided, but he also survives both the Rocks and Scylla and Charybdis unscathed.

Correspondences

Mechanics

The Gilbert schema lists the art of “Wandering Rocks” as mechanics. Gilbert describes the mythical Wandering Rocks as a “blind mechanism,” the rare non-personified natural force in The Odyssey. Instead, the Clashers smash mindlessly into each other at regular intervals, creating “storms of ruinous fire.” The Rocks’ mechanical nature is mimicked on a small scale in images like Tom Rochford’s invention, the Trinity College bicycle race, and even Almidano Artifoni’s “sturdy trousers,” which Gilbert likens to something worn by H.G. Wells’ Martians. Gilbert felt that “Wandering Rocks’” structure is mechanical overall, as “its eighteen parts interlock like a system of cog-wheels or the linked segments of an endless chain.”

Frank Budgen, in his book James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, offers a different interpretation: “In ‘Wandering Rocks’ the action goes forward at clockspeed.” Budgen saw the tyranny of the clock and timetable as an outgrowth of the mechanical age of the steam engine and railroads. The fact that ordinary people could know the time within the minute or second re-ordered societal expectations around precise schedules and punctuality. Additionally, Budgen viewed the characters’ movements as mechanical in and of themselves; in fact, we encounter many of the Dubliners drifting around, seemingly with no will-power or agency. The episode takes place at 3 pm, an hour when busy people should be reaching the peak of the work day. Needless to say, no one is maximizing their productivity in “Wandering Rocks.”

Labyrinth

The technic of “Wandering Rocks” is listed in the Gilbert schema as “labyrinth,” which fits well with the art of mechanics, as a labyrinth must be built by a fabulous artificer. “Wandering Rocks” is a major stylistic departure from the first nine episodes of Ulysses. The episode is subdivided into 18 sections, all of which take place simultaneously and occasionally intrude on one another in interpolations that can feel perplexing and jarring on a first read, though it is possible to pick up on the overall rhythm of the episode as one continues to read. Gilbert sees this structure as an extension of the episode’s labyrinth technic, making it a “small-scale model of Ulysses as a whole,” while scholar Daniel Schwarz sees it as a “bathetic version of the novel’s structure.” Scholar Hans Walter Gabler stated that this episode, written in 1919, is the first subdivided episode of Ulysses, as “Aeolus’” characteristic headlines were added later. “Wandering Rocks,” by contrast, always had its subdivisions and interpolations in place from the first draft onward.

Budgen told the story of how, while writing “Wandering Rocks,” Joyce and his daughter Lucia got hooked on a game called “Labyrinth” and would play it together every evening. Joyce tracked his errors in Labyrinth the game and organized them into “six main errors of judgment.” Unfortunately, Budgen doesn’t expand on what these six main errors were, but the Joyce-built labyrinth of “Wandering Rocks” is no different. The labyrinth itself tempts us with errors, so it is necessary to proceed with caution.

In this spirit, Joyce has purposely buried a series of traps in “Wandering Rocks”: little red herrings that can trick or divert the reader from the true course. If you’re not careful, you’ll wind up totally lost in some Joycean oubliette. A great example that we’ve already covered in a previous post is Blazes Boylan’s secretary Miss Dunne as a potential identity for Bloom’s saucy pen pal Martha Clifford. While thinking about a recently read novel, Miss Dunne questions, “Is he in love with that one, Marion?” This is such an enticing little tidbit that makes it seem like she’s really thinking about Henry Flower’s wife. However, Gilbert uses this as a prime example of misleading information tucked into the episode to throw the reader off course. We’ll cover more specifics of Joyce’s traps in future posts about the characters of “Wandering Rocks.”

The question remains how to escape Joyce’s labyrinth. Daniel Schwarz offers some advice in his book Reading Joyce’s Ulysses: be a Dedalus, not an Icarus. As readers, we must use our creativity and intelligence to navigate the labyrinth and fly free. At the same time, we mustn’t fly too high, which Schwarz defines as overreading and overreaching. This is harder than it seems at first glance. Haines’ quip that “Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds that have lost their balance” may also ring true for you and me when it comes to Joyce’s labyrinth. Assuming you’re too clever to be trapped makes you much more vulnerable to traps.

Blood

If you’re starting to think this whole bloody thing is too much trouble, then you’ve stumbled into this episode’s correspondent organ: blood! Just as we examined the heart as the correspondent organ in “Hades,” a lot of the imagery attached to blood in “Wandering Rocks” is related to circulation. The Liffey acts as the main artery of Dublin, with the Elijah throwaway (inscribed with the “blood of the lamb”) as a tiny corpuscle flowing on its tide. Mark Osteen writes in the book The Economy of Ulysses that the symbolic blood of “Wandering Rocks” takes the form of both monetary and social currency. All the Dubliners we meet act as blood cells cascading through the veins and arteries of the heart of the Hibernian Metropolis.

There is corruption in the flow of blood, though, hinted at by the image of the Poddle River’s “tongue of liquid sewage.” Osteen notes that the circulation of “Wandering Rocks” takes the form of mainly unequal exchanges, including borrowing, pawning, gift-giving, gambling, and auctioning. The inequality of exchange and flow of currency demonstrates the inequality inherent in the society strangled by Stephen’s two masters from “Telemachus” – one English (the imperial government, represented by the Viceregal Cavalcade) and one Italian (the Catholic Church, represented by Father Conmee). These are the two boulders looming over the dangerous straits our brave heroes must pass through.

The Structure of “Wandering Rocks”

“Wandering Rocks” recreates on the page one of the most detailed snapshots of Dublin in 1904 in the whole of Ulysses; this is the episode Joyce was referring to when he made the famous statement that Dublin could be rebuilt from ruins using Ulysses as a guide. Dublin is widely recognized to be the main character of the episode, momentarily sidelining Leopold, Stephen, or Molly, who all make appearances but do not get greater emphasis than any of the minor characters who share the pages. Budgen said of the episode, “Among the normal citizens drift the vague personages, freaks, and naturals of the city.” Recreating Dublin for Joyce was not just about placing businesses and homes at their proper addresses, but including as many of its people as possible.

Budgen described how, using a map of Dublin and a ruler, Joyce calculated to the minute the movements of each character, marking the major characters like Father Conmee in red. For the Elijah throwaway, he consulted records of tidal conditions to make sure it drifted at just the right speed and distance given that day’s conditions. Scholar Clive Hart decided to check Joyce’s math on the ground in Dublin, spending many days walking up and down the streets described so meticulously in “Wandering Rocks,” noting the times and calculating the mean time it took to traverse each section. Hart became a one-man “Wandering Rocks” during his experiment, a microcosm of a microcosm; he was delighted to be passed at one point by President Éamon de Valera’s presidential motorcade, which would have departed the Áras an Uachtaráin, formerly the Viceregal Lodge, in the Phoenix Park, on its way to inaugurate the Dublin Horse Show in Ballsbridge. Hart compiled his findings into an incredibly detailed chart which you can find at the end of his essay on “Wandering Rocks” in the book James Joyce’s Ulysses: Critical Essays. In Hart’s opinion, all the movements described in “Wandering Rocks” are possible.

As a coda to Hart’s calculations, an attempt was made at the 1982 International James Joyce Symposium to recreate “Wandering Rocks” on the streets of Dublin with actors and members of the public. Gabler recalled it as “triumphant and bathetic at the same time.” The entire re-enactment took place over an hour in different locations, mainly around the city center of Dublin. Like in Ulysses, the characters often passed within a few streets of one another but never crossed paths. Some were indoors in stationary locations. As a result, spectators could only see a small part of the whole at any given time. Hart himself had the role of Conmee, making the Jesuit priest’s journey from Mountjoy Square on Dublin’s northside, catching a tram, and then continuing on foot to Artane. Hart made the journey in full, elaborate costume on the commuter train that had since replaced the old trams. Joyce described Conmee walking through open fields north of Dublin, but those fields had long been paved over by the early 1980’s. As one would assume spectators would want to maximize the scenes they could watch in the city center, Gabler wrote, “[Hart] sadly had to admit that his exercise had been entirely solitary.”