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The "Proteus" episode takes place along the Sandymount strand. Notice a Martello tower in this PC from the 1950s. |
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"Signatures of all things I am here to read," (U3.2) |
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"seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured." (U3.2) |
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"Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time." (U3.10) |
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"Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?" (U3.21) It has been suggested that these lines reference Madeleine Lemaire (1845-1928), a French painter famous for portraits and flowers. Of possible (remote) relevance, Lemaire painted in the 1880's a picture of Ophelia that was shockingly untraditional: she showed Shakespeare's heroin leering with the glowering light of a vampire in her eyes, her dress slipped off her shoulders to reveal her breasts, thus suggesting that Ophelia's madness may have been driven, at least in part, by sexual frustration. |
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"Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him." (U3.45) |
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"With beaded mitre and with crozier," (U3.52)
A mitre is the official headdress of a bishop in the Western Church, a tall cap with a top deeply cleft crosswise, the outline of the front and back resembling that of a pointed arch. A crozier is the ceremonial staff carried by a bishop or an abbot, hooked at one end like a shepherd's crook. |
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In this PC of an Irish woman 'Going to Mass,' the mitre and crozier are emblems of Irish Catholicism. Others are the Muckross Abbey and the cross of Monasterboice. |
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"- He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his guncase?
- A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk? - I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off." (U1.57) |
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"I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait." (U3.70) |
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"Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!" (U3.90)
Lithia water is mineral water containing lithium (Li) salts. Medicinal interest in Li began in the mid-1800s when Lipowitz and Ure reported that Li solutions dissolved uric acid crystals. This led to the belief that lithium was useful in gout, and other diseases thought to be due to an imbalance in uric acid (including angina, asthma, arthritis, depression, headaches, hypertension, epilepsy). Lithium is used nowadays in the treatment of mood disorders. |
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"Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose." (U3.128)
'Red nose' could mean alcoholism. An ad to cure it from Pearson's Magazine (1905) |
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"You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still!" (U3.130) |
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"You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still!" (U3.130) |
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"On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: naked women! naked women! What about that, eh?" (U3.133)
A tram line connecting Sutton Station to Howth opened in 1901. It was 5 five mile long, and was operated by the Great Northern Railway. On this PC, notice the tram's open upper level, where Stephen would likely be standing in the rain. |