I have always been fascinated by Ulysses, but  its density of language defeated me when I tried to read in its entirety; so I would dip into it, concentrating on one section of the book at a time.  The novel records the events of a day in 1904 in the life of Leopold Bloom – a Dubliner and second-generation Jewish immigrant, and therefore both insider and outsider. Set into the narrative of a Dublin Ulysses’ return to his somewhat unchaste Penelope (Molly) are several virtuoso set-pieces. One of these presents mundane narrative details in the form of a mad questionnaire; another travels through English literature from Middle English to the twentieth century, parodying its stylistic patterns. In this section, at the point which represents early Tudor English, I found the following:

“Therefore, Everyman, look to that end which is thy death and the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth from his mother’s womb so naked shall he wend him at the last.”

This parody of the King James Bible (Book of Job, ch. 1 v. xxi) seemed fittingly earthy for voices and viols; and Bloom’s calm, non-religious meditation on death after he attends a friend’s funeral counterbalances the dazzling life-force projected by the novel as a whole, which culminates in Molly Bloom’s naughty and beautiful soliloquy at its close. Around and between these I have set a variety of related fragments – including lines from Night town (a surreal dramatic sketch set in Dublin’s red light district), and a mad litany which vividly recalls the insane Catholic indoctrination of my early childhood. The overall message, as I see it, is that life is brief, messy and wonderful – and far grander and more important than the sum of our human endeavours:

“Once you are dead you are dead.

No one is anything.”

Some may find this scary; to me it has the calm ring of truth, and offers perspective, acceptance and consolation.

Giles Swayne