I’m still stumbling through Ulysses, mired in the mind of Stephan Dedalus’ musings in Proteus. Dense stuff, but fascinating. I’m getting good info from the podcast I follow. It’s going pretty much line by line, with about 45 minutes of discussion on each segment. I’m astounded at the nuance and depth of Joyce’s thinking, and the humor. I made a run through it without explanatory text, and it’s much easier to navigate this time than it was the first few times I read the novel. The whole Aristotle (Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.) vs. Berkeley/Boehme approaches to the physical world. But still. Damn. Wish I’d read more philosophy.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.— Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!