The Great Bloomsday Read-A-Long

Hello everybody! I know I have ignored blogging about Ulysses, but fear not: I'm still reading. I'm currently half-way through Circe, which I'm loving. I've been reading quietly and desperately trying to find something to say that would be insightful and interesting, but kept ending up feeling inadequate and not writing. But here we are: Bloomsday just passed and I'm reading Ulysses and I feel I should mark the day somehow (although it's not the first time Bloomsday catches me reading Ulysses, I was a few pages in this time last year).

So I'll address some of the points brought up by Emily and Lori during the weeks I was away, and bring up a topic of my own.

Writing styles: your favorites, least favorites, how do they work, etc.

I like the writing in the first three episodes (when we're following Stephen) the most. I like how visual the writing is here (more so, I think, than any other episode until Circe) and I like the constant back and forth between Stephen being over-dramatic and Stephen mocking himself. 

There are quite a few bits of these episodes that I remember off the top of my head, at least enough to search for them efficiently:

Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful.

The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes.

What doesn't exactly work for me is when Joyce is blatantly parodying popular writing styles of the era (like he does in the romance-y beginning of Nausicaa), though, to be honest, this is mostly because I'm never sure if I'm in on the joke.

Ulysses Read-Along: First Impressions

For last week, Emily suggested as a discussion topic first impressions, and I want to talk about how I felt about Ulysses the first time I picked it up and how that changed.

To be honest, the first time I tried reading Ulysses, in high school, I did not like it at all, and I only made it as far as Aeolus through sheer stubbornness. I think my dislike was due to the fact that I never got immersed. I have one of those heavily-annotated editions, where the notes double the thickness of the volume. I figured the notes are there because they are important, because you cannot get everything out of the book without them. And I did want to get everything out of it. So I thought I should read all the notes; not as I encountered them, but to have a master check-up at least every few pages. Of course, then I would need to re-read the text with the notes in mind. Except I wouldn't remember half the explanations (many of which didn't mean anything without an even more detailed context of 1904 Dublin), and I would have to do this a couple of times more. I could appreciate how smart some of the connections were, or how elegantly Joyce could reference in a phrase a story that took a page of explanations in the notes, but re-reading something you've just read isn't very fun. So my first impression of Ulysses was that it's a clever book, but also i) very boring, and ii) pointless to read since I will never get all of it. 

I was about to make the same mistake when I started again, but then a birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl... happened and it was so beautiful and I just wanted to read on and know the story. I didn't stop again until Proteus, where I found it fascinating, rather than frustrating, to read up on Aristotle in order to be able to follow Stephen's thoughts. Now I make notes of things that I don't get but make me curious, and I try to keep the balance between looking up details and staying with the book. And of course I will not get everything out of it, but that's ok.

This time around, I actually have impressions about characters and situations and language, and not only about the book. I find Stephen adorably obnoxious, I think Buck Mulligan is funny but I empathize with Stephen's cringing around him, and I like Bloom a lot. I also have a very long, very fast-growing, list of phrases and sentences that I love. 

Reading after Bloomsday

So Bloomsday passed and it was wonderful. I really enjoyed reading and following everyone's updates yesterday. Unlike the insanely awesome o who read the whole of Ulysses yesterday, I only got up to section 7. I did enjoy it, though, and I like the system of writing down some quick thoughts after I read an episode, so I'm going to continue my reading today (and probably tomorrow as well) and update this post as I go. I suppose it's no longer a readalong, but I find that keeping track of my progress this way is nice. I want to write a review for Ulysses after I'm done, so I can cross it off the Classics Club list as well. So, without further ado: 

Episode VII: Aeolus

I remember this section being awfully confusing. This time around I had better luck with it, mostly because it occurred to me that I should ignore the newspaper headlines that break up the text. Without them, this piece is not at all different from the funeral episode that precedes it. Still, the text moved awfully fast and there were a lot of characters and conversations to keep track of. You know those stock exchange sequences in movies? When everyone is yelling at the same time and you can barely follow? It was a little like that, except that people were yelling lines from Shakespeare and obscure jokes. Still, if Joyce based this on the chaos of howling winds, then it makes perfect sense. I felt it was useless to even read the notes for all the references.

Favorite quote: 

We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. DOMINUS! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!

I love this. It's the perfect subtle satire.

Favorite character: 

I very much sympathized with Stephen when he thinks "Dublin. I have much, much to learn.", mostly because I felt the same. But my favorite character in this section was Leopold. I enjoy his perspective, find it much easier to follow and he's so aww-worthy when he thinks of Molly. It was very interesting to see the difference in the way Stephen and Bloom are treated at the newspaper HQ. They belong to different worlds. 

Episode VIII: Lestrygonians 

This is my favorite section so far and it also contains my favorite line from Ulysses (I very much doubt anything will be able to surpass it). I feel the need to talk about why this section touched me. So in this section we get Leopold's stream of consciousness as he leaves the newspaper quarters, strolls through Dublin, goes to lunch and then ends up at the library. As he does so, he is constantly thinking of Molly. He knows that Blazes Boylan, her manager, will visit her during the day and he suspects she is/will be cheating on him with Boylan. His thoughts constantly return to that through the narrative and every time he decides there is nothing he can do; he cannot stop this. And every time these thoughts are mixed with his own desire for Molly. Watch their succession:

Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all. (...) A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.

I remember reading that Joyce worked a lot on that last sentence to make it perfect. I don't even find it good. But this is the first hint, an anticipation of much more powerful paragraphs to follow. Here's the next one, with Bloom eating and someone asking him about his wife's career.

Isn’t Blazes Boylan mixed up in it?

A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom’s heart. He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.

His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly, longingly.

"A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom's heart." That to me says more than all the mute obscure craves. And then comes the high point of this, my favorite passage from this book. Bloom is eating, contemplating exotic foods and then this happens:

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.

Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.

I don't even know where to start with this. With the Proustian episode of memory-inducing wine, caught so beautifully in one sentence: "Touched his sense moistened remembered"? With the lovemaking scene at Howth Head, which is the same scene that Molly remembers at the end, in her famous soliloquy? With how episode is framed by those damn flies, which make me feel SO sorry for Leopold? Or with the perfect line, "Me. And me now"? (Who hasn't felt like that at times?) This is why I said that Joyce can keep together gross details, dirty humor, sex while writing about as deep a feeling as any other writer. I felt this passage like a punch.

Episode IX: Scylla and Charybdis

This was another one of those episodes that I remembered were horribly HARD to follow the first time I read the book and that provided me with a pleasant surprise this time around. This is turning into an experience that's all about me and my progress as a reader. (Yay for narcissism!) I know a lot more stuff than I did the first time I tackled this book, and part of that stuff I know because of this book. So I didn't get completely lost during Stephen's conversation about Shakespeare. (Which is not to say I didn't still need the notes.) I'm still trying to figure out the importance of this conversation for the novel as a whole. I suppose it contributes to the larger father theme, but I confess that this theme never actually clicked into place for me, not entirely. Also, bah, is there anyone who would actually pick Aristotle over Plato? Stephen, you suck.

Favorite quotes:

This was the chapter for favorite one-liners:

"He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage."

"A father is a necessary evil."

"A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella."

And also, this:

Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

Stuff to follow up on: 

• Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (having gone through a Hamlet obsession really helped with this chapter. I suppose it would have been better if I had read this as well. And a bunch of other stuff, but I doubt I'll actually read everything that's mentioned here, so this will have to do.)
• Mallarmé, Hamlet et Fortinbras, Hamlet ou le distrait
• Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, I love this guy's Contes Cruels, and maybe it's time to give his plays a try at all.
• Goether, Wilhelm Meister
• Maeterlinck, La sagesse et la destinée. Because OMG, he says this and I want to read more: "If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend."
• Oscar Wilde, Intentions

 .
Episode X: The Wandering Rocks 

I got a little distracted by some other books and stopped reading Ulysses for a couple of days. (It is a constant problem with me. It will say on my tombstone, "Here lies Claudia. She would have been a great [insert awesome profession here] and [insert personal relationship here], but she got distracted".) Anyway, this episode was like a puzzle waiting to be pieced together. It was, like Aeolus, an episode that I imagined as a movie sequence, with close-ups of a bunch of characters whose trajectories intersect in the end. Not my favorite thing to read, but interesting, I guess.

Favorite quote: 

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

So yes, this is said against Stephen and his theories about Shakespeare from the previous episode. It is, however, a great line :)

Favorite character: 

Stephen's sister, Dilly. After their mother's death, Stephen's sisters had to make ends meet on their own. Their father is helpless and Stephen, for all his whining about conscience, is above helping them. It might interfere with his navel-gazing, you see. Despite this, we get a glimpse at Dilly wanting to learn things, using some of the (little) money her father gave her to buy a French primer. Stephen got an education and left home. In this chapter a priest intervenes so that Dignam's son can get a free education. It just highlights the difference in opportunities between girls and boys and makes me want to give Dilly a hug.

Episode XI: Sirens 

Joyce starts to play with language here. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this chapter. It was one of those times when I got what's happening and why, but I was not convinced by it. Take for example, the beginning, the two pages of random quotes from the chapter that's to follow. It works on two levels. First, within the music theme that's heavy in this chapter. It's like you're listening to the first motifs in a symphony (or perhaps just to the warm up?). Secondly, it's like a parody of those novels that have mottos at the beginning of each chapter (I'm looking at you, George Eliot). You can't possibly get those mottos without returning to them after you've read the chapter. In the same way, you can't get the first two pages of this chapter without having read it in its entirety. It's smart. And the language games are pretty. At the same time, meh.

Episode XII: Cyclops 

I loved this episode. Joyce excels at portraying the mixture between narrow-mindedness, bigotry and chauvinism that is nationalism. The people assembled at the bar, but especially the Citizen, are the Cyclops. They are one-eyed in that they can't see beyond their biased worldview. And that worldview includes: glorification of their own country (here, Ireland), demonizing other countries (here, England), mistrust of foreigners, xenophobia, racism (catch the moment where they read of a lynching in America and rejoice), ignorance and general paranoia. And all this for a myth built by the 19th century through texts much like the ones Joyce imitates here. Nations are an illusion, but the only person who sees that here is Bloom. Bloom, who is the voice of reason throughout (or perhaps not reason, but just empathy and basic human decency) and finally stands up for himself at the end, when the underlying hatred of the group turns to real violence.

At the beginning of this chapter I was wondering if it wasn't too much to ask of a reader to follow all the references to Irish history and to topics that would have been the fodder of newspapers in 1904. It's probably still an issue, but I no longer think of that. Because this slightly surreal conversation right here, with its ignorant pride and bigotry? I know it. I've seen it play out, except that the names of the countries involved and the minorities demonized were different. Well done, Joyce, I'll remember this episode when you foist more unreadable stuff on me.

Favorite quotes: 

–Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations.
–But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse.
–Yes, says Bloom.
–What is it? says John Wyse.
–A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place.
–By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I’m a nation for I’m living in the same place for the past five years.

After what I said above, it stands to reason that I'd like this fragment. It continues with Bloom claiming he's Irish because he was born in Ireland and the Citizen spitting to the side in reply. And that's the problem. It's not only that nations are an illusion, but they are not even a helpful one. They are an illusion that allows people to persecute other people. I'm not surprised that this book was written during World War I.

Continued here.

Reading for Bloomsday

Bloomsday is here and I'm up at an ungodly hour to start reading. (YMMV as to what "ungodly" means.) I will be reading Ulysses throughout the day, tweeting lines of the book as I go for the Tweeting Ulysses event and checking in with the people in the Bloomsday Readalong hosted by o from Délaissé.

This post will be updated with my progress as I go. I haven't decided yet if I'm aiming to finish the whole book today. I've already read Ulysses once, so, on one hand, I could push myself to reread it in its entirety in one day. On the other hand, I also feel like taking a detour to explore some of Joyce's references, particularly the literary ones. So I might stop to read some Yeats along the way, or I could just make a list of all the references and keep it as reading material for next week. We'll see.

Check back here for my progress in a couple of hours. And now... here we go.  Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead....

Episode I: Telemachus

This flew by easier than I expected. I remember the effort it took me to follow the dialogue the first time around. It's like you're dropped in the middle of a real life conversation that you have to do your best to follow. Even though I had read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and was familiar with some of the historical background, my best was not good enough and I spent a lot of time going "Huh? WHAT are they talking about now?" I also remember reading the word "Chrysostomos," looking it up and thinking that if I'm supposed to get all that just from a character opening his mouth, then I'm screwed. This time, though, I felt I was on top of it and that I could actually follow what everyone was saying and why they were saying it. I said hello to Chrysostomos, my old buddy. It was a good start and it's making me feel hopeful about the rest. :)

Favorite quote: 

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

I love how the undercurrent of Stephen's grief and guilt over his mother's death comes to the surface here. Joyce has this way of succinctly describing emotions that gives me the shivers. "Pain, that was not yet the pain of love" might be the best description of the mix of feelings after someone one's death I've ever read.

Favorite character: 

Buck Mulligan. I can't help it. I just sympathize with Mercutio-like characters. (And isn't Mulligan more Mercutio to Stephen's Romeo than he is a fake-Horatio to Stephen's Hamlet, as people describe him?) I know he's vulgar, I know he's irreverent and I know he treats Stephen badly. I get why he's in the story. But, at the same time, The Ballad of Joking Jesus is funny. And I like people that don't take themselves seriously. I wouldn't mind reading more of Buck Mulligan.

Stuff to follow up on:

I want to read some of the things that were referenced here. (I'm reading an annotated edition, and I try  to keep up with the notes as well, though I constantly forget to check them as I fool myself that I get what's happening I read ahead. Oh well.) Since making plans for what to read next is my favorite activity (much surpassing reading itself), here's my list:

• Swinburne, The Triumph of Time (I love how they constantly call him Algy.) 
• Yeats, Cathleen ni Houlihan
• Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism & Culture and Anarchy (I've decided I'm going to try to read these for A Victorian Celebration.)

Episode II: Nestor 

Stephen teaching a history class. Some images that I loved (A pier is a disappointed bridge? That's actually quite brilliant, no matter what Mulligan would say.) This wasn't particularly hard to follow, even though Stephen started musing about history and the possible and Aristotle and all that jazz. (I wish I could say that, as a Philosophy major, I knew what he was talking about. But...yeah.) Still feeling good about myself, though.

Favorite quote: 

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.

Another example of Joyce capturing emotions in a striking way. Stephen is tutoring an ugly boy and thinking of how someone (i.e. his mother) must love the boy even though he's so ugly. From there he starts thinking about his own childhood. Do you see a pattern here? Most of my favorite passages from Ulysses are like this - easy to understand and easy to relate to (bonus if they make me think of my childhood).

Favorite character: 

After confessing my appreciation for Buck Mulligan, you thought I'd say I liked the old anti-Semitic misogynistic teacher, didn't you? No, I like Stephen here. What was interesting was that all the people so far are immersed in culture in one way or another. They can spout endless quotes. Parts of their conversation are just citing Shakespeare/various Irish poets. But at the same time, it's clear that not all of them are the real thing. Mr. Deasy (the guy who hates Jews and women) quotes Iago to bolster his point, because it's Shakespeare, you know? It makes one like Stephen, who at least knows what he's talking/dreaming about.

Stuff to follow up on: 

• Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment & The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• Milton, Lycidas

Episode III: Proteus 

Ah, there it is. The feeling that the book moves faster than your mind. I actually have a theory about what's happening here, and in Modernism in general. (Yes, that's one snotty sentence.) In this chapter Stephen keeps repeating two German words: "Nacheinander" (one after another) and "Nebeneinander" (side by side). The ever-helpful notes told me that these terms were used by Lessing to distinguish between things you can present in writing and things you can present in the visual arts. The subject of poetry (and, generally, written stuff) is always a sequence of events, one after another, while the subject of a painting is a conglomerate of objects that are there at the same time, side by side, and you, as a viewer, can take your time in noticing them.

Reading this explanation, I thought it fit Joyce unexpectedly well. To me it looks like what Joyce is doing here is precisely putting things side by side. Instead of getting the normal sequence of events, you get an image of everything the characters remember about their lives and about history. Everything they ever learned or lived is there simultaneously, mixed with the present. This is not a narrative in the traditional sense, this is more like a painting. It's an effort to say everything at once. And that's also why one can't take it all in immediately.

Don't mind my rambling, it was something I was struggling to put into words about Faulkner and why his sentences are so long, so I'm happy that I found these terms to describe it :)

Favorite quote: 

Before him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. UN COCHE ENSABLE Louis Veuillot called Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. 

This section was so full of references and associations triggered by words. And then this, that works so well as a description for it. I have a huge soft spot for Modernism and for its troubled relationship with the cultural baggage it inherited.

Stuff to follow up on:

• okay, this might be insanity, but I want to read Lessing's Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. It might not say what I thought it said, and my off-the-cuff theory about Modernism might not stand, but it's worth a shot. 
• Ibsen, Brand

Episode IV: Calypso

We get to meet Leopold and Molly Bloom. They're normal people, so seeing the world through their eyes is not as challenging as seeing the world through the eyes of Stephen, who can't go two minutes without thinking of Aristotle. At my first reading, I actually had more trouble following Leopold's thoughts, though. The problem is that, unlike with Stephen's snobbish references, there is no way you can trace all the biographical elements here without reading the book to its end and piecing it all together. At least this time around I knew Molly was born in Gibraltar, so Leopold randomly thinking of that place didn't throw me off. Oh yes, and Joyce following Leopold to the toilet still amuses me.

Favorite quote:

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.

I like this because of the last sentences, but I had to include it all because the last sentences didn't make sense without the rest. And what I like about those last sentences is how neatly they mirror the last sentences of the book, from Molly's soliloquy.

Favorite character: 

None. I feel a sort of pity and tenderness towards both Leopold and Molly, but I don't really like Molly so far, and seeing women through the eyes of Leopold got jarring pretty fast. He's a bit of a creep.

Episode V: Lotus-Eaters 

Not much to say about this one. I enjoyed it to a surprising degree and it flew by. I suppose I could talk about Leopold's pen mistress or about his funny comments about the church, but the truth is that I just want to keep reading and see how far this enthusiasm for the stream of consciousness technique carries me :)

Stuff to follow up on: 

I want to read something about Maud Gonne. I had no idea who she was before reading the notes, but she sounds like a pretty interesting person. She wrote an autobiography (The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen), but I'm not sure I'd enjoy it.

Episode VI: Hades

I enjoyed this episode much like I did the one before it. I think this sort of technique, registering all the associations Bloom makes in a very succinct manner, is the one I like best. Bloom goes to a funeral, his way intersects with Stephen's for the first time and we get to meet the mysterious Man in the Macintosh! I confess I didn't give this guy a second thought the first time I read Ulysses. There was A LOT of mysterious stuff going on in this book, so I couldn't really tell which parts were really mysterious and which parts were just me being dumb. (The jury is still out on that one.)  Then I read Nabokov's lectures on Ulysses and he was all about the Man in the Macintosh and how this character appears throughout Ulysses and no one knows who he is. Nabokov's theory was that the Man in the Macintosh was Joyce himself pulling a cameo à la Hitchcock. I like the theory that Joyce just wanted to screw with us and our expectations :)

Favorite quote: 

Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you’ll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more in her warm bed.

Leopold musing about Queen Victoria. On one hand condemning her for her mourning, on the other condemning her for vanity. She can't win. It also amused me how terrible he is when he thinks of stuff with which to console Dingnam's widow. "I hope you’ll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only." (I sort of imagine this as a piece of dialogue in Seinfeld :)

Time for a break. I'm getting tired. Continued here.