Sirens
“Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.”
A chapter written like music. Bloom eats dinner alone as barmaids flirt and Simon Dedalus sings, while Boylan rides off to meet Molly.
- Beat 01The overture
The chapter opens with a strange fragmentary passage — phrases, sounds, near-nonsense — that turns out to be a kind of musical overture: every line will return later in the chapter as a theme.
- Beat 02Bronze and gold
The Ormond barmaids — Miss Douce (bronze hair) and Miss Kennedy (gold) — flirt, gossip, and serve drinks while watching the viceregal carriage pass.
- Beat 03Bloom dines
Bloom slips into the dining-room next door with Stephen's uncle Richie Goulding, orders liver and bacon, and writes a careful reply to Martha Clifford while he eats.
- Beat 04Simon sings
Simon Dedalus and others gather at the piano. Simon sings 'M'appari' from Flotow's 'Martha,' and Bloom — alone, listening through a doorway — is moved almost to tears.
- Beat 05Boylan rides off
Through the whole chapter Boylan's jaunting-car can be heard on the street outside, jingling its way to Eccles Street. Bloom hears it leave and stays in his seat.
- Beat 06Coda
Bloom leaves the bar, walking out past a print-shop window of Robert Emmet's last words and quietly farting in time to them. The musical pattern closes.
Four in the afternoon. The bar of the Ormond Hotel. Two barmaids — one bronze-haired, one gold-haired — flirt with the customers; Simon Dedalus and a few friends gather round the piano and sing sentimental Irish ballads about love and loss and exile. Bloom comes in quietly for a meal in the dining room next door, where he can hear the music through the wall. He knows that at this exact hour Boylan is on his way to Eccles Street, to his wife, to their bed. He sits with that knowledge and listens to the singing, and the prose itself starts behaving like music — phrases repeat, echo, overlap, break apart. He writes a careful, slightly cowardly reply to Martha to take the edge off. The chapter is about the strange consolation of art at exactly the moment your life is going wrong: other people's songs about heartbreak are easier to bear than your own. Today we'd recognise the move instantly — putting on a sad playlist while the thing you can't face is happening across town. Bloom doesn't go home. He pays his bill and leaves.
- Scene
- The Concert Room
- Hour
- 4:00 PM
- Organ
- Ear
- Art
- Music
- Color
- —
- Symbol
- Barmaids
- Technic
- Fuga per canonem
- Correspondence
- Sirens