Ulysses Lecture II - Nestor & Proteus (Patreon)

'History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.'

Today we're enjoying a rich feast of language in the next two episodes of James Joyce's Ulysses: Nestor and Proteus.

In the Penguin Modern Classics edition, this takes us from pages 45-64.

Nestor Timestamps:

• 0:00 history is a nightmare
• 2:53 the poet in exile
• 5:00 what happens in Nestor?
• 6:00 who is Nestor?
• 6:54 the technique of catechism
• 9:00 Stephen’s history lesson
• 10:30 Nestor’s three movements
• 10:59 the end of Pyrrhis?
• 14:00 pier as bridge without end
• 15:20 Viconian cycles of history
• 17:40 poetry at war with its age
• 22:55 Milton’s Lycidas
• 27:00 Stephen helps Sargent
• 32:50 Stephen and Deasy
• 33:30 Joyce’s comments on antisemitism
• 36:00 history repeats itself

Proteus Timestamps:

• 42:23 why is this section so difficult?
• 43:13 what happens in Proteus?
• 44:55 Joyce’s characterisation
• 47:20 language as main character
• 48:55 who is Proteus?
• 50:55 ‘Ineluctable modality of the visible’
• 53:00 the musicality of Ulysses
• 55:00 the law of signatures
• 1:04:00 walking into eternity
• 1:07:20 ‘Wombed in sin darkness’
• 1:11:00 ‘the man with my voice’
• 1:12:50 ‘whitemaned seahorses’
• 1:14:00 Stephen sees a dog
• 1:24:00 ‘Dead breaths I living breathe’
• 1:36:00 summarising Proteus
• 1:27:00 our next episodes
• 1:28:00 some words of encouragement

Questions to Consider:

1) What do you make of Joyce's use of language? And what makes him different from other writers? 

2) Do you agree with Stephen? Is history a nightmare from which you're trying to awake? 

Bonus: Please let us know which parts of these two episodes were most resonant for you.

Happy reading, everybody!