Notes

The Homeric counterpart to this chapter is musical. Circe warns Odysseus about the peril of the Sirens, who lure sailors to their deaths. If he wants to hear their beautiful song, he must stick wax in the ears of his crew and get them to tie him to the mast. He does this and is able to hear the dangerous ladies in safety. The sirens are the two barmaids. Their isle is the bar, a place of danger. There many Dubliners, though not Bloom, ruin their health. The two singer, Dedalus senior and Dollard, are both alcoholics. Poor Paddy DignamÂ’s death was indirectly caused by drink. There are many other instances of alcoholic excess in the book, including StephenÂ’s. Bloom, prudent as usual, drinks very little. A glass of cider with his dinner in the hotel was all. This, combined with the glass of burgundy he enjoyed three hours earlier, was enough to give him flatulence. Bloom likes music. But he is not seduced by it, as most of the Irish in this chapter seem to be. He remains cool and unravished even by DedalusÂ’s final and triumphant high note. Drink also may increase venery. But Bloom, writing a letter to his unseen friend Martha Clifford, is indifferent to the charms of the barmaids.

The Biblical counterpart is the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon, or Canticles). This is the only book in the Bible that is called a song. It is the only one, which is a scarcely disguised pagan erotic poem. In Christian tradition it is allegorized into the marriage of Christ and the Church. This must have delighted Joyce and encouraged him to invent even stranger allegories.

Ulysses is structured on musical principles throughout. It contains many references to opera and song but the "Sirens" is by far the most musical of the chapters. It begins with a set of fifty-eight fragments, the first of which is "Bronze by Gold Heard the Hoofirons, Steely-ringing." It means literally that Miss Lydia Douce, with bronze hair, and Miss Mina Kennedy, with gold hair, the barmaids at the Ormond Hotel, hear the viceregal procession go past. This introduction is best described as a catalogue of motifs, like those printed at the beginning of an opera. The beginning of "Sirens" is there to remind us that the whole of Ulysses is based on the verbal equivalent of the leitmotif. It is a phrase associated with a character or an idea and reappearing in various transformations throughout the work. The fragments as printed here also make up a mysterious prose poem. It cannot be understood at first reading. But it gradually yields its meaning, as the context of each phrase in the chapter becomes clear.

Throughout the chapter, musical rather than literary techniques are used. The recurrent Themes, particularly the tapping of the blind boyÂ’s stick, join together the paragraphs like leitmotifs. The blind boy had tuned the barÂ’s piano, and is returning for his forgotten tuning fork. As he gets closer ("Tap, Tap. Tap"), Blazes Boylan gets further away. Here the orchestral method of diminuendo is used. The sentences, scattered through the second half of the chapter, describe his progress to BloomÂ’s house.

Molly BloomÂ’s place in the chapter is clear, though she does not appear. She is referred to only a few times. She is the singer whose voice Boylan follows and Bloom remembers with love. She is the touch-stone against which the other Sirens are tested. Constantly phrases in the chapter bring her to the mind of the reader, just as the experiences of Bloom bring her to his mind. Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy laugh at the thought of marriage to Bloom. Inevitably we think of his wife. The bar girls trill snatches of a song, and Miss Kennedy drinks tea while reading a book. Miss KennedyÂ’s gold hair and "drowsy silence" parallel MollyÂ’s, while LenehanÂ’s amused pre-occupations with the barmaids reminds the reader of his anecdote about Molly in Chapter X. Such references to Molly are a preparation for her increasingly important role in the last part of the novel.

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