Ulysses Essay 17 (37:7)

Chapter 3 (Proteus) Note 3

“Get down, bald poll”

Stephen’s stream of consciousness now runs to a seething medley of associations, and this essentially unfathomable section has been the object of unending academic analysis. It starts with Stephen chiding himself for boasting when he was a schoolboy that his two uncles (one of whom he has just imagined himself visiting) were respectively a judge and a general: “Come out of them Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bays of Marsh’s library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas.” It is a mystery (at least to me) why Stephen’s acknowledgement that the status of his uncles was bereft of beauty lead him to the quasi-association that reading texts by Joachim Abbas in the library of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (established by the Archbishop of Dublin, Narcissus March, in 1707) was similarly lacking in beauty. Be that as it may, the apocalyptic prophesies of Joachim Abbas now spring into his mind. Abbas, a twelfth century Italian mystic, prophesied that after the Old and the New Testaments – written by God and Jesus respectively – a third “New New” Testament written by the Holy Spirit would supersede both the previous testaments. The name Joachim itself has interesting biblical connotations: the first “Joachim” – Hebrew “Yehoyakim” – was king of Judah (609-598 BCE) during tumultuous times during which his country, a paradigmatic “failed state”, was successively invaded by Egypt and Babylon. King Joachim died during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem which culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the Jews to Babylon, and he is portrayed in Jewish tradition as an unsavory character – a godless tyrant who had incestuous relationships with his mother, his stepmother and his daughter-in-law, as well as murdering his male subjects to seize their wives and property. In contrast Christian tradition venerates a later saintly Joachim who is alluded to in the apocryphal “Gospel of St. James” (but not mentioned in the New Testament). According to this Gospel, St. Joachim and his wife St. Anne were the parents of the Virgin Mary, whose own birth is regarded to have been the result of an “Immaculate Conception” the theological nature of which remained somewhat fuzzy through the ages, until in 1677 the Holy See confirmed the dogma that Mary was conceived by a natural act of sexual intercourse which was, however, uniquely untainted by the burden of “original sin” (and in honor of which the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated on December 8 – a public holiday in numerous predominantly Catholic European and South American countries – exactly nine months before the celebration of the Nativity of Mary on September 8).

But back to Joachim of Abbas. Stephen intentionally misquotes in Latin the text of a sentence that appears in a “book of prophecies” spuriously attributed to Joachim: “Descencde, calve, ut ne nimium decalveris” (“Descend, bald one, lest you become totally bald”) although the original text (in translation) reads: “Ascend, bald man, so that you don’t become balder – you who are not afraid to sacrifice your wife’s hair, but are prepared to nourish the she-bears’ hair.” One interpretation of this opaque text is that Stephen appears to be thinking about having escaped from being tempted into the clutches of priesthood, as described in Portrait (and here it may be relevant to add that in Yiddish tradition the term for a Catholic priest is “galach” [“shaven one”] because the priests shaved their beards in contrast to rabbis).

What Joachim was getting at is also obscure, but his reference to “she-bears” in his prophecies about late medieval popes may have some connection to the fact that the first pope in the series (Nicholas III) was a member of the aristocratic Orsini family (Italian for “bears”). However, to any speaker of modern Hebrew the mention of bears brings to mind a colorful idiom which is in virtually daily use in Israel: “Lo dubim ve’lo ya’ar” – literally “No bears and no forest” – employed by all and sundry to designate a situation or event which is patently untrue or non-existent (such as on hearing a far-out rumor, e.g., that a local Israeli soccer team had beaten Barcelona).

The source of the idiom is Talmudic, but refers to an atypically harrowing episode in the life of the prophet Elisha, generally considered to have been a man of kindness and goodwill who ministered to the sick (including curing the Syrian general Na’aman of leprosy by advising him to bathe seven times in the Jordan). The story in the Tanach (II Kings 2:23-24) runs as follows:

 “And he [Elisha] went up from Beth-El, and as he was going up by the way, some young lads came out of the city, and mocked him saying, ‘Go up, bald head; go up, bald head.’ So he turned around, and when he saw them he cursed them in the name of God, after which two she-bears came out of the forest and tore up forty-two of the youths.”

There is a plethora of Jewish and Christian apologia to explain away this awful episode, although actually the Talmud does not hesitate to censure Elisha for his over-reaction. However, it then deals (in Tractate Sotah 47a) in its own inimitable manner with the meat of the matter by debating the precise nature of the miracle that occurred on the prophet’s ascent (not “descent” as in Stephen’s intentional misquote) from Bethel. One opinion holds that in biblical times there actually was a forest near Bethel (although in Talmudic times the arid eastern hills of Judea were unwooded as indeed they are now) and that therefore the miracle consisted only of the sudden appearance of the two bears. The contrary opinion avers that there were neither bears nor forest in the neighborhood and that both the forest and the bears appeared simultaneously out of thin air: God performed not one miracle but two for his faithful servant. Indeed, most secular Israelis if they were asked as to whether this story actually occurred, would tend to reply: “Lo dubim ve’lo ya’ar” – “No bears and no forest.”