Ulysses Essay 41 (65:39)

Chapter 5 (Lotus-Eaters) No. 2

“ Paradise and the peri”.

Bloom walks out of the post office substation  and runs into M’Coy,  a railroad clerk who sometimes gets Bloom reduced prices on the train trips that he makes when going out of town to canvass newspaper advertisements. But now Bloom regards M’Coy as an unwanted and bothersome nudnik – not only will he delay the timing of Bloom’s carefully calculated walking trip through central Dublin, but at the very moment of their meeting, Bloom’s eyes and mind are entirely focused on an elegantly dressed woman who has just come out of the upscale Grosvenor Hotel on the opposite side of Westland Row. The lady in question is preparing to mount an “outsider” – a characteristically Dublinian nineteenth century form of two-wheeled horse transport in which up to four passengers would sit on two benches placed at right angles to the axle so that they faced out towards the sidewalks (hence “outsider ), with a well between the benches serving to hold their luggage and other effects.

Bloom ties to fob off the insistent M’Coy with irrelevant answers to the former’s prying questions (“’Hello Bloom. Where are you off to?’ ‘Hello M’Coy. Nowhere in particular.’”) But when M‘Coy notices that Bloom is dressed in mourning black, and quasi-sympathetically determines that Bloom has not himself been bereaved, the conversation shifts inevitably to Patty Dignam’s unexpected death and the funeral arrangements for later in the morning. All this while Bloom is planning to catch a glimpse of the uncovered thigh of the woman across the street (and perhaps of her underwear) which he hopes will be revealed above her expensive silk stockings as she climbs onto the seat of the outsider. But – paralleling his frustrated desire to follow his neighbor’s maid’s “hams” on her way back to Eccles Street from the butcher earlier that morning (as will be recalled, she went in the wrong direction) – so too now the fates conspire to prevent Bloom from enjoying his moment of prurient satisfaction. Not only does the woman’s escort take his time in finding the correct coins to pay the jarvey before being able to help his companion onto her seat, and not only does Bloom have to unwillingly carry on the prolonged and desultory conversation  with M’Coy (during which M’Coy irritatingly gets his “talking head” in the way of Bloom’s line of vision) but when at last the woman is all set to climb onto the outsider, a “heavy tramcar” going down Westland Row blocks off any prospect of Bloom espying the action; and indeed he is disappointed to discover that after the tram has passed the couple are already well on their way to the nearby railway station. Still, during his strained conversation with M’Coy, Bloom is mildly compensated by the fact that the woman has somewhat salaciously taken note of his interest in her: “Sees me looking. Eye out for the other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow.” And M’Coy, becoming aware that Bloom’s attention is directed elsewhere, interrupts their conversation to ask him, “Well, what are you gaping at?” to which Bloom inconsequentially hauls out a cliché about the late Dignam: “’Yes, yes,’ Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. ‘Another gone.’”

Reflecting on the incident, Bloom recalls a third similar event, and employs a rather abstruse literary allusion to metaphorically epitomize the depth of his recurrent sexual frustrations: “Lost it…Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street hallway. Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display of. Esprit de corps.”

And so to “paradise and the peri.” The “peri” are mythological exquisite winged sprites in Persian folklore, who, after originally being utterly malevolent, change for the good, but are still forbidden from entering paradise until they have undergone a period of penance. According to Gifford, Bloom is referring to a catchphrase “So near to paradise and yet prevented” that forms the title  of an interpolated poem in Thomas Moore’s  “Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance” published in 1817. The poem tells of the recurrent unsuccessful attempts by a peri to enter paradise, until “one tear of penitence” gains her the right of admission. Parenthetically, it seems to me that at this juncture Joyce perhaps allows Bloom to display an unexpected degree of literary sophistication, but since Bloom was almost certainly aware that Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1882 operetta Iolanthe was subtitled “The Peer and the Peri”  (after all he is married to an opera singer), maybe I  am overstating my case.

And finally to paradise itself. The term “paradise” has found its way into both English and Hebrew and is loaded with mystical connotations in both cultures, albeit each in its own specific sense. The etymological origin of the word “paradise” is the Persian term “paridayda” connoting a walled garden, but in its migration to Western European religious thinking it has taken on the significance of the heavenly place where pure souls go in the afterlife, as opposed to the sinners who are dispatched to the fiery reaches of Hell. (By the way, for a classic description of the horrors of Hell, one can do no better that read Joyce’s reportage in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man of the terrifying lectures hurled at him and his adolescent schoolmates by Father Arnall during a weeklong school “retreat”, the entire substance of the Jesuit priest’s harangues being the unendurable punishments in store for these youngsters in the afterlife for having committed the grievous sin of masturbation, especially if they would not confess and repent of their sin).

But while “Paradise” in Christian thinking is not only the opposite of “Hell” but also a synonym for the Garden of Eden, in Jewish eschatology the good place to spend one’s afterlife is always the Garden of Eden (“Gan Eden”) and “Paradise” as such is not usually addressed as an immortality option. Instead in Hebrew the word “paradise” – Hebraized to “pardes” (and pronounced “par’dais”) – has taken on two separate but interlinked significances, one realistic and the other mystical and Kabbalistic. The realistic meaning of the word “pardes” harks back directly to its Persian origin and simply denotes an orchard of fruit trees. (Thus when Bloom on his way home from the butcher reads in the Agendath Netaim advertisement about “orangegroves… north of Jaffa” he is really envisaging Zionist “pardessim” –  “orchards”).

The secondary and mystical significance of “pardes” is based on a Talmudic legend which was later developed by the Kabbalists. The Talmudic legend centers on four great exegetes of the Torah who lived in Palestine during the decades that followed on the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. The four scholars were Ben  Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuya, and  Rabbi Akiva. According to the legend, the four entered the “Pardes”, i.e. the paradisiacal orchard ]of the Torah[, and each suffered a different fate as a result of their trying to understand the deep mystical significance of the text of the Torah which is encapsulated in the mnemonic “PaRDeS” comprised of the four Hebrew consonants Peh, Resh, Dalet and Samech. Thus “Peh” stands for “Peshat” (“simple” – i.e., the literal meaning of the text); “Resh” for “Remez” (“hint” – i.e., the allegorical underlying meaning of the text); Dalet for “D’rash” (“inquiry” – i.e., the homiletic lessons from the text); and finally Samech for “Sod” (“secret” – i.e., the inscrutable, esoteric, mystical and eschatological messages of the Torah. The Talmud apparently relates the legend to warn ordinary mortals to stay away from going too deeply into the esoterica of the Torah (or, in other words, to better stick with the “peshat” – the literal exegesis of the Torah text) to avoid experiencing the terrible fates that befell three of the four scholars.

So what happened to these four great minds when they gazed on the “pardes”? The Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Hagiga 14b) relates: “Four entered the Pardes…Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher [Elisha ben Abuya]  and Rabbi Akiva…Ben Azzai gazed and died…Ben Zoma gazed and was harmed [i.e., became insane]…Acher cut down the plants [i.e. lost his faith in the Torah]; Rabbi Akiva entered in peace and left in peace.” Thus only Rabbi Akiva – who later gave decisive but wrongheaded spiritual backing to the disastrous revolt let by General Bar Cochba against the Roman occupation of Judea in 132-135 C.E. ­  – came out of the “Pardes” unsullied, although  eventually he was burnt on the stake by the Romans along with nine of his colleagues – an episode which is related every year in poetic form during the Musaf service on Yom Kippur, as part of the mourning for the loss of the complex and magnificent “Avodah” service that was led by the High Priest on Yom Kippur until the destruction of the Temple. The juxtaposition of the recital of the second century tragedy of the ten martyrs to the synagogal remembrance of the Avodah ritual served in post-exilic Jewish thinking (until the rise of Herzlian political Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century) as a non-provocative surrogate for rabbinically outlawed direct mourning of the loss of Jewish national independence that followed the 70 C.E. destruction of the Second Temple by the legions of Imperial Rome. The rabbis held that only the coming of the messiah could augur the restoration of Jewish independence, and even today many in the ultra-orthodox sector, even among those who benefit from Israeli citizenship, do not confer legitimacy on the State of Israel.

But who was Elisha ben Abuya who survived his entrance into the “Pardes” although it seemingly turned him into a heretic? As noted above, the Talmud confers on him the epithet “Acher” (“the other one”) in order not to mention his despised name. Stories and legends about Elisha ben Abuya abound in the Talmud and later rabbinic literature. He is supposed to have once witnessed a father instructing his young son to climb a tree and take the eggs from a bird’s nest, but admonishing the boy to first  chase away the mother to avoid causing her unnecessary distress, in accord with the precept in the Torah:  “If you come across a bird’s nest in a tree or on the ground, whether it has baby chicks or eggs in it, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or on the eggs, you must not take the mother with its young. You must make sure to send the mother away, but you may take the offspring for yourself, so that you may prosper and live a long life” (Deuteronomy 22:6-7). The boy obeyed his father and shooed the mother bird away before taking the eggs, thus also complying with the Fifth Commandment –  “Honor your father and your mother, that your days will be long upon the land that the Lord your God is giving to you” (Exodus 20:12). Tragically, at this point the boy fell out of the tree and was killed. Elisha immediately perceived that the boy had obeyed the only two commandments in the Torah that promised long life to those who complied with them, and yet the result was his immediate death. This manifest injustice, so it is said, turned him into a non-believer for the rest of his life, to the extent that he would parade on his horse through Jerusalem on Yom Kippur in a year that the Yom Kippur fell on a Shabbat (the ultimate “holiest day”), directly insulting the feelings of his fellow Jews (even today in secular irreligious Tel Aviv, not a car moves on Yom Kippur, except for emergency vehicles, in tribute to the overwhelming importance of the holy day in Jewish tradition). Yet in spite of Elisha ben Abuya’s heresy, many of his erstwhile colleagues and students kept up their friendship with him because of the breadth and depth of his knowledge of the Torah. The Talmud (Tractate Hagiga, 15A) relates, among other fascinating tales about the famous heretic, that once on a Shabbat afternoon, Elisha ben Abuya and Rabbi Meir, the celebrated Mishnaic rabbi who had been Elisha’s star student, were strolling on the outskirts of Jerusalem while discussing some abstruse point of Torah. Elisha was riding his donkey, in contravention of Halakhic law, while Rabbi Meir was on foot by Elisha’s side. When they reached “techum Shabbat” (a distance of about half a mile into the fields from the periphery of a built up area and beyond which one may not walk on Shabbat), Elisha said to Rabbi Meir: “Meir, you must return for we have reached techum Shabbat.” Meir replied: “I will return, but perhaps Elisha ben Abuya will return too?” To which Elisha ben Abuya is supposed to have responded sadly: “Everyone can return, but Elisha ben Abuya cannot return” – a play on the Hebrew word for “return” (“teshuva”) used to denote the concept of repentance in Jewish religious thought) .