Telemachus and Stephen Daedalus: Beginnings
by Lenhardt Stevens
i.
The Odyssey begins with the council of gods, high on Mt. Olympus, discussing the
fate of Odysseus, who is trapped on Ogygia with Calypso. Gods decide the fate of
mortals, whose only appeal to these judgments is through the caprice of their affections.
For Odysseus, Athena has a special affection that will lead to his freedom. Numerous
aspects bear down on Stephen Daedalus at the opening of ​
Ulysses.​
He considers himself
a slave to two masters, one in Italy and the other in England, or the Catholic Church and
the British government. Additionally, Mulligan and Haines appeal to impersonal
processes through the Telemachia. Mulligan insists that his mockery of Catholic rites
and Stephen’s gloomy appearance should be taken without offense, while Haines blames
history rather than his countrymen for the mistreatment of the Irish. Both Telemachus
and Stephen are servants of fortune, despite their rebellion thereof, and even their
masters claim to be without the power to change their circumstance.
ii.
The battle with unseen and malignant forces proceed not just in relation to
political, historical, and social dimensions, but also psychological. Stephen, when
approached by Haines to discuss his belief in God, claims that “-You behold in me,
Stephen Said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.” (​
U, p​
. 20)
Stephen’s inner life is plagued by memories of his mother’s death. He has visions of her
ghost visiting him, with the smell of wetted ash on her breath, and visions of the bile
coughed up into the bowl placed next to her deathbed. Telemachian grief is only
escapable after hope has arrived in the form of knowledge. Reversing the original
opinion that his father is dead pulls Telemachus out of the misery in which he has
persisted, which arrives only when he has a meeting with Menelaus about Nestor. How
and where will Stephen’s arrive? The parallels between the beginnings for both
characters become strained once we realize the kind of direness proceeding from
Stephen’s life over that of Telemachus. Stephen’s father is himself wandering Dublin,
frequenting pubs and attending a funeral. He has left the Dedaelus family to fend for
themselves. The father is alive, the mother is dead, and Stephen must cope with the
knowledge that his mother’s death cannot be reversed through a story. Here we can see
a strong tie to the Christian narrative. The immortality promised by Christianity is
pushed up against the reality of the mother’s corporeal limits and her spirit inhabits a
handed consciousness. Is it Stephen having visions or is it the spiritual visitation of a
limbo bound mother?
iii.
The opening of the book acts as an outcome to Stephen’s original mission to fly by
the “nets of nationality, language, and religion,” (​
P​
, p. ___) all the things that appear to
be weighing down on Stephen. Stephen’s attachment to birds that serve as symbols for
his freedom from the aforementioned orders draw particular attention to my choice of
‘weighing down.’ He was unable to lift off from Dublin and live successfully as a poet in
Paris. Failure as an artist follows Stephen while death looms over his thoughts. The
idealistic rejection of the old world order, found within the self-confession: “I will not
serve that in which I no longer believe whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland or
my church.” (​
P​
, p. 252) appears to have cropped up into Stephen’s life in ways he could
not have anticipated. Most plainly, the death of his mother has him back in the hands of
the church doctrine, contemplating dogma and the place of his soul within the afterlife.
The national cause for independence comes to him as a more and more personally
charged mission. Haines begins to embody Stephen’s call to arms. His condescending
speech in addition to his flagrant conciliatory remarks towards the irresponsibility of the
British people in what their empire enacts surrounds Stephen with ample justification
for the taking back of his country from the oppressor. The Martello tower,
unfortunately, belongs to Mulligan. For that reason, we cannot say that Haines
symbolically situates himself as a character perfectly for Stephen to react towards. It is
Stephen, a vagabond, who appears to be floating in the world, and how can one have a
country who does not have a home?
iv.
Telemachus is called off by wingéd Athena to speak with King Nestor about the
whereabouts of his father. Stephen knows full well where his father is, and the call he
hears comes from a sea lion out in Dublin Bay. What should be the meaning of this sea
lion? One reading could have it as a gross parody of what type of calls the sea gives us, a
kind of extension of Mulligan’s sacrilegious rite on top of the Martello tower.
Everything Mulligan touches during his morning ritual becomes tainted by his
insincerity. His complete disregard for the words he uses and ability to behave so
flippantly towards the Catholic mass is meant not merely to mock the beliefs of the
believers, but also the attitude of Stephen. Stephen, who did not take communion on his
mother’s death bed, will be reminded of his rejection of his mother’s faith by the caustic
Mulligan. We cannot be sure of what Mulligan’s genuine beliefs are about much in the
situation. Stephen, who is occupied so completely by the thoughts of his mother’s
passing and his current circumstances in Dublin, is present to someone who seems to
have no personal compass to answer to. Stephen is committed to the sadness of his
circumstance in a way completely other to the disregard Mulligan demonstrates. But
similar to Telemachus towards Athena, Stephen knows the real drive behind much of
Mulligan’s act. Athena disguises herself as Mentes, “the son of wise Anchialus” (​
O, ​
ln.
180) both so that the suitors and Telemachus do not recognize her and because mortals
would not be able to apprehend such a radiant goddess. Stephen reads Mulligan in the
same manner. There may be a display that Mulligan makes for Stephen, but its ulterior
motivations are not so hidden that Stephen cannot attempt to locate them through their
morning conversation. When he draws Mulligan’s attention to the fact that there is as
much offense for him personally as there is towards his mother, Mulligan becomes
defensive about his antics. Mulligan sides with the evidence; amidst all the mockery we
have a defense for his behavior in the truth of its circumstance. His insincerity is able to
slip further from the open because it is so well honed to Mulligan’s purposes. His
learning is nothing more than a way for him to entertain himself.
v.
Stephen wants to listen for clues and details of the whereabouts of the thing he is
looking for, and its manifold shapes and appearances mirror those of Proteus.
Telemachus in listening to Menelaus tell the story of Odysseus’s capturing of the
polymorphic king is given knowledge not only of his father’s cunning, but also the very
information he was looking for; Odysseus lives. Tracing a critical theme throughout
Ulysses​
’s ‘Telemachia,’ Stephen’s search for an external world, one in which historical
battles really took place (p. ____), objects appear because “you damn well have to see
them” (p. ____) and the mind cannot influence ​
the way things are​
might be delivered
to him by the nature of his psychological variety. If nothing else, the world is made
known to Stephen by its complexity, its indifference towards him being in it, the
brutality of some of its inhabitants, i.e. the dog that frightens him.
vi.
Steinberg talks of the Stephen/Telemachus parallels in terms of an initiation rite.
He writes that:
“...typically, initiation involves: a decisive, often traumatic act, which separates the boy
from the world of women and children of which he had been a part; a period of
separation or seclusion from society, in which the novice is ‘instructed’ and a final
ceremony which returns him to society as a man, knowledgeable about the history and
mysteries of his tribe, with full duties as a responsible member of the group.”
(1982, p. 290)
Certainly the death of Stephen’s mother can speak to this notion of the initiation rite.
We might also consider the removal of Stephen from his sisters’ lives as another
example of how female existence has been torn away from him. Separation from the
social order is Stephen’s lot from the opening of the novel, and yet this separation
cannot be considered decisive in the sense of his physical whereabouts over the course
of his morning. He still is in contact with the development of the Irish youth, though his
quiet hostilities towards the students from privileged backgrounds seethes within him as
he teachers. It should also be noted that his subject matter as a teacher is of
Graeco-Roman history, rather than a curriculum of nationally relevant Irish history.
Although it is worth considering that the situation of Pyrus could apply equally to the
Irish, for whom, no matter what kind of victories are won against the British military,
might be unable to combat the sheer mass of British power that could amass against
them. Here the initiation rite appears as a challenge that the rest of the novel will have
to monitor as it unfolds. Stephen’s allegiance to Ireland is an obligation, something he
is convinced of as acting against his will. How do we see his will manifest?
vii. How can we map onto the theme early on in the novel of Stephen as a failed,
isolated artist with the beginning Telemachus’ adventuring? What does Telemachus’
trajectory in the Odyssey say about the role of the artist Stephen in Ulysses? Here it
might be said that the primitive and even archaic nature of the Odyssey speaks very little
to the modern role of the artist sought after by Stephen in Joyce’s novel. If we take the
above section seriously and view the initiation of the young man into society as an
appropriate path through Stephen and Telemachus’ beginnings, it would seem our
efforts have to be significantly raised to take into account the artist aspect of Stephen
and their relation to the son. I think this comparison should be abandoned, because the
disagreements between these two characters are much too pronounced for it to bear any
significant similarities in this respect. We might even suggest that the relationship to
his house and home, his family, and the enemies who threaten them all guides the
actions of both men, but for Stephen brandishing a blade could never be more than a
metaphorical gesture. Most of all, uniting his house for Stephen will include his entire
race, the Irish, nothing less than the unification of an entire nation. Removed from the
poem, the Odyssey ​
qua ​
literary artifact acts as a form of cohesion between the Greek
peoples. From a sociological point of view, the distinct city-states of the Ancient Greek
world were brought under stark similarities because of their shared religious practices.
Homer, it would appear, is the manifestation of unity within the Greek mind, defining
those who are outsiders and those who are insiders.
However what Stephen has produced is separate from what Joyce has. In one sense,
Ulysses ​
relationship to Stephen is an elegy. The opening mourns the misbegotten hopes
of the young artist. Stephen’s father might very well be not the literal incarnation of
Simon Dedalus, but his entire artistic drive, who supported and aided the writer to grasp
for his ambitions, only to disappear and leave him stranded. Nietzsche’s dictum, “Wenn
man keinen guten Vater hat, so soll man sich einen anschaffen.” (If one does not have a
good father, he must create him) drives at the role of Stephen’s longing. Stephen does
not discover that his inspiration is out in the world on its way back to Dublin; his
(possible) discovery of a artistic-progenitor relies on dismal predicament. Who will save
Stephen if Stephen neither knows nor understands from which way it may come?
Unlike Telemachus, Ireland’s redemption will have to come from a man who is not
universally known, and therefore not universally praised.
“But the general emphasis is on contrast and opposition, even in the locations, the first
three chapters being set outside the city limits and the second three inside them, so as to
preclude contact between the two men. Thus, at the beginning of ​
Ulysses​
, the ​
Portrait​
,
and ​
Dubliners​
are contained as separate strands, related mainly in contrast.” (Peake
1977, p. 133)
viii. Let us also keep in mind that ruin seems to await both men at the close of their
portion of the beginning. While Odysseus lays on the isle of Calypso, awaiting Pallas for
delivery from his captor, the suitors attempt to ambush the prince, hiding in their ships
for him to return to Ithaca. And what for Stephen’s fate? The young man seems aware,
almost to a heightened degree, of the swirling elements in his surroundings that may
compromise his vision for his life and his people. This contrast lies striking most of all.
Telemachus searches for the father he longs to be reunited with, and Stephen wanders
out on the beach and contemplates his past and his dashed dreams. Telemachus
appears youthful, even naïve, in his admiration of Menelaus, his steadfast loyalty to his
family, and his lack of consideration over the hostile feelings the suitors may have
towards him in his absence. Whereas Stephen leaves very little outside of his purview
while he is living out the rest of his morning in Dublin. Among the thoughts on
philosophy, history and religion he has, strikingly he does not even consider his family
outside the oppressing presence of his mother in his mind. I claim he does not want to
have family on his mind. For Stephen, it is yet another anchor that weighs on him as he
tries to free himself from the Dublin life that only seems to beckon him to aim for
something less than his ambition strive after.
ix. In need of saving and at the hands of the god(s), the young men in both stories are
both active participants in the larger story around them and yet also nothing but
knowers. They seek knowledge without the decisive ability to know what to make of it.
Telemachus may find comfort in the knowledge of his father’s fate, allowing satisfaction
from the mere knowledge of his survival, but Stephen cannot place himself within the
world in an active, participatory sense. He stumbles around Dublin, working a job he
does not take any pleasure in, and has to deal with the unhappiness that comes with
living in a petty capitalist life at the hands of English rule. With the home invaded, and
no knowledge of a redeemer, Stephen is at once the pale shadow of Telemachus and the
larger than incarnation of him. His loss, troubles, and worries are larger than
Telemachus, because he sees the stakes in his life as reflecting those on a political scale.
His life will not reduce to domesticity, but expands until it encompasses country,
religion, and self.
MMXIV