The Eyes/I's Have It: Joyce's Use of Parody in "Cyclops" Mark Nunes DeKalb College mnunes@dekalb.dc.peachnet.edu Presented at the XIV International James Joyce Symposium, June 13, 1994 In the penultimate parody of the "Cyclops" section, Joyce gives us a journalistic account of the citizen's attack on Bloom: ***From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character.... Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere.... (282) The "reports of eyewitnesses" play an important role in this chapter, the most notable being, of course, the narration of the first person narrator. While his nominal occupation is that of a debt collector, his job within this section is clearly that of the storyteller, one who retells his eyewitness version of the events at Barney Kiernan's. The nameless narrator is not alone, however, in his task of tale-telling. The I-narrator finds himself cut off on thirty-three occasions by the voices of parody. Each voice presents a distinct narrative frame, creating, in effect, separate eyewitnesses. Parody and narrative proliferation work hand in hand in this chapter. As Michael Groden notes, Joyce uses parody in "Cyclops" to introduce "a relativity in the point of view that is much stronger than the limitations among the initial episodes" (155). Although this relativity often reveals the underpinnings of various narrative forms and their inherent limitations, parody serves more than a disruptive function in the section. As eyewitnesses proliferate-- interrupting, cancelling, and contradicting each other--parodies begin to serve as supplements to one another. While this proliferation undermines the authority of any single, direct narration, the interaction of these multiple narratives allow Joyce to explore the possibilities of successful, indirect narration. The I-narrator's prominent delineation as a character in this section parallels a similar prominence of his limitations as a narrator. His character, in effect, shapes and limits the information he relays. Joyce restricts the narrative scope to the body containing it, a fact most notable when the I-narrator exits the bar to relieve himself, taking the narration with him (275). The act of relating the story becomes a prominent part of the section itself, with Joyce writing out the so's and anyhow's and other oral conventions of story telling. Parody likewise pushes narrative technique to the foreground; as the section moves from the eyewitness first person to various parodic narratives, the account of events radically changes. Characters too, especially Bloom, appear to undergo a metamorphosis between various narrative frames. The I-narrator sees the Citizen "in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his load of papers, working for the Cause" (242). The Irish legend parody, however, literally "sees" the Citizen measuring several ells from shoulder to shoulder, and haired like a mountain gorse (243-244). Likewise, the medical journal parody transforms Bloom's muddled scientific knowledge into a precise explication of physiology, as he himself becomes Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft (250). Although we may distrust these narratives, feeling that these parodic disruptions are not "accurate," Joyce makes it clear that the I-narrator, with his open biases and opinions, is equally limited. Ultimately, the chapter contains no reliable eyewitness to the events in Barney Kiernan's. In effect, Joyce replaces the single eye of the cyclops Polyphemus with thirty-four "I"'s, each narrating its own independent tale. Like the one-eyed Polyphemus, each narrative eyewitness presents a single view, hence a singular, limited narrative capability. Perhaps most pressing of the monocular monster's limitations is his inability to produce a parallax-- that slight shift in perspective between two points of view. The simplest example of the parallax is the differing perspective of two eyes, the effect of which produces depth-vision. Polyphemus literally lacks depth perception; in "Cyclops," each narrative eyewitness likewise lacks depth. The I-narrator gives the reader a "lardyfaced," money-tight, Freemason Leopold Bloom, fond of "jawbreakers" and an occasional seat upon "his high horse about the jews" (280). But through the parodies, the reader also gets a vision of Bloom as the hero and patriot "O'Bloom, the son of Rory" (245), scientist and Herr Professor (250), the skilful orator of the controversial, (260), "the distinguished phenomenologist" (281), and ultimately ben Bloom Elijah (283). Certainly these passages are parodies, but these narratives also give glimpses of Bloom which do in fact emerge at various points in Ulysses, perspectives outside of the I-narrator's monocular vision. Through the parodies, and through the first-person perspective, Joyce calls attention to those facets in any narration which both define and limit it as a narrative structure. The I-narrator and the thirty-three parody narratives each assume the position of "the spiritual authority of the Holy See," but cannot maintain that authority (282). Each monocular perspective can only succeed within its own limitations and these same limitations implicate any number of excluded perspectives. Gilbert describes the technic of this section as gigantism: "a parody of a special and appropriate kind....The inflation of certain themes to bursting point, or the projection of Cyclopean shadows of human forms on the sides of a cavern" (274). Joyce's earliest schema, however, refers to the technic as "alternating asymmetry," a term which I prefer because it emphasizes the importance of parallax and its relation to the function of parody in this section (Herring 123). The shifting monocular narratives present alternate and asymmetrical perspectives, simultaneously revealing the capabilities and the limitations of any single narrative framework. The standard approach to this term, and hence to the chapter, has been to assume that the I-narrator and the parodic narratives stand in a binary relation or, as gigantism suggests, that the first person narration stands primary to the secondary parodic narratives. Marilyn French, for example, sees two equally well-defined narrators telling the tale of "Cyclops" (141). Although he does not suggest two actual narrators, Robert Bell also hears two voices at work in this section: that of the Satirist and of the Parodist (9). Other critics, for example Karen Lawrence, make note of the multiple forms of parody in this section, but then return to a binary model of first person narration and parodic intrusion, what Dermot Kelly calls a "two- tiered or "a double-barrelled narrative" (28). All of these approaches align with Kenner's description of parody as a "double telling" which "rests on double vision: a vision of duality" (Dublin's 177). Elsewhere Kenner writes, "At the very least, on the model of two-eyed men, reality exacted a doubling [for Joyce]" (Joyce's 83). Although a two perspective model is simplest, it may oversimplify Joyce's narrative strategy by failing to acknowledge that each mode of parody in this section, at very least fifteen separate narrative forms, speaks in its own voice. As a section, it makes more sense to look at the chapter as a battle for narrative control between autonomous narrative frames, each with its own monocular vision. Parodies, after all, at times disrupt one another: Paddy Dignam's seance breaks off not with a return to first-person narration, but with a short passage mourning the loss of "O'Dignam, sun of our morning" (248); and it is the I-narrator who interrupts the first long Epic parody with his "I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him " (242). No longer does it seem possible to assume centrality for the first person narration, or a dialectic between the I-narrator and the various parodies. Each of the thirty-four narrative voices, one might say, struggles for centrality. The parallax between perspectives is not between two points-- the central and the disruptive-- but between many constantly shifting narrative perspectives. At times this breakdown in narration occurs in the midst of a sentence, as in the section's final words: "And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness // at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green street // like a shot off a shovel" (283, breaks mine). The sentence begins as a Biblical epic, telling of the apotheosis of Bloom. The narrative shifts to a different sort of eyewitness report which narrates the trajectory and path of projectile Bloom, more fitting for a scientific journal than the Bible. A final break occurs with the introduction of "Dub" colloquial, an expression which could come from no other mouth than that of the I-narrator. In this one sentence, each of the three major narrative forms makes an appearance-- the epic, the journalistic and the first person-- but they stand in a complex relationship. No narrative achieves centrality. Each narrative works off each other, defining itself at the expense of others, yet at the same time exposing its own limitations. This final sentence presents in miniature the overall narrative strategy of the chapter. The structure resembles a comic routine in which thirty-four comedians share the same microphone, wrestling it out of each other's hands in mid-sentence or mid-thought, surrendering it only at the most inopportune moments. The struggle takes on a few characteristic forms, each of which emphasizes that the parodies do not simply erupt from the first person narrative, nor do they serve as secondary counterpoints to a central "I" Functionally, the parodies fall into two broad categories: interpretive and creative. Interpretive parodies often function as narrative filters, "revisioning" the I-narrator's tale. Some of the interpretive narratives, however, actually precede the first-person narration; in other words, it is the I-narrative which serves a reiterative function, not the parody. When Alf Bergan enters the bar, for example, the reader does not hear the I-narrator's version until after an epic version of the event: "And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven" (245). Interpretive parodies remain within the fictive confines of Barney Kiernan's, at times advancing the narrative of events in the pub, often elaborating on Bloom's "jawbreakers about phenomenon and science" and other details beyond the interest of the I-narrator (250). "Creative parodies," however, leave behind Barney Kiernan's and establish their own fictive space. Perhaps the most telling feature of these parodies is their tendency to overextend themselves to the point of losing their parodic tone. The epic-religious-journalistic parody which erupts from Martin Cunningham's barroom blessing starts as an endless parade of saints performing miracles and bearing palms, inkhorns, and babes in bathtubs, but collapses finally into a blessing that, translated, shows no real parodic elements: "God, by whose word all things are made holy, pour forth Thy blessings over these creatures. . . Thou being the creator through Christ our Lord" (279). Compared with Mulligan's blasphemous inversions in "Circe" and Stephen's ironic Latin fragments in "Telemachus," Father O'Flynn's words, though occurring within a parody, sound neither distorted nor parodic. The bite of parody does not sting until the I-narrator once again gains control: "And so say all of us, says Jack" (279). The I-narrator is also responsible for the parodic counterpoint to the epic execution-turned wedding: "With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard, by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his immediate entourage, to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone: God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart" (255). Clearly centrality and intrusion only make sense in this section on the basis of who happens to be in charge. Context can likewise pollute the apparently straight first-person narration, giving rise to "unintentional" parody. Even before the Citizen's concern over Ireland's exfoliation becomes the grounds for the conifer wedding parody, his epic tone has already been weakened by similar parodic praise for the "first class foliage... and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly well supplied" (241). Likewise, when the citizen speaks of the potato famine, the Irish exodus to America and the hopes for Irish-American support for Irish nationalism, his words of themselves, while ringing with clichŽs, do not read as parody: "Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come again with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan" (270). His narrative concludes with a parallel to the conclusion of the Apostolic Creed: "And he will come again to judge the living and the dead," a narrative form which Joyce parodies on the same page: "Whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid" (270). Here, the presence of the creed form, elsewhere openly parodied, gives rise to "unintended" parody. The context of the parody narrative, in effect, brings to life more subtle parodies which are inherent in the narrative structure itself. As the section progresses, the distinction between parody and "straight" narrative begins to blur. The alternating asymmetry of "Cyclops" refuses to reduce to a binary opposition of naturalized and parodic narratives, suggesting in its place a complexity of resonant, yet autonomous narratives that cancel, contradict, interpret and misinterpret one another. The section as a whole begins to evolve a depth of vision, overcoming the monocular vision of the Cyclops. The parody sections start commenting on each other, and the "alternating asymmetries" begin to multiply. The journalism passages, like the "historic and hefty battle" of Myler and Percy's boxing match, start to sound like epic parodies (261). Likewise, in the fashion page parody of the wedding of the trees it becomes difficult to distinguish the epic from the journalistic. The journalistic parodies the epic, but the epic reflexively parodies the journalistic. The description of "the muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth," for example, simultaneously parodies the elaborate descriptions of the epic and the exacting precision of journalese (272). What develops, then, is an elaboration of narrative through a proliferation of narrative form. The monocular, direct narrative gives way to an indirect, comic narrative of many voices and visions. Bakhtin's carnivalization provides a useful metaphor at this point. Each narrative in the section-- most apparently the I-narrator-- makes an attempt at monoglossia, that central position of "the Holy See," and in failing each becomes a part of an interactive system of "interillumination," in which various narrative forms expose both their limits and their possibilities (Bakhtin 17). The multitude of narrative voices play off each other, and in doing so, create a dialogue between forms. Kristeva notes that Bakhtin describes a shift from the 0-1 binary logic of the epic to the 0-2 of carnivalization: "the power of the continuum. . . where 0 denotes and 1 is implicitly transgressed" (70). The "Cyclops" section, I would argue, shows in particular Joyce's use of parody not only to disrupt binary logic, as Kristeva implies, but to also create indirect narration. The alternating asymmetry here suggests a fluid interaction of multiple narratives, resulting in an open system of interillumination. Bakhtin's description of the novel as "a comical operation of dismemberment" seems particularly appropriate to Joyce's use of multiple narratives (24). In the 1920 schema, Joyce refers to the science of this section as surgery, not politics, and from the level of narration, this description is far more accurate: no one narrative emerges unscathed (Groden 157). As Karen Lawrence notes, "Cyclops illustrates that there is no privileged style. In it, no language is allowed to stand unparodied" (114). To gain as much use as I can of that earlier 1920 schema, I turn to it once again to borrow the term "egocidal terror" (Groden 157). The parodies in this section perform an egocide on the I of the monoglossic narrative, a blinding of the eyewitness, so to speak. But the combined failures of individual narrative forms seem to point, at least indirectly, to narrative possibility through a larger, interactive system. In a similar vein, the nearly one hundred parodic heroes in this chapter--not to mention "Throwaway" and ben Bloom Elijah--introduce the possibility of indirect affirmation, or what Dermot Kelly calls the "celebratory" beyond the mockery (374). Certainly these details are infused with parody, but there seems to be something more than mockery at work. The presence of multiple parodic narratives debases "straight" narration, yet the interaction of these narratives seems to complicate the role of parody itself. Terry Caesar notes that Joyce uses parody to create an "inward freedom" which helps "inscribe [the narrative] as something beyond all its various models" (236). The interactive parodies of "Cyclops" likewise open up the possibility for indirect narration by undermining various monocular, direct narratives. Again, Bakhtin provides a useful touchstone: ***The liberty to crudely degrade, to turn inside out the lofty aspects of the world and world views, might seem shocking. But to this exclusive and comic familiarity must be added an intense spirit of inquiry and a utopian fantasy... The entire world and everything sacred in it is offered to us without any distancing at all, in a zone of crude contact, where we can grab at everything with our own hands. (26) The parodies in this section, and in the book as a whole, do more than debase narrative and novelistic assumptions; they make use of "a zone of crude contact" to explore narrative possibility. To some extent, then, the "Cyclops" section can be seen as a parody of Ulysses itself. The alternating, at times inconsistent narratives, the presence of both epic and journalistic elements, the multiple acute, yet monocular perspectives of Dedalus, Bloom, Molly and others-- these same devices are at work within this section, yet expanded and elaborated upon to the level of parody. On their own, individual narratives make a crude and direct statement, and in doing so show their limitations. The complexity of interaction that accounts for the elaborate parallax between multiple, limited voices, however, provides for an indirect form of narration. Joyce once noted, "I want the reader to understand always through suggestion rather than direct statement" (qtd. in Groden 156). Parody provides Joyce with a tool for expanding on this approach. The alternating asymmetries of Joyce's parody point toward the possibility of an open system of narrative resonances in which interillumination and proliferation replace the authority of the singular eye. Works Cited Bakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. and trans. Michael Holquist. Austin: U. Texas Press, 1981. Bell, Robert. Jocoserious Joyce. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991. Caesar, Terry P. "Joycing Parody." James Joyce Quarterly Winter 26 (1989): 227-237. French, Marilyn. The Book as World. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976. Gifford, Don. Notes for Joyce. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974. Gilbert, Stuart. James Joyce's Ulysses. New York: Vintage, 1955. Groden, Michael. Ulysses in Progress. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977. Hayman, David. "Cyclops." James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays. Ed. Clive Hart and David Hayman. Berkeley: U. California Press, 1974. 243-275. Herring, Phillip F. Joyce's Notes and Early Drafts for Ulysses. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1977. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Ed. H.W. Gabler. New York: Vintage, 1986. Kelly, Dermot. Narrative Strategies in Joyce's Ulysses. Ann Arbor: UMI Press, 1988. Kenner, Hugh. Dublin's Joyce. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. ---. Joyce's Voices. Berkeley: U California Press, 1978. Kristeva, Julia. "Word, Dialogue, and Novel." Desire in Language. New York: Columbia UP, 1980. 64-91. Lawrence, Karen. The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981. Roughley, Alan. "Joyce's Signs: Joyce and Semiotics." James Joyce and Critical Theory. Hampstead, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. 42-73.