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Homer nods
Oct. 23rd, 2011 10:45 pmJust been watching the final part of Planet Word, where Stephen Fry explores language. This episode dealt with storytelling. Fry read the sirens passage from the Odyssey and then said that when James Joyce updated the Odyssey in Ulysses, the corresponding siren episode was controversial.
They illustrated this with a clip from the nineteen sixties film version of Ulysses (which updated the action to the present day). But the clip they showed was the sequence where Gerty MacDowell is sitting on the beach and she shows Mr Bloom her knickers and Bloom masturbates. A controversial scene both in the book and in the film, but it's not the sirens scene. It corresponds to the scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus is shipwrecked on a beach and is discovered by Princess Nausicaa.
The sirens scene in Ulysses is the earlier scene set in the bar and restaurant of the Ormond Hotel, just after the viceregal procession has gone past, and the sirens are the barmaids. (Music pervades this scene.)
They illustrated this with a clip from the nineteen sixties film version of Ulysses (which updated the action to the present day). But the clip they showed was the sequence where Gerty MacDowell is sitting on the beach and she shows Mr Bloom her knickers and Bloom masturbates. A controversial scene both in the book and in the film, but it's not the sirens scene. It corresponds to the scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus is shipwrecked on a beach and is discovered by Princess Nausicaa.
The sirens scene in Ulysses is the earlier scene set in the bar and restaurant of the Ormond Hotel, just after the viceregal procession has gone past, and the sirens are the barmaids. (Music pervades this scene.)
