A Note on Chrysostomos

The Aristotelian tradition has long taught us to regard metaphors primarily as a form of substitution, proper words linked through the logic of resemblance. In Joyce’s work, however, metaphors can best be described as fields of action, in the sense described by Paul Ricoeur. Here meaning is not catalogued as in a lexicon; as Ricoeur says, “The dictionary contains no metaphors” (67). Rather, meaning emerges in “the interanimation of words in the living utterance” (79); it is “wholly contextual, the product of ‘semantic collision’ [that] can occur only in the present” (Clark 123). Furthermore, comparison or resemblance is not the main point of interest; instead it is “the degree of tension retained within the utterance, the continued friction of resistance and dissimilarity” (Clark 124) between the tenor and vehicle that is of significance. The “tension between identity and difference in the predicative operation set in motion by semantic innovation” (Ricoeur 6) allows us to see something as being and as not being an other simultaneously, the dynamics of the dialectic having both ontological and semantic implications.

In our reading of Ulysses, we have been accustomed to take names as “proper” ones in the sense that Bloom, for example, is often regarded as a “parallel”—albeit an ironic one—to Odysseus. Furthermore, books of annotations have taught us to read allusions as words in a dictionary, which we then “look up” often without knowing what to do with the information. Helpful as these tools are, they have also made the referential dimension of Joyce’s text dominant. But as Joyce said, “Comparison makes folk wait and tells you only what smthg is like” (Notes 26). Instead, as he told Frank Budgen in a letter, our guide should be Hermes, who “is the god of signposts: i.e. he is, specially for a traveller like Ulysses, the point at which roads parallel merge and roads contrary too” (Letters 147-148). Nouns in Joyce are not entropic; rather they most often function as active metaphors in that they set in motion fields of verbal activity based on multiple junctures of identity and difference.1 We might consider “Bloom” as a proper noun referring to a character in the text; but the name is also a metaphor in action in that Bloom can also be regarded as being like and unlike Odysseus, Moses, Elijah, Shakespeare and others. Bloom is and is not his predecessors. In him we find the aesthetics of a complex, paradoxical form of repetition in which sameness is always read through the lens of difference.2 As readers, we need to deal with such dialectical interactions and language games, the inquiry finally expanding our concept of “Bloom” both as a character and as a dynamic metaphor—both of which imply, finally, a sense of action, performance, and narrative unfolding.

As an example of a noun functioning as a dynamic metaphor which expands into a narrative, let us focus on one—Chrysostomos—in the opening of the book (1:26). The first word we might attribute to Stephen, Chrysostomos has been taken as a reference to Mulligan’s “gold-capped teeth” and to the oratorical eloquence of “the Greek rhetorician Dion Chrysostomos & and St. John Chrysostomos & patriarch of Constantinople” (Gifford 14). Knowing these references helps a great deal, obviously; but the information produces a kind of cognitive entropy. Is the noun only used to tell us that Mulligan’s delivery resembles that of a golden-mouthed orator? Suppose, instead of considering Chrysostomos as a noun telling us what Mulligan’s oratory is “like,” we read the word as a metaphor in action. We can activate the interanimation of words and the field of tension between Mulligan and Chrysostomos, the semantic resistance between the two, all of which might expand our idea of how Stephen perceives Mulligan “as” and “as not,” and furthermore, what the word might suggest about Stephen himself.

Joannes Chrysostomos (AD 347-407), the archbishop of Constantinople, was not only a great orator, but idolized by the people for his piety, his teachings, and noble deeds. He was, however, disliked by many other bishops and clerics who were suspicious of his simple style of living and his preaching on such topics as the significance of the human will. His accusations of several bishops of simony and other “gross crimes” (Cotton 704) did not help improve his status among the higher orders. Eventually he aroused the opposition of the empress Eudoxia, and a council of bishops convened to bring various accusations against him, including treason. In his lifetime, he was sent into exile three times, the last of which was to Pityus, in Pontus, at the farthest point of the East-Roman empire. He did not survive the journey and died in Pontus, at the age of sixty. In his many writings on the scriptures, Chrysostomos was far ahead of his time; he emphasized the “human element” in the composition of the Bible and focused not on allegorical interpretations but the grammatical meaning of the sacred texts (Cotton 705). His sermons were followed by immense applause, which he would dismiss. In one of his Homilies, he writes: “The place where you are is not theatre, nor are you now sitting to gaze upon actors” (Cotton 705).

The word “Chrysostomos,” then, at this juncture in the text, refers to a field of semantic possibilities rather than a single adjective and noun such as “golden-mouthed orator.” While his skilful oratory and theatricality does link him with Mulligan, Chrysostomos, the brilliant, independent and exiled thinker, brings to mind not Mulligan but Stephen, or even Joyce himself. Chrysostomos’s emphasis on the significance of human intervention and will in hermeneutic activities, and his self-consciousness of his performance are elements which further associate him with Joyce. In its location in the text, the term might also be seen as an epic convention, Stephen’s “calling” on an inspiring figure, serving as an antidote to the false bearings of self-appointed speakers like Mulligan. The tension we find between the two semantic fields or narratives also hints at differences between Mulligan and Stephen, the former voluble and wealthy—he can afford to cap his teeth and words in gold—the latter suffering from bad teeth, the exiled artist who has yet to perform.

These are only some of the possibilities the noun “Chrysostomos” as an active metaphor, an event opens up. Furthermore, the evocation of the name in an entirely new historical setting and time interweaves the history of Chrysostomos, a celebrated figure, with what would go unnoticed by most historians: an early morning banter between two young Irishmen. Such a domestication of history is also indicated by Joyce’s choice of location, the use of a site with a “recorded” military history ( a Martello tower) as the setting for events of ordinary life—conversing, having breakfast. But the collision and dialogical interactions among the various temporalities and narratives—those of Chrysostomos, the Martello towers, Stephen, Mulligan—reanimates and transforms not only our perception of the dramatic opening scene but also our understanding of history itself. And yet, the new cultural grammar created here is not informed by the dynamics of oppression and colonization. Metaphorical tension suggests an “equality” among the components in the field of action, informed by difference within sameness. If decolonization, as Satya Mohanty puts it, is “the process of unlearning historically determined habits of privilege and privation, of ruling and dependency” (110), then it is the quality of Joyce’s act of writing itself as well as the mimetic elements of the text that elicit the practice, the “doing” of decolonization.3

Clark, Stephen H. Paul Ricoeur. London: Routledge, 1990.
Cotton, George Edward Lynch, “Chrysostomos, Joannes.” Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Ed. William Smith. 3 vols. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1848. 703-706.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Gifford, Don and Robert J. Seidman. Ulysses Annotated. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Herring, Phillip F., ed. Joyce’s Notes and Early Drafts for Ulysses. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1977.
Joyce, James. Letters. Ed. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Viking P, 1957.
Joyce, James. Ulysses. The Corrected Text. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler. N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1986.
Mohanty, Satya P. “Epilogue. Colonial Legacies, Multicultural Futures: Relativism, Objectivity, and the Challenge of Otherness.” PMLA 110:1 (Jan. 1995):108-118.
Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor. Trans. R. Czerny, K. McLaughlin, and J. Costello. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.
Senn, Fritz. Inductive Scrutinies. Focus on Joyce. Ed. Christine O’Neill. Dublin: The Lilliput P, 1995.

1 On the performative element in Joyce’s work, see Fritz Senn’s essay “Joyce the Verb.” As Senn remarks, “None of us may be able to define ‘Joycean’ adequately, but we vaguely sense that it connotes some heterogeneous, but characteristic hyperactivity: words seem to be charged, or else we readers charge the words, somehow, it seems, beyond the norm” (9).

2 For an astute analysis of the relation between repetition and difference, see Deleuze.

3 This essay is part of a larger study on the performative elements of Ulysses.