Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

Carr, Private Compton, and the phantasmagoric image of Edward VII for his treasonous
declaration, Stephen encourages their anger by declaring: "I seem to annoy them. Green
rag to a bull" (15.4497)13. His statement stimulates their militaristic might, as Carr
obscenely declares: "Ill wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking
king"(15.4598-9)14.
Ignoring Carr's aggressive challenge, Stephen envisions an apocalyptic
destruction of Dublin, which includes allusions to Jesus's crucifixion in Joyce's stage
directions:
Brimstone fire springs up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy gaffing guns
boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. . .The midnight sun is darkened.
The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount
Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and
appear to many. A chasm opens with a noisless yawn15.
These images of cataclysmic destruction, which follow Stephen's earlier deicide,
degenerate into a black mass, reversing the Catholic ritual:
On an eminence, the center of the earth, rises the fieldaltar of Saint
Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the
high barbacans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled
altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs. Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason,
lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father
Malachi O'Flynn in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet
back to the front, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr. Hugh C.
Haines Love M.A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar
back to the front, holds over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.
(15.4688-97) 16
Mulligan, in composite with Father O'Flynn17, begins the black mass by inverting the
phrase with which he began the novel, "Intobio ad altare diablo"--words which translates
to, "I will go up to the devil's altar"(15.4699; 1.5). Haines, in composite with Reverend
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