5465. MENDICANT (where was Moses when the candle went out?)

MENDICANT

(where was Moses when the candle went out?)

In James Joyce's Ulysses, why do we prefer enigmas

to muddle? I like the 'riddle' of the Man in the Macintosh.

He first turns up at Paddy Dingham's funeral, in the Hades

chapter. Yeah, why not? I mean it's a walk-on role, made

perfectly for a deft quickness and a shadow image. No one

knows who he is. Mystery man : 'Who is that lanky galoot

over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know?'

And then Bloom, in the midst of this strange, small funeral,

realizes, of a sudden, that the presence of this stranger increases

the number of mourners to thirteen, 'Death's number!' 'Where

the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, I swear.'

-

There's a newspaper reporter, Hynes, and he doesn't know

the man either. Following a conversational mix-up, he records

the name, erroneously, as M'Intosh'. The stranger is thus

given a spurious identity. Hynes also misrepresents Bloom

by calling him Mr. Boom. Whatever all that means, the fact

remains that 'identity' is a mysterious thing, and presence is

often itself just plainly misunderstood. This person is mentioned

again, later on, after being seen (in 'The Wandering Rocks'

section) as 'a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry bread'.

Curious that too, as well as the addendum 'passed swiftly and

unscathed across the viceroy's path. Why 'unscathed', one is

supposed to ask. Later on, Bloom - recalling this presence -

remembers the man as having 'corns on his kismet', which in

the Joycean lingo used, means 'is famous for being unlucky.'

-

Such stuff, as this, I thrive upon  -  like some new and beautiful

yellow flower in a nicely placed garden, a bloom no one has yet

named, a flower as yet unrecognized by Botany itself. I'm hoping

that's me, anyway. 'Famous for being unlucky' is, for sure, quite,

quite the gift of something, negative or not, a gift no matter.

-

Later, yet again, in the section 'The Oxen of the Sun' Mackintosh

is again described  -  and once more the sense is dubious  -  as

'poor and hungry', drinking Bovril, a viscous meat extract from 

which one makes a hot bouillon that is held to be fortifying by 
people of low income, as a plausible supplement to dry bread. 
We are also told that he 'loves a lady who is dead.'

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to be continued....