Eight Big Poppies for Four O'Clock
and you thought Joyce and Math were boring.
During Molly’s soliloquy in the eighteenth section of Ulysses, she reflects, “I like the way he made love then he knew the way to take a woman when he sent me the 8 big poppies because mine was the 8th…I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the same time four.” (747) The number four is extremely significant to Joycean scholarship. Joyce’s opus Finnegans Wake is written as a four-part cycle, and the Four are characters in the work itself. Wake’s extensive use of the symbolic language of four is too extensive for a detailed description in an essay on Ulysses, but it helps direct the reader towards interpreting why Molly received “eight big poppies” from Blazes Boylan for four o’clock on the sixteenth of June. Besides Blazes Four O’clock arrival, the first things that we notice is that four plus four equals eight, and the square root of sixteen is four. There is also the fact that Monday is four days from Thursday, which happens to be the fourth day of the week. With some recollecting we will remember that the year of the novel is 1904, and that Leopold Bloom is forty years old, and first appears in the fourth section. The number of people sexually involved in today’s affair was four: Molly, Blazes, Poldy, and Gerty. Though Ulysses is a three-part novel centered around three characters, the number four is a significant symbol of cyclical change that is inescapable in reading Joyce and would appear to be as present in Ulysses as it is in Finnegans Wake if less detailed and refined.
Joseph Campbell explains in the preface to A Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake” “[the four part cycle] is a reference to Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, whose La Scienza Nuova…[essentially provides] Vico’s notion that history passes through four phases: theocratic, aristocratic, democratic, and chaotic.” When asked if Joyce believed in Scienza Nuova, he replied, “I don’t believe in any science, but my imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn’t when I read Freud or Jung.” (Ellman 693) The comparison to Freud and Jung tokens that Vico’s vision of history is a psychological one. The number four then takes on a psychological profundity that raises all kinds of questions. Is Ulysses really a three-part novel? What about the Night Town play, a section much longer than Part I and Part III? Does the novel only center three characters? What about the conversation Molly is having in her head that only the reader can see? Does this make the reader our fourth? Dare we say that this means Joyce is inviting us to play in his world, behind the fourth wall? Play is certainly possible. When considering the structure of the text; Part I has three sections, Part II has twelve, and Part III has three again. If the missing factor is four, when inserted then three times four becomes twelve, divide by four to arrive at three again. As it happens, Molly is thirty-four. Besides Vico’s philosophy, the number four carries significance for Joyce in many symbolic ways. As Samuel Beckett has noticed, “Why, Mr. Joyce seems to say, should there be four legs to a table, and four to a horse, and four seasons and four gospels and four provinces in Ireland?”
This is not to say that four is the most important number in Ulysses, “the danger is in the neatness of identifications,” as Beckett would be quick to point out. Though the use of four is quantifiably and mathematically beautiful it is a mistake to assume this quality has any degree of certainty, especially when it is a three-part novel after all. If there is a fourth part to the novel, by not naming it, and putting it out of numerical order, as Night Town is between parts II and III, the chaos factor of this cycle is fully realized which lends artistic balance by disrupting complete harmony. A flame that is further stoked by Night Town being a play as opposed to a novel. A lack of certainty sparks ambiguity along with the quantifiable and mathematical. A reading that operates under these conditions is working more with symbolism and creating meaning in interpretation than it is with finding a qualitative fact about the novel.
Molly’s eight poppies stand as a symbol for herself and her lovers. If the number four represents the complete life cycle of an individual, then four and four making eight is these two individuals coming together. The eight appears in two faces coming together for a kiss, “theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul.” (740) We find the shape of an eight in Bloom kissing Molly’s bottom in the concentric roundness of the head and rear. (734) We find the shape again in their sleeping positions, lying at opposing ends. Molly’s own hourglass figure could be thought of as the numeral eight. To what end does this symbolism apply to Molly’s affair with Blazes? Blazes may buy Molly eight poppies, and say he’ll show up at four o’clock, but he can’t make Molly’s four into an eight; if anything, he is the mathematical operation that brings Molly and Bloom together so that their fours can add up. Molly’s true affections are expressed in the eighteenth section in Molly’s soliloquy when she says, “Poldy has more spunk in him,” (742).
How can this logic be applied to the twenty-two-year-old Stephen Dedalus? Stephen is young enough that he is neither a boy nor a man. His age symbolizes this in that two plus two make four while four cannot be factored into twenty-two nor contains the quadratic numeral, which suggests that Stephen may not have reached full artistic maturity but is close. This is reflected in Joyce’s confessional golf joke in naming Buck Mulligan as a statement about A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The work begs the question, is this largely autobiographical work reliable as an account? By naming the first character we see Mulligan, Joyce is insinuating that Ulysses is a do over in an attempt to get things right. Perhaps this is Joyce’s way of shouting, “fore!” before taking his shot. It cannot be understated that for an artist the caliber of Joyce, this feeling is to be expected after the abandonment of any of his works.
The numerical qualities of eight in Ulysses are less significant than its aesthetic qualities. If eight is a lady, then by seducing her, and putting her on her back she becomes infinity. In becoming infinity, she goes on forever; this is Molly Bloom, yes. The symbol Joyce chose for his Linati schema is the ever-flowing loops of infinity. Though this symbol has changed to a dash mark for the Gilbert schema, this transition begs for some associative Joycean analysis. The infinite qualities of language through a metamorphic cycle of speech are represented in associating the symbol for infinity with the very same punctuation Joyce uses to convey speech. Humans have always been talking, are always talking, and will always be talking; it’s this very quality which gives form to human intelligence.
The section of Ulysses that best represents this numerical evolution is the fourteenth. By recreating the entire lifespan of literature in one go, Joyce is demonstrating the cycle of the monomyth. An analysis of the number fourteen shows that one story can work in four parts: time, place, people, and voice. A herculean effort to be comprehensive provides the understanding of communication. A fetus developing along three trimesters, and a sudden painful, chaotic push are the stuff life is made of.
The eighth section of Ulysses highlights destruction as part of creation. The entire episode revolves around food, both the repellant side of wasteful gorging, and the necessary comforts of taste. The essential act of eating is the destruction in this cycle of rebirth and creation. The corresponding episode to the Odyssey is Lestrygonians, an episode featuring giant cannibals. Through Joyce’s associative powers of wordplay, the number eight serves as a pun for the past tense action of eating a meal. What did everybody do? They ate.
We see the result of this destruction at the end of the fourth section of Ulysses when Bloom is at stool, “seated calm above his own rising smell.” (69) The circular ritual nature of existence is brought to light by this attention to the particulars of a morning toilet. What humans consume provides nourishment, but also leaves waste. The waste must be cleansed before beginning the process anew, and too much awareness of the process will simply disgust and scare the unfortunate soul who sees the man chewing with his mouth open. The effect allows the reader to feel empathy for Bloom, while simultaneously being disgusted with the particulars of his person. To see Bloom’s excretion is to know disgust, despite the fact that it is a normal and essential bodily function. To see Bloom’s disgust is to see that Bloom himself would be disgusted in reading the same thing, despite the fact that the eater appears to be enjoying a particularly scrumptious meal. The reason for this disgust is brought into question by exposing the ridiculousness of outrageous reactions to what should be commonplace. By introducing the character in this way in the fourth section the reader is given insight into what makes Bloom a complete four.
The first seven lines of Ulysses opens at eight O’clock AM and has four indented sentences that tell the reader where and when the paragraph break is. (Bulson 48) This structure means that within the first seven lines of Ulysses there are four paragraphs. Closer inspection shows that the first paragraph has four lines.
The title Ulysses has seven letters in it, when we remove Molly’s “yes” from it, then it has four letters. If the l takes the U across its knee to straighten it out a bit, it resembles the numeral 4 with a bit of imagination, and to combine the remaining Ses nets an eight. With Joyce, even the shape of the letters and numbers is an artistic choice that begets intentionality.
It’s hard to argue that pattern seeking of this kind is computational scholarship. Numerologists apply similar tactics to divine the future in holy texts, but that doesn’t make it authentic. The point is that a Joycean worldview invites this sort of scrupulous attention to detail, even if the results are mystical. It becomes important to remember that this play has its limits, and at some point, the text demands a higher understanding. Yet this obsessive attention to every little detail is the foundation of true Joycean understanding. It’s simply not a coincidence that Ulysses was published on Joyce’s fortieth birthday in 1922, which corresponds to Stephen’s age of 22, and further drives home the point that the world is receiving this message before it is ready for it. Even if the numerical correspondences are coincidence, the associative powers of the reader has divined new meaning from their presence, and new streams of thought about the text are opened.
This may seem like a con to some, a way of, “enquiring into the number of times giraffes appear in the English novel,” as T. S. Eliot notes. It becomes important to emphasize that the reality of Ulysses must be handled alongside its elevated playfulness. Eric Bulson writes in Ulysses by Numbers, “Though counting giraffes in a novel might sound frivolous enough when done for its own sake, [Eliot] does not dismiss the possibility that facts, numerical and otherwise, can be useful for literary interpretation.” (9) Bulson writes about the number 7 Eccles Street that marks Molly and Poldy’s address:
But does that exact number really matter? What if it were 6, 14, or why not, 9? For the numerologist, that number 7 might correspond with the days of creation and rest, but so what? How far does this connection take us in our interpretation of a fictional day in Dublin? A computational reading, on the other hand, would instead see that seven as a quantitative fact. Molly and Leopold live in the seventh unit located on Eccles Street, a real street in Dublin. And that’s of potential interest for someone interested in the historical or topographical dimension of the novel, who might want to know that there was actually a 7 on that street in June 1904. But why argue over the validity of one when they’re both correct? Seven is a number in a novel, and it can have a qualitative and quantitative dimension. So even if it is charged with symbolic meaning, this digit also serves a quantitative function that contributes to the realism.
Blazes is late for his affair with Molly at four O’clock and instead crosses paths with Bloom while ordering a sloegin in town, “Not yet. At four he. All said four.” (265) This is the most dramatic confrontation between Blazes and Bloom, if it can even be called a confrontation. Bloom follows Blazes for a bit and lets him pass. Bloom also silently passes judgement on Blazes for making Molly wait, “Be near. At four. Has he forgotten?” (266) By letting Blazes pass without incident, Bloom is an “unconquered hero,” (264) bound to the mast of his own security. Once again, the destructive element of this cycle is demonstrated through digestion. In this case Bloom passes the emotional pain and jealousy of Molly’s affair like the gas he passes from his cider. (291) By showing Bloom in this way, Joyce has created a new type of hero who does not conquer, without being conquered. In contrast, Odysseus slaughters every last one of Penelope’s suitors after coming home from sacking Troy, and Blazes sexual appetites more closely resembles that of Odysseus than does Bloom’s.
The creative numerical patterns of Ulysses are far less extensive than those found in Finnegans Wake, which arguably contains every symbolic use of the numeral in existence. Nevertheless, their presence speaks for itself with some creative application of the imagination and can lend insight into much of the inner workings of the text. To dismiss these patterns out of hand as merely coincidence is to avoid the associative power of Joyce’s language. These are the threads that are weaved in the tapestry of life that is constantly done and undone by trickster hands. While all is fair for love at four, even as it passes like a rising smell, the definition of a hero is not a mathematical sum of twenty years or twenty-four hours, but an artfully ambiguous concept open to the imagination.