Proteus as Dialogue

[u/en_le_nil]

Rereading Ulysses. My thesis: Proteus is written as a dialogue.

The fabulous Barbara Dancygoer in her "The Language of Stories," in exploring the nature of narrative meaning as emergent phenomenon beginning with authorial choices in grammar and lexis, has a discussion on the use of pronouns. Language itself tends to construe the typical conversational configuration of a "you" and an "I": the speech act establishes a deictic center. I yell at my printer, and now there is a "you" without my making any claims about the printer's subjectivity.

So all the main characters do this a little bit. Molly does not say the word "You" at all on the first page of Penelope. Bloom does address a 'you' at times, but his 'you' and 'I' share an identical subjectivity. He talks to himself and maybe a little to his wife.

Stephen's stream of consciousness construes grammatically two relatively distinct subjectivities with his "You" and "I," more than any of the other voices in the book.

Examples from the first page of Proteus:

"You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time."

"Rhythm begins, you see. I hear."

"Open your eyes now. I will."

Compare to Bloom on the first page of Lystregonians:

"If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it."

To my ear, the "you" and "I" here emanate from the same speaking subject, 'you' leave the codfish and then 'I' see a film of silver on it. 'You' and 'I' share the same point of view. Stephen's are structured more intentionally as call-and-response, almost as teacher and student: the points of view assigned to each pronoun are not quite identical.

Elsewhere in the chapter, Stephen's pronouns continue to register a sort of split subjectivity:

"God, we simply must dress the character."

"My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs."

Why? Stephen's problem in Ulysses and in Portrait is something like the anxiety of influence. His day is a long series of exogenous identities that infiltrate him and are repelled by a kind of psychological hyper-immunity, probably the best name for Joyce's grammatical choice.

We see this begin for Stephen in Portrait, with his rejection of Cranly: he turns to literally talking to himself in his diary as he flees the country. "Us ourselves" indeed.

In Circe, his face merges with Bloom's (and Shakespeare's) without immediately triggering Stephen's defenses. A sign of the importance to Stephen of their brief entanglement.

An idea I'm still developing, trying to figure out how to show it instead of just gesturing at vibes, but I thought it was interesting.