Rike - Ulysses, the Linati Schema

James Joyce: Ulysses

The Linati Schema

http://www.friederikebuchholtz.de/ulschemalin.html

This schema was drawn up by Joyce around 1920 and sent to Carlo Linati, a friend and translator into Italian of Joyce’s Exiles, for his personal use, though Joyce soon found himself being badgered by many others who had heard of the plan’s existence. In his letter of September 21, 1920 enclosing the plan, Joyce wrote to Linati:

As to Mr Dessy’s suggestion I think that in view of the enormous bulk and the more than enormous complexity of my damned monster-novel it would be better to send him a sort of summary - key - skeleton - scheme (for home use only)... I have given only «Schlagworte» [catchwords] in my scheme but I think you will understand it all the same. It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses has fascinated me ever since boyhood. I started writing a short story for Dubliners fifteen years ago but gave it up. For seven years I have been working at this book - blast it! It is also a kind of encyclopaedia. My intention is not only to render the myth sub specie temporis nostri [in the light of our own times] but also to allow each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the somatic scheme of the whole) to condition and even to create its own technique. Each adventure is so to speak one person although it is composed of persons - as Aquinas relates of the heavenly hosts.

James Joyce, Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 271.

Chapter	Title	Time	Colour	People	Science/Art	Meaning	Technic	Organ	Symbol
1	Telemachus	8am - 9am	Gold, White	Telemachus, The Mentor, Antinous, The Suitors, Penelope	Theology	Dispossessed son in contest	Dialogue for three and four, narration, soliloquy	—	Hamlet, Ireland, Stephen
2	Nestor	9am - 10am	Brown	Telemachus, Nestor, Pisistratus, Helen	History	The wisdom of the ancients	Dialogue for 2, narration, soliloquy	—	Ulster, woman, practical sense
3	Proteus	10am - 11am	Blue	Telemachus, Proteus, Menelaus, Helen, Megapenthes	Philology	Primal Matter	Soliloquy	—	World, tide, Moon, evolution, metamorphosis
4	Calypso	8 am - 9 am	Orange	Calypso, Penelope, Ulysses, Callidike	Mythology	The departing wayfarer	Dialogue for 2, soliloquy	Kidneys	Vagina, exile, nymph, Israel in captivity
5	Lotus-Eaters	9 am - 10 am	Dark brown	Euryloches, Polites, Ulysses, Nausicaa	Chemistry	The temptation of faith	Dialogue, prayer, soliloquy	Skin	Host, penis in the bath, froth, flower, drugs, castration, oats
6	Hades	11 am - 12 pm	Black, White	Ulysses, Elpenor, Ajax, Agamemnon, Hercules, Eriphyle, Sisyphus, Orion, Laertes etc. Prometheus, Cerberus, Tiresais, Hades, Proserpina, Telemachus, Antinous	—	The descent into nothingness	Dialogue, narration	Heart	Cemetry, sacred heart, the past, the unknown man, the unconscious, heart defect, relics, heartbreak
7	Aeolus	12 pm - 1 pm	Red	Aeolus, Sons, Telemachus, Mentor, Ulysses	Rhetoric	The Derision of victory	Simbouleutike, dikanike, epideictic, tropes	Lungs	Machines, wind, fame, kite, failed destinies, the press, mutability
8	Lestrygonians	1 pm - 2 pm	Blood red	Antiphates, The seductive daughter, Ulysses	Architecture	Depondency	Peristaltic prose	Oesophagus	Bloody sacrifice, food, shame
9	Scylla and Charybdis	2 pm - 3 pm	—	Scylla, Charbydis, Telemachus, Ulysses, Antinous	Literature	The double-edge sword	Whirlpools	Brain	Hamlet, Shakespeare, Christ, Socrates, London, Stratford, scholasticism, mysticism, Plato, Aristotle, youth, maturity
10	Wandering Rocks	3 pm - 4 pm	Rainbow	Objects, Places, Forces, Ulysses	Mechanics	The hostile milieu	Shifting labyrinth between two shores	Blood	Caesar, Christ, errors, homonyms, synchronisms, resemblances
11	Sirens	4 pm - 5 pm	Coral	Leucothea, Parthenope, Ulysses, Orpheus, Menelaus, Argonauts	Music	The sweet deceit	Fuga per canonem	Ear	Promises, female, sounds, embellishments
12	Cyclops	5 pm - 6 pm	Green	Prometheus, Noman, Galatea, Ulysses	Surgery	Egocidal terror/P>	Alternating asymmetry	Muscles, bones	Nation, state, religion, dynasty, idealism, exaggeration, fanaticism, collectivity
13	Nausicaa	8 pm - 9 pm	Grey	Nausicaa, Handmaidens, Alcinous, Arete, Ulysses	Painting	The projected mirage	Retrogressive progression	Eye, Nose	Onanism, feminine, hypocrisy
14	Oxen of the Sun	10 pm - 11 pm	White	Lampetie, Phaethusa, Helios Hyperion, Jove, Ulysses	Physics	The eternal herds	Prose, embryo, foetus, birth	Matrix, uterus	Fertilisation, frauds, parthenogenesis
15	Circe	11 pm - 12 am	Violet	Circe, The Swine, Telemachus, Ulysses, Hermes	Dance	The man-hating ogress	Exploding vision	Locomotor apparatus, skeleton	Zoology, personification, pantheism, magic, poison, antidote, reel
16	Eumaeus	12 am - 1 am	—	Eumaeus, Ulysses, Telemachus, The Bad Goatherd, Pseudangelos	—	The ambush on home ground	Relaxed prose	Nerves	—
17	Ithaca	1 am - 2 am	—	Ulysses, Telemachus, Eurycleia, The suitors	—	Armed hope	Dialogue, pacified style, fusion	Juices	—
18	Penelope	—	—	Ulysses, Laertes, Penelope	—	The past sleeps	Monologue, resigned style	Fat	—