Jahn, Manfred 1995b.

Rev. of Senn, Fritz, ed., James Joyce, Hades: Ein Beispiel aus dem
'Ulysses', Englisch-Deutsch (Mainz: Dieterich, 1992). James Joyce
Quarterly 32.3/4: 774-776.
This is the ninth volume in Dieterich's series excerpta classica, which so far "covers"
authors like Barthes, Bash, Sartre, Rimbaud, Proust, and Boccaccio. While at first
glance the series might well be seen as a blatant attempt to cash in on the German
public's urge to improve their minds (the local term for this is Bildungsbeflissenheit),
the excerpts are carefully presented and annotated by expert editors. In the present
case, the avowed aim is to acquaint the reader with the freshness, colourfulness,
humour and linguistic inventiveness of Joyce's narrative style, and, as a by-product,
make Ulysses more generally accessible. There must be a sizable audience for this;
mainly, of course, teachers and students, but beyond that many potential readers who
feel in need of what software marketing people like to call a "user-friendly interface".
Considering that this is precisely [End of p. 774] what Ulysses fails to provide, one
can see that Dieterich may have a very valid (selling) point.
The present book is a small-format but substantial paperback containing "Hades"
(based on Gabler) interleaved with Wollschlger's translation, and extensive notes.
The text and the notes are sandwiched between three brief introductory essays (one on
the literary status of Ulysses, another giving a synopsis of chapters 1 to 5, the third
summarizing the textual debate), and five longer essays dealing, respectively, with the
death motif, Homeric allusions, Joyce's technique of incremental proofreading,
prospective and retrospective intra- and crosstextual correspondences. The text is
supplemented by a generous amount of photographic material, an itinerary map,
Gilbert's Schema, and a select bibliography.
The businesslike quality of this outline shows the hand of an expert, and, in fact, the
initial smirk of condescension is quickly wiped off the reviewer's face by the fact that
the project's editor, presenter, annotator and commentator is none other than Fritz
Senn. Senn has eagerly embraced the concept of a user-friendly approach; he actually
seeks the communication with that fabled animal, the common, or ordinary, reader.
Consequently, the first thing Senn does is explicitly promise to bypass joyless
Literaturwissenschaft and avoid scholarly jargon. Laying his cards on the table, he
disarmingly announces that his aim is to set an insidious trap, get the readers hooked,
tempt them to catch the inspiration of the text. This is a smart move in several
respects. For one thing, it is difficult to imagine anything more infectious than Senn's
own obsession with Ulysses and its author. And since it is in the nature of an
obsession to know no bounds, nothing will ultimately stop him (or his readers) from
gaining access to the treasures hidden in the libraries of the academic industry.
Despite Senn's own initial misgivings about the excerpta classica framework (he
elegantly dismisses these on the strength of the pars-pro-toto principle, which
arguably is a foundation stone of Ulysses itself), the book works extremely well,
mainly because he is such a singularly gifted and perceptive annotator and
commentator, but not least also because "Hades" turns out to be an excerpt to end all
excerpts. It provides a moving view of the city of Dublin, presents wonderful
character vignettes, and shows the major figures in typical and idiosyncratic

interactions. Sombre moods and passages are perfectly balanced by irrepressible

humour, and Senn, knowing that this will score well with uninitiated readers,
unobtrusively provides the necessary background detail to fully appreciate the jokes.
In addition, the chapter's narrative technique is both attractive and reasonably [End of
p. 775] negotiable - indeed, Wollschlger's translation does its bit here by bridging the
more extreme associative leaps and discontinuities of Bloom's interior monologues.
"Hades" is in fact one of the last chapters in which Joyce uses the initial style, and
surface cracks are already beginning to show. For the first time, the textual focus
begins to leave the main focalizer's point of view, and although the style ultimately
reverts to focalization through Bloom, these brief excursions, duly pointed out by
Senn, are clear anticipations of the more radical fugues to come in "Aeolus",
"Wandering Rocks" and "Sirens".
It turns out that to find fault with Senn, one has to resort to a bit of pedantry. To begin
with, the quality of the proofreading is disappointingly poor (particularly in view of
the textual debate) - one encounters errors such as "I except" [expect], "thum[b]s"
(112), "Maede's" (170), runaway italics (292), etc. Secondly, granting that a select
bibliography necessarily rests on personal judgment and preference, it is nevertheless
a pity that two excellent introductory texts, viz. Ellmann's James Joyce's Tower and
Hayman's The Mechanics of Meaning have not been included. Incidentally, JJQ is not
listed either. Also, given the intended readership, perhaps the 1993 Oxford Ulysses
might be considered a more suitable follow-on version than the Gabler edition
recommended by Senn (no criticism intended here, as the Oxford edition postdates
Senn's book). Lastly, although Senn's personal style is as refreshingly natural and
unacademic as promised, there are occasional lapses into Joysprick. For instance, at
one point Senn speaks of "Geschmack saurer Trauben" and "Literatur . . . mit dem
groen 'L'" (8). Such phrases will simply baffle the targeted audience, not only
because in German "literature" is always spelled with a capital L, but also because no
German reader who needs a translation to follow "Hades" will be able to retrieve the
English kernels ("sour grapes", "literature with a capital L") that underlie these crosslingual intertextualities. However, prospective Joyce readers need to learn to take the
rough with the smooth, and none of the foregoing points seriously detract from the
overall appeal and usefulness of the book.

[21 Aug 2000]