Proteus, god of the sea.#4

Leora challenged me, and I think Raven in her polite and cautious way tried to warn me, but stubborn headed me could not resist. This Sunday have been the day of Proteus in many variations. My brother Kel, Gunnar and Serina have all been engaged and thrilled by the opening sequence of the Proteus chapter. We have read Homer, Wittgenstein, about Jugend art, searched through glossaries for the best translation of modality(there is none,the Norwegian word is modalitet), we have twisted and turned the sentences till I finally ended up in the bath listening to a skilled Irish actor reading the Ulysses.
Couldn't dream of a better way to spend a sunny summer's day.
All this and football too..

PROTEUS, GOD OF THE SEA.
Menelaus who fought Proteus and won the answer, the way back to Ithacha .

"INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT, IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes.
Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.
Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.(Dante on Aristotle: "the master of the men who know"). Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.


Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells.
You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably.
I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos.
Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.


See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end."
Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.


Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end."
— James Joyce (Ulysses)

The modality of the sea,
The rhythm of the sea,
The ever changing,
The life giving,
The life ending,
The riddle to be individually solved.
A blogger , Kurt Lindblom says,"Anyway, the phrase basically means the inescapability form of the visible. Vision is a fundamental component of existence. And Stephen is musing over the exact nature of reality--what is real? How can he know what is real? "

I don't agree. Anyone who has been walking along the shore knows for sure that the sea, the waves; the form of the shore, is always changing. Flood, tide, storm, landslides pollution; the ocean is as vulnerable as it is strong. A blind man knows a lot of forms, shapes by using his other senses, also described by Stephen. His ears, his skin, his balance, smell, texture, are all things telling about the real world surrounding him. Any archeologist can tell a lot about what may be hidden under the earth, because of history, forms, shapes of the scenery and the culture he is about to examine.
We can indeed know about things we do not see.
Hebrews 11
¹Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Most of the pictures made by Gunnar Jacobsen.
The pictures were added mainly to entertain, but also that you may take time to reflect on the text.