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James Joyce
Ida Klitgaard
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
CANNIBALISTIC TRANSLATION IN THE LESTRYGONIANS EPISODE OF JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES

The idiom in the title of this essay (food for thought) is here to be understood both literally and figuratively. It is to be understood literally because Leopold Bloom’s thoughts in Lestrygonians are visibly about food, but it is also to be grasped figuratively as the objects of his thoughts give rise to serious considerations of so much more than food, notably the conception of cultural cannibalism. In the following I shall give a detailed explanation of this contention.

The entire episode of Lestrygonians is famous for its interconnected puns, images and associative reflections on the similarities between human savagery, cannibalism and degeneration on the one hand, and cultural control, Roman Catholic transubstantiation and death on the other hand. One example is found half-way through the episode where Bloom enters the Burton restaurant. Here Bloom is faced with a scenario of animalistic “dirty eaters” (U 8.696) who not only represent the Dubliners’ primitive instinct for survival, but also represent their intellectual and emotional paralysis:

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling wolfing gobfals of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his numbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it […] Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man (U 8.653-63).

Further on we are increasingly startled and repulsed by the many vivid and highly complex images of human consumption of both animal and human flesh and blood, which are strikingly toppled with further allusions to sexual consumption. This passage, which takes place in Davy Byrnes’s Pub, says it all:

Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect.There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger (U 8.745-49).

Roman Catholic missionaries, who believe in the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine offered at communion service, are too salty to swallow to cannibals. The chief cannibal, we are told, then prefers his victim’s ‘parts of honour’, which we must assume to be either the inner organs or the genitals, which Bloom in turn assumes to be ‘tough from exercise’, implying sexual ‘exercise’. The wives of the chief expect this saturation to have a positive effect on his sexual performance; just as Catholic transubstantiation is believed to make Christ’s body and soul come alive at the Consecration of the Eucharist. These rather blasphemous “translations” of religious ideas then link up with an even nastier association, that of a limerick which reads in its totality:

There was a right royal old nigger
Who ate the balls of Mr. MacTrigger
His five hundred wives
Had the time of their lives
It grew bigger and bigger and bigger (Henke 1977)

In Bloom’s “dirty” mind Mr MacTrigger turns into ‘the reverend’ Mr MacTrigger, making him clerical or at least deserving reverence – he does expand his powers as it were.

Now, Bloom’s mind is not only dirty. These parabolic bites of nourishing musings are encapsulated in a wider frame of cultural and social concern on Bloom’s part. Immediately following the scenario of dirty eaters in Burton’s restaurant is an association to ‘That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac’ who presumably ‘choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne’ (U 8.663-65). Bloom ponders: ‘Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however’ (U 8.665-67). According to Gifford and Seidman, the reference is more likely to be to the supposed meeting between the then-high king Laeghaire and St. Patrick than to the myth about King Cormac choking on the food he ate. The legend of King Laeghaire goes that even though he did not accept the Christian conversion, the King agreed not to interfere with St. Patrick’s mission: he could not ‘swallow it all’ – which might also, in my interpretation, refer to the Irish King’s refusal to swallow the alleged flesh and blood of Christ.

The civilisation which has taken over Ireland in the wake of the Christian conversion is, it is indicated, one in which everyone fights for his or her life: ‘Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff […] Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!’ (U 8.701-3). This competition for survival has spread its implications like a disease into the stomachs, hearts and souls of the people in the modern city of Dublin, and Bloom feels increasingly alienated by it all:

Things go on same, day after day […] Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the blood off. All are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa […] Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed (U 8.477-83; 495).

Translation Theory

The above ideas lead to the other half of the title of this article, ‘Cannibalistic Translation in Lestrygonians’, which takes us to the theoretical part of my study. What is conceived in these passages of Lestrygonians is very much akin to the metaphor of cannibalistic translation, a hot topic in many recent translatological writings about the construction of cultural identity through translation. The notion originates in the Brazilian antiliberal and antichristian modernist Anthropophagus Movement of the 1920s. In his famous ‘Anthropophagus Manifesto’ (1928) Oswald de Andrade advocates a return to the state of Brazil before the European colonisers seized the country as their mental and cultural colonisation has destroyed happiness.

When Brazil was discovered by the Portuguese, French and Spanish explorers, the original people, the tribe of the Tupis, reacted by eating the colonisers; however, this act was not an act of brutal destruction, but an act of respectful cultural absorption and transformation:

Despite the way it has been characterised by Western explorers, missionaries and anthropologists, it [cannibalism] was highly religious, and in many ways akin to the Christian practice of communion with its symbolic drinking of the blood of Christ. For the Tupi Indians, cannibalism had nothing to do with the European notion, which involves concepts of devouring, dismembering, and mutilation, but rather an act of taking back out of love, honour, and nourishment. Only the bravest and most virtuous soldiers were devoured. They would first be taken into the community to live among the families and children of the conquering tribe so that the people could learn virtuous behaviour from the captured soldier. The final act of eating the brave soldier was symbolic as well as physical. Cannibalism was seen as an act of nourishing, in which the positive values of the brave but defeated soldier would be digested and absorbed and become part of the future physical and mental identity of the victorious community. In a Darwinian fashion, the transfusion of blood was the means by which the virtues would be transmitted (Gentzler 2003: 25).

Consequently, all the non-virtuous, “inedible” parts were metaphorically spewed. But what the tribe took from the foreign culture, they consumed, digested and assimilated to their own culture.< /p>

In this way, the postcolonial dilemma of Brazil, and implicitly, according to Oswald de Andrade, that of Brazilian literature, becomes that of

the duality of the origin and, accordingly, of the cultural identity of Brazil, both European and Tupi, both civilized and native, both Christian and magic: a culture that grew out of the juxtaposition of two civilizations in different stages of development and that carries to this day the inherent paradox of the “origin” (Viera 1988: 179).

The same can be said of the notion of cultural cannibalism in Lestrygonians. Here Bloom’s thoughts circle around a comparison between pagan Irish culture and modern urban Christian civilisation based on reflections of the similarities between transubstantiation and cannibalism. The Irish pagans had to convert to Christianity, having to ‘swallow it all’, virtuous as well as non-virtuous values, but Christianity subsequently, it is suggested, swallows its followers in a most degrading way turning them into greedy and savage pigs who live by the motto: Eat or be eaten! And what they cannot chew, they spit out: ‘A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle’ (U 8.659-60). This resembles in a figurative way how Bloom feels in the middle of the vast alienating city: “Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed” (U 8.495). This feeling may originate in the fact that Bloom is neither pagan nor Christian, but Jewish. As is demonstrated throughout Ulysses, the Jewish Leopold Bloom is a person the greedy and savage Dubliners cannot understand, that is “chew”, so they spit him out, cast him out of their community, making him a stranger in his own country.

Thus the cannibalistic metaphor works well both as an illustration of the Dubliners’ degenerate behaviour as well as an illustration of the Irish postcolonial dilemma of being forced to appropriate all of Roman Catholicism rather than being allowed to select only the best of that tradition, as was the case with the Tupi Indians in Brazil. This tribe found a way to merge foreign input with domestic habits which, in their belief, was a dignified way to “translate” cultural difference. In opposition, the Irish tribe has been forced to succumb to all the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, turning the Irish into nothing more than primitive animals alienating themselves from each other.

The postcolonial Brazilian Gordian knot of hybrid cultural identity has been revived and re-evaluated in the cultural and literary theories of the two Brazilian concrete poets and translators, brothers Haroldo and Augusto de Campos in the 1960s and 70s. In their literary theories and literary practice they regard the act of translating foreign literature into the Brazilian culture as an act of cannibalism or an act of blood-transfusion, but in a creative, positive and transformative way as it was practiced by the Tupis: ‘Translation as transfusion. Of blood. Ironically, we could talk of vampirization, thinking of the translator’s nourishment’ (Haroldo de Campos in Viera 1999: 95). The main features of such cannibalistic translation are ‘playing with the language, adding puns, ambiguities, phonetic resonance, multilingual referents […] irony and parody’ (Gentzler 2003: 27).

The de Campos brothers also intervene in canonical literature by, for instance, inserting material that does not belong there, such as Augusto de Campos inserting lines from Brazilian folksongs into his translation of John Donne, ‘creating a kind of transcultural hybrid form that resonates in both European and Brazilian culture’ (Gentzler 2003: 28). Edwin Gentzler elaborates: ‘Cannibalism has become perhaps the leading cultural metaphor in Brazil, reflecting the possibility of creating a new national culture, one not imitating European or North American culture, but one blending elements of both North and South, Europe and indigenous, First and Third World’ (Gentzler 2003: 28-29).

So far I have discussed cannibalistic translation as a metaphor for the construction of cultural identity as it is suggestively represented in the complex ‘food for thought’ in Bloom’s train of associations in Lestrygonians, and as it has been discussed in Brazilian modernist cultural theory and translation theory. I will analyse now what happens to these ideas and features in an actual translation of Lestrygonians into a totally different foreign language.

The texture of Ulysses very much resembles the texture of the translation strategies of the de Campos brothers as it, too, plays with language and includes puns, ambiguities, phonetic resonances, multilingual referents, irony and parody. And like Augusto de Campos, Joyce also intervenes in canonical literature by for instance ‘translating’ the Odyssey into a modern transcultural hybrid form that resonates in both Irish, British, European and, yes, all other national cultures. But how do we translate this texture - chew, swallow and transform this - into a foreign language in such a way that the target text turns into a successful transfusion of the maiden text with fresh blood as it were?

The Danish Translations

I am going to devote the rest of this article to a comparative analysis of a profound passage in Lestrygonians with the existing Danish translations. The passage includes a number of innuendos expressing the above-mentioned similarities between human savagery, cannibalism and degeneration on the one hand, and cultural control, Roman Catholic transubstantiation and death on the other hand. The passage includes a great amount of language play, puns, ambiguities, phonetic resonances, multilingual referents, irony and parody as well as the before-mentioned reference to the limerick about cannibalistic sexual consumption.

Below are Joyce’s 1922 passage and the Danish translations produced by Mogens Boisen in 1949, 1970 and 1980 (1). The 1970 and 1980 translations are thorough revisions of the 1949 translation (2):

James Joyce 1922:
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants mustered [musterred] and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam's potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honor. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr Mac-Trigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese (U 1922: 8.741)

Mogens Boisen 1949:
Sardiner paa hylderne. Kan naesten smage dem ved synet. Sandwich? Hele familien Skinke paa raekke og geled. Daasemad. Hvad er konen uden Plumtree’s daasemad? Aldrig glad. Sikken en dum annonce! De satte den op under doedsannoncerne. Helt i skoven. Dignam’s daasekoed. Godt for kannibaler med citron og ris. Hvid missionaer for salt. Ligesom roeget flaesk. Hoevdingen aeder sikkert de fornemste stykker. Maa nok vaere sejge af brugen. Hans koner sidder paa stribe for at iagttage virkningen. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. Med den jubler hun af fryd. Guderne maa vide, hvad der er i. Livmoder, raadnende tarme luftroer hakkes fint og blandes. Vanskeligt at finde koedet. Koscher. Ikke koed og maelk sammen. Det er dét, der nu kaldes hygiejne. Jom Kippur fasten indvendig foraarsrengoering. Fred og krig beror paa en eller anden fyrs fordoejelse. Religioner. Julekalkuner og gaes. Drab paa uskyldige. Spis, drik og vaer glad. Skadestuerne fulde bagefter. Indbundne hoveder. Ost fordoejer alt undtagen sig selv. Staerk ost (Dn U 1949: 178) (3).

Mogens Boisen 1970:
Sardiner paa hylderne. Kan naesten smage dem ved synet. Sandwich? Hele familien. Kam og Skink paa raekke og geled. Daasekoed. Hvad er hjemmet uden Plumtree’s daasekoed? Stedt i noed. Sikken en dum annonce. De satte den op under nekrologerne. Helt i skoven. Dignam’s daasekoed. Godt for kannibaler med citron og ris. Hvid missionaer for salt. Ligesom roeget flaesk. Hoevdingen aeder sikkert de fornemste stykker. Maa nok vaere sej af brugen. Hans koner sidder paa stribe for at iagttage virkningen. Der var en fornem gammel nigger, som aad en vis ting af pastor MacTrigger. Men med – et saligt sted. Guderne maa vide, hvad der er i. Livmoder, raadnende tarme luftroer hakkes fint og blandes. Vanskeligt at finde koedet. Kosher. Ikke koed og maelk sammen. Det er dét, der nu kaldes hygiejne. Jom Kippur fasten indvendig foraarsrengoering. Fred og krig beror paa en eller anden fyrs fordoejelse. Religioner. Julekalkuner og gaes. Drab paa uskyldige. Spis, drik og vaer glad. Skadestuerne fulde bagefter. Indbundne hoveder. Ost fordoejer alt undtagen sig selv. Staerk ost (Dn U 1970: 166).

Mogens Boisen 1980/1986:
Sardiner paa hylderne. Kan naesten smage dem ved synet. Sandwich? Hele familien. Kam og Skink paa raekke og geled. Daasekoed. Hvad er hustru uden Plumtree’s daasekoed? Stedt i noed. Sikken en dum annonce. De satte den op under nekrologerne. Helt i skoven. Dignam’s daasekoed. Godt for kannibaler med citron og ris. Hvid missionaer for salt. Ligesom roeget flaesk. Hoevdingen aeder sikkert de fornemste stykker. Maa nok vaere sej af brugen. Hans koner sidder paa stribe for at iagttage virkningen. Der var en fornem gammel nigger, som aad en vis ting af pastor MacTrigger. Men med – er dagen soed. Guderne maa vide, hvad der er i. Kallun, lunge, raadnende tarme luftroer hakkes fint og blandes. Vanskeligt at finde koedet. Kosher. Ikke koed og maelk sammen. Det er dét, der nu kaldes hygiejne. Jom Kippur fasten indvendig foraarsrengoering. Fred og krig beror paa en eller anden fyrs fordoejelse. Religioner. Julekalkuner og gaes. Drab paa uskyldige. Spis, drik og vaer glad. Skadestuerne fulde bagefter. Indbundne hoveder. Ost fordoejer alt undtagen sig selv. Staerk ost (Dn U 1980/1986: 206-7).

In the following I will extract individual lines in order to analyse them separately.

Example 1:

Sandwich? Ham and his descendants musterred (4) and bred there(1922)

Sandwich? Hele familien Skinke paa (5) raekke og geled (Dn U 1949)

Sandwich? Hele familien. Kam og Skink paa raekke og geled (Dn U 1970; 1980)

In these lines Bloom speculates whether he should order a sandwich, a ham sandwich presumably. Later on we learn that he orders a sandwich with gorgonzola. But this food gives rise to the memory of a comic rhyme including several puns and language play, not least phonological resonants: ‘Why should no man starve on the deserts of Arabia? / Because of the sand which is there. / How came the sandwiches there? / The tribe of Ham was bred there and mustered’ (Gifford and Seidman 1988: 179). The reference to Ham combines food and the Biblical son of Noah, traditionally regarded as the father of the Negroid races (Gifford and Seidman 1988: 179).

All these complex references cannot be transferred to the Danish translation. And from a pragmatic point of view, attempting to maintain the parody of the English rhyme in a Danish text would make no sense to the Danish reader as s/he simply would not recognise it. Instead Mogens Boisen’s first translation of ‘Ham and his descendants’ has become ‘Hele familien Skinke’ [The entire Ham family], where ‘Skinke’ in Danish only refers to the meat, not the Biblical figure. In the subsequent translations he has changed the lines into ‘Hele familien. Kam og Skink’ [The entire family. Kam and Skink] where ‘Kam’ is a pun on both the Danish name for the Biblical Ham as well as referring to the loin of an animal. ‘Skink’ is a creative abbreviation of ‘skinke’ [pork ham] which now looks like a one-syllable name just like ‘Kam’.

The wordplay of ‘musterred’ and ‘bred’ with the similar sounds of ‘mustard’ and ‘bread’ has not been rendered in Danish. Boisen translates ‘musterred’ into ‘paa raekke og geled’ [in serried ranks] which does have military connotations, but without the mustard/ham sandwich connotations. In this way the Danish translations of these lines certainly lose the references to the old English rhyme, but they nevertheless create images of hams lined up somewhere in the pub, or just in Bloom’s mind, linking up with his vision of ‘sardines’ lined up ‘on the shelves’, foreshadowing the cannibal’s wives waiting ‘in a row’ further on.

This vision of family members with names such as ‘Kam’ and ‘Skink’ standing in a row surprisingly also concocts with the next lines in the passage:

Example 2:
Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete […] Dignam's potted meat […] With it an abode of bliss (U 1922).
Daasemad. Hvad er konen uden Plumtree’s daasemad? Aldrig glad. […] Dignam’s daasekoed. […] Med den jubler hun af fryd (Dn U 1949).
Daasekoed. Hvad er hjemmet uden Plumtree’s daasekoed? Stedt i noed. […] Dignam’s daasekoed. […] Men med – et saligt sted (Dn U 1970).
Daasekoed. Hvad er hustru uden Plumtree’s daasekoed? Stedt i noed. […] Dignam’s daasekoed. […] Men med – er dagen soed (Dn U 1980).

Here Bloom thinks about the advertisement of Plumtree’s Potted Meats which has paradoxically been placed under the obituaries in the newspaper. This, then, makes Bloom link ‘potted meat’ with the burial of his friend Paddy Dignam earlier in the day. His corpse in the coffin obviously resembles that of ‘potted meat’. After this digression he returns to the last line of the jingle, ‘With it an abode of bliss’, which, metaphorically, again interfaces with the image of Dignam in his coffin, resting in peace. The entire passage reminds the attentive reader of the following passage in ‘Hades’ where Bloom wonders what the rats think of dead meat:

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it (U 1922/1986: 6.980-85).

Bloom associatively links human corpses with eating dead meat which has gone bad. This certainly stands in sharp contrast to the mythologically Tupi cannibalistic way of honouring dead heroes. In the Dublin cemetery corpses are compared with cheese (which becomes significant in the last line of the selected passage in Lestrygonians where Bloom puns on the phrase ‘Mity cheese’) which, in turn, makes him recall that the Chinese think white man smells like a corpse. This is furthermore linked with the above-mentioned limerick in the selected passage in Lestrygonians where the cannibals find white missionaries too salty, ‘Like pickled pork’.

The passages in Lestrygonians and ‘Hades’ create together a network of disturbing images where food, meat, cheese, milk, decomposing corpses, death, bad smells and tastes evoke thoughts of corruption and cannibalism. Ironically, the passage in ‘Hades’ ends by saying that Roman Catholic priests, who by implication believe in transubstantiation, are ‘dead against’ cremation, which would in fact put an end to such degeneration. The implication here is that the doom of the Irish is very much in the dirty hands of the priests who are thus compared with rats picking the bones of their flock.

In contrast to all this, Jewish kosher food does not bring ‘milk and meat together’ (U 1922/1986: 8.750), suggesting that Bloom’s religion is free of cultural cannibalism.

In translation, this big “messy” conglomeration of images of repulsive cannibalism, cultural control and death must be preserved, or ‘potted’, in a new mulitilingual hybrid of the source language and the target language. And this network is not to gradually decompose in the translation, but to invigorate and strengthen the target text.

Boisen first translates ‘Potted meats’ into ‘Daasemad’ [tinned food] and then ‘Daasekoed’ [tinned meat] getting the connotations of death right. Unfortunately the p-alliterations in ‘Plumtree’ and ‘potted’ are lost. The rhyme between ‘meat’ and ‘Incomplete’ is, however, preserved in both the early ‘Daasemad’ [tinned food] – ‘Aldrig glad’ [never happy] and in the later ‘Daasekoed’ [tinned meat] – ‘Stedt i noed’ [in distress; starving]. Even though ‘Incomplete’ does not refer to anyone actually starving as in the Danish translation, but to the fact that a home is really lacking something without Plumtree’s potted meat, the Danish phrase successfully underscores the link to food and consumption.

Oddly enough, Boisen lingers between translating ‘home’ into ‘konen’ [the wife], ‘hjemmet’ [home] and ‘hustru’ [the wife – with a more dignified ring to it] which emphasises that it is the wife who is in distress or even starving without this amazing potted meat. In view of today’s political correctness this is a somewhat chauvinist interpretation, but it miraculously ties up with the cannibal chief’s wives in the limerick, waiting in line to see their husband’s manhood rise to the occasion. The associations we might get of a Dublin housewife anxiously awaiting ‘potted meat’, perhaps ironically dragged home by her husband, are not in the least heroic, epic or in any way admirable. Potted meat, that is conserved animal corpses, or "Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up," as Bloom himself gathers (U 1922/1986: 8.750-51), is a poor substitution for fresh quality-meat. No wonder Bloom opts for a vegetarian sandwich.

Mogens Boisen’s translations of the conclusion to the ad, ‘With it an abode of bliss’, which reminded us of Dignam resting in peace in his coffin, turn from ‘Med den jubler hun af fryd’ [with this she will cry with happiness] to ‘Men med – et saligt sted’ [but with it, a blissful place] and finally to ‘Men med – er dagen soed’ [but with it, the day will be sweet]. The first translation emphasises the Dublin wife’s ecstatic response to having ‘potted meat’, which may turn it into a sexual double entendre, I suggest, tying in with the cannibal wives’ similar expectations of their husband’s manly performance. The second translation, in contrast, stays very close to the original, thus focusing on the quiet bliss of a home with potted meat. The third translation, I am surprised, has turned into almost sheer nonsense as it dilutes the spunk and spice of the above ambiguous implications. It loses the biting flavour of the original as it only stresses the meaningless jingle-like quality to the advertisement.

Example 3:
Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese (1922)
Ost fordoejer alt undtagen sig selv. Staerk ost (Dn U 1949; 1970; 1980)

Unfortunately, in these lines Bloom’s vegetarian cheese sandwich does not offer a fresh, uncorrupted option to the dead meat scenario above. The gorgonzola which Bloom selects is one of the most smelly cheeses one can possibly have, and the fact that it is mouldy suggests that it is both dead and alive at the same time, underscoring the themes of transubstantiation and cannibalism in Lestrygonians.

But what is meant by the fact that it ‘digests all but itself’? Gifford and Seidman explain: ‘A saying that originated in the sixteenth century. The process of making cheese was popularly regarded as a process of digestion because it involved the use of rennet, a substance derived from animal stomachs and used to curdle milk’ (Gifford and Seidman 1988: 180). This means that the vegetarian cheese is in fact also corrupted by animal substances, a rennet stomach, signifying that the cheese eats itself in the making, which evokes decomposition of a corpse such as Paddy Dignam’s. As we recall, in Hades Bloom did speculate on the nature of cheese: ‘Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk’ (U 1922/1986: 6.982). And so the gorgonzola is both dead and alive, eating itself in the making, and decomposing, transubstantiating, when fully made.

The Danish translation of this line does not cause any trouble. But the translation of the next one, ‘Mity cheese’, loses all the rich ambiguities of the English expression. Gifford and Seidman explain that ‘The minute cheese mite infests and “digests” cheese, leaving a brown, powdery mass of shed skins where it has traveled [sic]’ (Gifford and Seidman 1988: 180). This may be coupled with the associations we get to rotting corpses being eaten by worms – or mites. But since Boisen’s Random House edition has ‘Mighty’ instead of ‘Mity’ as in the Gabler edition, Boisen’s selected adjective is ‘Staerk’ meaning either “strong”, “hot”, “sharp” or “smelly” cheese. The references to the small cheese mites thus fall away.

The phrase ‘Mity cheese’ in fact refers to a now vintage poster advertisement made by T. E. Stephens in 1912 with the words ‘P. T. Selbit’s Mighty cheese’ featuring a bunch of sweating males in their shirtsleeves who try to pull apart a huge, round wheel of cheese, but have to give up. The name of P. T. Selbit refers to a great illusionist of the early twentieth century (1881-1938). I doubt that Mogens Boisen has been aware of this.

Bloom’s ensuing meal consisting of a cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy is described in ways which may evoke images of Roman Catholic communion, bringing us full circle to the opening of my article:

Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that (U 1922/1986: 8.818-20).

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. (U 1922/1986: 8.850-51).

In the last description the influence of the wine may have begun to work on Bloom’s mind as the long sentence is highly playful including lots of alliterations and assonances. The cheese is, however, still dubious as it is either described as giving rise to a ‘feety savour’ or as being ‘mawkish’ meaning either nauseating or stale. The mustard is not particularly inviting either. It is a ‘relish of disgust pungent mustard’ meaning a disgusting, bitter, stinging or strong-smelling relish.

It is just as distasteful as the white missionary was to the cannibals in the limerick, suggesting that the cannibalistic, Catholic feast upon Christ’s body is not for Leopold Bloom. It only brings deadly mites to his body and soul. But the wine/blood, however, seems to become him well.

Conclusion

The network of ideas which comprises Leopold Bloom’s literal and figurative “food for thought” in Lestrygonians gives the reader a lot to chew on. The “flesh” of Bloom’s reflections offers new insights into his perception, conception and digestion of Ireland’s hybrid cultural identity. The verbal “blood” that runs through these ideas, too, offers translational transfusions by way of puns, ambiguities, phonetic resonances, multilingual referents, irony and parody – not least in the overall vision of the classic Ulysses as an apt cannibalistic expression of the modern postcolonial condition, just as the Brazilian de Campos brothers imagined it in their theories of translation in Brazil.

This brings me to the epilogue of this study: the recent Danish translations of Ulysses from 1970 and 1980 are largely re-translations of the 1949 “original”. This means that they are translations of a translation (the 1949 edition) of a translation (Joyce’s work being a translation of Homer’s Odyssey), suggesting that the Danish translator, Mogens Boisen, too, performs some kind of cultural cannibalism, that is, feeding on and swallowing up his own creation which, in turn, has fed on and swallowed up a number of other European creations. The actual textual result is sometimes on a par with Joyce’s intended playfulness, but other times the result is famished and limp. This means that the cultural metaphor of cannibalistic translation is not only a metaphor for the individual identity, but for an entire global network of people and nations feeding on each other. As Rainer Guldin says: ‘As translating cannibals we are but knots in a global net of creativity spanning many generations and vast geographical spaces constantly feeding on one another and ourselves’ (Guldin 2007: 6).

Indeed food for thought. Bon appetit!

Primary References:

Joyce, J (1922/1986) Ulysses (ed. H W Gabler). London: Bodley Head.

Joyce, J (1934) Ulysses. London: Random House.

Joyce, J (1949) Ulysses (tr. M Boisen). Copenhagen: Martins Forlag.

Joyce, J (1970) Ulysses (tr. M Boisen). Copenhagen: Martins Forlag.

Joyce, J (1980/1986) Ulysses (tr. M Boisen). Copenhagen: Gyldendal.

Secondary References:

Gentzler, E (2003) ‘Translation, Postcolonial Studies, and the Americas’.  
EnterText (An interactive interdisciplinary e-journal for cultural and historical studies and creative work), 2:2. Available at:
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/4042/entertext2.2/gentzler.pdf (consulted 12.11.2010).

Gifford, D and Robert J. Seidman (1974/1988). Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Guldin, R (2007) ‘Devouring the Other: Cannibalism, Translation and the Construction of Cultural Identity’. Revista Ghrebh, 10, June. Available at: http://www.revista.cisc.org.br/ghrebh10/artigo.php?dir=artigos&id=Rainer (consulted 23.10.2010).

Henke, S  (1977) ‘Joyce's Moraculous Sindbook: A Study of Ulysses’. Available at:
http://www.ohiostatepress.org/Books/Complete%20PDFs/Henke%20Joyces/08.pdf (consulted 12.11.2010).

Klitgard, I (2004) ‘Dual Voice and Dual Style: Translating Free Indirect Discourse in Ulysses’ in Nordic Journal of English Studies 3(3): 319-44.

Klitgard, I (2005a) ‘The Danish Translation of the Anthology of Styles in James Joyce’s Ulysses’, Orbis Litterarum 60(1): 54-69.

Klitgard, I (2005b) ‘(Dis)Location and Its (Dis)Content: Translation as Exile in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake’ in M Boss, I Gilsenan-Nordin and B Olinder (eds.) Re-Mapping Exile: Realities and Metaphors in Irish History and Literature. Arhus: The Dolphin 34, Aarhus University Press: 107-34.

Klitgard, I (2005c) ‘Taking the Pun by the Horns: The Translation of Wordplay in James Joyce’s Ulysses’ in Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, 17(1): 71-92.

Klitgard, I (2006a). ‘The Danish Translation of “Penelope” in James Joyce’s Ulysses’ in I Klitgard (ed.) Literary Translation: World Literature or “Worlding” Literature? Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Special issue of Angles on the English-Speaking World 6: 83-95.

Klitgard, I (2006b) ‘”The irresistible tug of the tides”: The Danish Translations of Stylistic Shapeshifting in the “Proteus” Episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses’ in Language and Literature 15(2): 141-58.

Klitgard, I (2006c) ’Joyce i dansk oversaettelse: Boisens Ulysses – som vinden blaeser?’ in I Klitgard and S Klitgard Povlsen (eds.) Joyce og Danmark. Arhus: Arhus Universitetsforlag: 129-44.

Klitgard, I (2007) Fictions of Hybridity: Translating Style in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.

Thornton, W (1961/1987) Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List.Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Viera, E Ribeiro Pires (1988) ‘New Registers for Translation in Latin America’ in P Bush and K Malmkjaer (eds.) Rimbaud’s Rainbow: Literary Translation in Higher Education. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 170-95.

Viera, E Ribeiro Pires (1999) ‘Liberating Calibans: Readings of Antroopfagia and Haroldo de Campos’ poetics of transcreation’ in S Bassnett and H Trivedi (eds.) Post-colonial Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

1 The respective Mogens Boisen translations appeared as Joyce, James. Ulysses  Copenhagen: Martins Forlag, 1949, 1970, and Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980/1986. I will refer to the translations as Dn U, followed by the year of publication.
2 In my book, Fictions of Hybridity: Translating Style in James Joyce’s Ulysses (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2007), I undertake a detailed and critical, comparative analysis of the Danish translations with the original based on a theoretical discussion of cultural, linguistic and aesthetic hybridity, Joyce’s poetics of translation as exile, and the translation theorist Lawrence Venuti’s terms ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignisation’ as the two most important translation strategies a translator may choose. I do not, however, address the episode of ‘Lestrygonians’ in this work. Other related analyses of the Danish translations can be found in a number of articles listed in the bibliography.
3 It must be noted that Boisen’s first translation is of the 1934 Random House edition of Ulysses which is full of misprints. In a preface to his 1970 translation Boisen says that during his work with this translation, he eventually managed to get a copy of the edition from 1939 which enabled him to make parallel readings of both editions, hopefully improving the whole thing (U 1980/1990: 10). Whenever there is a discrepancy between these editions and the Gabler edition used here, I shall make a note of it.
4 The 1934 Random House edition, which Boisen initially used, has “mustered”.
5 Before 1948, the last letter of the Danish alphabet ‘aa’ was orthographically rendered with an ‘aa’. The change in 1948 was not manifested in Danish dictionaries until 1953 which explains why Boisen does not adhere to it in his 1949 edition.