Ithaca

This concise, mathematical, question/ answer approach of narration seems fitting to expand Joyce’s commentary on language, taking the opposite path to degradation of language in oxen of the sun (ending in slang gibberish). This sort of technical language was created and seems to be used for the sake of a succinct, clear expression but Joyce’s use of it elucidates the absurdity. It seems the more concise the word the less understandable the definition (and also, less people are familiar with these definitions.) In an attempt to bring the signified and the signifier closer, this sort of language pushes them farther apart.
And like the feigned attempt of the language to bring together the signified / signifier (which could also be looked at as metaphoric for Stephen and Bloom’s representation of the ideal / corporeal) Stephen and Bloom’s attempt at connection seems more superimposed then organic. Here we really see the two drastically different minds: one, of Stephen the artist, and the other, of Bloom the “scientist.” They even hear the sound of the bells differently (is Joyce inferring here that pre-reflectivity does not exist (if our sound is even shaped by memory/ ego?)
But all of that aside, given Joyce’s view of the absurdity of language, it seems that he would want Stephen and Bloom to connect in a space the transcends language . And they do. “Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom? / Not verbally. Substantially” (697). This corresponds with their exchanged look in the previous chapter.
Which brings me to the repeated use of opposites, or antinomies in this chapter. The neverchanging / everychanging water, the scientific / artistic, the real / imaginary, the move from the known to the unknown. In Bloom, Stephen hears a profound accumulation of the past. In Stephen, Boom sees predestination of a future. In order for completion, the opposite must be with in its own opposite. This is brought to light with the mention of St. Johns of Damascus. According to the Bloomsday book, St. John’s Trinitarian theology, “develops the conception of circumincession in order to express the InnerTrinitarian relations. And circumincession means the reciprocal existence of the persons of the Trinity in one another.” So the relationship is reciprocal.