During the composition of this episode, Joyce drafted as a reference a “pair of notesheets where Joyce listed all the ‘characters’ that had appeared thus far in Ulysses to assure their inclusion in ‘Circe’” (Groden 175). In addition to the power of “Circe” to transform the novel, this episode also portrays the grotesque transformation of hundreds of characters (dead and living), inanimate objects, and concepts thus far encountered in Ulysses. Joyce estimated that he wrote a third of Ulysses at the proof stage of the revision process (Beach 58), arranging codependent details all over the novel and weaving a web of intratextual puzzles that will “keep the professors busy for centuries” ( JJ 521). This episode, with its exhaustive reprises of virtually every character, object, and idea introduced in the novel thus far, would compel Joyce to revise much of what he had previously written. Little did he know that “Circe” would require eight drafts and take over half a year to write ( Letters), much less that it would have the power to bewitch his creative process and entirely transform Ulysses. In early spring 1920, Joyce emerged from the 1,000 hours he had spent writing “Oxen” and turned his attention to “Circe.” He expected that this episode, like the few he had recently composed, would take him two to three months to complete. Finally, some of Odysseus’s crew shake him from the madness of his long Circean interlude and compel him to resume the journey home to Ithaca. The plan works: the moly counters Circe’s magic, she swoons for Odysseus and transforms his crew from pigs back into men. Odysseus bravely hopes to rescue his men from Circe’s enchantment on the way to her house, Odysseus receives help from Hermes, who offers him a plan and equips him with moly, a magical herb that will protect him from Circe’s witchcraft. One man escapes to tell Odysseus about their comrades’ fate and Circe’s trickery. Circe invites Odysseus’s men inside for a drink and then magically turns them into pigs. In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew land on Aeaea, and a team of scouts discover the palace of Circe, a witch goddess. Bloom is hustling to catch up after stopping briefly to buy snacks. Accompanied by Lynch (and trailed by Bloom), Stephen has taken the train from Westland Row to Amiens Station and is now on his way to a brothel. As Stephen anticipated all the way back in “Telemachus,” he will not sleep there tonight. Regardless, Buck and Haines have departed without Stephen on the last train toward the Tower in Sandycove. Between the end of “Oxen” and the start of “Circe,” a sundering occurred between Stephen and Buck Mulligan in Westland Row Station perhaps Buck simply abandoned Stephen, or maybe there was a physical confrontation. Worried over Stephen’s drunken condition, Bloom has followed him into Nighttown in hopes of taking care of him.
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