Hallucinations in “James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses” by Frank Budgen (post 2): The Circe episode on sane and sober people who have hallucinations.

“Since the month of June he [James Joyce] had been working on the Circe episode, the longest, the strangest and in many ways the strongest episode of Ulysses. It is steeped in the atmosphere and governed by the logic of hallucination…

“Bloom though tired is sober. The little that he has drunk has stimulated his imagination and, the night and the place aiding, his thoughts and fancies assume three-dimensional shapes before him and claim independent existence [like a writer’s characters, with whom the writer works and converses, and who seem to have minds of their own]…

“The Circe episode is generally regarded as the clou of Ulysses, at any rate as the most original and striking of all the eighteen episodes…The observed fact is that hallucination is common human experience [among novelists and others who have the normal version of multiple personality]. The art consists in treating it as such. We all know it in the certified mental case, in the case of sufferer from fever delirium, in the case of the overdrunk individual who lives in a world full of serpents and rodents, but not in our own lives where it also plays its part. Joyce shows it as being a common experience of sane men [like writers with a normal version of multiple personality]. It may be objected that Stephen is drunk. Bloom, however, is soberer than many judges, and it is mainly Bloom’s inner world that is projected into three dimensional space…

“Take a time of crisis such as that in which Bloom is living, a Jew, sonless and with memories of his dead son all the day rolling back upon him, cuckolded to his own knowledge, physically tired, surrounded with the sights and smells of the brothel, and nothing is more natural than that the thin partition between daydream and hallucination shall break down—that for the space of seconds his waking dream [a term often used by writers in regard to their creative process] shall dominate his fatigued senses” (1, pp. 231-252).

Charles Dickens’s Hallucination

I have previously quoted a real-life hallucination of sane and sober Charles Dickens. As recorded in Forster’s biography, Dickens tells about a vision he had when he was once riding in his carriage on the road to Canterbury. He was near the house called Gadshill-place, and he hallucinated a strange young boy, standing by the side of the road:

   “Holloa!” said I [Dickens], to the very queer small boy, “where do you live?”

   “At Chatham,” says he.

   “What do you do there?” says I.

   “I go to school,” says he.

    I took him up [into his carriage] in a moment, and we went on [Dickens recalls]. Presently, the very queer small boy says, “This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.”

   “You know something about Falstaff, eh?” said I.

   “All about him,” said the very queer small boy. “I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!”

   “You admire that house?” said I.

   “Bless you, sir,” said the very queer small boy, “when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it. Though that’s impossible!” said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might.

    I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy [Dickens recalls]; for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true.

Comment

Frank Budgen makes a good point. Bloom is sane and sober. So if he hallucinates, then one issue being raised is hallucinations among normal people. However, Budgen goes too far. Not all normal people hallucinate. What kind of normal people do?

People with multiple personality, most of whom are not mentally ill, sometimes hear the voices of their alternate personalities, and sometimes “hallucinate their alter personalities as separate people existing outside of their bodies” (2), like Dickens did in the above quotation.

In the Circe episode, Joyce lifts the curtain on the hallucinatory experiences of novelists and others with multiple personality. Of course, not everyone with multiple personality has the same kinds of hallucinations, which may be few and far between or different.

1. Frank Budgen. James Joyce and the Making of ‘Ulysses’ [1934]. London, Oxford University Press, 1972.

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.