CALYPSO

The first episode of book II invites the reader to draw parallels between Stephen and Bloom. Both Telemachus and Calypso open with a name and a description of an imposing and even frightening figure: Buck Mulligan and Leopold Bloom: “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.” Bloom is described in a considerably more visceral way than the other characters we have encountered up until this point. Everything about him is bodily and pulsing – much more alive than how one imagines Stephen. Even their respective daydreams and thoughts are vastly different (though similar in their wanderings.) Stephen and Bloom seem like embodiments of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Stephen is clearly Apollonian in the way his thoughts are lofty and poetic while Bloom is concerned with bodily pleasures (wanting to watch the woman’s hips and finding satisfaction in his bowel movements.) Bloom’s thought process is rooted in the natural things he sees (wondering how the cat sees him and wishing to walk around the earth in front of the sun.)