Investigating a possible allusion to a man not yet deceased
Leopold Bloom, in the Hades chapter of Ulysses, scans the deaths column of the Freeman’s Journal. Photograph: PA Wire
The clue that Joyce was up to something here is what Senan, in an elegant metaphor, calls his “injured lapwing” technique. In this case it involved him distracting the casual reader from Naumann by having Bloom wonder about the next name on the list : “ ... what Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosby and Alleyne’s? no ...
In the same paragraph, after a poetic reflection on “characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper”, Bloom skips ahead to reading about a “month’s mind”: the traditional Catholic memorial marking the departed’s first post-funeral milestone. The Ulysses connections here are widespread, Senan points out. Giving evidence on Rabbi Newman’s mental state, for example, was a Dr Connolly Norman, irreverently referenced in fiction by Buck Mulligan: “He’s up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane.”
Why would he have turned Newman into Naumann? Well, for one reason, the dead rabbi was from Russia, and Russian jews would not have called themselves by the anglicised Newman. He probably used an accented version. Hence perhaps the morgue register, available in the National Archives, “appears to show his surname as Noiman”.
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