Stephen's distance from his own body is evident when he
urinates: "Better get this job over quick. Listen: a
fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement
breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In
cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels.
And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely
flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling." The flowing of
his own water into the swirling waters of Cock Lake becomes so
thoroughly transformed into poetic sounds and images that one
can barely tell it is happening. But Joyce carefully shaped
his language to make this conclusion inescapable.
The paragraph provides a hint that Stephen is thinking of
peeing into the ocean waters: "I shall wait. No, they will
pass on." And after the flow is "spent" his thoughts keep
circling around the topic. As the foam floats away he imagines
the weeds under the water's surface as women lifting up their
skirts: "Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing
weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up
their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning
coy silver fronds." The "hising up" of petticoats
recalls Mary Ann's urination
in Telemachus, and "writhing weeds" and "coy fronds"
make these female entities sexual beings. Soon they are "Weary
too in sight of lovers, lascivious men." Penises
too are playing in Stephen's consciousness. Two paragraphs
later he thinks of the drowned man's corpse, "A quiver
of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits
of his buttoned trouserfly."
Stephen's thoughts about his urine mingling with the waters
of the ocean anticipate similar thoughts at the end of Lotus
Eaters when Bloom imagines his penis floating in a warm
bath. Bloom has considered masturbating in the bath, and the
thought of seminal fluid mingling with the bathwater
sexualizes the image: "He foresaw his pale body reclined in it
at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting
soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over
and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel,
bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush
floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp
father of thousands, a languid floating flower." Joyce
clearly intends a connection to the "floating foampool, flower
unfurling" in Proteus.
