As he often does in this jocoserious book, at the end of Proteus
Stephen takes his probing metaphysical thoughts in an absurdly
comic direction, turning the idea of a mild "Seadeath" into an advertiser's
pitch for a desirable new experience. His musing consideration
of Homer's Odyssey, continued in the phrase "Prix
de Paris," gives way by complicated shades of ambiguity
to the huckster's cry, "Just you give it a fair trial," and
his customers' hilarious testimonial, "We enjoyed ourselves
immensely."
Odysseus' death at sea, Gifford observes, stems from the
prize of Paris in the sense that the Trojan War was set in
motion by the Trojan prince's awarding of the apple of beauty
to Aphrodite over Athena and Hera. Gifford does not mention
that in fact two prizes were exchanged: the apple that Paris
gave to Aphrodite, and Helen, whom Aphrodite promised to Paris
as a bribe to induce him to choose her. This second prize, the
queen whom Paris abducted from Sparta and took home to Troy,
was the more immediate origin (the Aristotelian "efficient
cause," perhaps) of the war.
Gifford brings Helen into the picture by noting that
Stephen's following phrase, "beware of imitations,"
may possibly refer to another version of the Paris-Helen story
told by the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, in which "only a
ghost, or 'imitation,' of Helen went to Troy with Paris, while
the real Helen remained faithful to Menelaus and sat out the
Trojan War under the protection of King Proteus of Egypt." If
Stephen is thinking of this alternate telling, the Greeks
would have done well to "beware of imitations."
Regardless of the precise contours of Stephen's recollection
of ancient Greek myths, a second layer of meaning is
developing as he thinks these phrases. The Grand Prix de Paris
was an immense cash award (250,000 francs in 1904) awarded
annually to the horse that won France's biggest race. Sitting
in Mr. Deasy's study in Nestor, Stephen has
contemplated a portrait
of "the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon" who won the prize in 1866.
The prize of Paris, then, morphs in his imagination from a
momentous classical exchange to a modern chance to get rich
quick.
Gravity declines further with "beware of imitations" and
"Just you give it a fair trial," which takes readers from the
splendor of rich men's thoroughbreds to the banality of
advertisers' pitches for life-enhancing products. The
punchline, "We enjoyed ourselves immensely,"
is quite funny. Homer was right! Death by drowning is quite
delightful! Try it yourselves and your family can be as happy
as ours is!
Declan Kiberd observes that later in the novel Bloom too will
think of drowning as a good way to go, "one of the many
affinities of which the two remain unconscious through the
day." He notes that "Stephen's ironic composure of an
advertisement for drowning might be similarly viewed as an
anticipation of the consciousness of the ad-canvasser Bloom."
Indeed, and there is more: early in Hades Bloom
imagines the deadly microbes clamoring to make children sick
as advertising
men drumming up business: "Canvassing for death.
Don't miss this chance." In these parallel passages, as
in the scene in Ithaca in which Stephen imagines an ad
for the Queen's Hotel, Joyce seems to be exploring the overlap
between writing commercial ads and writing fiction.
