In addition to the bad teeth that maybe he
should spend some of his drinking money on, and the beaten-up
country shoes and old pants that he has accepted
from Mulligan, and the handkerchief that he forgot to
pick up from the floor in the tower, on June 16 Stephen
has no glasses for his bad eyes. Striking a match in Circe
and attempting to light his cigarette, he thinks of how
history has repeated itself from the painful time at Clongowes
when his glasses were smashed on the cinderpath.
Watching Stephen struggle to light the cigarette, Lynch
tactfully remarks that "You would have a better chance of
lighting it if you held the match nearer." Stephen does so and
says, "Must get glasses. Broke them yesterday. Sixteen
years ago." The earlier accident, mentioned in part 1 of
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, precipitated
the cruelly unjust beating by Father Dolan, an incident that
will spring back to life a page later in Circe. Zoe
says to Stephen, "I see it in your face," and on cue the top
of the pianola flies open and Father Dolan pops out like a
jack-in-the-box: "Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses?
Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye."
In an eternal return of the same befitting Joyce's cyclical
view of history, the glasses are now smashed once again.
The tender six-year-old's naive faith in justice has been
replaced by the 22-year-old's despairing conviction that
"History is a nightmare," but life keeps
cycling through its little jokes.
