Gifford suggests an allusion to the end of Book 21 of the
epic poem, when Odysseus strings his mighty bow and prepares
to slaughter the suitors. In the Robert Fitzgerald translation
from which he quotes, the verbal echo is particularly strong:
"Then Zeus thundered / overhead, one loud crack for a
sign. / And Odysseus laughed within him that the son / of
crooked minded Kronos had flung that omen down."
"Coincidentally," Gifford notes, Carl Jung acquired a sense of
spiritual purpose and began his search for numinous archetypes
within the human psyche when he heard two "loud cracks" from
pieces of furniture in the summer of 1898.
Joyce was reading some of Jung's work when he wrote Ulysses,
but this personal anecdote apparently first appeared in print
in the early 1960s (in Memories, Dreams, Reflections),
and the two men first met in the 1930s—so, intriguing as the
coincidence may be, there is little reason to suppose that it
informs the passage in Ithaca. Leaving aside Jung's
odd experience, though, the echo of the Odyssey, in a
chapter teeming with such echoes, is sufficiently strong to
introduce the notion that divinity can declare its presence in
mundane sounds. In Nestor Stephen called God "A shout in the street."
Other deities might manifest themselves in cracking timbers.
The evocation of supernatural support, if such it is, comes
just after what Gifford calls Bloom's "prayerful" review of
his day, in which various events have symbolically enacted
Jewish religious rituals. If quotidian occurrences like making
breakfast, going to work, listening to music, and masturbating
may affirm a divine order, then the release of tension in a
piece of "strainveined timber" may well do the same thing. The
narrator encourages such a reading by inserting the word
"unforeseen" into his long list of crisp monosyllables ("a
brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack"), and by
mentioning that the sound has been produced by "insentient
material." Inanimate objects produce sounds all the
time, so why call attention to the fact unless to suggest that
something extraordinary is happening? And saying that the
event was unforeseen places it in the context of divine omens
that men cannot anticipate.
It's quite reasonable, then, to suppose that Joyce here is
encouraging his Odyssean hero to move forward with killing the
suitors—an action which he will shortly perform in a
remarkably nonviolent way, by examining his "antagonistic
sentiments" toward the adultery, considering possible
responses to it, and choosing acceptance rather than rage. For
several hundred pages now, the novel has employed Homeric
analogies to suggest that Bloom may prove to be a heroic
individual: standing up to the Citizen, reclaiming his manhood
from Bella Cohen, acting as a father to Stephen. If he can now
master the longstanding sexual anxiety that Molly has brought
to the surface and forced him to confront, June 16 may prove
to have been a climacteric.
All of this may be implied by the answer in this brief
Q&A, but different notes are struck in the meandering
question: "What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in
order to go so as to conclude lest he should not conclude
involuntarily apprehend?" However one construes the syntax and
references of the central words here, they create a picture of
irresolution. Bloom is "about to rise" from his chair in the
parlor, but his meditation on the cause of the table's
cracking noise stops him. Why was he about to rise? It was "in
order to go" into the bedroom. Why was he going to go there?
It was "so as to conclude" something. What was that something?
His waking day? His understanding of what happened during it?
His differences with Molly? His marriage? Whatever it was, he
wished to conclude it "lest he should not conclude."
Etymologically, "conclude" means "to shut completely." None of
Bloom's thoughts about his wife, his marriage, or his
sexuality come within a country mile of that condition.
If the cracking timber does offer some hope that Bloom will
succeed in the bedroom, it does so only within the context of
his evident uncertainty, self-doubt, and hesitation. A similar
mixture of anxiety and hope is implied by the allusion to a popular song in his
final, "selfevident enigma." Here at the outset of the triad,
"selfimposed" probably refers chiefly to the fact that the
sound intrudes on Bloom's consciousness irresistibly. But
nothing in nature requires him to search for its "cause," so
it is Bloom too who is imposing the enigma on himself.
Spending time on two more such mysteries before he departs for
the bedroom—Who was McIntosh? Where was Moses when the light
went out?—shows a reasoning mind in thrall to its emotions.
Fear is the mother of procrastination.
