the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan
floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the
younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of
meteoric showers about the period of the feast of
S. Lawrence (martyr, lo August): the monthly
recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon
in her arms: the posited influence of celestial
on human bodies: the appearance of a star (1st
magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night
and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision
and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous
exsuns) about the period of the birth of William Shakespeare
over delta in the recumbent neversetting constellation
of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar
origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared
in and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona
Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold
Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin
which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and
disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about
the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in
and from the constellation of Auriga some years after
the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in
and from other constellations some years before or
after the birth or death of other persons: the
attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from
immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of
shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence
of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of
infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor
of human beings.
His (Bloom’s) logical conclusion, having weighed
the matter and allowing for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not
a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a
Utopia, there being no known method from the known
to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally
finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more
bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes:
a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space,
remobilised in air: a past which possibly had
ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators
had entered actual present existence.
Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the
spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples
of poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment
or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic
constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of
their planet.
Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory
of astrological influences upon sublunary disasters?
It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation
and the nomenclature employed in its selenographical
charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as
to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the
sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between
the moon and woman?