Proteus: Intellectual Complexities

Proteus: Intellectual Complexities

Perhaps the most intellectually complex episode is in section 1, chapter3, "Proteus". Joyce scavenges the whole history of European scholastic philosophy to provide weapons for his young artist, Stephen Dedalus, in his battle to capture the transitory flux of reality.
Joyce relates this intellectual struggle to Homer's story of how King Menelaus wrestled information from the slippery only "shape-shifting" sea king, Proteus.
Bewildered by a myriad obscure references and complex patterns of language, ever shifting like the sea, the first-time reader may be tempted to give up.
A moment comes indeed when language seems to break down into meaningless misprinted shapes.
Listen: a four worded wave speech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos.
Do take Joyce's advice. Listen! For this is the miraculous moment when Stephen captures the voice of the sea itself in words of his own making- the crash of a wave and the foam retracted through the shingle.
Say it over to yourself. It is like putting a shell to your ear, as a child does to hear the sea.

Notes taken from "Introducing Joyce" by David Norris and Carl Flint