The Quest for Melchisedek

Extract

Introibo ad altare Dei—these words from Psalm 42 can induce a stiffening, even a shudder, among Catholics of traditional formation, and so I at once assure my audience that they begin my paper not, or not directly, because of their place at the beginning of one of the rites of Mass that we knew before the Council, but because of their appearance in the opening paragraph of James Joyce’s Ulysses:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing-gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

— Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted he peered down the dark, winding stairs and called up coarsely:

— Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest.

He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awakening mountains.

This is liturgical parody, but the scene also has more disturbing overtones. The cliffs of Dun Laoghaire are soon likened to the cliff of Elsinore where Hamlet was set at enmity with his mother. Mulligan’s companion, Stephen Dedalus, joins him on the parapet wearing black in mourning for his mother and troubled by the memory of how he hurt her by his refusal to join in the prayers at her deathbed. Mulligan compares him to Hamlet and interprets his nickname, Kinch, as meaning ‘the knife-blade’.