There is a problematic sentence in Ulysses (Ithaca p.629, Oxford World's Classics) I would like to subject to your High Wordinessess's scrutiny.
Context: While Mr. Bloom (central character of said novel) is making cocoa for himself and Stephen Dedalus (let's call him an acquaintance, it's not important for our purposes) he, Bloom, notices on the kitchen counter the stubs of two betting tickets from the Gold Cup, a horse race which ran earlier in the day. Seeing them he is temporarily troubled by the fact that he did not act on certain portentous signs he received throughout the day about the winning horse named Throwaway. Throwaway was an outsider; a dark horse, but all the same Bloom's intimations were unexpectedly prophetic: Throwaway won.
The chapter proceeds as a series of questions and answers. The question asked at this point is :
Quote:
What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?
And the answer, and the proposed subject of this thread, is :
Quote:
The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed
its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge
and of counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum
of possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation."
I would like to compare notes with someone on the correct interpretation of this sentence!
Is Bloom, as I see it, quite simply consoling himself that it is difficult a) to interpret signs, and b) omit from one's thoughts the "sum of possible losses" (which is equal to all possible bets at stake on the total number of horses racing minus the winning horse?)
This seems the obvious interpretation.
However, another Ulysses reader puts it simply thus:
Quote:
I think the idea is: you play a number, you win 100 dollars, you decide it's your lucky number and keep playing it until you lose more than 100 dollars.
My reason for posting is I have difficulty leaving it at this because these double-negative word-pairings seem oxymoronic : "counterestimate against [...] by failure to interpret" It seems possible a third, perhaps far more complex, interpretation might be necessary.
On the two heads are better than one (particularly if neither of them are mine) principle, I will leave it at that, anxiously awaiting the chance to extend a humble and appreciative welcome to alternative interpretations.
Regards,
HLOP
