New Criticals

A request for a loan
                  in Greek.

James Joyce writes.        The Bank.

Mando Aravantinou reads.
                  Cities of love.
                  In crisis.
                  Silences of exile.

Ulysses wandering the streets.

Nights and days haunted
                  by the material of myths         
                  the real.

Lestrygonians  eating red bank shellfish.  
                  The Red Bank.

We have chosen the 8th chapter of Ulysses, the Lestrygonians, as our axis.
The part that, as many contemporary commentators and scholars have noted,
most allows us to take liberties and, thus, be transported to our times.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.                    

- James Joyce, Ulysses.

In societies of extreme consumerism, Bloom’s questions on the role of food in times of peace and prosperity, but also of war, and others regarding class distinctions, or the transitory nature of happiness through consumption are all valid today. The creation of mega-cities as evidence and proof of the power of money in the film becomes a metaphor for modern Lestrygonians.

The existing, anonymous mega-cities, reflections in huge, glass building facades, the scale of skyscrapers obliterating human figures, the hard black & white images are all references to today’s Lestrygonians. 

And under the Mediterranean sun, surrounded by the sea, the Trieste of absence but also intense presence in James Joyce. In this city of borders, the symbolic end of the West, but also of the North, Joyce will reacquaint himself with Greek.

The Greeks have always brought me good luck.

- James Joyce