Forms
organ, organisation, organise, organiser, streetorgan, mouthorgan, organgrinder, organism, organic, organtoned, stillorgan
Related Terms
Flesh, Host
Explication
In Ulysses, the word organ takes on many different meanings, from musical, to scientific, to sexual, with the ambiguity between these meanings highlighting the blurring between the bodily and the artistic/spiritual in the novel. The very first sentence about Leopold Bloom in Ulysses characterizes him as someone who “ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1). This is also the book’s first occurrence of the word organ, here in its most fleshly sense as “a part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function”(OED).
Definitions and Examples
I. Organ, n. (OED n.1 2a) A musical instrument (usually large) consisting of a number of pipes, supplied with compressed air, sounded by keys, which on being pressed down let air into the pipes by opening valves.
“Not going to be any music. Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street”(5.394-397)
II. Organ, n. (OED n.1 3a) With distinguishing word. Any of various instruments resembling an organ in sound or construction. See also barrel organ n., hand organ n., mouth organ n. 1b.
“The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps”(7.425-426)
III. Organ, n. (OED n.1 5c) A periodical which serves as the mouthpiece of a particular political party, cause, movement, etc.
“HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT”(7.84)
IV. Organ, n. (OED n.1 7a) A part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1-2)
V. Organ, n. (OED n.1 8) The human organs of speech; the human voice.
“Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours”(11.536-537)
VI. Organ, n. (OED n.1 10) The penis.
“The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis”(12.468-478)
VII. Organise, v. (OED v. 2d-e) To make arrangements or preparations for.
“—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent”(12.994-995)
VIII. Organisation, n. (OED n. 4a) An organized body of people with a particular purpose.
“How long since your last mass? Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to”(5.421-425)
IX. Organism, n. (OED n. 3a) An individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.
“His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed”(14.650-654)
X. Organic, adj. (OED adj. 2b) Having the characteristics of a living organism
Related Topics
Bodies, Music, Medicine, Science, Politics & Media
