{"id":600,"date":"2016-11-21T21:48:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/?p=600"},"modified":"2016-11-21T21:48:04","modified_gmt":"2016-11-21T21:48:04","slug":"final-lexicon-entry-organ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/uncategorized\/final-lexicon-entry-organ\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Lexicon Entry: Organ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forms<\/strong><\/p>\n

organ, organisation, organise, organiser, streetorgan, mouthorgan, organgrinder, organism, organic, organtoned, stillorgan<\/p>\n

Related Terms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flesh, Host<\/p>\n

Explication<\/strong><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Ulysses,\u00a0<\/em>the word\u00a0organ\u00a0<\/strong>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. Most often, an\u00a0organ\u00a0<\/strong>in\u00a0Ulysses\u00a0<\/em>is a musical instrument, typically associated with the church but also, as a\u00a0mouthorgan\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0streetorgan,\u00a0<\/strong>smaller devices whose notes play across the streets of Dublin. While often mentioned, these instruments are usually heard in passing – as in the “two shrill voices, a\u00a0mouthorgan<\/strong>” that echo through the hallways of the telegraph – or reduced to the object of Bloom’s thoughts, as with the “Who has the organ<\/strong>\u00a0here I wonder?(5.395) in “Lotus Eaters”. Indeed, Bloom thinks about church\u00a0organs\u00a0<\/strong>several times: “saint Werburgh’s lovely old\u00a0organ<\/strong>“(6.609-610), the “organ\u00a0<\/strong>in Gardiner street”(11.1197), “the pealing anthem of the\u00a0organ<\/strong>“(13.282).<\/p>\n

An organ\u00a0<\/strong>is also, however, a specialized structure of flesh: the very first sentence about Leopold Bloom in\u00a0Ulysses\u00a0<\/em>characterizes him as someone who “ate with relish the inner organs<\/strong> of beasts and fowls”(4.1). This is also the book’s first use\u00a0of the word\u00a0organ,<\/strong> here in its most fleshly sense as “a part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function”(OED). Far from musical or holy, this reference instead suggests Bloom’s perhaps unusual frankness about the physicality of the body. The dissonance between these two definitions of the word – the physical and the musical – suggests that any unity might lie in the more abstract meaning of an\u00a0organ.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At various points in\u00a0Ulysses,\u00a0<\/em>we see this definition of the\u00a0organ\u00a0<\/strong>abstracted to refer to other forms of arrangement and assembly. As each\u00a0organ\u00a0<\/strong>in a body serves its function, the\u00a0Telegraph\u00a0<\/em>operates as a “GREAT DAILY ORGAN<\/strong>“(7.84) and The Irish Independent\u00a0<\/em>is “for the old woman of prince’s street […] the subsidized\u00a0organ<\/strong>“(12.218-219), furthering a metaphor of a kind of body politic in which the periodical serves the function of a voicebox. Yet more abstractly, any kind of arranging can be referred to as\u00a0organising,\u00a0<\/strong>which in\u00a0Ulysses\u00a0<\/em>most often refers to Boylan, the “organiser<\/strong>” of Molly’s concert tour.<\/p>\n

This notion of Boylan as one who “organises”\u00a0<\/strong>Molly highlights how the\u00a0interplay of the divine\/spiritual and the biological as two ways of structuring bodies within\u00a0Ulysses\u00a0<\/em>also carries a sexual charge, wherein even the talk of\u00a0organs\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0organizing\u00a0<\/strong>in all its definitions discussed above hints at another, hidden\u00a0organ:\u00a0<\/strong>the penis. When Simon Dedalus, for example, declares that Ben Dollard will “burst the tympanum of her ear […] with an\u00a0organ\u00a0<\/strong>like yours”(11.536-537) he refers not only to Dollard’s baritone voice breaking eardrums but to a deflowering, as emphasized by Father Cowley’s added joke: “not to mention another membrane”(11.540). Similarly, Bloom’s reference to Boylan as Molly’s\u00a0organiser\u00a0<\/strong>hints at his awareness of the sexual infidelity occurring. The obsession in\u00a0Ulysses\u00a0<\/em>with organs<\/strong>, therefore, is indicative of Bloom’s fixation not just on religion or guts, but also on the shame and anxieties about sexuality that are perhaps most visible in “Circe”.<\/p>\n

Definitions and Examples<\/strong><\/p>\n

I.\u00a0<\/strong>Organ, n. <\/strong>(OED n.1 2a)\u00a0A 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.<\/p>\n

“Not going to be any music. Pity. Who has the organ<\/strong> 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)<\/p>\n

II. Organ, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n.1 3a)\u00a0With 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.<\/p>\n

“The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan<\/strong>, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps”(7.425-426)<\/p>\n

III. Organ, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n.1 5c) \u00a0A\u00a0periodical which serves as the mouthpiece of a particular political party, cause, movement, etc.<\/p>\n

“HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN<\/strong> IS TURNED OUT”(7.84)<\/p>\n

IV. Organ, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n.1 7a)\u00a0A part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function<\/p>\n

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs<\/strong> of beasts and fowls”(4.1-2)<\/p>\n

V. Organ, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n.1 8)\u00a0The human organs of speech; the human voice.<\/p>\n

“Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ<\/strong> like yours”(11.536-537)<\/p>\n

VI. Organ, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n.1 10) \u00a0The penis.<\/p>\n

“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<\/strong> 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)<\/p>\n

VII. Organise, v.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED v. 2d-e)\u00a0To make arrangements or preparations for.<\/p>\n

“\u2014My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success too.\u00a0He’s an excellent man to organise<\/strong>. Excellent”(12.994-995)<\/p>\n

VIII. Organisation, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n. 4a)\u00a0An organized body of people with a particular purpose.<\/p>\n

“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<\/strong> certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to”(5.421-425)<\/p>\n

IX. Organism, n.\u00a0<\/strong>(OED n. 3a)\u00a0An individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.<\/p>\n

“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<\/strong> has been framed”(14.650-654)<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bodies, Music, Medicine, Science, Politics & Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forms organ, organisation, organise, organiser, streetorgan, mouthorgan, organgrinder, organism, organic, organtoned, stillorgan Related Terms Flesh, Host Explication In\u00a0Ulysses,\u00a0the word\u00a0organ\u00a0takes 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. Most often, an\u00a0organ\u00a0in\u00a0Ulysses\u00a0is a musical instrument, typically associated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}