This episode of Ulysses is based more loosely upon Homer's epic than are the other episodes in the novel. In Homer's Odyssey, Circe turned Odysseus's men into swine; Odysseus, however, never succumbed to Circe's spells. In Joyce's Ulysses, Circe (the symbolic female of this chapter) is Bella Cohen, and she keeps a brothel at 82 Tyrone Street Lower, in the midst of the Dublin redlight district, the district that Joyce (but not the Dubliners of 1904) calls Nighttown in Ulysses. Unlike Homer's hero, Bloom is not spared the debasement of Odysseus's men (and, of course, in the original, Odysseus did not undergo a transformation). Bloom is debased, and, significantly, this chapter initiates the subsequent cathartic effect of that debasement.
Joyce, of course, did not need Homer's epic to supply the hallucinogenic character of the events in "Circe." There are ample precedents in literature — "objective correlatives," as T. S. Eliot called them, for "objectifying" inner states of fictional characters. In Coleridge's Ancient Mariner's tale, the protagonist's spiritual desiccation is reflected in the dryness of the atmosphere at sea; likewise, the witches in Macbeth probably emanate from Macbeth's and Banquo's desires for power; the Faustian "Walpurgisnacht" literally records the darker, frenzied side of human passion; and Venus in Furs, written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch in 1870, certainly raised psychosexual behavior to a new and startling literary art form. Clearly, though, both Homer in his Odyssey and Joyce in "Circe" are concerned with a universal psychological theme: the fear that expression of sexuality might well turn the participants into "animals."
In addition to examining Bloom's (and to a lesser degree, Stephen's) expressionistic visions, however, it is important to define the literal narrative of the episode; thus, for the sake of convenience, if one divides this chapter into separate parts, the first part of "Circe" concludes with Stephen's sighting of Bloom in the music room of Mrs. Cohen's establishment. At this point, Stephen turns to Bloom and says, "A time, times and half a time." This same expression is used in the Bible to account for the length of time before the Day of Judgment is to arrive. For Stephen, this "Day" occurs in "Circe" when he meets his dead mother in a vision.
