Ulysses/Words/Elijah

Elijah in Ulysses

Quotes

"Elijah" first appears in Ulysses/Lestrygonians (Chapter 8), where Bloom sees the name walking by a poster:

His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, druids’ altars. Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion is coming.

- Chapter 8

Right after that, the name gets caught up into a thought from Ulysses/Lotus Eaters (Chapter 5):

He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.

- Chapter 8

It comes up again, as if it is a bubble rising from Bloom's subconscious mind into the narrative, early in Ulysses/Wandering Rocks (Chapter 10), which follows a number of minor characters as they go about their day in Dublin. This one comes up at the end of a section about Katey and Boody Dedalus (sisters of Stephen) scrounging for food.

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and George’s quay.

- Chapter 10

and again, later in the chapter, just after a scene where Dilly Dedalus, another sister of Stephen's, hounding her father Simon for money:

North wall and sir John Rogerson’s quay, with hulls and anchorchains, sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the ferrywash, Elijah is coming.

- Chapter 10

A third, nearly identical passage, occurs at the conclusion of a conversation between Buck Mulligan and Haines (characters from way back in Ulysses/Telemachus (Chapter 1)):

Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping street past Benson’s ferry, and by the threemasted schooner Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks.

It is followed immediately by a fourth reference:

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as Mr Lewis Werner’s cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.

At the corner of Wilde’s house he halted, frowned at Elijah’s name announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of duke’s lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared he muttered:

— Coactus volui.