On the steps of the Paris Stock Exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes bellied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew the years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonour of their flesh
...
—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Near the end of the section of the Ulysses the above quote appears. I have to say that the Ulysses, when approached as a "novel," is poorly written. But that's because Ulysses is more like a collection of awesome quotes than just a unified story. And the above quote holds in good stead on its own independently of the storyline of the whole novel.
I particularly like the expression "thickplotting." It captures the rich, dense layers that people in power create through discourse and images. These millionaires, however, own none of what they make use of. Hence, "[n]ot theirs." "Time surely would scatter all" excellently captures the phenomenon here expressed. I just stared at the page and chewed this sentence in my mouth and went "mmmm....." due to the impressiveness of this line. The thickplotted layers of words are fragile, susceptible to collapse, surely would collapse in time. Why? Because the words don't belong to anybody. Homeless words, wandering around in mid-air. The essence of the emptiness of the city.
The above is an insight unique to a smart person like Joyce who is no longer fooled or entertained by the play of homeless words. Stephen's last utterance in the above quote is thus Joyce's ethical question. What is the antithesis to history? And for Joyce, religion is also just as thickplotted as any other form of collective institution. So where would a smart person like him find homage?
