In January, 1996, Naoki Yanase, the translator of Finnegans Wake, published James Joyce no Nazo wo Toku, or Solving an Enigma of James Joyce, in which he insists on his new theory that the nameless narrator in the 12th episode of Ulysses, "Cyclops" is a dog.  His theory has greatly impressed many Joyceans and is worthy of yet more discussion.
  On 09/10/96, I sent my rough summary of Yanase's dog theory to the James Joyce Mailing List(j-joyce@lists.utah.edu) in order to see the reaction of other Joyceans outside Japan.  Most, however, were very sceptical or rather harsh or than I had expected, probably partly because my English translation and analysis of the dog theory seemed inappropriate.
  As Richard Stack commented in his e-mail dated 09/10/96, the figure critics often refer to as "Thersites" is, after all, the only properly human narrator in Ulysses.  Admittedly nameless, he is nontheless supplied with a very particular set of characteristics, most notably an unmistakably verbal style.  It is a doubtless fact, that he has a job; a collector of debts (U12.24-25) and an insatiable thirst(U12.141-42): besides, he is afraid that the wolfhound Garryowen might take his leg for a lamp post(U12.702).  How can he be a dog?
  In this article, I'd like to express my response to his theory and reconsider this interesting topic which has been debated by many Joycean scholars for years.
 
 

  Who is the I-narrator of the "Cyclops" episode?  Yanase begins with this simple yet  very difficult question.  Because it is so hard for us to imagine that the I-narrator is a woman, judging from the word usage and the topic of conversation, it can be concluded that the I-narrator is a man, not a woman. In addition, he has a great difficulty earning his living but manages to live; vide the phrase "Collector of bad and doubtful debts"(U12.24-25). Yanase notices his circumstances, the way he is treated by others: he is treated more like creatures than human being, but he can speak like a human being. “I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when ..."(U12.3-4).  This quote is, for Yanase, evidence that the I-narrator might be a dog.  According to the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, "to give tongue" means "properly of a hound; to give forth its voice when on the scent or in sight of the quarry. Also transfer of a person." He also points at the special usage of the word "collector,"  which appears only 6 times in the novel.  The readers meet this word for the first time in the 1st episode "Telemachus": "---The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the collector of prepuces."(U1.393-94).  And in the 9th episode "Scylla and Charybdis," there is a reference by Buck Mulligan again:  "---Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more"(U9.609).  Jehovah is, needless to say, the Jewish god.  The word "god" is an anagram of the word "dog."  According to Yanase, Joyce intentionally put the word "collector" only in these Jehovah sentences so as to remind us of Bloom's Judaism.  For Yanase, most readers have never imagined that the narrator of the "Cyclops" episode is a dog, because, as he points at, they have considered the problem very realistically: no dog in the real world can talk with human beings coherently (Yanase,43).  But dogs can do it in fictional discourse.  Joyce, a very careful writer, never left any explict evidence for the readers, but Yanase follows very subtle traces in some sentences which may prove the narrator's identity.  First, he anatomizes the conversation between Joe and the I-narrator.  Yanase summarizes the specific four-dimensioned structure of the conversation:

--For the readers who fail to notice that the I-narrator is a dog, it is a consistent and logical conversation between human beings.
--For Joe, it is a self-contradictory conversation with the dog which simply barks  "Bowwow."
--For the I-narrator, and the readers who do notice that he is a dog,  it is the conversation  in which the I-narrator properly gives responses to Joe.
--For the I-narrator, and the readers who notice that the I-narrator is a dog, it is the conversation which Joe properly gives responses to the I-narrator without knowing anything(Yanase,65-66).

  Yanase tries to prove his theory by exchanging some sentences narrated by the I-narrator, vide:

  --Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I.  I've a thirst on me I wouldn't sell for half a crown.
  --Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.
  --Wine of the country, says he.
  --What's yours? says Joe.
  --Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.
  --Three pints, Terry, says Joe.  And how's the old heart, citizen? says he. (U12.141-47)
  <>   if    <>  the I-narrator  <>  is   <> a dog <>
  --Bowwow, bowbowwowbowbow, wow, says I.  Bowbowwowwowbowwowbowwowwowwow.
  --Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.
  --Wine of the country, says he.
  --What's yours? says Joe.
  --Bowwowwow, says I.
  --Three pints, Terry, says Joe.  And how's the old heart, citizen? says he.

With this example, Yanase insists, the persons to whom Joe is talking are gradually showing their true colors.  One is the Citizen, the other is Terry the barman, not the I-narrator. The communication between the I-narator and Joe, among the I-narrator and the Citizen and the barman are not perfectly accomplished.  Of course it is not enough: he provides another example:

  --Look at him, says he.  Breen.  He's traipsing all round Dublin with a postcard someone
      sent him with U.p: up on it to take a li...
      And he doubled up.
  --Take a what? says I.
  --Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.
  --O hell! says I.
     The bloody mongrel began to growl that'd put the fear of God in you seeing something
     was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs. (U12.257-64)

In this example, "the bloody mongrel" is a dog named "Garryowen" which is owed by Terry, Yanase explains.  We have to pay attention to the bloody mongrel because it responds to the I-narrator faster than anyone else.  This is because the I-narrator is a dog and it hates Garryowen intensely.  In addition, he finds more evidence-- the strange usage of the interjection "Gob" which serves the same role as the Irish word "begob" ("By God").  As for the word "begob," Joyce used it several times in this episode as well as in other episodes.  Joyce made a use of the word "gob" 21 times only in this episode with one exception in the 15th episode "Circe" : "THE NAMELESS ONE  Bareback riding.  Weight for age.  Gob, he organised her" (U15.1144-45): probably THE NAMELESS ONE is the I-narrator.
  Yanase pays attention mainly to Joyce's usage in the text and his equation that the I-narrator is a nameless dog is very significant, because the dogs are described unfavorably throughout the text, except "Athos,"  a dog owned by Virag, Bloom's father.  Dogs have a very important role as a concept in opposition to "God," especially in the satanic mass climatic of the "Circe" episode.¹  One plausible way to judge if Yanase's theory is right or not is to change all the narrative into "Bowwow" and check if the conversations are still accomplished.  But such an examination will always be subjective, so one may insist that they are perfectly accomplished, while others might not.  It seems to me that Yanase places too much  importance on Joyce's word usage in the present text(trentu's e-text, based on Gabler's ed.) and tends to ignore the manuscripts and the typescripts, and the general background behind the text.  Frank Budgen wrote in James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses" and Other Writings,  that 'so vividly presented is the grotesque life of "I" that we are forced to like him in spite of his poisonousness.  Himself a snarling Thersites, he liberates the Thersites in us' (Budgen,158).  In Budgen's context, the I-narrator is a man like a snarling dog who sniffs at everybody's things.
  In the next chapter, I propose to look over the earlier texts and reconsider the most basic problem:  Why does the I-narrator hide his identity?
 
 

  The composition of the "Cyclops" episode, ended temporarily with its publication in four installments in TheLittle Review and may be dated between early June and 3 September 1919, when Joyce sent the manuscript to Ezra Pound.  There were 9 surviving stages of writing in all until its publication in 1922.²  This period of writing took place during the Irish War of Independence(1919-1921).   The earliest reference to "Cyclops" is on a letter from Joyce to Frank Budgen dated 19 June 1919:

    The chapter of the Cyclops is being lovingly moulded in the way you know.
  The Fenian is accompanied by a wolfhound who speaks (or curses) in Irish.
  He unburdens his soul about the Saxo-Angles in the best Fenian style and
  with colossal vituperativeness alluding  to their standard industry.  The epic
  proceeds explanatorily "He spoke of the English, a noble race, rulers of the
  waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster, silent as the deathless gods."
                                                                                     (Letters I, 126)

Yanase may have read this letter and considered what Joyce wanted to say.  And perhaps he thinks that the phrase "a wolfhound who speaks (or curses) in Irish" (= the furious dog Garryowen) might be some clue for the identity of the nameless narrator.   In this sense, the I-narrator can be a dog, for a verse which is said to have been made by Garryowen is on the text(U12.740-47).  If we think that the whole part of the episode is narrated by the I-narrator, actually he fairly conveys the conversation which contain not only some Irish words but also French, and even Hungarian words.³  And as the above letter proves, the central character of the episode is doubtlessly "the Fenian" referred as the Citizen.
  Myron Schwartzman, in his article, "The V.A.8 Copybook: An Early Draft of the 'Cyclops' Chapter of Ulysses with Notes on its Development"(JJQ12,1/2), quotes the line Joyce cited, spoken by a man named Michael Cusack, appears on page 10 of the copybook V.A.8 (JJA13.94) as follows:

  as he [Michael Cusack] spoke of the Eng foemen, a race of mighty valorous heroes,
  [begotten of Bullybull the Bull,] rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabasters
 silent as the deathless gods. (Schwartzman,64)(Cf.U12.1210-14)

  Of course, as many critics remark, the novel Ulysses was never really finished, that Joyce who has seen as a man obsessed with endless patterns of allusions and correspondences, was still writing it on the galleys.  I however do not view it like this.  In the V.A.8 copybook, Joyce had gone one step further:  there had been gossip about a divorce between Molly and Leopold.  By the Little Review version, Joyce deleted this material.  Also, the original of the citizen in this earlier draft bears his name as "Michael Cusack."  He occupies a much more subordinate position in the copybook than in the Little Review and final version of the chapter.  Schwartzman insists that Joyce's main task in the transition from the copybook draft to the Little Review was the process of bringing Cusack, the I-narrator, and Bloom into proper perspective (Schwartzman,65-66).  We can see the name Cusack in the surviving earliest draft V.A 8, but cannot find the I-narrator until the Rosenbach Manuscript.  And there were so many blanks in the conversation where proper names should be referred as the speakers.  In addition, the cast of the characters in the copybook draft included Stephen Dedalus, in company with Lenehan, Professor MacHugh, O’Madden Burke, and J.J. O'Molloy, who appear in the 7th episode "Aeolus" in the later versions.  They are, as it were, men of letters, and probably Joyce judged that they are not particularly suitable for the Irish pub discussion.  It seems very significant that Joyce deleted most of the people who deal with the publication except Bloom.  In the pub discussion of nationalism, Joyce doubtlessly judged no literary men are needed.
  The James Joyce Archives (1978) contains two of the lists for the "Cyclops" episode written by Joyce himself.  They help us to understand how the episode was constructed.  The first list is of Incidents, MS(Buffalo V.A.7): JJA13:136:　
 
 
 

  In the essay '"Cyclops" in Progress, 1919' (JJQ12,1/2), Michael Groden points out that this list contains several events for the episode in an order approximating that of the final version, and all those events occur in the second half of the episode, which means that there may have been a parallel list, now lost, for the first half(Groden,128-29).
  The second list is of characters, MS(Cornell 55): JJA13.137:　
 
 
 

  Joyce must have composed this list after he began to write the notebook since his letter to Budgen written ten days earlier quotes the end of the first scene, and before he finished the fourth scene, since Cusack and other listed names begin to appear there.  The list omits Professor MacHugh, who appears with Stephen in the sixth scene, and John Wyse Nolan and Bob Dolan, who are named as early as the second.  It significantly does not imply the existence of a narrator who is himself a prominent character in the episode.  The list includes some charactors who are not really present.  If Joyce ever intended to call the dog "Leary," the drafts gave no indication of it.  The dog is named "Garryowen" throughout, as Groden notes(Groden,140-41).  This means there is no evidence which connects Garryowen with Leary the dog.  We can't prove that Yanase's new theory is right, because we don't find any explicit evidence for the I-narrator's identity: he may be a dog, but whose dog is he?  Or is he a stray dog which belong to no one, or just happened to be there at Barny Kiernan's on the 16th of June,1904?  He tries to hide his idenitity for some reason, like the nameless nationalist called the Citizen who, in the early manuscript, was identified with the real man named Michael Cusack.
 
 

  There are a lot of different elements which make this episode special.  One of them is the nationalistc discussion between Bloom and the citizen.  The model of the Citizen is Michael Cusack:  according to D.J.Hickey and J.E.Doherty's A Dictionary of Irish History 1800-1980(1980), he lived between 1847-1907, and was a Gaelic athletic enthusiast: b.Co.Clare.  A teacher, he worked at Blackrock College and Clongowes Wood.  He founded a school to assist young people entering the Civil Service Academy Hurling Club and this experience germinated the idea of a Gaelic Athletic Association of which he was co-founder in 1884.  After his death the Gaelic Journal said that he "was the living embodiment of the GAA."  GAA is a amateur association famous for its anti-British outlook and imposed a ban (now rescinded) upon its members, which prevented them from participating in or observing certain specified non-Gaelic games.  Its rules also excluded those serving in the crown forces from membership.  From this we can conclude Cusack was a very strident natiionalist.
  Richard Ellmann's reliable biography James Joyce notes that George Clancy,  one of Joyce’s close friends at University College, subscribed ardently to every aspect of the national movement and helped form a branch of the Gaelic League at University College, and persuaded his friends, including even Joyce for a time, to take lessons in Irish.  He was an enthusiast also for Gaelic sports like hurling, and therefore a great friend of Michael Cusack.  He brought Joyce to meet Cusack a few times.   Clancy was to end as a victim of the Black and Tans(JJ60).  When Michael Cusack died, Joyce wrote to his borther Stanislaus Joyce,"I suppose you saw old Cusack is dead."(6 Feb 1907: Letters II, 209-210). Ellmann also notes Cusack called the character "Citizen Cusack" (Letters II, 210n).  Finally Joyce deleted the real name "Cusack" from the text and just called the Citizen, but even on the present text, we can easily identify the citizen with Michael Cusack through Joe's description of him: "--There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival.  There he is sitting there.  The man that got away James Stephens.  The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot.  What was your best throw, citizen?" (U12.880-83).
  Bloom gives the definition of the word "nation" to the Citizen and John Wyse: "--A nation? says Bloom.  A nation is the same people living in the same place" (U12.1422-23).  And when the Citizen asks Bloom,"--What is your nation if I may ask?" he answers, "Ireland.  I was born here.  Ireland" (U12.1430-31).  Later he answers about his origin, too: "--And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted.  Also now.  This very moment.  This very instant" (U12.1467-68).
  Maria Tymoczko argues in The Irish "Ulysses" with Lebor Gabala Erenn (The Book of Invasions):

  Recognition of the framework from The Book of Invasions illuminates more than the relations
of the three major characters; it is also a factor in Joyce's portrait of the Citizen in the
"Cyclops" episode of Ulysses.  Joyce's treatment of this charactor has been cited to show
hs disdain for the Irish cultural revival and for the cruder forms of insular nationalism.  The
Citizen was modeled on the founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, Michael Cusack, but The
Book of Invasions adds resonance to the character, for the Citizen can be identified as the
representative of still another wave of invaders, the Fir Bolg [early immigrants to Ireland].
In Irish typology the Fir Bolg are short, dark, ugly, crude people.  They were laborers in
Greece, and in Ireland, after the conquests of the Tuatha De Danann [Irish Gods in the Golden
Age]and the Goidels[a Gaelic-speaking people], they become the unfree, subjugated, nonnoble
populace.  The Fir Bolg typology--current in Joyce's time and still in force today-- is one
element behind Joyce's construction of the Citizen. ...  (Tymoczko,33-34)

  Here, we see the irony of Deasy's joke in the second chapter "Nestor," which says, "Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews, because she never let them i" (U2.437-442), as well as the irony of the Citizen's xenophobia and his virulence against the Jews in particular.
 
 

  Although Yanase's theory is very interesting, we cannot judge whether Yanase's theory is right or not, because, as we have seen, the evidence Yanase provides in his book is somewhat obscure.  If one may take Odyssey as a very important mythical source, or the name of the  episode "Cyclops," which means "one eye" literally,  the I-narrator is someone's eye, the organ of sight, maybe the Citizen's imaginary lost eye.  There are a lot of references related to the eye, the act of looking or seeing in this episode.  And if the dog can talk,  then the "eye" can also have his own way of thinking and talk with human beings in the fictional discourse.  In addition, whenever  the I-narrator says something, the verbs always take 3rd singular form in the present tense, like "says I," though it is very common usage in some 19th century novels, for example, Ishmael in Herman Melville's Moby Dick: some anecdotal evidence has recently come to my attention that "says I" is a not uncommon conversational inflection in Irish English: this of course requires more research.  In the myth Odyssey, the mythic hero Odysseus names himself "OUTIS" (Nobody) before Cyclops, so Joyce intentionally hid the I-narrator's and citizen’s identities in this episode through the nationalistic discussion,  as well as he deleted most of the people who deal with the publication,  probably because of a parody of safety for nationalists: Needless to say, so many betrayers caused a series of failures of rebellion in Irish History.
  If you ask, "Whose eye is this?" I would like suggest to you the following sentences may provide some clues:

  (i)     They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts.  With awe Mr
      Power's blank voice spoke:
     --Some say he is not in that grave at all.  That the coffin was filled with
     stones.  That one day he will come again.
           [Joe] Hynes shook his head.
     --Parnell will never come again, he said.  He's there, all that was mortal of
     him.  Peace to his ashes. (U6.921-27)

  (ii)--Same only more so, says Lenehan.  And thereafter in that fruitful land the
     broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.
      --Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.
      --No, says the citizen.  It's not signed Shanganagh.  It's only initialled: P.
      --And a very good initial too, says Joe [Hynes]. (U12.1536-40)

  As Enda Duffy notices, the "P" suggests, to Joe at least, Charles Stewart Parnell, the fallen political leader who died in 1891,  but a rumour circulated in Ulysses, that Parnell was still alive(Duffy, 118).⁴  It would be very interesting if we could prove that the I-narrator is a shadow of Parnell, one of the greatest nationalists in Irish History.  As Budgen records, Joyce said, "'I' is really a great admirer of Bloom who, besides being a better man, is also more cunning, a better talker, and more fertile in expedients.  If you reread Troilus and Cressida, you will see that of all the heroes Thersites respects only Ulysses.  Thersites admires Ulysses"(Budgen,169).
  In conclusion, why do we not have to name the nameless narrator?  I even doubt if the I-narrator conveys the whole part of the episode including so many fragments of parodies which suddenly interrupt conversation.  In earlier manuscripts, when the I-narrator did not exist yet, the parodies had already been on the text.  The identity of the I-narrator or Thersites is an insolvable enigma as well as the that of M'Intosh.
 
 

*This article is based on a paper presented at the 13th Conference of IASIL JAPAN
  at Shikoku University, 29/09/96.
 
 

 ¹  Cf. Eishiro Ito, "On 'dogs' in James Joyce's Ulysses,"TOHOKU,XXIV
   (Dec.1989), 41-71.
 ²  For more details, see Micahel Groden, "'Cyclops' in Prpgress, 1919"
   (James Joyce Quarterly, XII,1/2(Fall 1974/Winter 1975), 132-33.
 ³  Bloom's father immigrated from Hungary.  Cf.U12.1635-41.
 ⁴  Of course Yanase notices this rumor.  See his translation of this
   chapter, James Joyce  "Ulysses" 12(Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 1996),
   p.87.
 
 

Main Text: Joyce, James. Ulysses. London: The Bodley Head, 1986.
               All citations from the text are reffered to in the following style:
               Ux.y.  x = the episode number, y = the line number in each episode.
Sub Texts: 1) Gen. ed. Groden, Michael. The James Joyce Archive, vol. 13 .
                 New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1978.
               2) James Joyce  "Ulysses": A Facsimile of the Manuscript I-III. London:
                Faber and Faber in association with The Philip H. & A.S W. Rosenbach
                Foundation, Philadelphia, 1975.
               3) The Little Review, vol. 6: no.vii (Nov.1919) 38-54, no.viii (Dec.1919)
                50-60, no.ix.(Jan.1920)53-61 and no.x(Mar.1920) 54-60.

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