/lit/ - Literature

>tfw you re-discover how fucking amazing james joyce is

It keeps happening, and then i get for whatever reason disillusioned, and then after a period i come back to him and i get even more attached and amazed than last time.

What is it about Ulysses that has you missing lines and imagery all the time, only to discover them on your third or fourth re-read/attempt at one of the chapters?

A few things i discovered the last two days

Stephen and Poldy seeing the same cloud cover the sun and their thoughts instantly grow gloomy

Stephen:
>A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green.

Bloom:
>A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.

I just feelsuch an affinity with these two men it almost makes me feel like i could call them up and talk to them as friends.

Also this chunk where Stephen is looking at his student, who he thinks is ugly and unintelligent i for some reason didn't catch on previous readings of nestor:
>Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She 27had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

Why did James Joyce choose to write Ulysses and his other novels in English?

>In the particular is contained the universal.

What did he mean by this?

Is it really necessary to read Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before reading Ulysses?

I'm asking because I just bought Ulysses and I don't have enough money to buy the other two. Did I fuck up?

Ch. II>Ch. IV> Ch. I> Ch. V> Ch. III

Based on quality, is this the correct order?

These photos were taken by Man Ray if I recall correctly.