It’s not quite accurate to say that Ulysses is a book about language. It “is” language — and not just a minute portion of it enclosed between the covers of one, albeit brimming, book. Rather it is “the thing itself” in its entirety, language in what Heidegger called the “second beginning” (anderer Anfang). The “first beginning” (der erste Anfang) was Heidegger’s name for the first stab of unadulterated wonder which inaugurated the 2,500-year history of western metaphysics as forgetfulness of Being in Heraclitus and Parmenides. You could say that the Greeks were too busy being overwhelmed with awe at the advent of Being to take much interest in the fact that they were being overwhelmed with awe. What we call history followed from that understandable lack of attention. The history of western metaphysics is a history of withdrawal. “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” says Stephen Dedalus

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