Aquacity and originality (Bloomsday)

From the “Ithaca” episode of Ulysses. In the early hours of June 17, 1904, Leopold Bloom washes his hands and invites Stephen Dedalus to do the same. The catechetical narrator of this episode reports Stephen’s response: no, he is hydrophobic. He hates “partial contact by immersion or total by submersion in cold water” and last took a bath in October. He distrusts “the aqueous substances of glass and crystal” and “aquacities of thought and language.”

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

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[Bloomsday : “the 16th of June 1904. Also: the 16th of June of any year, on which celebrations take place, esp. in Ireland, to mark the anniversary of the events in Joyce’s Ulysses” (Oxford English Dictionary ).]