ABSTRACT
Bloom's aimless meandering around Dublin in "Lotuseaters" is particularly appropriate because he is trying to get to the Westland Row post office to pick up a letter from his epistolary mistress, Martha Clifford, without being seen by his fellow Dubliners. Although he seems more absent-minded than usual, Bloom's roundabout route is carefully traced out by Joyce. Joyce's friend Frank Budgen is largely responsible for the portrait of Joyce as a literary cartographer. In the summer of 1912, two years before he began writing the Ulysses in earnest, Joyce wrote two articles in Italian for Trieste's daily newspaper, Il Piccolo della Sera. These articles, written during his last visit to Ireland, read like the nostalgic ramblings of a local. What Joyce says about the "Pictorial Map of Galway" could just as well be said about Ulysses: they are both "topographical" symphonies.
