In the early 1930′s, the American modernist poet Louis Zukofsky (who spent nearly his entire life working on a long poem simply entitled “a”) undertook an extremely daunting task. Along with his friend Jerry Reisman, he spent three years writing a screenplay for a film version of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce did not approve the script and it still hasn’t been published, so very little is known about it today. However, there is one thing we do know for certain. Zukofsky and Reisman knew exactly who they wanted to direct their screenplay and play the role of Leopold Bloom: Charlie Chaplin.

Joyce cannot have been too surprised with their choice; Chaplin was almost certainly an inspiration for Bloom. However, this particular allusion, and many others, has been largely overlooked because of all the energy devoted to uncovering Joyce’s allusions to Homer’s Odyssey. In his lectures on literature at Cornell University, Vladimir Nabokov (the author of one of the few 20th-century novels to rival Ulysses: Lolita) was very insistent about what a waste of time he thought the obsession with Joyce’s “Homeric” parallels was:

“That there is a very vague and very general Homeric echo of the theme of wanderings in Bloom’s case is obvious, as the title of the novel suggests, and there are a number of classical allusions among the many other allusions in the course of the books; but it would be a complete waste of time to look for close parallels in every character and every scene of the book. “

Nabokov is certainly right about this, but Joyce did spend quite a bit of time emphasizing the connections between his book and Homer’s epic. In a sketch he made of Leopold Bloom, for instance, Joyce inscribed the line of Greek verse – “Tell me Muse, of the man of many devices, who over many ways…” – that opens The Odyssey. But look closely at the sketch (below) and another influence on Leopold Bloom should be clear.

Chaplin is not mentioned directly anywhere in Ulysses, though he is described in Joyce’s prodigious Finnegans Wake in the following way: “toothbrush moustache and jawcrockeries, alias grinner through collar … , tar’s baggy slacks, obviously too roomy for him and springside boots.” This description is the key to Chaplin’s influence on Joyce. When Ulysses was published in 1922, Chaplin still hadn’t made his great sound films (or “talkies”) like The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux or Limelight. So it wasn’t anything that Chaplin said that influenced Joyce. It was how Chaplin looked. Or, rather, it was the look of Chaplin’s greatest creation: The Tramp. It’s hard to ignore the connection once you’ve seen it. Black suit, moustache, a bowler hat on The Tramp and a felt slouch hat on Bloom. The media theorist Marshall McLuhan went so far as to name Bloom The Tramp’s “literary twin.” They may not be identical twins, but Bloom and The Tramp are fraternal at least.

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