Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye
In Brief
In Sirens, strains of a 19th century popular song
called "Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye" float out of the Ormond
bar. Although fragments of the song lyrics appear in the text,
they are supplied from someone's memory (the narrator's?),
because the song is paradoxically "voiceless": "A voiceless
song sang from within." It quickly becomes clear that
someone is playing the song on the bar's piano, and after the
last strains are heard it appears that that person is Simon
Dedalus. At the end of the novel Molly thinks of how well he
used to sing "Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye."
Read More
John Liptrot Hatton composed the song in the early 1860s, with words written by Jane Williams. Seven phrases are reproduced in the text of Sirens: "The bright stars fade . . . the morn is breaking . . . The dewdrops pearl . . . And I from thee . . . to Flora's lips did hie . . . I could not leave thee . . . Sweetheart, goodbye!" These appear at intervals realistically corresponding to the time it takes Simon to play the music on the piano, though one of them is inexactly remembered:- The bright stars fade, the morn is breaking,
The dew-drops pearl each bud and leaf,
And I from thee my leave am taking,
With bliss too brief, with bliss, with bliss too brief.
How sinks my heart with fond alarms,
The tear is hiding in mine eye,
- For time doth thrust me from thine arms.
- Goodbye, sweetheart, goodbye!
- For time doth thrust me from thine arms.
- Goodbye, sweetheart, goodbye!
- The sun is up, the lark is soaring,
Loud swells the song of Chanticleer,
The leveret bounds o'er earth's soft flow'ring,
Yet I am here, yet I, yet I am here.
For since night's gems from heaven do fade,
And morn to floral lips doth hie,
- I could not leave thee though I said
- Goodbye, sweetheart, goodbye!
- I could not leave thee though I said
- Goodbye, sweetheart, goodbye!
Zack Bowen observes that the opening strains of the song are heard as Blazes Boylan approaches the Ormond, and that he leaves at the song's conclusion:
— ... Sweetheart, goodbye!
— I'm off, said Boylan with impatience.
Despite whatever the song may mean to Bloom, then (he is
present in the dining room for part of it), it is associated
much more strongly with his antagonist, and the association is
ironic: a Casanova saying his goodbyes in order to hurry off
to an adulterous conquest is serenaded by a tender song about
a lover having to part from his sweetheart.


