It is as much about all the parts of Dublin that once passed before young James Joyce’s eyes. ulysses The Book is also a book about books, and about writing and speech, full and empty, as the invocation of myth, as seduction, chatter, and rhetoric. Words, like an open book, have two sides and carry at least two meanings: the meaning of the current utterance and the other side of history. This, like the method of all commentators on ancient texts, from preachers and theologians to literary critics, is at least in part an import of Joyce’s mythological method. Joyce’s selection of this passage as his only recorded reading therefore seems particularly significant. ulysses It comes from “Aeolus” episode, A parody of Odysseus and his companions’ encounter with the god of the winds.
Joyce sets the stage for the newspaper company. freeman’s diaryis typical of writing in the present tense, where reporters and editors give exaggerated speeches punctuated with reductive and substantive headlines. In the midst of this business, the erudite Professor McHugh and Stephen Dedalus explore literature and history and make connections. McHugh reads “the most brilliant oratory” he has ever heard. This is a defense of the revival of the Irish language, likening the Irish to Moses and the ancient Hebrews, and acting as the high priests of Egypt to repel the temptations of an oppressive empire. They are called vagrants or day laborers. The world trembles at our name.
Joyce recorded this passage in 1924 at the urging of Shakespeare and Company founder Sylvia Beach. Sylvia Beach convinced the HMV gramophone studio in Paris to make the record on the condition that she financed it and the studio’s name did not appear anywhere on the product. ulyssesremember, it was in many places below Prohibition of obscene acts (It was not lifted in the United States until 1933.) Judge John Woolsey). The recording sessions were painful for Joyce, requiring two attempts over two days to complete, and he suffered from poor eyesight. Still, Joyce Beach wrote in her notes: ulysses…One feels that it is more than just an argument. “you can Read the speech here While listening to Joyce read the above. Beach called Joyce’s reading “a wonderful performance.” “I had never heard it before, but it never struck me as deeply moving,” she wrote.
Beach may have been satisfied with the recording, but his friend, the linguist CK Ogden, described it as “very bad”, that is, “technically not a success” (though in any case it was “not at all a commercial venture”). You quickly realize this as you struggle to hear Joyce’s quiet readings. Ogden wanted to preserve his voice in clearer documentation, so he filmed Joyce reading a book. finnegans wake Five years later, he was working in the studios of the Ornithological Society in Cambridge (he boasted that he owned “the two biggest recording machines in the world”). By this time, Joyce’s vision had almost completely faded. Ogden photographed the text and enlarged it so it was half an inch high, but Joyce could still barely make out the text and “probably needed someone to whisper it to her.” parallel” (Beech, who was not present, imagined that he must have memorized this line).
Joyce chose to read from the “Anna Livia Plubell” section of the experimental text. This passage, writes Mental Floss, is “brimming with” “allusions to the rivers of the world.” He reads in the voice of an old washerwoman and begins with the simplest words about the temporal aspect of language. where ulysses Foreground of literary history, finnegans wake It delves deep into geological time and prioritizes the oral over the written. These are the only two recordings Joyce ever made, and while they undoubtedly represent a central place for him in both books, he also chose them because they were easier to read aloud and perhaps memorize.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2014.
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josh jones I’m a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
