The Iowa Review
Volume 18
Issue 1 Winter
1988
Blindness and Inwit: James Joyce and the Sirens a
Reading of Chapter 11 of "Ulysses"
Arthur Nestrovski
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Nestrovski, Arthur. "Blindness and Inwit: James Joyce and the Sirens a Reading of Chapter 11 of "Ulysses"." The Iowa Review 18.1
(1988): 18-26. Web.
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Article 3
Blindness and Inwit:
James Joyce and the Sirens
A Reading of Chapter 11 of Ulysses
Arthur Nestrovski
".
. . LES
PREMIERS
DISCOURS
furent
les premi?res
chansons,"
in his "Essai Sur l'Origine des Langues."
For
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
a hundred years
was
Rousseau
(as forWagner,
later) the original language
a song of
as need was made gesture. A
passion made voice just
immediacy,
we are still a hundred years after
hundred years afterWagner,
and
Wagner
writes
still think of music
as some unhindered
discourse
It
of the unconscious.
seems that two thousand
years of craft have not been enough to expose the
it comes to music,
in the Crowd
both the Man
and the
art as art. When
man
are alike, as alike are the women
and Nomen
to soul chanson.
to
reenact
the
soul
ready
the couch
by
forever
chords,
". . . kind of drunkenness
to himself
.
(.
.)Thinking
as he thinks of Father
Cowley's
of all
says Bloom
strictly prohibited,"
piano playing and of music en
as a
as Tristan's
in general. But music
truth potion,
drug, music
is amodern
than two centuries old. By the time Rousseau
idea, no more
was writing
his Essay, the sound of music was not the one we know. For
thusiasts
the "kapellmeister,"
his art was one
steeped in the doctrine of "affections,"
an art of communal
mimesis
of representation
rather than expression,
It is only during
rather than individual
confession.
the early eighteenth
into
that originality
and personal
storm-and-stress
century
expenditure
over vocal music
the game, as instrumental music
and
gains prominence
Carl Philipp,
the son, Emanuel Bach, makes
the shape of day with his own
works
and leaves behind
the ghost
of his dead father.
once
a form of
as for
this point, music
again becomes
speech, just
a
"Il crut que lamusique
Rousseau
form of music.
the first speech had been
?tait une fa?on particuli?re
de communiquer
la pens?e, et que les instru
?taient entre nos mains
les violons,
les vielles,
les trompettes
ments,
At
d'autres
organes
de la parole,"
writes
Diderot
of the deafman.
Immediacy
18
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becomes
intimacy:
tasies made public,
Fantasias
the clavichord
and the Fifth
are Carl
will
Philipp's private phan
for us, Beethoven.
be,
Symphony
as craftsman was the master of inventiveness
the composer
and
as
to hear, the
ease, proud to present his subtle art for everyone
genius
an
carve
us
to
for
conceals
Imme
his
craft
of
selfhood.
tone-poet
image
Whereas
a lover's
now becomes
diacy
knowledge
to be at once invisible and present.
a
Between
ghostly
music
of the other,
and craft the ability
art that bears
its art and a ghostly
weaves
its craft of secrecy and illusion.
that conceals
no seal of
subject, the art of music
It thematizes
the lure of a truly
time, yet it is removed from time. Beyond
as
continuous
music
since
lives
architecture,
form, time past, is
present,
present here, in time present, music's
only speaking tense. Imme
to
is
craft? ebbing and flowing
the laws of tidal ears. A double bind,
diacy
bound airs are bound so that they too be binding. Against
such powers, no
escape but other forms of binding.
always
the Sirens'
Against
song,
against
the song of the Binders,
Odysseus
has no
weapon but a rope,with which he has himself bound to themast. To hold
him
and Eurylokhos,
and ambush in their very
still, Perimedes
cunning
more
as
line around him,
he begs to be untied. The threat
names, will pass
of song is the threat of forgetfulness:
the closer one may get to this green
one
the deeper
mirror,
escapes from oneself into oneself. The Neapolitan
Sirensong will make no time of time, will blend
the line between
craft and content. The moment
sense and desire, will blur
of thrust is the moment
of delusion ?not
alienation.
The
vision,
not
encounter
of song will
of sailor and bird-women.
brief
counter
satori, but
silence of mid-morning,
few moments.
Reconciled
brief
with
rather,
repeat, in measured
The silence inwhich
love spent.
Songs
reconciled
time,
the brief
en
songs dwell is the
and Sirens love but for a
with
each other, lover
soar
"in
and
lover
listeners
the
intoxicated
singers
effulgence
symbolistic,"
ichar
by sentiment,
"high, of the etherial bosom,"
high, icharian flights,
ian fugues, "throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect," infinite while
it lasts,
nature,
"all
master
soaring all around about the all," wagnerian
singers of the
. ."And
sentences
"endlessnessnessness.
mime
the
affected manner
Joyce's
ism of a sincere song?like
in the
ode to Parnell (in "Ivy Day
Joe Hynes'
19
or John F.
as remembered
Taylor's
impromptu,
by
Room"),
in
the
of
office
the
here be
J. J. O'Molloy
Evening Telegraph?pastiche
comes at once exposure and achievement,
style both cessation and the only
for
speech.
possibility
Committee
There
is a sense inwhich
world
as book
here is pastiche. Every word,
the nar
rators' no less than their characters',
ismarked by some practice of writing
or of
is allusion; each charac
each song, each gesture,
speech. Each word,
a
as world,
an
it is the
than
the
book
Rather
ter,
character,
engraving.
in the making,
of all things I am here to
"signatures
for us, the epiph
each song, each sign of life becomes,
an institutional
epiphany of
performance.
that's
read." Each word,
any of style ?the
every word
the author. Style holds the pen before the
Style makes man,
speechcraft
must be to set each
artist, whose
only counterword
language against every
own.
In
of
his
this
Marks,
other,
then, each language
including
Gospel
a collection
of for
will be made to account for its sins. The book becomes
aworkbook
of Irish polyphony.
The author as composer
epiphanies,
on all
is the one who puts together all the voices,
the master
singer skillful
manners
contra
of "affections,"
the contrapuntist
playing diction against
to see.
the craftsman who presents his art for everyone
diction,
mal
are
most conspicuous
features of this art, and
Trope and pun
perhaps the
to
the
The
both combine
trope will give the lie to
literary engine.
help jam
of language, and make of every speaker an orator, a rhetor, a
the naturalness
The pun, in its turn, short
learns to scatter words.
cultured man who
as it makes one think not of this or that
but
meaning,
thought
turns
rather of both and none at once. To these we may add irony, which
said into its opposite;
and what might
be called the narrative
everything
circuits
of
shift of narrative voice and rhythm.The
ataxy, the constant
multiplicity
narrative points of view will be forever cancelling
the voice of reconcilia
tion,
the voice
started
Nothing
dispenser,
belief
is produced.
Faced with
meaning
choice but to begin to read.
20
as successive
changes of strategy
sooner is fable
unlikely,
improbable,
impossible. No
of the bookwork.
than the clerk of works
lays bare the machinery
taken for granted,
every
given; every figure is made,
nothing
will make
of the wisdom
even
so much
that is artificial,
we
have
no
an overture.
at the beginning,
with
writing
Retrospective
begin
a
made of this
wakes
sy
arrangement;
retrospective
prospective
reading
a word
at
we
in
is
still
The
but
here.
world
noptic writing
bay,
already
are stunned at the
its
Environs.
it
Like
of
the
operatic medleys which
sight
We
emulates,
is all cymbals and fireworks on a first hearing.
this opening
an hour in every minute,
hear in this two-page
readings hear
sequent
gram all the chatter
moves
and the silences
of thirteen
hundred
Sub
ideo
lines. As Almi
the page to take his place in front of the Or
mond Orchestra,
the royal cavalcade fades out of view and brings to a stop
The overture
that is a prelude puns across the arts
theWandering
Rocks.
to mirror
tone and
albeit on a different
the preceding
epilogue,
key. The
dano Artifoni
across
an overture
all cymbals
prelude that is
clipclaps full tups like opera:
it leads one to expect anything but Water
Music.
works
and fire
to lose our faith in
this opening, we have begun
we may be sure
it's done, eppripfftaph
grammar.
By
pfrwritt,
to go unscathed,
that no further closures will be allowed
unread. Up to
was
this point, the question,
"Who is speaking?"
difficult to
occasionally
answer. In the overture,
it becomes not difficult to answer, but
however,
A
few measures
into
the time
to ask. Once
is punctured,
the narrative
the narrators cannot
impossible
sustain their breath. From now on, a writerly writer will
stage-manage
the show, like aDeus in machina. That he too will become readerly fiction
almost goes without
saying. The overture of the opera is the opening of
the works.
in a chapter which
is ostensibly
this should be happening
concerned
cannot be mere coincidence,
in a book where
is
coincidence
law. ("It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence,"
thinks Bloom as he eyes the
on
a
on
car
Essex
hat
gay
jaunting
riding
sexbridge ?the
bridge that draws
That
with
music
is in question
is a posited neutrality of representation,
and
apart.) For what
a lie that is still with us.
that is the age-long
lie of music,
"magic Iyer,"
Ask amusician
"Who is speaking?" and you're sure to get a horn blow in
in a chapter which
is no less osten
reply. That this should be happening
be mere
in a book
coincidence,
rounds things,"
three, which
?a
is a mere coincidence,
writes Borges.
"Two
three is a confirmation"
to
to
the songs
the scriptures,
is a
signature.) From the Sirens
immediacy
cannot
sibly about sighs and lips and smiles
is
where
coincidence
law. ("The number
21
of belief, of trust and thrust. The throstle crafts
question
Sonnez
Sonnez
Douce
la cloche!"
rings bells: "Sonnez!
Smack, ding, done.
its tone, Miss
les machines!
if it is a fugue, must be so more for its names and
fugue that follows,
for the history of its form than for an unlikely
but much-believed
but
never shown
From a strictly musical
the chap
point of view,
parallelism.
sense as an
ter makes more
with
act, complete
introduction,
operatic
The
a tenor aria, a trio, a
a baritone
solo, and several comings
quintet,
not have allowed for such vari
and goings,
than as a fugue, which would
itmakes no sense at all to speak of it as a prel
ety. And as for the overture,
an
ude, unless it be
operatic prelude. But the fugue provides what writing
duets,
in opera: a lexicon, a source of tropes and emblems
seems to have been
too the universe
of its art. Here
arranged for Joyce's
to show what
convenience.
Suffice it to list a few technical words
chance
and cannot
needs
had come
up with
"dux"
find
"episode,"
ticular case the one
the first
Li?ge's
or
"fuga" (flight
chase), "augmentation,"
or
"mirror form," "in
(tight
bound), "lydian,"
imitation." And as if this were not enough,
"retrograde
that comes),
"stretto"
"diminution,"
vertible
in the way of necessity:
"subject,"
"countersubject,"
one that goes, and in this par
"comes"
(a guide),
(the
canon,"
recorded
of
reference
fourteenth-century
the word
work,
"fugue"
Speculum Musicae,
appears
music's
in Jacques
mirror.
de
for the chapter. An aca
stands as virtual heading
fugue as emblem
most
form
the fugue is the
demic test piece for composers,
fully developed
one
music
write
while
still
That
of polyphonic
actually
writing.
might
must
to so many hard and fast conventions
of a
be something
abiding
The
as the last and
to those who
think of music
mystery
only form of
art. That one might write
still abiding
unmediated
truly great music while
a
remains
for
conventions
those
who
know it
such
slow
major mystery
by
seems to be
us is that culture at its
is not. What
highest
telling
polyphony
minor
intense,
may breed nature at its most
for us to go so low.
other way
Miss
Douce
and the seashell
against
A miss
cast as image for a chapterhead.
is Siren
outcry. Miss Mina Douce
22
and that,
a
indeed,
perhaps
there is no
an emblem
mirror:
gildedlettered
a sweet
amirrored
letter of
against
and isMina-bird,
a bird
that is often
tamed and taught to speak. She learns a false high language and a lip wish
the "cloche" smack seems to tell us is that nature
show of solitude. What
at its
at its most
intense,
highest may breed culture
is perhaps no other way for us to go so low.
and that,
indeed,
there
nature find their
speaking culture and culture speaking
ready-made
on
she bade him,"
and George
emblem
the seashell. "Listen!
Lidwell,
on
sea
waves
calcium
Then
coil.
heard
wonderful
solicitor,
pale gold in
to hear. But Bloom,
contrast
from the dining lounge, hears better,
glides
Nature
"more
that that they had heard, each for herself alone, then each
a silent roar." What
the shell seems
hearing the plash of waves,
faintly
for other,
us is that nature and culture
to be
telling
there is no other way for us to go.
share one space, and that, indeed,
A straight line and a shell is how Brancusi painted Joyce. Both are laby
rinths, infinite labyrinths in opposite directions. Both straight and coiled
line are marks
time by the geometer, who knows
the
that that same line and that same spiral have run and coiled through
run
own
as
too.
The
lives of all geometers,
they will coil and
through his
movement
is the music of line and of sea spiral, and both at once:
of music
are
a present tense that is
always
fading, and always ourselves who
fading
of time,
abstracted
from
as
is the secret
composition,
po?tica," music
as
"m?sica pratica," music
of the medieval
consolation
music-making,
as "meditatio mortis."
Time
music
will
that time
signatures
countersign
in. The medieval
"m?sica
fixed in its own contradiction,
each moment
substance;
to
The
be
Sirensong will blend sense and de
eternally repeated.
composed
craft and content, will make no time when
sire, will blur the line between
which
is their
time,
forgotten,
"Of course
ordinating
is at its most
intense.
to pervert our wiser ears
singer continues
by sub
that is to sing, the aria, to the time-factor,
the space-element,
the unskilled
which ought to be killed, ill tempor"(FW 164). And just like the shell
reverses
lines will
of line by folding
line upon
to
send the letter back
sender, will bend
the infinite
so Joyce's music
the grammar against its
itself,
own
do the trick: "Miss Kennedy
and echo will
grain. Permutation
a loose hair behind
an ear.
sauntered
sadly from bright
light, twining
no more,
a
she
twisted
twined
hair.
Sauntering
Sadly she
sadly, gold
23
twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear." A curving ear: "Her
ear too is a shell," thinks Bloom
of weary gold by bronze. A bass clef, a
seashell, a curving ear; a bar, a bed and board of keys to play one selfsame
tune.
had the ear of a foreigner,
fascinated by the uncom
Joyce the composer
ex
mon
common
His
is a virtuoso
sound of
tongues.
playful paper music
cross-art punning,
ercise in an individual
call a
what we might
style of
one
one
sense
in
of the word. There is no
and only
style of "synegraphy,"
of classical rhetoric can well describe most,
that the vocabulary
if
care
not all, of such
time and
and glossaries we
puns. With
synegraphic
to print an extensive
to be found in this
of
list
illnesses
be
able
might
doubt
epenthesis,
anadiplosis,
prosthesis,
chapter, including
apheresis, apocope,
tmesis, coluthon,
among others.
gemination,
ellipsis, and contamination,
But such a diagnosis, while
be missing
symptoms.
signs, would
hitting
from the spell to the incantation,
The chapter's surface charm is charming
to the chant. The appogiatura
from the enchantment
"Luring. Ah, allur
the hollow
iddle, addle, ooddle, ooddle,"
"Diddle,
ing," the portamento
and the long fermata on "end
fifths "Why did she me?" or "Blmstup,"
. . ."make choice of chance and chime: "endnessnessess
lessnessnessness
ity!" (FW 613). And then there is that large collection of what can only be
as some literal form of word
not in the sense of
described
painting,
Renaissance
and Baroque
melodic
rather as a sight of sense
un com:'d" combines
image
. . ."
Both "endlessnessnessness
mimicry,
on page,
"wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair
trill at end of cadence.
and synegraphic
are
thnthnthn"
and "imperthnthn
examples
same
art which would
allow
typographic
even "bootssnout"
and "footstool"
context,
in this context,
on,
but
of onomatopoeic
that
design,
In this
for "Pprrpffrrppffff."
to look like
begin
ideograms;
or "bob" or ":" make
reading
"Sleep!"
The Bells will
clatter "Haltyaltyaltyall,"
even
in nighttown,
visual.
Later
and be an
swered by The Gong's "Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo." All this is
on the
to be
strange mute music,
printer's
played painted
as
wind
have
will
make,
made,
chapter,
chapter,
speech
for
worth.
all
words,
they're
the foreigner
translating culture's
Joyce
24
is incessantly
cult to expose
composing
the singing.
Song
galley.
us, look, at,
sign for song, incessantly
The Old Serpent will coil
the Old Teaser, not a foreigner, but an exile, is here to
the one that throws
like a Greek "diabollos,"
accuse, slander, traduce,
uncommon
babble. Emblems
across, that makes
cast,
language of tongue,
ex machine, will come
un
like aDiabolus
the devil of the village,
through
to
moral.
draw
souls
his
likely
to bite his tale, but
?
tuner was
The
it for the
in today, miss Douce
tuning
replied,
and I never heard such an exquisite player.
concert
smoking
?
Is that a fact?
?
The real classical, you know.
Didn't he, miss Kennedy?
I'm sure he was.
too, poor fellow. Not
twenty
?
Is that a fact? Mr. Dedalus
said.
He
?
and strayed away.
at his face, miss
curse on bitch's bastard.
And
blind
drank
So sad to look
God's
Douce
condoled.
Tink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the bar and
came bald Pat, came bothered
diningroom
Ormond.
Lager for diner. Lager without
Pat,
came Pat, waiter
alacrity
So they come together,
Pat and Tap,
the palindromes
to
immune
the charms of "Wine, Women
bothered,
of
she served.
the stripling and the
and Waterclocks,"
the eyeless and the hard of hearing,
steering clear of Sirens' rocks and roll.
Inversion here seems to be subversion,
turning, trope: when Joyce is fixed
on common words, we'd better
the
"Both
poet to his underword.
join
the waiter,"
who,
for him, who
waits
ered Pat,
waits
while you wait, whose
family
wait.
"How will you pun?" Why
you
mean
bother? Because old Irish "bodar" is akin toWelsh
"byddar," both
as the waiter
wait? Because the wait is to the watchman
is
ing deaf. While
to the counterman,
aman who
a
man of
stands by the place of accounts,
waits
thought. Bothered
counterman.
And
bothered,
while
Pat the waiter
is none other
than deaf Pat,
the watcher
as for the blind
tuner, the stripling, Mr. Penrose, he'll
of rhetoric too. For a tone is "the ele
but
clefs
only piano keys
ment
in discourse
that expresses
the speaker's sentiment
and reveals his
to
&
the Funk
Standard Dictionary
character,"
according
Wagnalls
of the
tune not
English Language. And
But
uncovers,
plunders.
word
word
a
stripling,
a mere
is also one who
youth,
strips,
it!"?
The
of
"the
last
surdity
"my herrings!
can we make
in stolentelling."
What
as
to back
one?
stripper, back
of deaf watcher
and blind
25
a shot may be made at what
this hy
together
.
.
to look at"
all ears, an artificial
actually like
(FW 169). ".
a
..."
made
natural
curl
Shame's
choice
with
tongue
necessity of chance,
and exile taught him to play blind and see. At once home and abroad, un
common
common
seen will
strip blind craft of all immediacy. With
magic
"Putting
brid was
truth and untruth
the stripling
cane,
taps his way
to the Ormond
inDublin.
Bar, Allemonde
His tapping beats the beating of old men andmaidens playing with them
and it beats
selves,
the curse of God
Strand;
bastards.
This
tuner's
as he walks blind
ashplant,
along Sandymount
a rolled copy of the Freeman;
it is the stick of
Prescott, Bach; it's
blind, Tiresias, Homer, Milton,
is Protean
wand
on all bitch's
Stephen's
it's Bloom's
baton,
genius for the greatest
for the sighted,
the rod of reading blindness
as
Christ
messenger,
Dionysus,
shepherd,
and?last
but not least ?Maistre
Sheames
sham, joky
for Jacob,
progenitor
Aaron
the priest,
Blake's
Los, Handel,
de
la Plume,
and Hermes
sham
Thoth,
and
low
of the Israelites.
cane on hand. At his son's
the Zurich
stream, stands Aloysius,
Against
home in Paris, his grandson handles his grandfather's
rod. Brancusi paints
Sa than, villainous,
him seashell by a stick. This old white-bearded
abom
to
stave
of
false
staff
and
and
mis-leader
with
under
Youth,
inable,
points
of the exile, who
the cunning
silence, make
blindness,
song. Deafness,
will
not
see what's
seen, nor hear what's
a
heard.
From
the heart of the hi
of cuckoldry,
from
the
bernian metropolis,
piano bar in the afternoon
"
in modus
'Tis
intones his psalm,
blind master
peregrinus:
Optophone
a letter on the blind, for the benefit of those who
Which
Ontophanes":
see, a letter on the deaf and dumb, for all of us who cannot hear or speak.
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