AbdoRinbo
08-17-2003, 07:02 PM
Every now and then I'll read a sentence or a paragraph in a novel that has a true poetic quality to it that is almost . . . musical. The one thing I think a lot of authors are lacking today is that sixth sense ability to describe the world with words that feel like the ideas or people they are describing. James Joyce had an incredible ear for using words that captured what is sometimes referred to as the 'condition of the spirit' or the 'state of the soul'. To observe how Joyce did this, we have to look to his biggest source of inspiration.
In the The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crewmen encounter the Sirens, who traditionally lured passengers to their island with mantra-like songs, where their ship would shatter against the coastal rocks. Odysseus, desiring to hear the Sirens' singing, had his crew members tie him to the mast to keep him sailing into certain death. In Joyce's modern day Ulysses--the tale told of a day in the life of an ad canvasser named Leopold Bloom--epic events are reduced to a charming baseness. Bloom, avoiding the reality that his wife is initiating an affair at that moment with a man named Blazes Boylan, twists a small rubberband around his fingers (like we all have done) subconsciously directing his attention away from a group of barmaids at a pub who sing a particular song that reminds him of his early days with his wife:
'Words? Music? No: it's what's behind.
'Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded.
'Bloom. Flood of warm jimjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow, invading. Tipdilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrop. Now! Language of love' (p. 274).
Joyce's technique for this episode pays little attention to literal meaning, but the words themselves become 'characters' to interpret as we move beyond their definitions. Joyce doesn't use a '-' to connect phrases (like 'joygush'); instead, he lets them conjoin and become one word with a new form of 'meaning'.
This regard for the sound of words and the rhythm of phrases is typically reserved for poetry, but now and then--and especially in the works of Italo Calvino--I'll find a story or two that perfectly emulates the the non-existent world behind the screen of a sentence. I'm sure the rest of you know what I'm talking about. You have all seen a pattern of words strung together that hit a literary chord and made you stop and wonder whether the words themselves were more real than the ideas being described. If you have a paragraph or a short passage or even just a sentence, go ahead and post it on here.
In the The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crewmen encounter the Sirens, who traditionally lured passengers to their island with mantra-like songs, where their ship would shatter against the coastal rocks. Odysseus, desiring to hear the Sirens' singing, had his crew members tie him to the mast to keep him sailing into certain death. In Joyce's modern day Ulysses--the tale told of a day in the life of an ad canvasser named Leopold Bloom--epic events are reduced to a charming baseness. Bloom, avoiding the reality that his wife is initiating an affair at that moment with a man named Blazes Boylan, twists a small rubberband around his fingers (like we all have done) subconsciously directing his attention away from a group of barmaids at a pub who sing a particular song that reminds him of his early days with his wife:
'Words? Music? No: it's what's behind.
'Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded.
'Bloom. Flood of warm jimjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow, invading. Tipdilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrop. Now! Language of love' (p. 274).
Joyce's technique for this episode pays little attention to literal meaning, but the words themselves become 'characters' to interpret as we move beyond their definitions. Joyce doesn't use a '-' to connect phrases (like 'joygush'); instead, he lets them conjoin and become one word with a new form of 'meaning'.
This regard for the sound of words and the rhythm of phrases is typically reserved for poetry, but now and then--and especially in the works of Italo Calvino--I'll find a story or two that perfectly emulates the the non-existent world behind the screen of a sentence. I'm sure the rest of you know what I'm talking about. You have all seen a pattern of words strung together that hit a literary chord and made you stop and wonder whether the words themselves were more real than the ideas being described. If you have a paragraph or a short passage or even just a sentence, go ahead and post it on here.