Joyce, James

writer

[Archive rare] [ENG] James Joyce lisant Ulysses et Finnegans Wake

Artesquieu · Jun 9, 2022 · partial coverage

• James Joyce
• Ulysses
• Finnegans Wake
• Anna Livia Plurabelle
• readings
• Aeolus
• Moses and Egypt
• Irish literature
• archive rare
• English

Coverage note: partial (about 7 minutes of readings; the automatic English transcript is very distorted, especially for the *Finnegans Wake* passage, whose coined words and dialect are rendered as near-nonsense; only the most legible parts of the first reading and the overall character of the second are reported, and the identification of the passages rests on the recognisable lines)

Core ideas

The Ulysses reading. Joyce first reads a passage that opens "Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland", in which the speaker says he felt transported "into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age", standing in ancient Egypt and hearing a high priest address a young Jewish listener. The priest boasts of Egypt's power, its cities, its galleys full of merchandise and its ancient literature and history, and contrasts it with the nomadic, city-less people of Israel ("you have no cities, no wealth"), invoking the majestic abodes of Isis. The speaker then reverses the scene: had the young Moses accepted that arrogant view of life and bowed his will, "he would never have led the chosen people out of their house of bondage," nor followed the pillar of the cloud, nor spoken with the eternal on Sinai or brought down the tables of the law. The passage is a rhetorical set piece, read with a slow, sonorous cadence.

The Finnegans Wake reading. The second recording is the famous closing movement of "Anna Livia Plurabelle": two washerwomen on opposite banks of the river Liffey gossip about the river-woman Anna Livia while they wring out and spread the laundry ("spread on your bank and I'll spread mine on mine"), as dusk grows. The transcript captures fragments of the ritual dialogue (counting clothes, sheets and napkins, remarks about a drunken husband, a stranger, gossip about the family, a mention of the Shannon and of Ireland, a lament for "all her children"), the river merging with Anna Livia, and the final fading lines in which the voices become indistinct ("my own way, my valley way"). The musicality of Joyce's lilting delivery is the main thing the recording preserves; the text itself, built on multilingual puns, is not reproducible from the transcript.

Excerpts