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The Modality of the Audible in Joyce's Ulysses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Joseph E. Duncan
Joseph E. Duncan*
Affiliation:
University or Minnesota, Duluth 12
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Extract

Readers of Joyce's Ulysses are familiar with his references to the modality of the visible and the audible as well as with the vast range and importance of the audible in the work. But commentators apparently have not seen that the key both to these references and to Joyce's use of the audible in Ulysses is Aristotle's idea of perception and modality as pondered by Stephen at the beginning of the third or “Proteus” chapter. This key opens a new door into Joyce's world of ineluctable modality and reveals the importance of the modality of the audible both in the physical world without and the stream of consciousness within. Joyce's conception of modality and his treatment of sound are closely related. His use of the audible provides one of the best illustrations of his basic concept of modality, while this idea of modality is itself the best guide to an understanding of his experimentation with the audible.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1957 , pp. 286 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1957

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References

Note 1 in page 286 New York: Modern Library, 1934, p. 38. All subsequent references to Ulysses will be to this edition. The unusual grammatical construction of the statement “he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured” does not seem to be suggested by either a Greek or English version of Aristotle. It is apparently rather an attempt by Joyce to present a grammatically correct elliptical statement of what would have been the rather awkward “he was aware of them as bodies before he was aware of them as coloured.” Joyce also probably desired a repetitive sound pattern: “aware of them … before of them.”

Note 2 in page 286 Gilbert, James Joyce (New York, 1952), p. 121. Tindall has identified “signatures of all things” as a phrase from Jacob Boehme reflecting the widely known doctrine of correspondence. He has further explained that Stephen characteristically takes refuge from the “occult whirlpool” to which correspondences may lead and “shares the rock of dogma with Aristotle, Loyola, and Aquinas” (James Joyce, New York, 1950, pp. 111–112). In this passage, instead of exploring the “signatures” as mystical symbols, Stephen recognizes their uncertainty as keys to the supersensible and turns, with Aristotle's support, to the bodies or substratum underlying them. Joyce was interested in correspondences, but chiefly in those that could be apprehended between things in the sublunary world of “ineluctable modality.” As Tindall has said, he used correspondences for art, rather than in the ways of the occultists.

Note 3 in page 287 The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (London, 1949), ii, 59, 43.

Note 4 in page 287 George Grote, Aristotle, ed. Alexander Bain and C. Croom Robertson (London, 1880), p. 9; George Henry Lewes, Aristotle (London, 1864), p. 7; G. R. G. Mure, Aristotle (London, 1932), p. 7.

Note 5 in page 288 De Anima, Bk. ii, Ch. vii.

Note 6 in page 288 This reference to Horatio's warning to Hamlet (i.iv.70–71) also suggests King Lear (iv.vi). Stephen with his eyes closed, like the blinded Gloucester, envisions a cliff where none actually exists.

Note 7 in page 288 Pkysica, Bk. iv, Ch. xi.

Note 8 in page 289 Delton Thomas Howard, Analytical Syllogistics (Evanston, 1946), pp. 24–25; Peirce, “Modality,” Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, ed. James Mark Baldwin (New York, 1920), ii, 90; Grote, pp. 133–134.

Note 9 in page 289 Analytica Priora, Bk. i, Ch. xiii, and De Interpretatione, Ch. xiii.

Note 10 in page 292 Pages 166, 259, 263, 268.

Note 11 in page 292 “Joyce's Use of Da Ponte and Mozart's Don Giovanni,” PMLA, LXVI (March 1951), 79–80. Bloom mistakenly thinks that the Italian words “Vorrei e non vorrei” (“I would like to and I wouldn't like to”) are “Voglio e non vorrei” (“I want to and I wouldn't like to”). He thus reveals his fear of Molly's adultery, but then dodges it in worrying about the pronunciation of “Voglio.”

Note 12 in page 293 Bloom's recollection of Molly aboard the Erin's King reminds him of some words from the popular song “Those Seaside Girls” (p. 66). Again the same song is introduced by allusions to “shell” and “weathereye” (p. 280). In Molly's reverie one memory reminds her of another, which in turn suggests the barking (“rrsssst awokwokawok”) of a dog (p. 745).

Note 13 in page 294 See also pp. 274, 278.