ABSTRACT
So there is music in the names of rivers, but a reading of Anna Livia Plurabelle is proof there is more. No one will deny Joyce is a superpunster, but Cocteau is always right and he has written: ‘Sans calembours, sans devinettes, il n’y a pas d’art sérieux… Tout chefd’oeuvre est fait d’aveux cachés, de calculs, de calembours hautains, d’étranges devinettes.’ It is easy to say Nile to one’s self, or Amazon, or even Congo-and thereby mentally conjure up vivid lands and sunburst flowers and poison; but Joyce is not satisfied with that. Joyce is a classicist. With Anna Livia before him, who does not come to the realisation that he has felt the tigris eye, that he has known the gangres of sin or that he has suffered from neuphrates? I speak of men. Who does not remember that he has heard a savage green voice in himself: Oronoko!—and who does not recall the lazy human mañana of his own reply: Garonne, garonne…first thing in the marne…
These questions are addressed to the elect. One cannot be concerned with the ignorant, though one must remain horribly conscious of their fat wormy presence,… No doubt the ignorant worship propulsion but cannot abide transport. They accuse Joyce, on their wild reckless rocketing east and west and roundabout, of tours de force. Some retrogress so far as to call them tours de faiblesse. Joyce cannot be read on trains, they say. Airplanes abhor Joyce. They will never see Joyce is a train, a monastery. No doubt the truth of the matter is in tours d’ivoire, rare and inviolable and therefore valuable and admirable. But the ignorants’ ignorance is exasperating and I wish I could wipe them off the face of the earth-along with a few others. The inevitable conclusion is that the acceptance of motors
requires only an act of hypocrisy on the part of the world while the acceptance of Joyce requires an act of faith in one’s self….
