ABSTRACT
. . . But a little language is a dangerous thing. When broadcast, it is apt to trickle exiguously. Mr. James Joyce says with commendable firmness: ‘Icis on us! Seints of light! Zezere! Subdue your noise, you hamble creature! What is it but a blackburry growth or the dwyer-gray ass them four old codgers owns? Are you meanam Tarpey and Lyons and Gregory? I meyne now, thank all, the four of them, and the roar of them. . . .’ But I don't know what he meynes, nor what he is meanam. It looks as if he had a spelling-bee in his bonnet, and had got confused by the buzz. Perhaps there were three bees, Tarpey and Lyons and Gregory, and the four of them made the roar of them. . . . Let us turn for advice to Mr. Padraic Colum, who tells us in a preface that ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle is concerned with the flowing of a River.’ He adds that it is ‘epical in its largeness of meaning and its multiplicity of interest.’ And he praises, possibly to excess, ‘James Joyce's inventions and discoveries as an innovator in literary form.’ But I doubt whether it is really an invention to burble, since all babies do it: and it is no discovery that, if you make a noise like a carrot, there are creatures who will simply eat it. ‘There will be many interpretations,’ says Mr. Colum, ‘of Anna Livia Plurabelle,’ but I think he exaggerates. I think most people will get it in one. However, lest I do injustice, I will quote in full a remarkable passage which Mr. Colum himself selects as giving beautifully the flow of water: . . .
