ABSTRACT
The dissatisfaction of the Irish with the English language and their efforts to change and revivify it make one of the most curious chapters in the history of English letters, but none has ever gone so far and made so many changes as Mr. Joyce. He is not content with an Irish dialect or with the simpler primitive tendencies of Irish writers, but he has attempted to change the whole face of the English language. Anna Livia Plurabelle is a fragment of a work on which he is now engaged, and here, as Mr. Colum explains in an appreciative preface, he is still writing about Dublin. But while his subject is akin to that of The Dubliners and of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the treatment is altered out of all knowledge, though doubtless it is a development out of Mr. Joyce's intervening work. There is the same kind of poetry in prose, but it would seem that this has needed the stimulus of new language and new technical devices to prevent its exhaustion. Anna Livia Plurabelle is written in an outlandish dialect; the roots of English words can be recognized, sometimes after thought, but often the endings and the spelling are much changed. One is at times reminded of the devices of manufacturers in their trade names, when they spell words phonetically or change ‘f’ into ‘ph.’ Undoubtedly, though inexplicably, this has a value in advertising, but it needs great boldness to find in it something of value for poetry or for poetical prose. ‘Frostivying tresses dasht with vireflies’ is a good example of this device in Mr. Joyce's work. In addition to this there is every kind of euphuism, foreign words are used, and much alliteration and rhyme.
