Ashplant
Reading, Smashing, and Playing Ulysses
Allen, Stuart. "‘Thinking Strictly Prohibited’: Music, Language, and Thought in Sirens." Twentieth Century Literature 53, no. 4 (2007): 442–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20479826.
Related topics:
Music
The Unspoken
Link to citation page: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20479826?uid=3739640&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102552121627
In this article, Allen posits the idea that Joyce uses music in Ulysses to allow readers to experience distraction. He begins by countering Derek Attridge's argument that music in Ulysses makes literal sense, because of Joyce's experiments with syntax in "Sirens" (U 11). According to Allen, although Attridge's argument lends insight into research about music in Ulysses, it rapidly loses its linguistic grounding and moves into other realms. Allen sees this happen with other researchers who try to discuss music and language. He compares this seeming "distraction" that scholars experience when articulating the relationship between music and language to the distraction experienced by characters in the chapter. Throughout the essay, he returns to the point that we are never sure which is the distracting force at work, and what is being distracted. He illustrates this with the passage "Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, twining a loose hair, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear." Although most critics argue that this passage is an example of language becoming music because of the repetition, Allen argues that it could just as easily be simply conveying "the languid beauty of Miss Kennedy" (445). As he puts it, "it is undecidable to what extent the language responds to itself of to its subject" (445). Allen then moves on to a discussion of Adorno's views on music in this episode, who argues that the music's departure from tonality "reveals a kind of thought more commonly associated with language" (446). Adorno also argues that music becomes "a social lubricant, now as an aide-memoire that fosters a sentimental...remembrance of things past" -in other words, a distraction (450). In the end, Allen argues that Bloom experiences distraction in episode 11, not only from the people around him but also from the music he hears.
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