James Joyce reading his work (1924/1929)

Jun 15, 2012



FROM THE “AEOLUS” EPISODE OF ULYSSES (1924)
MP3 Download / Internet Archive Link
Joyce made this recording in Paris at the HMV studios at the insistence of Sylvia Beach (the woman behind Shakespeare and Company, the publisher's of Ulysses), although HMV would only loan out their equipment at a cost and would have as little to do with the recording as possible. Beach recounts:
Joyce himself was anxious to have this record made, but the day I took him in a taxi to the factory in Billancourt, quite a distance from town, he was suffering with his eyes and very nervous. Luckily, he and Coppola were soon quite at home with each other, bursting into Italian to discuss music. But the recording was an ordeal for Joyce, and the first attempt was a failure. We went back and began again, and I think the Ulysses record is a wonderful performance. I never hear it without being deeply moved. Joyce had chosen the speech in the Aeolus episode, the only passage that could be lifted out of Ulysses, he said, and the only one that was "declamatory" and therefore suitable for recital. I have an idea that it was not for declamatory reasons alone that he chose this passage from Aeolus. I believe that it expressed something he wanted said and preserved in his own voice. As it rings out - 'he lifted his voice above it boldly' - it is more, one feels, than mere oratory.
THE "ANNA LIVIA PLURABELLE" SECTION FROM FINNEGANS WAKE (1929)
MP3 Download / Internet Archive Link
This recording of Joyce reading was made in 1929 by C.K. Ogden (the linguist, philosopher, and inventor of Basic English) in the studio of the Orthological Society in Cambridge. Ogden boasted of the two biggest recording machines in the world and wanted to do a better recording of Joyce than the Ulysses recording of 5 years earlier which he regarded as being of very poor quality. Sylvia Beach again:
How beautiful the "Anna Livia" recording is, and how amusing Joyce's rendering of an Irish washerwoman's brogue! This is a treasure we owe to C. K. Ogden and Basic English. Joyce, with his famous memory, must have known "Anna Livia" by heart. Nevertheless, he faltered at one place and, as in the Ulysses recording, they had to begin again. Ogden gave me both the first and second versions. Joyce gave me the immense sheets on which Ogden had had "Anna Livia" printed in huge type so that the author-his sight was growing dimmer-could read it without effort. I wondered where Mr. Ogden had got hold of such big type, until my friend Maurice Saillet, examining it, told me that the corresponding pages in the book had been photographed and much enlarged.
Below are the texts themselves:
FROM THE “AEOLUS” EPISODE OF ULYSSES (1924)
He began:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?

—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me.
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.

—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.

Nile.

Child, man, effigy. By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.

—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:

—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw.
THE "ANNA LIVIA PLURABELLE" SECTION FROM FINNEGANS WAKE (1929)
Well, you know or don’t you kennet or haven’t I told you every telling has a tailing and that’s the he and the she of it.  Look, look, the dusk is growing. My branches lofty are taking root.  And my cold cher’s gone ashley.  Fielhur? Filou! What age is at?  Its saon is late.  ‘Tis endless now senne eye or erewone last saw Waterhouse’s clogh. They took it asunder, I hurd thum sigh.  When will they reassemble it?  O, my back, my back, my bach!  I’d want to go to Aches-les-Pains.  Pingpong!  There’s the Belle for Sexaloitez!  And Concepta de Send-us-pray!  Pang!  Wring out the clothes!  Wring in the dew!  Godavari, vert the showers!  And grant thaya grace!  Aman.  Will we spread them here now?  Ay, we will.  Flip!  Spread on your bank and I’ll spread mine on mine.  Flep!  It’s what I’m doing.  Spread!  It’s churning chill.  Der went is rising.  I’ll lay a few stones on the hostel sheets.  A man and his bride embraced between them.  Else I’d have sprinkled and folded them only.  And I’ll tie my butcher’s apron here.  It’s suety yet.  The strollers will pass it by.  Six shifts, ten kerchiefs, nine to hold to the fire and this for the code, the convent napkins twelve, one baby’s shawl.  Good mother Jossiph knows, she said.  Whose had?  Mutter snores?  Deataceas!  Wharnow are alle her childer, say?  In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther?  Allalivial, allalluvial!  Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger.  I’ve heard tell that same brooch of the Shannons was married into a family in Spain.  And all the Dunders de Dunnes in Markland’s Vineland beyond Brendan’s herring pool takes number nine in yangsee’s hats.  And one of Biddy’s beads went bobbling till she rounded up lost histereve with a marigold and a cobbler’s candle in a side strain of a main drain of a manzinahurries off Bachelor’s Walk.  But all that’s left to the last of the Meaghers in the loup of the years prefixed and between is one kneebuckle and two hooks in the front.  Do you tell me that now?  I do in troth.  Orara por Orbe and poor Las Animas!  Ussa, Ulla, we’re umbas all!  Mezha, didn’t you hear it a deluge of times, ufer and ufer, respund to spond?  You deed, you deed!  I need, I need!  It’s that irrawaddyng I’ve stoke in my aars.  It all but husheth the lethest zswound.  Oronoko!  What’s your trouble?  Is that the great Finnleader himself in his joakimono on his statue riding the high horse there forehengist?  Father of Otters, it is himself!  Yonne there!  Isset that?  On Fallareen Common?  You’re thinking of Astley’s Amiptheayter where the bobby restrained you making sugarstuck pouts to the ghostwhite horse of the Peppers.  Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper. It’s well I know your sort of slop.  Flap!  Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.  Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me!  Your prayers, I sonht zo!  Madammangut!  Were you lifting your elbow, tell us, glazy cheeks, in Conway’s Carrigacurra canteen?  Was I what, hobbledyhips?  Flop!  Your rere gait’s creakorhueman bitts your butts disagrees.  Amn’t I up since the damp dawn, marthared mary allacook, with Corrigan’s pulse and varicoarse veins, my pramaxle smashed, Alice Jane in decline and my oneeyed mongrel twice run over, soaking and bleaching boiler rags, and sweating cold, a widow like me, for to deck my tennis champion son, the laundryman with the lavandier flannerls?  You won your limpopo limp from the husky hussars when Collars and Cuffs was heir to the town and your slur gave the stink to Carlow.  Holy Scamander, I sar it again!  Near the golden falls.  Icis on us!  Seints of light!  Zezere!  Subdue your noise, you hamble creature! What is it but a blackburry growth on the dwyergray ass them four old coldgers owns.  Are you meanem Tarpey and Lyons and Gregory?  I meyne now, thank all, the four of them, and the roar of them, that draves that stray in the mist and old Johnny MacDougal along with them.  Is that the Poolbeg flasher beyant, pharphar, or a fireboat coasting nyar the Kishtna or a glow I behold within a hedge or my Garry come back from the Indies?  Wait till the honeying of the lune, love!  Die eve, little eve, die!  We see that wonder in your eye.  We’ll meet again, we’ll part once more.  The spot I’ll seek if the hour you’ll find.  My chart shines high where the blue milk’s upset.  Forgivemequick, I’m going!  Bubye!  And you, pluck your watch, forgetmenot.  Your evenlode.  So save to jurna’s end!  My sights are swimming thicker on me by the shadows to this place.  I sow home slowly now by own way, moyvalley way.  Towy I too, rathmine.
Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes!  And sure he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and dotthergills.  Gammer and gaffer we’re all their gangsters.  Hadn’t he seven dams to wive him?  And every dam had her seven crutches.  And every crutch had its seven hues.  And each hue had a differing cry.  Sudds for me and supper for you and the doctor’s bill for Joe John.  Befor!  Bifur!  He married his markets, cheap by foul, I know, like any Etrurian Catholic Heathen, in their plinky lemony creamy birnies and their turkiss indienne mauves.  But at milkidmass who was the spouse?  Then all that was was fair.  Tys Elvenland!  Teems of times and happy returns.  The seim anew.  Ordovico or viricordo.  Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle’s to be.  Northmen’s thing made southfolk’s place but howmulty plurators made eachone in person?  Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into oure eryan.  Hircus Civis Eblanensis!  He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans.  Ho, Lord!  Twins of his bosom.  Lord save us!  And ho!  Hey?  What all men?  Hot?  His tittering daughters of.  Whawk?
Can’t hear with the waters of.  The chittering waters of.  Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk.  Ho!  Are you not gone ahome?  What Thom Malone?  Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us!  My foos won’t moos.  I feel as old as yonder elm.  A tale told of Shaun or Shem?  All Livia’s daughtersons.  Dark hawks hear us.  Night!  Night!  My ho head halls.  I feel as heavy as yonder stone.  Tell me of John or Shaun?  Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?  Night now!  Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!   Night night!  Telmetale of stem or stone.  Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of.  Night!