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Joyce's Use of Da Ponte and Mozart's Don Giovanni

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Vernon Hall Jr.
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Extract

Joyce was born in a musical city, Dublin. His childhood was filled with music. As a young man he entered a competition in the Irish festival of music, and if he had not refused to sing at sight would probably have won it. Had he done so, his future career would have been more likely that of a concert tenor than a writer. Throughout his life vocal music was his great pleasure and consolation.1 No sensitive reader of Ulysses has failed to appreciate the way Joyce not only uses the sound of words for musical effects, but also employs musical devices in constructing his novel.2 Snatches from songs are woven into the text. Richard M. Kain writes:

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , March 1951 , pp. 78 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

1 To retrace the recurrences of these thematic songs would reveal how large a part music plays in the consciousness of the two characters. Music is one of the most potent of subconscious recalls; it rises unexpectedly to mind, and, in turn, leads to appropriate words and associations. Such constant psychological interplay defies detailed analysis; an index of themes will serve to indicate the multitude of musical references in the text, but the careful reader will take pleasure in discovering for himself Joyce's revelation of how extensive a part sound plays in the operation of the mind—a part never so completely demonstrated in literature as by Ulysses.

1 Herbert Gorman, James Joyce (New York, 1939), pp. 17, 120–122, and passim.

2 Harry Levin, James Joyce (New York, 1941), pp. 98–105.

3 Fabulous Voyager: James Joyce's Ulysses (Chicago, 1947), p. 144.

4 James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses (London, 1934), p. 186.

5 Pronounced in the English fashion, Juan sounds like Boylan.

6 Here is the duet with my translation:

7 Ulysses, Random House ed. (New York, 1934), p. 63. Page references hereafter given in my text are to this edition.

8 In following through the Don Giovanni theme we must, for the sake of clarity, leave out other themes also represented by our citations. For instance, here we have two other themes blending with the one we are interested in. This passage fits in with the theme of Bloom's interest in words and the theme of Spain-Italy and the lovemaking and dolce far wienie that he believes characteristic of the East and South.

9 Appendix D of Kain's Fabulous Voyager lists voglio as “a phrase from one of Molly's songs.” This listing is awkward since the form voglio is not in Molly's song except as Bloom wrongly recalls it.

10 See, e.g., the remarks of the debt-collector on Blazes and Molly, p. 314.

11 This is proof that Joyce was giving these lines from memory since the text has the poetical form cor(e), not the regular form Joyce uses.

12 Like all of Bloom's slips, this is revealing. In one of Bloom's erotic visions Bella Cohen becomes a man, Bello.