David Norris Reads from “Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (review)

Joyce’s notoriously difficult Finnegans Wake is given renewed life in this wonderful recording of “Anna Livia Plurabelle” by David Norris. Joyce made a number of comments about the orality and the musical nature of his texts, and, when speaking of his reading of a passage from “Anna Livia Plurabelle,” he claimed that it was not a “blending of literature and music” but rather “‘pure music.’”¹ This musical notion was expanded into a listening experience when Joyce defended Finnegans Wake against an English woman’s accusation that it “isn’t literature,” by saying, “‘It was’ . . . while she was listening to it” (JJII 702). He capitalized again on the pleasing oral quality of the text in a letter to Lucia: “Lord knows what my prose means. In a word, it is pleasing to the ear. . . . That is enough it seems to me.”² Implicit in these statements is an element present in musical performance: with each oral rendition of the Wake, the reader/performer chooses the interpretation she or he will emphasize. This sentiment is perfectly echoed in Norris’s written introduction to the recording: “You have to read the text like music and practice it like a violinist or a pianist so that you can perform it. Once you have mastered this the meaning of the sounds becomes obvious to the hearer” (CD overleaf). In this way, Norris goes about imbuing the sound of his readings, characters, and vocalizations with meaning apparent to the listener, and his virtuosity is revealed with every phrase.

Critics such as Anthony Burgess rejected the emancipation of the Wake from its written form. He writes: “[i]t has to be read aloud. . . . But it cannot be wholly freed from the page. We need the score . . . to perceive patterns clearer to the eye than to the ear.”³ While it is true that reading the written text produces a multiplicity of interpretations not possible in an oral performance—“no reading aloud could possibly reproduce the graphic distribution of the text” or “the play of letters”⁴ or reveal the extent of each homonym, pun, and portmanteau—Norris’s dexterous recording nevertheless voices an array of meanings in his chosen passages and saturates the washerwomen with recognizable personalities.

Furthermore, his interpretation of particular phrases tends to instill an Irish lilt into the text that might not be immediately apparent in the written version. For example, his pronunciation of “ijypt” as the Hiberno-English “eejit,” “Yssel that the limmat?” as closer to “isn’t that the limit,” “[t]ell me every tiny teign” as “tell me every tiny ting,” and “aisne aestumation” as “own estimation” all demonstrate an agility regarding the oral possibilities in the text and can be contrasted against different emphases: Egypt for “ijypt” or Limmat (the river in Switzerland) for “limmat.”⁵

Because Norris has chosen to record the same passage as the existing recording of Joyce’s reading of ALP (FW 213.11–216.05), I would be remiss if I did not discuss a comparison. Although there are many similarities between the two—from the same dialogic aspect of the elm and stone washerwomen to pronunciation choices such as “Concepta” (FW 213.19) with an Italian “ch” and “Hircus Civis Eblanensis!” (FW 215.26) with a hard “c” in “Hircus” and a “ch” in “Civis”—Norris’s version is nevertheless his own performance of the text. While Joyce’s “r”s are rolled very prominently, Norris instead uses pacing, dynamics, and harshness in his tone to delineate the different qualities of his duo. A significant difference is his “Whawk?” (FW 215.30), which provides an alternative sonic dimension to the preceding and following syllables—“What all men. Hot? His tittering daughters of. Whawk? Can’t hear with the waters of” (FW 215.29–31)—and helps with the characterization of the stone and the elm.

All in all, this is an excellent recording and one that I will certainly be playing for my...