One of Matisse’s illustrations for the 1934 edition of Ulysses

Fleeing Folly for Thanksgiving, I spent the four-hour drive to Greensboro, Georgia, listening to Donal Donnelly reading Joyce’s Ulysses, a book that should be heard not read, or at least read aloud.

Joyce possessies the best ear of any prose writer ever.

Dig this, from Episode 1, “Telemachus”:

 I AM THE BOY

THAT CAN ENJOY

INVISIBILITY.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

AND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD.

And now this from Episode 3, “Proteus”:

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan’s movement I made nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour, welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.

And no more turn aside and brood.

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs nebeneinander: He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another’s foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.

Yeats’s “Who Goes with Fergus” is stuck in his head like a catchy tune. His mind animates the world around him.  You listen and enter that world, a world come alive, a better world.

It’s so addictive I feel like getting in the car and driving around this lovely late-autumn neighborhood to hear the lilt of the words in my failing ears.

He capered before them down towards the forty-foot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.

Donal Donnerly