James Joyce

Musemathematics

Quote | | Paul Greer

“Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn’t see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you’re listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It’s on account of the sounds it is.”
– James Joyce from Ulysses

“Golden Hair” by Syd Barrett (1970)

Video | | Paul Greer

 

(added 2018: )

‘In ‘Golden Hair’, culled from Chamber Music, a slim verse Joyce wrote in 1907, a troubadour yearns for a Rapunzel locked in a tower. With simple barre chords, Barrett conjured a solemn air akin to a medieval madrigal. Its cadence is pure plainsong, chanted words over bare chords, with the first of his thrilling downward octave leaps at the end.‘

— (Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd – Dark Globe by Julian Palacios)
via byronsmuse

Final line of Ulysses by James Joyce.

Quote | | Paul Greer

“…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

— Molly Bloom’s soliloquy

james joyce and the hotel porter

Quote | | Paul Greer

[Said Joyce:] ‘A German lady called to see me today. She is a writer and wanted me to give an opinion on her work, but she told me she had already shown it to the porter of the hotel where she stays. So I said to her: “What did your hotel porter think of your work?” She said: “He objected to a scene in my novel where my hero goes out into the forest, finds a locket of the girl he loves, picks it up and kisses it passionately.” “But,” I said, “that seems to me to be a very pleasing and touching incident. What did your hotel porter find wrong with it?” And then she tells me he said: “It’s all right for the hero to find the locket and to pick it up and kiss it, but before he kissed it you should have made him wipe the dirt off it with his coat sleeve.” ‘

I told her,’ said Joyce ‘(and I meant it too), to go back to that hotel porter and always to take his advice. “That man,” I said, “is a critical genius. There is nothing I can tell you that he can’t tell you.” ‘

— Frank Budgen (1934)
via ragbag