ジョイスの音楽 : Ulysses 第11挿話における「フーガの技法」と オノマトペについて

James Joyce, arguably talented in music as well as in language, suffered from serious eye problems throughout his life. Thus, it seems rather natural that musical and aural elements should play an essential role in his work, and “Sirens,” the eleventh episode of Ulysses, stands as the most conspicuous example of this tendency. In fact, Joyce himself proclaimed a “fuga per canonem”as the technic of this episode. This statement, however, has stirred an endless controversy among critics, along with one more intriguing trait of the episode: the overture or the opening list of linguistic fragments supposedly taken from the following body of narrative. Firstly, I overview the critical history of “Sirens” and clarify its lacunae. Then, I demonstrate three onomatopoeic fragments overwhelm five leading songs vocalized or played on piano in the three rooms of Ormond Hotel, the locus of the chapter. Finally, I suggest that these three onomatopoeic words can be interpreted as “god” in Ulysses as they can be heard in silence.
According to Brad Bucknell, Joyce’s phrase “fuga per canonem” is itself contradictory; etymologically fugue means“flight”or“playing free”while canon, “rule.” This ambiguity triggered confusion among early critics such as Stuart Gilbert and Frank Budgen. In the 1970s, Zack Bowen, who made a comprehensive study of Joyce’s musical allusions, broke new ground by arguing that the overture of fragments does not fit into the form of a fugue anyway. Thus, in the following decades, the critical paradigm itself was changed; instead of forcing Joyce’s text to comply with the musical form, it is the musical form that should conform to his language system. David Herman concludes that both music and language follow certain“rules for the (re) arrangement of elements”and that “Sirens” is analogous to Arnold Schönberg’s twelve-tone technique which subverted classical conceptions of music. Bucknell highly evaluates Herman’s analogy and declares that Joyce succeeds in preventing the fragments of overture from their inclusion into a central narrative just as Schönberg succeeds in preventing tonality from obtaining centrality.
Herman-Bucknell’s argument is plausible, but regrettably, they fail to provide enough textual analysis. They seem to be not much interested in the significance of onomatopoeias and how they cooperate with the songs in the episode, either. To address these lacunae, I would like to choose three onomatopoeic words: “jingle,“ ”tap,” and “pwee,” and five leading songs either played on the piano, whistled by a customer in the dining room of the hotel, or sung by customers in the saloon. Three onomatopoeias respectively represent the sound of adulterer Boylan’s car, that of a blind piano tuner’s stick, and that of the protagonist Bloom’s fart. The first onomatopoeia repeatedly appears at the early stage of the narrative, representing the movement of Boylan approaching the hotel and leaving it for Molly, the wife of Bloom. The second one appears in the middle stage, representing first the blind tuner approaching the hotel and then Boylan knocking on the door of Bloom’s house. It may also represent the sound of the sexual intercourse of Boylan and Molly as its repetition increases after Boylan enters the house. The third one first appears as the sound of gas in the bowel of Bloom towards the end of the episode, and finally takes place as a fart in a polyphonic manner at the end.
Three onomatopoeias and five songs correspond to the plot of the episode and reflect Bloom’s anxiety and despair concerning his wife’s adultery. Significantly, the five songs basically take place only when the repetition of three onomatopoeias does not appear in the text. I would like to suggest, therefore, that the main player of the episode can be onomatopoeias and not songs. In terms of fugue, “jingle” can be interpreted as the first subject and its repetition as the answer to it; “tap” and “pwee” could be the second and third respectively. On the other hand, the songs, which are textually less obtrusive than onomatopoeias, could be episodes. Stephen, another protagonist of Ulysses, says: “God: the noise in the street.”Since no character besides Bloom notices
onomatopoeias, I am suggesting that they can be considered noise or “god,” which is heard in silence after music or songs are over.