La grabación fue organizada y financiada por su amiga y editora Sylvia Beach, que lo llevó en taxi al estudio de grabación HMV en el suburbio parisino de Billancourt.
La primera sesión no salió bien. Joyce estaba nervioso por
el sufrimiento de sus problemas oculares recurrentes. Regresó otro día para
terminar la grabación. En sus memorias, Shakespeare & Company, Sylvia Beach
escribe :
Joyce había elegido el discurso en el episodio Eolo, el
único que estaba "declamatorio" y por lo tanto adecuado para para tenerlo
en cuenta. Se había metido en la cabeza, que este sería su única lectura de
Ulises.
James Joyce Reads a Passage
From Ulysses, 1924
Today is
“Bloomsday,” the traditional day for book lovers to celebrate James Joyce’s
masterpiece, Ulysses (text — audio). To mark the occasion we bring you this
rare 1924 recording of Joyce reading from the Aeolus episode of the novel. The
recording was arranged and financed by the author’s friend and publisher Sylvia
Beach, who brought him by taxi to the HMV (His Master’s Voice) gramophone
studio in the Paris suburb of Billancourt. The first session didn’t go well.
Joyce was nervous and suffering from his recurring eye troubles. He and Beach
returned another day to finish the recording. In her memoir, Shakespeare &
Company, Beach writes:
Joyce had
chosen the speech in the Aeolus episode, the only passage that could be lifted
out of Ulysses, he said, and the only one that was “declamatory” and therefore
suitable for recital. He had made up his mind, he told me, that this would be
his only reading from Ulysses.
I have an
idea that it was not for declamatory reasons alone that he chose this passage
from Aeolus. I believe that it expressed something he wanted said and preserved
in his own voice. As it rings out–“he lifted his voice above it boldly”–it is
more, one feels, than mere oratory.
The passage
parallels the episode in Homer’s Odyssey featuring Aeolus, god of the winds. As
a pun, Joyce sets it in a newspaper office where his hero Leopold Bloom stops
by to place an ad, only to be stymied by the blustery noise of the printing
presses and of the various “windbags” in the office. One character tries to
entertain a couple of his friends with a mocking recital of a politician’s
speech printed in the day’s newspaper. Here is the passage Joyce reads:
He began:
–Mr.
Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the
remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It
seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this
country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and
that I was listening to the speech of a highpriest of that land addressed to
the youthful Moses.
His
listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smoke ascending in frail
stalks that flowered with his speech…Noble words coming. Look out. Could you
try your hand at it yourself?
–And it seemed
to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of
like haughiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was
revealed to me.
From the
Fathers
It was
revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither
if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah,
curse you! That’s saint Augustine.
–Why will
you jews not accept our language, our religion and our culture? You are a tribe
of nomad herdsmen; we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth:
our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden
with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but
emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an
agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man,
effigy.
By the
Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat:
stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
–You pray
to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the
abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and
humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children:
Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you
called: the world trembles at our name.
A dumb
belch of hunger cleft his speech. he lifted his voice above it boldly:
–But,
ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view
of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before
that arrogant admonition he would never have led the chosen people out of their
house of bondage nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never
have spoken with the Eteral amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor even
have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and
bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the
outlaw.
Fuente : Open
Culture.com
You Tube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario