ver leaves it for a moment. Sound is as important in Joyce’s prose as it is in the work of modern poets. It isn’t surprising that Joyce himself wrote poetry. Joyce erased, or at least blurred, the distinction between poetry and prose. Just as poetry is impossible to translate, so too Joyce’s prose is impossible to translate. Just as poetry can be read over and over, so too Joyce’s prose can be read over and over. While Proust reminds one of a painter (he called one of his chapters, “a seascape”), Joyce reminds one of a musician. Joyce often alludes to other writers and to his own work, just as musical compositions often allude to earlier motifs. Joyce is like ancient poets, who often alluded to earlier poets, and to earlier lines in their own work. 25. Proust One might describe Kafka as humorous, Joyce as comic, and Proust as nostalgic. Kafka’s humor conceals suffering and seriousness; one cannot imagine Kafka telling the bawdy jokes that Joyce tells. Joyce’s comic sense expresses not suffering but joy; Joyce said that literature “should express the ‘holy spirit of joy’.”(18) Proust’s nostalgia has two sources: his detachment from the present, and his attachment to his mother. Proust wrote his magnum opus while he was entombed in his cork-lined Paris apartment, isolated from the world. Such a detachment from the present has the effect of awakening memories of the past. Proust had an unusually strong attachment to his mother. After his mother had died, Proust told his maid that, “if I were sure to meet my mother again, in the Valley of Jehosaphat or anywhere else, I would want to die at once.”(19) Proust’s attachment to his mother, and his detachment from the present, combined to form the nostalgic tone of his work. One prominent theme in Proust’s work is idealism, that is, the notion that the world is one’s idea of the world. Prou...
