Joyce and Sound

     One of the striking aspect's of Joyce's narration in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is his (and Stephen's) attention to sound.  This appears in several ways, but is most prevalent in the following: Stephen's noticing of onomatopoeia in words and reflections of that in their meaning, and Joyce's meticulous transcription of sound.

     First, let us look at the way young Stephen associates words' sounds with their meanings.  There are several words he does this with.  First, on page 8, he associates the meaning of the word "suck" with the sound made when the action takes place.  "Suck was a queer word...But the sound was ugly.  Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty water went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down slowly the hole in the basin had made a sound like that: suck."  Then, on page 12, "That was to kiss.  His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss."  Already Stephen associates the meaning of words with sound, which shows both deep contemplation into language and a close attention to the sound of language.  We see this in other parts, as at the end of Chapter I, when he describes the sound of the cricket bats and compares it to water.

     There is one instance, in Chapter four, when Stephen associates happenings in his life with sound.  In Chapter IV, while he leaves the quasi-college visit with his father, he feels content with his decisions, and we read the following passage, on page 178:

It seemed to him that he heard notes of fitful music leaping upwards a tone and downwards a diminished fourth, upwards a tone and downwards a major third, like triple-branching flames leaping fitfully, flame after flame, out of a midnight wood. It was an elfin prelude, endless and formless; and, as it grew wilder and faster, the flames leaping out of time, he seemed to hear from under the boughs and grasses wild creatures racing, their feet pattering like rain upon the leaves.

In this we see Stephen literally translate his feeling into music.  In addition, he associates the sound of the music with the image of running animals., an interesting parallel, considering his "flight" in the book.  This shows the extraordinary way Stephen perceives sound, and presages how Joyce uses it in his later work.

     This heightened sense sound adds another interesting angle to the book.  It is worth mentioning that before deciding to become a writer, Joyce considered being a musician.  It makes sense that the young boy associating sounds of words with their meanings (we can assume this is fairly autobiographical) would eventually coin the word "quark" to represent a seagull's cry, and spell a cat's cry "mkgnao".  Joyce even uses sound to enhance the plot: take the end of Chapter II with all the assonance and "s" sounds during Stephen's encounter and its contrast with the highly clunky, consonant-ridden beginning of Chapter III.  In the end, we see (and hear!) a bit of how much sound influences Joyce's writing, and the integral place it holds therein.