The Sirens Who Don't Sing

"Sirens" is the second place in the book where readers are tempted to give up, and Philip Kitcher says why. The first page and a half is a run of phrases that look like nonsense. Read the whole episode and they turn out to be the statement of themes, laid out boldly and then developed, bit by bit, in the prose that follows. Joyce's art for this episode is music, and the chapter is built like a piece of it.

The scene is the bar of the Ormond Hotel. Simon Dedalus is there, Lenehan is there, Blazes Boylan comes and goes, and Leopold Bloom sits in the next room with Richie Goulding, listening to Dedalus and Ben Dollard sing. Kitcher's real subject is what happens to the interior monologue here. Thoughts migrate between minds: words Stephen Dedalus spoke in the library run through Bloom's head. Bloom hears the jingle of the jaunting car carrying Boylan toward Eccles Street, and knows where it is. Joyce has built a new perspective in which a man can think what lies beyond his senses, and it gives us Bloom's agony as the hour of Molly's assignation arrives.

Kitcher ends with the musical culture Joyce grew up in, a culture of people singing round a piano at home, and he sings the first verse of the song Molly is supposed to rehearse that afternoon, "Love's Old Sweet Song."