On Local Disturbances: Reflections on Joyce’s Use of Language in “Sirens”

Abstract

This article explores the issue of language in the “Sirens’ episode of Ulysses. “Sirens” begins enigmatically with “Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing”. Glossing this requires something more than tying it to the consciousness of the two barmaids or indeed to the wider theme of the episode. With the help of some such awkward sentences and phrases taken for the most part from the Overture or Prelude to “Sirens”, I want to consider the processes at work here and especially how they might connect with politics and the colonial encounter. In particular I focus on how Joyce translators “French, Spanish, German, Italian, and modern Greek “tackle such phrases such as ‘Imperthnthn thnthnthn”. The sounds in the Overture are often detached from meaning, or their meaning is deferred until later in the episode, or their semantic field or phonological system is peculiar to English. In wrestling with Joyce’s texts, the translators remind us of what we might describe as “local disturbances”, which surround not only the Overture to “Sirens” but Joyce’s language in general. I then complicate this idea by suggesting a possible parallel in “Sirens”“an episode which is sometimes read in terms of the 1790s when the United Irishmen attempted to break the connection with the United Kingdom and which includes repeated pointed references to the ’98 song “The Croppy Boy” “ between local disturbances in language and local disturbances in Irish history.