The dogsbody's dogsbody
Our recent opportunity to get to grips with Ulysses in its original context was rewarded in so many ways, and the quick dips into the book re-revealed the exhilarating mimetic power of the English language in the hands of a genius such as James Joyce. An illustration: Stephen Dedalus is walking along Sandymount Strand in Dublin when he notices a dog, belonging to a pair of cocklepickers, discovering the carcass of another dog that's been washed up by the sea. Now, savour this perfect mix of vocabulary, syntax and rhythm:
"Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolfstongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked around it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies dogsbody's dogsbody."
Joyce's great gift is that he makes us perceive reality more clearly than we see it.
