Twining stresses
Twining stresses
In Brief
"Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened,
spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim
sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucked the
harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded
words shimmering on the dim tide." Joyce’s prose lushly
imitates the sounds coupling within the mind of a young artist
who still thinks of himself as a poet more than a
fiction-writer.
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The "twining stresses, two by two" that Stephen recalls from Yeats' paired spondees (white breast, dim sea) open out to generate more couplings linked by sense (inshore/farther out), alliteration (water/whitened/wavewhite wedded words, hand/harpstrings), assonance (whitened/lightshod/white breast/twining/wavewhite/tide, spurned/hurrying/merging), and rhyme (chords/words, shimmering/dim).
The mysterious ways in which words combine to make patterns of beautiful sound occupy Stephen’s thoughts throughout A Portrait and Ulysses. Proteus will show him writing down snatches of a poem generated almost entirely by sounds—as the villanelle in Portrait did more impressively. In Aeolus he thinks about Dante’s gorgeous rhymes as beautiful girls in harmonious colors; “But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.” At the end of Aeolus he takes a different tack, trying out a fragmentary story.
North Coast of the Dingle Peninsula, oil pastel by Helene Brennan. Source: www.helene-brennan.com.