James Joyce Experience

61 readers

3 users here now

Irish author

founded 1 month ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

“English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way. I haven’t yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to..." (James Joyce Experience) (lemm.ee)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2 comments fedilink hide all child comments

“English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way. I haven’t yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things. I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don’t think my first language can be written down at all. I’m not sure it can be made external you see. I think it has to stay where it is; simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs.” ― Claire-Louise Bennett

top 2 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"Imagine my shock as a neurodivergent teen when I first realized that using large vocabulary and eloquent speech doesn't make you less likely to be misinterpreted, rather it adds an entirely new layer of misinterpretation I had never even realized existed in the form of people thinking you're being snobbish or condescending when you're just trying to be specific" https://notthewriteryourelookingfor.tumblr.com/post/759681306752942080

Joyce himself tacitly acknowledged this radically different approach to language and plot in a 1926 letter to Harriet Weaver, outlining his intentions for the book: "One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

“There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot