Sirens: Comments by Joyce

"I understand that you may begin to regard the various styles of the episodes with dismay and prefer the initial style much as the wanderer did who longed for the rock of Ithaca. But in the compass of one day to compress all these wanderings and clothe them in the form of this day is for me possible only by such variation which, I beg you to believe, is not capricious."

(letter from Joyce to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 6 August 1919,
Letters 1:129, Selected Letters, p. 242)

"Perhaps I ought not to say any more on the subject of the Sirens but the passages you allude to were not intended by me as recitative. There is in the episode only one example of recitative, on page 12 in preface to the song. They are all the eight regular parts of a fuga per canonem: and I did not know in what other way to describe the seductions of music beyond which Ulysses travels."

(letter from Joyce to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 6 August 1919,
Letters 1:129 Selected Letters, pp. 241-42)