OWW 4: Kyrios!

At the risk of overindexing on James Joyce I want to highlight another brief line of his that’s firmly lodged in my memory and, I think, worth celebrating. It’s time for a new edition of Other Writers’ Words. But I need to preface it with an explanation.

I have a good memory for words and phrases, but I have almost no visual memory, no ability to picture things in a “mind’s eye,” and no internal monologue. I didn’t realize this was unusual until well into adulthood, but it’s officially a neurodivergence with a fairly low incidence rate of about 3%.

As a result, I lack the ability to put myself back into a place I remember, or to work up, as though in conversation with myself, to some previously attained heights of emotion. Whether it’s a net good or a net hindrance is beside the point—it’s what I have to work with. I can’t picture a scene or replay a song in my head. And I’m not sure if it’s related, but I also have a fairly narrow range of emotional reactions to music. There are genres and pieces I like more than others, and many that I appreciate for being well-crafted examples of their type, even if they don’t hit for me personally. I’m generally good a remembering tunes and lyrics. But in most cases I don’t really get worked up by, or about, music.

But. There’s an exception.

The final moments of the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto. It’s worth listening to at greater length (ideally the whole thing), but a version that rings out clear and never fails to get me is here. That shimmering build with the deep thrum of orchestra beneath it elicits actual physical reaction in me; I flush and feel a bit dizzy. I get a tightness in the roof of my mouth. The hairs on my neck stand up.

I can’t explain it, but that snippet of Beethoven is somehow the same as a line from Chapter 7 of Joyce’s Ulysses, a formally inventive chapter framed as clippings from newspapers and describing the main characters aimlessly coming and going. One side character, a blowhard professor, complains about the failings of Irish intellectualism, about its loyalty to lost causes and its domination by other cultures and languages. But then, as “a smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes” the professor slides into reminisces of Greek, and exclaims: “Kyrios! Shining word!” I don’t know if anyone else sees a resemblance here, but that bit of Beethoven is shining. And so is Joyce’s “kyrios” phrase. It shines the brighter for being so brief, and being so mired in the other slush and hot air, the flapping chaff of the chapter. The character who says it is ridiculous, but that κύριος line is perfect.