“Joyce Maims Words” — William Carlos Williams on James Joyce

William Carlos Williams on James Joyce (from Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a symposium on Finnegans Wake)—

Joyce maims words. Why? Because meanings have been dulled, then lost, then perverted by their connotations (which have grown over them) until their effect on teh mind is no longer what it was when they were fresh, but grows rotten as poi — though we may get to like poi.

Meanings are perverted by time and chance — but kept perverted by academic observance and intention. At worst they are inactive and get only the static value of anything, which retains its shape but is dead. All words, all sense of being is gone out of them. Or trained into them by the drill of the deadly minded. Joyce is restoring them.