"— Mrkgnao!" Something strange is happening when a novel
gives a cat a part in the dialogue, with her own quotation
dashes, what appear to be her own emotions and intentions, and
very realistic sounds. Without violating the principle of
realistic representation that he took to be one of the sacred
imperatives of fiction, Joyce broadens the scope of the novel
from human society to a somewhat larger community of sentient
beings.
It is no exaggeration to call this exchange at the beginning
of Calypso a dialogue. In context, the cat's
properly spelled first word (Bloom's "Miaow"
much later in the chapter is a human bastardization) reads as
"Hello there, you! I'm here":
— Mkgnao!
— O, there you are, Mr Bloom
said, turning from the fire.
When Bloom says that he will give her some milk, the cat's
somewhat longer reiteration comments impatiently on the fact
that he is not actually doing it:
He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
— Milk for the pussens, he
said.
— Mrkgnao!
the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They
understand what we say better than we understand them.
Her third speech, louder and longer still, clearly demands,
"Feed me!":
— Mrkrgnao!
the cat said loudly.
And Bloom feeds the cat. Her response to this satisfactory
outcome, whatever subtleties of feline intention it may contain,
obviously means "Yes!":
— Gurrhr!
she cried, running to lap.
The cat has other modes of discourse, Bloom reflects: "The
cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of
the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr.
Scratch my head. Prr." The communication between
man and beast effected in these exchanges is as real as the
communication between man and wife that is narrated several
paragraphs later:
He said softly in the
bare hall:
— I'm going round the corner. Be
back in a minute.
And when he had heard his voice
say it he added:
— You don't want anything for
breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
— Mn.
No. She did not want anything.
To the man who knows her moods and inflections, Molly's
sleepy soft grunt communicates her intention just as
effectively as an articulate sentence would, suggesting that
something more than logical syntax is involved in language.
Gestures, intonations, a shared repertoire of signals: these
animal resources are also a foundation of human communication,
as Michel de Montaigne
recognized.
Joyce fantastically eloborated his innovation in novelistic
discourse in Circe, where not only animals but
objects speak, in a fantastic variety of dialects.
