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Monday, August 20, 2007

The James Joyce Underground


'Q. In the subway corridor under Bryant Park on 42nd Street, there is a huge artwork with a strange quotation by James Joyce: "Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!" Can you make sense of it?

A. Samm Kunce, the environmental artist who created the 2002 glass, stone and marble mosaic, "Under Bryant Park," obliged. The line, she said, is from "Finnegans Wake." She suggests pronouncing the first word "Tell me tale" with an Irish accent.

Like quotations from Jung and Ovid that are also in the artwork, Joyce's words deal with nature, water and stone. "For me it talks about music," Ms. Kunce said of the Joyce quotation. "It talks about the sound the water makes in the night, how you might hear the brook babbling over stone, how the leaves may rustle in the night." Joyce, she said, "cared so much about capturing the musicality of language in his native Irish."

The Bryant Park station is used by many commuters, and she didn't want people to grow tired of something too simple. "I wanted it to have a long life for them," she said.'


---new york times---