Towards a New Language: Comparing the Role of Music in 'A Painful Case' and 'The Dead'

In this essay I will argue that in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ music is the language through which successful communication is attained, both in the forms of social unity and of a sudden, insightful revelation. I will first proceed to analyse the use of music and sound in ‘A painful case’ as an anticipation of the more complex and encompassing function it performs in ‘The Dead’. I will also suggest that the choice to elect music as one of the three aspects of ‘Public Life’1 in ‘A Mother’, along with politics in ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’, and religion in ‘Grace’, is not a casual one. The exploration of the complexity and provincialism of the musical world during the Irish Revival allows Joyce to reflect on the similar situation -i.e., corrupted, hypocritical and stagnating- in the literary field. The Irish Revival mainly interested the literary field, so choosing to make light on the musical panorama in the tripartite section dedicated to ‘Public Life’ sent a precise message. 2 Throughout Dubliners, music works as a substitute for verbal language and writing, actually providing the key of reading of some relevant moments in the short stories, both at a symbolical and a meta-textual level.3 It triggers epiphanies, as in ‘The Dead’; it is a metaphor for complete and utter failure to bring Nationalism forth, as pictured by the harp in ‘Two Gallants’,4 where a youth without perspectives nor hope is portrayed; and it functions as the sole form of recreation and means of social interaction for the isolated, spiritually barren character in ‘A painful case’.