Adrian Schiess
The Song Element

This imposing volume is the fruit of the artist Werner Schmidt’s decades-long immersion in the preeminent literary monument of the twentieth century: James Joyce’s Ulysses.

What began as a personal reader’s voyage now attains definite form in an eloquently colorful, interdisciplinary and polyphonic tribute—a work between literary study, theory of color, visual art, and reflection on language.

In the book’s first part, Schmidt analyzes and visualizes the use of colors in Ulysses in unique chromatic diagrams and coded color stripes that were literally painted on the walls in exhibitions. They are complemented by a series of photographs taken in Dublin, the novel’s setting, and accompanied by probing meditations on literary and linguistic facets and aspects of politics and the history of religion in the Joycean universe.

The second part gathers the voices of twenty renowned Joyce scholars, who, in five thematically organized chapters, share their perspectives on the color, texture, structure, and effect of Ulysses.

A feast for all who revere Joyce—and a gift of anyone who would not just read but truly wrap their mind around literature in its boldest and most luminous incarnation.

With texts by Florian Arnold, Dorothée Bauerle-Willert, Erik Bindervoet, Heinz Brüggemann, Jakob Brüssermann, Michael Deckard, Toni Hildebrandt, Otto Jägersberg, Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Jūratė Levina, Susanne Peters, Christoph Poetsch, Saskia C. Quené, Dieter Ronte, Werner Schmidt, Fritz Senn, Dirk Teuber, Vega Tescari, Shane Walshe, Andreas Weigel, Keith Williams, Ursula Zeller