Joyce’s Ulysses is something more than a common thread linking the four words by Patrizio Esposito recorded here: it is actually the prime source, the very root of the compositional action. ‘Shut your eyes and see’: Joyce’s approach, which is Esposito’s inspiration, is precisely such ‘singing with one’s ears’. As is well known, Joyce in his youth aspired to a career as a tenor, played the piano, and composed: he was always keen on music and it has been calculated that his works conceal thousands of references to the world of music and its protagonists. In Ulysses, in particular, he not only makes explicit mention of genuine pieces of music, from Gregorian chant to Handel, Mozart and Verdi, right down to songs and nursery rhymes (in the penultimate chapter there is even a tune on a musical staff), but also interweaves his lines with the noise and sounds of daily life, which are continually represented as onomatopoetic phonemes.