Bastian Zimmermann: Rebecca, Molly Bloom’s soliloquy has inspired a number of your works over the last twenty years. Why is that particular text so special to you?

Rebecca Saunders: What really fascinates me about the monologue of Molly Bloom is a certain aspect of its structure—there are so many different strains of ideas and surfaces of speech, which every now and again rise above the surface of this constant flow and then disappear again. It also has an extraordinary energy, which is so unrelenting. The way in which certain ideas, passages, memories, single words or phrases reoccur is an astonishing structural process. There are certain words, not just “yes”, but also “oh”, “ah” and “no”, a lot of “no’s” actually. This kind of formal punctuation I found intriguing. For me this translates into a kind of musical polyphony. When I read the text to myself, I hear the polyphony: how the different voices, guises, ideas, perspectives, characters, the different emotional states are constantly intertwined, creating new and astonishing perspectives. I was also fascinated by the brutality and crudeness of Molly Bloom’s language.

BZ: Ed, what impact does this soliloquy of Molly Bloom have on you? It seems that Joyce has...