1918: JAJ returns to Zurich, Jan. 1918, and settles at 38 Universitätstrasse; good reviews of A Portrait and Dubliners, together with Pound’s promptings, persuades Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap to bring out serial publication of Ulysses in the Little Review, March 1918-Dec. 1920 (13-plus out of 18 episodes), the “Telemachiad” (Chaps. 1-3 of Ulysses) reaching them in February; JAJ becomes the recipient of 1,000 francs p.m. for 12 months from Mrs. Harold Edith Rockefeller MacCormick, 1 March 1918-Oct. 1919, receiving notice from the Eidgenössische Bank of Zurich, 27 Feb. 1918; JAJ learns her identity from Charlotte Sauermann of Zurich Opera Co., a wealthy patroness of Jung resident in Zurich since 1913; JAJ persuaded by Sykes to form and support The English Players, with a view to presenting Importance of Being Earnest, at Theater zur Kaufleuten, Pelikanstrasse, 29 April 1918, JAJ to pay 30 frs. to professional actors involved; subsequently embroiled in legal conflict with Henry Carr over cost of wardrobe (espec. trousers) for the role of Algernon; official support withdrawn from Players by A. Percy Bennett (British Consul-General); JAJ sues Carr for value of tickets sold and libel (‘cad’ and ‘swindler’); JAJ writes to Lloyd George and next to Sir Horace Rumbold (British Min. in Switzerland) complaining about the behaviour of the consulate staff; prelim. hearing of JAJ’s case against Carr, 8 June 1918 (setting date for 8 July); Horace Taylor introduces Frank Budgen, ex-sailor and English artist; JAJ indulges in roistering at Zimmerleuten Restaurant with Budgen, Suter, and others; produces Synge’s Riders to the Sea with Nora in the role of Maurya [English version], in a triple bill with plays by Barrie (The Twelve-Pound Look), and Shaw (The Dark Lady of the Sonnets), 17 June 1918 (‘as she was born within sight of Aran I think Synge’s words were spoken with the genuine brogue’: Letter to Forrest Reid, accomp. by photo., in Letters, I, p.118); court hearing deferred due to continuing iritis; Joyce tours the Players to Lausanne, Geneva, Montreux and Interlaken; JAJ suffers attack of iritis in both eyes, May 1918; editions of Exiles brought out similtaneously B. W. Huebsch and Grant Richards and New York and in London, 25 May 1918; Huebsch brings out Chamber Music in New York; A Portrait appreciative review by Clutton-Brock (TLS, 25 July 1918); HSW approaches the Woolfs at suggestion of Roger Fry about possible publication of Ulysses in Hogarth Press, June 1918; Woolfs indicate that the book would take prohibitively long to print on handpress (privately holding it to be ‘underbred’); favourable review in New Statesman by Desmond McCarthy (21 Sept. 1918); English Players produces Mrs. Warren’s Profession, 30 Sept. 1918; recurring eye-trouble in Oct. and Nov.; JAJ wages 2 lawsuits against Carr, winning the first (15 Oct. 1918), and losing the second (11 Feb. 1919; with costs of & damages of 120 frs.), having withdrawn from the Players in their own interest in Dec. 1918; JAJ choses not to play the part of Richard Rowan in Exiles in mooted English Players production, to be directed by Sykes, hence deferred; Players produce Stanley Houghton, Hindle Wakes, 3 Dec. 1918, losing money in conditions of martial law prevailing in Zurich at the time;

1919: JAJ spies on Marthe Fleischmann, a young woman who occupies an apartment behind his own, finding her to be the limping mistress of Herr Rudolf Hiltpold who reminds him of a girl once seen on the beach at Clontarf [Dollymount] in 1898; ; engages in an epistolary flirtation with her, Dec. 1918-June 1919, in which he compares himself the Dante and Shakespeare, using Greek ‘e’s to avoid incrimination - and produces the epiphanies known as Giacomo Joyce; employs August Suter’s studio, then in possession of Frank Budgen, for candle-lit assignation on his birthday [Maria Lechtmesse/Candlemas; Presentation and Purification of BVM] (‘I have explored this evening the coldest and the hottest parts of a woman’s body’: remark to Budgen); Marthe retires to a sanitorium; JAJ blamed for unsettling her and forced to hand her letters over to Hiltpold (“Mr. Vormund”, viz., her ‘Guardian’ in letters to Budgen), June 1919 issue of The Little Review impounded by US Post Office, January and May 1919; JAJ attempts to mount Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Municipal Theatre but blocked by lack of support from British Consulate; promotes Martyn’s The Heather Field and Yeats’s Land of Hearts’s for next production of English Players, which actually mounts Hubert Henry Davies, The Mollusc (April 1919); gives up drinking absinthe for Nora; tastes Fendant de Sion (‘The Archduchess’); court proceeds against Joyce by destraint [of property]; recruits Padraic Colum to raise financial support for persecuted writer in America, resulting in $700 from Scofield Thayer (ed. Dial) and a further $300 from a friend of his (June 1919); JAJ pays $200 toward upkeep of Players and offers to support them; visits Locarno with Budgen, 8 May 1919 and is invited to Isola da Brissago in Lago Maggiore by Baroness St. Leger, an aged “Circe” who presents Joyce with erotic letters and pictures owned by a former Greek lover; Nora sends JAJ telegram announcing settlement of £5,000 War Loan Bonds (at 5%) on him, 14 May 1919; JAJ departs from Locarno without notifying Budgen, 14 May 1919; Pound objects to “Sirens” (letter, 18 June 1919); HSW admits to making donation in a letter of 6 July 1919; HSW brings out selection in issues of The Egoist printing from Chaps. II, III, VI & X (Jan.-Dec. 1919); JAJ’s play Exiles, trans. as Verbannte produced in Munich in a German translation of Hannah von Mettal (poss. at the instigation of Stefan Zweig), 7 August 1919; one performance only and called ‘a flop’ by Joyce himself to forestall criticism; letter from G. Herbert Thring (Soc. of Authors) protesting production of Shaw’s play without consent answered by Joyce, 21 Sept. 1919; Ulysses episode [XI - cont.], printed in Little Review (Sept. 1919, Vol. VI, No. 5); Mrs McCormick’s payments terminated (‘Der Kredit ist erschöpft’), prob. due to JAJ’s refusal to be psychoanalysed by Carl Jung [or otherwise on Jung’s advice], 1 Oct. 1919; JAJ blames Ottocaro Weiss for the termination of Mrs McCormick’s patronage; Lucia attends Scuola Evangelica after four years at Volkschule in Zurich; serious breach with Ottocaro Weiss based on JAJ’s suspicion of betrayal in the matter; pawned silver watch; JAJ and family return to Trieste, 19 October 1919; Leon Fleischmann, agent of Boni & Liveright, expresses interest in publishing Ulysses in letter to Ezra Pound, 11 Oct. 1919; Joyce copies Rimbaud’s “Voyelles” - which he had earlier recited to Curran in Dublin, into Notebook VIII.B, 1919/20; also prose selections from Walter Pater; photo-port made by C. Ruf, 20 Sept. 1919 [Buffalo UL];

1920: Joyces settled with the Schaureks, then living at 2 via Sanità; seeks and receives advance from Huebsch through Pinker; failed to persuade Mrs McCormick by letter to renew patronage; resumes teaching at limited hours at Scuola Superiore di Commercio Revoltella, by now a university; associates with Schmitz [Svevo], Silvio Benco (now ed. of Piccolo della Sierra), Otto Schwarz, Tullio Silvestri and Francini - though Signora Francini remarks, ‘Joyce non è piu quello’; cool relations with Stanislaus; working on “Nausicaa” in Nov. 1919, and corresponds with Budgen about Ulysses (‘namby-pampy jammy marmalady drawsery (alto là) style’), begging him to visit to support the writing and offering him teaching hours; seeks for novelettes and penny hymnbook from Aunt Josephine; “Cyclops” episode in the Little Review suppressed in United States, Jan. 1920; “Nausicaa” completed by 2 Feb.; JAJ commences working on “Oxen of the Sun”, a fuga per canonem in eight regular parts (Letter to HSW, 6 Aug. 1919, Letters 1: 129) and based on George Saintsbury’s A History of English Prose Rhythm and ‘the most difficult episode in an odyssey [...] to interpret and to execute’ (Letter to HSW, 25 Feb. 1920; Letters 1: 137); works 1,000 hrs. on chapter before completing it on 18 May 1920, having incorporated Bloom in the episode only during revision; JAJ meets Pound at the latter’s suggestion at Sirmione on Lago di Garda [where Mrs Pound was convalescing], setting out abortively on 5 June, and arriving on 8 June 1920 instead (‘bringing my son [...] to act as lightning conductor’, acc. to HSW, letter 12 July 1920), June 1920; receives shoes and suit from Pound, who promises to find translators and arrange a production of Exiles there; set out for via Venice & Milan; visits Carlo Linati, Italian translator of Ulysses, later supplying him with schema of Ulysses (‘for home use only’ - letter of 21 Sept. 1920); travels onwards to Darantière in Dijon via Switzerland; reaches Paris with family, 8 July 1920, initially stays in private hotel at 9 rue de l’Université; Lucia attends private school for a six months before entering Lycée Duray for a year;

1920 [cont.]: Lucia takes drawing lessons at Académie Julian; Ludmilla Bloch-Savitsky (French translator of A Portrait as Dedalus) lends Joyces a flat nr. Bois de Boulogne, July-Nov. 1920; fails to purchase Burberry for Stanislaus with money supplied by him (finally returning devalued sum in March 1922); JAJ meets Adrienne Monnier (Prop. of La Maison des Amis des Livres, 7 rue de l’Odéon), and Sylvia Beach [Prop. of Shakespeare and Company, fnd. at 8 rue Duputryen, Nov. 1919, moving to 12 rue de l’Odéon, in May 1921], at a party given by André Spire, 11 July 1920; meets John Rodker [1894-1955], an Egoist contributor, and makes plans to bring out first London edn. of Ulysses - viz., the Egoist Edn., published by Harriet Weaver’s Egoist Press in assoc. with John Rodker, Oct. 1922; meets T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis at Hôtel Elysée, Eliot bearing a parcel of shoes from Pound [‘he’s very please-thank you’ - Eliot to Lewis; in Lewis’s memory; cited in Ellmann, JJ, 1982, p.493-94]; Joyce picks up the bill for an expensive dinner afterwards (Eliot styling his manner ‘punctilious reserve’); borrows portable bed for Giorgio from Jenny Serruys (whose offer to translate Exiles into French he accepts); meets Paul Valéry [whose f.-in-law René Doumic was editor of Revue des Deux Mondes], at home of Natalie Clifford Barney and snubbed by latter on expressing a dislike for Racine and Corneille; HSW supplies further settlement of £2,000 (the legacy of an aunt), placing the funds at JAJ’s disposal, Oct. 1920; JAJ moves back to 9 rue de l’Université, Nov. 1920 and later takes a luxurious flat on 5 Boulevard Raspail, Dec. 1920 - with £200 supplied by HSW pending income from the larger sum; case of books arrives from Trieste; works on “Circe” while living at rue de l’Assomption [acc. Hutchins]; completed by 20 Dec. 1920 (‘I think it is the best thing I have every written’: JAJ to Francini) - now back at rue de l'Université JAJ has meeting with Valery Larbaud, Christmas Eve, 1920; Larbaud raves about Ulysses, Feb. 1920 (‘As great as Rabelais!’); US Post Office confiscates and burns issues for Jan. & May 1919; Ulysses became the subject of a formal complaint by John S. Sumner of the Soc. for Prevention of Vice (NY), triggered by masturbation scene in “Nausicaa” (printed in the issue for July-Aug. 1920), Sept. 1920;

[ top ]

1921: hearings of Court of Special Sessions [var. Supreme Court] (New York) on 14 & 21 Feb. 1921 result in the work being deemed obscene with a fine of $50 and legal undertakings not to print further sections [then proceeding through “Exen of the Sun”]; Otto Schmitz [Svevo] carries JAJ’s notes for Ulysses to Paris as requested, March 1921; Huebsch signals unwillingness to proceed with publication of Ulysses, 24 March 1921; visited by Dr. Joseph Collins, Richard Wallace and Myron Nutting (a painter, who supplied the phrase, ‘how is your corporosity sagatiating?’ in revision of “Oxen”); JAJ refuses to make changes to MS; Huebsch declines to print, 5 April, and JAJ withdraws offer by telegram; receives $150 p.m. from Robert McAlmon; Sylvia Beach offers to publish Ulysses (‘would you let Shakespeare & Co. have the honour of bringing out your Ulysses?’) around 25 March, to be aided by Adrienne Monnier in spite of ‘lack of capital, experience, and all the other requisites of a publisher’; agreement signed on or around 10 April 1921 to produce an edn. of 1,000 copies (100 on Holland, signed by author at 350 frs.; 150 on vergé d’arche at 250 frs.; 750 on linen at 150 frs.), with 66% royalties to author, to be printed by Maurice Darantière of Dijon - a hand-set printer of de luxe editions proposed by Monnier, for whom he had published Cahiers des Amis des Livres [who costed Ulysses at 20,000 frs.]; HSW soon agreed to bring out an Egoist Press edition in London from Darantière’s plates (25% to Joyce at first and 90% of profits after costs had been covered); JAJ meets Arthur Power at Bal Bullier (Montparnasse), where Beach and Monnier bring him, the two men proceeding to Closérie de Lilas, and subsequently meeting often; MS section of “Circe” destroyed by fire by when viewed typist’s husband (a Mr. Harrison working in the British Embassy), 8 April; John Quinn reluctantly supplies photostat of fair copy in his possession after first refusing access; JAJ meets Marcel Proust chez Mrs Violet Schiff, and in company with Stravinsky and Diaghilev, 18 May 1922, and has vacuous conversation (variously reported by Margaret Anderson, Frank Budgen and Arthur Power); JAJ receives use of Larbaud’s Paris apartment at 71 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, 3 June-Oct. 1921; starts to receive the galleys from Darantière, 10 June; Lugné-Poë refuses to risk money on French-trans. production of Exiles, 21 June; JAJ answers charge of drunkenness (cocaine, &c.) in self-exculpatory letter to HSW in response to hers about his rumoured drinking, 24 June, 1921; faints from fright when alerted by McAlmon to rat in Brasserie Lutétia, early July; suffers attack of iritis at Café d’Harcourt, following day and recuperates by August with aid of local applications of cocaine; receives idea of final word for Ulysses listening to Mrs Wallace at their house in Chatillon, July 1921; drinks with Lewis at Gipsy Bar, nr. Pantheon and invites him to view Larbaud’s flat; also meets with Djuna Barnes at Les Deux Magots and elsewhere;

1921 [cont.]: JAJ moves back to rue de l’Université on Larbaud’s return and continues working on “Penelope”; McAlmon helps types “Penelope”, introducing errors in order of phrases which JAJ apparently approves; JAJ receives visit from Con Leventhal [q. date]; reports to HSW that he has written the first sentence of “Penelope” (2,500 words), 7 Aug. 1921; faints at Alhambra, with Giorgio, 26 Aug., after seeing another rat on 23 Aug., also in company of McAlmon; commences long walks along Champs-Élysées; reading galleys of “Scylla & Charybdis”, 7 Sept. 1921; sends “Penelope” to Darantière, 7 October; enquires of Aunt Josephine if an ‘ordinary person’ could climb over the railings at 7 Eccles St. and gain ground unhurt, 21 Nov. 1921; completes “Ithaca”, 29 October; Jacques Benoîst-Méchin (b.1901) recruited to translate passages of Ulysses for Larbaud séance; JAJ supplies him with secret scheme of Ulysses, later printed by Stuart Gilbert (former judge, retired from Burmese Colonial Service) in 1931; Larbaud gives a conférence [var. séance], 7 Dec. 1921, at Shakespeare and Company, being attended by 250 people at an entrance charge of 20 frs. - a lecture afterwards published in La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1 April 1922) at Maison des Amis des Livres, rue de l’Odéon, 7 Dec. 1921, borrowing the phrase ‘monologue intérieur’ [internal monologue] from Paul Bourget; subscriptions secured two months before publication; Larbaud’s encomium circulated in prospectus (‘[w]ith Ulysses Ireland makes a sensational return into the best European literature’); drawing of JAJ by Wyndham Lewis;

1922: Ulysses published in Shakespeare & Co. Edn., 2 Feb. 1922, in cobalt blue and white covers, Beach collecting 2 copies sent by Dijon from the guard of the Dijon-Paris train at 7 a.m. (copies nos. 901 & 902); JAJ dines in celebration with the Nuttings, Wallaces and Helen Fieffer at Ferrari’s, moving on to Café Weber, before being led home by Nora against his will; JAJ signs and presents first copy to Nora, who offers to sell it to Arthur Power; further copies arrive from Dijon (Nos. 251 & 252), 5 Feb.; JAJ carouses with McAlmon and Hemingway; Desmond Fitzgerald, Irish Free State Minister, offers to nominate him for Nobel Prize and invites him to return to Ireland (‘Not for the present’), circa 20 March 1922; asks for tie and gets ties and ring from McAlmon, then in Cannes; gift of £1,500 from HSW, March 1922 (total to date: £8,500); Allesandro Francini-Bruni gives lecture on Joyce at the Trieste Berlitz School, for Triestino Press Association in Damatic Society Hall - deemed an outrage by Stanislaus, who was present, 22 Feb. 1922; JAJ and Nora quarrel about her attitude to Ulysses; Nora decides to takes her children to visit Galway family, against Joyce’s wishes, 1 April, 1922, threatening not to return; remains 10 days in London before arrival in Ireland; met in Dublin by John Joyce and Michael Healy; shows off children at Presentation Convent Galway; lodging house occupied by machine-gun unit of Free State Army; JAJ writes distraught letters; JAJ arranges plane to collect Nora and family; Nora boards train and comes under fire from both Civil War sides at Galway; Dr. Louis Berman (an endocrinologist invited to examine JAJ by Pound) recommends full extraction of JAJ’s [17] teeth; Joyce accepts the endocrine treatment but postpones the extractions; The Sporting Times publishes ‘The Scandal of Ulysses’, by “Aramis” [pseud.] (1 April 1922); JAJ suffers acute iritis, May 1922 and consults Dr. Victor Morax; attended in domestic squalor by Dr. Pierre Mérigot de Treigny (acting for Morax) at rue de l’Université, end of May; Pound broadcasts Joyce’s fame in his “Paris Letter” in The Dial (June 1922); JAJ attends ballet with Nora at invitation of Gilbert Seldes (editor of The Dial), 16 June - and raged at her ignorance of the significance of the day (‘this is the day on which that book is supposed to have taken place’ [Ellmann, JJ rev. edn. 1982, pp.525-26]); Arnold Bennett prints hostile review of Ulysses as ‘Concerning James Joyce’ (The Bookman, Aug. 1922);

1922 [cont.]: the Joyces travel to London, August 1922, with consent of Sylvia Beach’s oculist Dr. Louis Borsch, whom he was then consulting; stayed in London at Euston Hotel ‘gateway to Ireland’; met there by Kathleen & Alice Murray - dgs. of Josephine, who had professed that Ulysses was unfit to read, causing Joyce to say, ‘If Ulysses isn’t fit to read, life isn’t fit to live’ [Ellmann, JJ rev edn. 1982, p.537]; JAJ meets HSW to discuss Egoist Edition of Ulysses (1922), and pleases her in spite of spending £200 - much of it on taxis; JAJ tells HSW, in answer her question about his next book, ‘I think I will write a history of the world’; suffers conjunctivitis and is threatened with immobility of fluid leading to glaucoma and blindness by Drs. Henry and James in London, Aug. 1922; returns to Paris, mid-Sept.; visits Borsch (appt. of early Oct.), who recommends a sphincterectomy on left eye following removal of teeth while at Nice - with prospects of the eye [ophthalmic] operation on his return; compiles a list of errors in Darantière [1st] edition with HSW and John Rodker, vetoing many of Rodker’s corrections as ‘beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of’ [letter to HSW; Letters, Vol. 1, p.187]; 2nd printing of Ulysses occurs on 12 Oct. 1922 in run of 2,000 at £2.2.0 [2 guineas] each and fully subscribed in 4 days; JAJ travels to Marseilles, 13 Oct. 1922, and onwards to Nice, 17 Oct. 1922, staying at Hôtel Suisse; bad weather in South of France deleterious to his eye; eye drained with leeches by Dr. Louis Colin; JAJwrites to Aunt Josephine referring to her ‘wrath’ at Ulysses, 23 Oct. 1922 (‘there is a difference between a present of a pound of chops and a present of a book like Ulysses; addressed Hôtel Suisse, Nice)’; JAJ returns to Paris, 12 Nov. 1922; attends Proust’s funeral, Nov. 1922; JAJ urges Sylvia Beach to issue third printing and quarrels with her over potential charges of issuing ‘bogus’ first edition and pressing critics for reviews (not interested in ‘hustling to boom the book’ - Beach), and with Budgen over compromising letter recovered by Joyce through a ruse (by getting Budgen drunk and taking his wallet in charge); sends copy of Sir Edward Sullivan’s Studio edn. of The Book of Kells to Miss Weaver at Christmas;

1923: JAJ sorts out notes of Ulysses (12 kilos), Feb. 1923; writes the notes on early Irish history in first pages of Notebook VI.B.3 [Buffalo] and commences writing Finnegans Wake with “King Roderick O’Conor”, 10 March, 1923 as notified to HSW in a letter on the morrow (‘Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio [the leopard cannot change his spots]’, (11 March 1923; SL, p.296); later tells Vanity Fair that he began FW at Nice in October 1922 [Letters, Vol. III, p.193, n.3.]; shows early draft of “Tristam and Iseult” to Larbaud, March 1923; suffered attack of conjunctivitis in March, 1923; decayed teeth removed, 4 April 1923 (initially scheduled for Jan.), others some days later; convalesces for two weeks in maison de santé; sphincterectomy [eye operation] performed by Borsch in stages, 3, 15 & 28 April 1923; JAJ receives new dental plates, 10 June 1923; JAJ and family travel to England arriving London mid-June 1923, staying at 6 Montague St. W.1; HSW settles a further £12,000 on JAJ (bequeathed by an aunt); Joyces travel to Bognor Regis, with Nora’s sister Kathleen Barnacle, staying at Alexandra Hse., Clarence Rd (Nora remarking, ‘He’s on another book again’); rewrites “Tristam and Iseult” in Bognor; visited by T. S. Eliot in Bognor; buys brown suitcase at Bognor (later used for writing his ‘ridiculous sentences while flat-hunting’); returns to Paris, Aug. 1923, and moves to better lodgings at Hôtel Victoria Palace, 6 rue Laise Desgoffes; Giorgio [now known as George] briefly works at Banque Nationale du Crédit, and then enrolls in Schola Cantorum; JAJ takes Dujardin’s Les Laurier sont coupés to Larbaud, successfully insisting on its part as origin of monologue intèrior (aka parole intèriore in JAJ’s holograph ded. of Ulysses to Dujardin, 1931); attends Ballet Mécanique of George Antheil and another concert by him at Ballet Suédois, 4 Oct. 1923; meets John Quinn, and photographed with Ford Madox Ford and Pound, Oct. 1923; Quinn announces his plan of selling off the Ulysses MS; Ford offers to publish sample of “Work in Progress” in transatlantic review; appearance of T. S. Eliot’s essay, “Ulysses, Order, and Myth”, in Dial (Nov. 1923), announcing that the ‘mythic order’ of Joyce’s Ulysses had ‘the importance of a scientific discovery’; 5 poems from Chamber Music appear in Der Querschnitt (Frankfurt 1923); letter seeking interim aid from HSW, 19 Nov. 1923; Edmund Wilson includes Joyce in Axel’s Castle (1923), calling Ulysses ‘more symphonic rather than narrative’ in structure;

[ top ]

1924: Quinn sells Ulysses MS and A. S. W. Rosenbach acquires it, at Anderson Galleries, 16 Jan. 1924 ($1,975) - without notification to Joyce; Joyce expresses wish to buy back MS and give it to Bibl. National de France; Quinn warns that Rosenbach would prosecute any attempt to speculate in the MS; Rosenbach offers to buy corrected proofs from Joyce but was refused; first unlimited edn. of Ulysses issued by Shakespeare & Co. (Paris 1924); JAJ notifies Schmidt that he is using his wife’s name (Livia) for his new work (letter of 20 Feb. 1920); wins Larbaud’s support for Schmitz’s La Coscienza di Zeno [The Confessions of Zeno], March-April 1924; Ludmilla Bloch-Savitsky, trans., A Portrait, publ. as Dedalus (March 1924); Auguste Morel set to translating parts of Ulysses, March 1924; Larbaud weighs in against objections raised by printer over missing diacriticals in trans. version of “Penelope” (‘Joyce a raison/Joyce ha ragione’), 5 July 1924; fragments of Ulysses in French translations by Larbaud and Morel appear in Commerce (Summer 1924), “Telemachus” and parts of “Ithaca” and “Penelope”, in spite of objections by Princess Caetani, a funder; botched proofs of new fragment (“Work in Progress”, being Ford Madox Ford’s term) reach JAJ, Feb. 1924; extract from “Work in Progress” published as “Literary Supplement” in transatlantic review (April 1924), with work of Tzara and Hemingway; JAJ sends draft of Anna Livia Plurabelle to HSW, 7 March 1924; Borsch observes secretion in conjunctiva of JAJ’s left eye, calls for rest, and warns of further operation, April; completes “Shaun the Post” by late May and writes the poem “A Prayer!”, 20 May 1924 (‘Blind me with your dark nearness [...] beloved enemy of my will!’); a British passport was issued for JJ on 2 May 1924 [held in Buffalo Univ. Library JJ collection, NY State]; rests his his eyes, commissions Patrick Tuohy to paint his portrait, May 1924 [now held at New York State University at Buffalo], having prev. done so for JSJ in 1923; photo-port made by C. Ruf, 5 June 1924 [Buffalo UL]; JAJ undergoes iridectomy, being the second operation to the left eye and his fifth eye operation, 10 June 1924; recuperates across Bloomsday with dressings in wholly darkened room [‘Today 16 of June 1924 twenty years after. Will anybody remember this date’ - Notebook; SUNY, Buffalo]; plans to visit Nice and reserves apartment, but travels to Saint-Malô (Brittany), 7 July, staying at Hôtel de France et Chateaubriand; interested in relation of Breton and Irish languages but irritated by Breton bag-pipes; visits Renan’s birthplace at Tréguier and looks at Carnac; Stanislaus writes lengthy letter expressing alienation and disappointment at outcome of JAJ’s talent, of 7 Aug. 1924; visits Quimpaire, late August, returning [via] Saint-Malô early Sept. 1924; finds a flat at 8 Ave. Charles Floquet; crosses to London, staying at Euston Hotel, late-Sept. to mid-October; HSW sees him drunk in Paris, October 1924; John Quinn, d. Aug. 1924; JAJ writes moving letter to Aunt Josephine on hearing of her imminent death, 2 Nov. 1924; Joyce reading from the “Aoelus” episode of Ulysses (pp.136-37) recorded on phonograph [gramaphone] by Piero Coppola for Shakespeare & Co., at Syvlia Beach’s private expense at Billancourt [Paris branch of His Master’s Voice], in 20 copies 17 Nov. 1924 [of which a signed copy at Buffalo]; Borsch performs sixth operation on JAJ’s left eye for secondary cataract, 29 Nov. 1924;

1925: JSJ writes to JAJ about Tuohy’s portrait of him (‘I hope you have the other family portraits all safe?’, 31 Jan. 1925); Borsch informs JAJ on his birthday [2 Feb.] that a subsidiary operation was needed on his left eye; offered immediate operation, but postponed in view of date; JAJ develops conjunctivitis in right eye, and returns to opthalmic [eye] clinic at 39 rue Cherche Midi, 15-25 Feb. 1925; Exiles performed at Neighbourhood Playhouse, NY, 19 Feb. 1925; tooth-fragment removed, April 1925; a seventh eye-operation performed, April 1925, followed by ten days in clinic; fragment of “Work in Progress” printed in Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers, ed. McAlmon (May 1925) [FW I.ii. pp.30-34]; JAJ moves to 2 Square Robiac, otherwise 192 rue de Grenelle - actually a cul-de-sac off rue de Grenelle between Les Invalide and Ave. de la Bourdonnais, early June 1925 (remaining until 30 April 1931); fragment of “Work in Progress” published in Criterion (July 1925) [1.v of Finnegans Wake, pp.104-125]; JAJ forewarned of further eye operation in September, 21 July; travels to Fécamp (Normandy), staying at Grand Hôtel des Bains et de Londres, late July 1925; driven by weather to Rouen (Hôtel de la Poste), 28 July, and hence to Archachon (Regina Palace Hôtel) with nights at Niort and Bordeaux en route; JAJ sends climatic parody of “The Waste Land” to HSW, 15 Aug. 1925 ([‘Rouen is the rainest place, getting/Inside all impermeables [...]’); JAJ defers Sept. eye operation; rescheduled for 23 Nov., and finally performed 8 Dec. 1925 [and the following Tuesday, being divided in two parts: Ellmann, 1982, p.573]; Joyces returns to Paris, 5 Sept. 1925 and settles into 2 Square Robiac; defers eighth eye operation; “Shem” chapter publ. by Ernest Walsh in The Quarter (Autumn-Winter 1925/26) [FW I.vii, pp.169-95]; Criterion printers refuse to set “Anna Livia Plurabelle”, Joyce agreeing with Adrienne Monnier of Navire d’Argent for its publication there (“Anna Livia Plurabelle”, pub. 1 Oct. 1925) [FW 1.viii, pp.169-95]; JAJ completes draft of “Fourth Watch of Shaun”, late Nov. 1925 [FW III.iv, pp.55-90]; Giorgio forms relationship with Helen Kastor Fleischmann, of an American of German Jewish extraction, the sep. wife of Leon Fleischmann and 10 years senior to Giorgio (and later to be good friend of Nora); eye operation, 8 Dec.; deeply impaired sight in both eyes [eye operation of 5 Dec. 1925 called ‘seventh’ by Bowker];

1926: JAJ, now writing in large letters, revises “Mime” and following sections [FW II,1-iv]; Ulysses reset (Shakespeare & Co. 1926); visited Myron C. Nutting, Jan. 1926 [Ellmann, JJ, 1982, p.573], and made squiggle of Leopold Bloom with Greek inscription to demonstrate his improving eyesight [now held in the Charles Deering McCormick Special Collections at Northwestern University]; issue of Le Navire d’Argent ded. to Svevo [Schmitz], arising from Joyce’s support; Feb. 1926; Exiles produced by Stage Society at Regent Theatre, London, 14-15 Feb. 1926, with Rupert Hervey and Gladys [Gwaldys] Black-Roberts playing Richard and Bertha; Ettore Schmitz and HSW in attendance; G. B. Shaw attends second-day performance and speaks well of Joyce as dramatist at subsequent discussion; JAJ reading Wyndham Lewis’s The Art of Being Ruled [cf. ‘the art of being rude’, FW167.03], which contains criticisms of him (letter to HSW, 23 March 1926); receives invitation from Lewis to contribute to the first issue of his new review to The Enemy (letter to HSW, of 21 May 1926) and commences “The Triangle” to that effect; Stanislaus visits Paris, April 1926 (‘You’ve done the longest day in literature, and now you are conjuring up the deepest night’); sudden death of Frantisek Schaurek [by suicide] while Eileen is passing through Paris finds JAJ unable to break the news to her; other visits from Mrs Sheehy-Skeffington, Michael Healy, and Harry Sinclair; 8th printing of Ulysses, entirely reset by Darantière [i.e., 2nd edition], May 1926 JAJ sends “Four Watches of Shaun” to HSW, 7 June 1926; undergoes his eighth eye operation, on left eye, June 1926; writes “The Triangle” for “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump” [FW II.ii, pp.282-304]; travels to Ostend, 11 August 1926, staying at Hôtel de l’Océan; runs lengthy distances on strand (6-7 km); takes 64 Flemish lessons; JAJ travels to Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels, and visits Waterloo securing plan of battlefield, travelling on same bus as Thomas Wolfe, though without meeting; renews acquaintance with Juda de Vries (now a dentist); returns to Paris, Sept. 1926; spends time with Georg Goyert discussing German translation of Ulysses; interviewed by Prof. Takaoki Katta (1886-1976), who was later to issue the first Japanese history of Irish Literature (1943), 15 July 1926 [cf. ref. to ‘japlatin’, in Joyce to HSW [Letters, Vol. 1, p.242]; visited by James Lyons, kinsman of Nora, 26 Aug. 1926; learns of pirating of Ulysses in America by Samuel Roth, ed., of Two Worlds, where five fragments appeared; Roth pays $200 to Joyce as appeasement, promising more (unpaid); suit against Roth contemplated, to be brought by Pound’s father; “Shaun” chapters accepted and then refused by Dial; JAJ invites HSW to order a piece of “Work in Progress”, 24 Sept., resulting in the opening of Finnegans Wake [‘brings us back to Howth Castle & Environs [... &c.]’ based on the “Giant’s Grave” at Penrith (postcard supplied by Henriette Véavère); fragment of Ulysses in Morel’s translation published in 900: Cahiers d’Italie et d’’Europe (autumne 1926); Pound writes to JAJ disparaging “Work in Progress” (‘circumambient peripherisation’; letter of 15 Nov. 1926); Spanish trans. of A Portrait by Dámaso Alonso [as pseud.] Alfonso Donado, pub. in Madrid as El Artista adolescenta (retrato), 1926; no part of “Work in Progress” printed this year; JAJ meets Eugene & Maria Jolas of transition through Beach (Maria Jolas [née MacDonald] being proprietor of École bilingue de Neuilly), 21 Dec. 1926;

[ top ]

1927: Lewis published The Enemy (Jan. 1927) - without Joyce’s “Triangle”, but with his own essay, “The Revolutionary Simpleton” instead; JAJ employs Benjamin Cotter who engages in legal action against Roth through NY firm Chadbourne, Stanchfield & Levy; JAJ organises 167 signature in protest against Roth’s piracy, incl. Yeats, AE, James Stephens and O’Casey as well as Eliot, Masefield, Pirandello, Valéry and others, issued formally 2 Feb. 1927; Roth continues to print until injuncted by Justice Richard Mitchell, 27 Dec. 1928; “Work in Progress” espoused as principal text of Jolas’s ‘revolution of the word’, and published serially in transition April-Nov. 1927 & Nov. 1929; and [more intermittently] up to April-May 1938); HSW expresses misgivings, 29 Jan. 1927 and after (‘[...] I do not care much for the output from your Wholesale Safety Pun Factory’, 4 Feb. 1927); JAJ expresses his own misgivings to McAlmon; shows recent poems to Pound who dismisses them as vieux jeu, saying: ‘Put it in the family Bible’ (a remark not recalled by Pound himself); JAJ guest of honour at PEN Club, 5 April, staying in London 3-9 April 1927; invites HSW Weaver to guess title of Finnegans Wake, and explains intentions in a spate of letters, April-Sept.; expresses willingness to hand “Work in Progress” over to James Stephens in letter to HSW, 20 May 1927, discovering on 31 May that they share an anniversary - though Stephens did not really know his birthday [see Stephens’ account - infra]; arranges meeting with Stephens; Stuart Gilbert offers through Sylvia Beach to correct errors in French trans. of Ulysses, 9 May 1927; JAJ travels to the Hague, 21 May, 1927, attacked by dog on beach at Scheveningen, and moves to hotel in Amsterdam; Pomes Penyeach issued by Shakespeare & Co., with drawings by Lucia, 7 July 1927; fails to sell proof copy of Dubliners, entrusted to MacLeish and intended for Rosenbach; Wyndham Lewis publishes Time and Western Man (Sept. 1927), which incls. “Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” as Chap. XVI, attacking JAJ’s supposedly ‘suffocating, neotic expanse of objects, all of them lifeless’, causing him to retaliate in “The Ondt and the Gracehoper” the Wake [‘But Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time?’]; JAJ completes “Anna Livia Plurabelle”, 27 Oct. 1927 (1,200 hrs.); visited by Frank O’Connor; visited by Byrne, then on holiday from America, and thus learns of suicide of Cosgrave, Nov. 1927; Ulysses published in Georg Goyert’s German trans. by Rhein-Verlag (1927; ed., Daniel Brody); Lewis publishes a hostile “Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” in Time and Western Man (Sept. 1927) [previously in Blast]; revises Pt. I of “Work in Progress” [FW I.i-viii], for publication; transition prints first eight sections of “Work in Progress” (April-Nov. 1927) [being first book of Finnegans Wake; FW Bk I.i-viii];

1928: JAJ suffers inflammation of the intestine; sympathetic visit from HSW, who joins in birthday party, where Joyce sings “Oh, the brown and the yellow ale”, 2 Feb. 1928 [event memorialised by Helen Nutting]; HSW return to London, 15 Feb.; transition issues of February, March, Summer and November 1928 print “Night Lessons” (II.ii), and the “Four Watches of Shaun” (III.i, iii & iv); Larbaud offers to hand over trans. to André Maurois; Gilbert and Larbaud agree to collaborate on French trans. of Ulysses at ‘Treaty of Trianons’ [restaurant], March 1928, giving Larbaud role of final arbiter (hence ‘entierement revue’); JAJ travels to Dieppe, March 1928, and completes “The Ondt and the Gracehoper” for transition (March 1928); moves to Rouen, 27 March; returns to Paris, end March; Goyert visits Paris, April 1928; JAJ borrows Ford’s house in Toulon, 26 April; returns to Paris, 24 May 1928; Sylvia Beach gives dinner-party to introduce Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to the Joyces, 27 June 1928; visit from Eileen Schaurek and her two children, en route to Ireland, March; JAJ travels to Salzburg, 8 July 1928, with Stuart & Moune Gilbert; there meets John Drinkwater and wife and visits Stefan Zweig; Stanislaus m. Nellie Lichtensteiger, 13 Aug. 1928, and travels with her to Salzburg to meet with Joyce directly after; JAJ suggests biography to be written by Gilbert, who declines; consults a Dr. A Toldt (opth.) at Salzburg; moved on to Le Havre via Frankfurt and Munich; returns to Paris, Sept. 1928; JAJ collapses and receives injections of arsenic and phosphorus from Dr. Borsch; death of Schmitz [Svevo] in car-crash, Sept. 1928; Sean O’Faolain reviews Anna Livia Plurabelle for Criterion (Sept. 1928), joining Wyndham Lewis and Rebecca West as one of the chief critics of the book, 1928; Anna Livia Plurabelle appears in de luxe edn. prefaced by Padraic Colum (Crosby & Gaige, 19 Oct. 1928; 850 copies); friendly visit from H. G. Wells who receives “Work in Progress” in transition issues from Beach, followed by fulsome letter refusing to help with ‘propaganda’ for JAJ’s ‘literary experiment’, 23 Nov. 1928; Nora undergoes exploratory operation for cancer at American Hospital, 8 Nov. 1928, followed by radium treatment, and then has a hysterectomy, Feb. 1929 - Joyce taking a bed in the hospital on both occasions;

1929: Ulysses published in French, Feb. 1929 (‘Traduit de l’anglais par M. Auguste Morel assisté par M. Stuart Gilbert, Traduction entierement revue par M. Valery Larbaud avex la collaboration de l’auteur’), unmarked by celebration at the time; JAJ organises writing and publication of Our Exagmination round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (May 1929), with contribs. from Beckett, Budgen, Gilbert, McAlmon, MacGreevy, Marcel Brion, Victor Llona, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, Robert Sage and William Carlos Williams, and letters of protest from G. V. L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon (‘I did stand behind those twelve Marshals more or less directing them what lines of research to follow’, Letter to HSW, 30 July 1929 - sometime though to be a fictitious person by now known to have been a Russian-born grad. of MIT in 1921, who moved to Paris in 1923 and died in Dec. 1929, without meeting Joyce); HSW visits and remains for two months while Nora recuperates; Giorgio’s debut as singer at Studio Scientifique de la Voix of Prof. George Cunelli, 25 April 1929; Lucia’s debut as ‘wild vine’ at Raymond Duncan’s dancing establishment; last performance at Bal Bullier, 29 April 1929, then abandons career in October claiming that she lacks the physical strength; Tales Told of Shem and Shaun publ. by Black Sun Press (Aug. 1929) [FW 152-59, 282-304, 414-19] - the press being orig. founded as Éditions Narcisse (April 1927) for self-publishing by Harry and Caresse [Polly] Crosby, then living in Paris; a foreword by C. K. Ogden and frontis. port. by Brancusi (a ‘symbole’ of Joyce’s ‘sens de pousser’ - that caused JSJ to say, ‘the boy seems to have changed a good deal’); JAJ participates in “Déjeuner Ulysse” organised by Adrienne Monnier and held at the Léopold Restaurant [Hôtel Leopold] in Les Vaux de Cernay, a villag nr. Versailles, 27 June 1929 - with guests Benoîst-Méchin, Auguste Morel, Valéry Larbaud, Léon-Paul Fargue, Paul Valéry, Edouard Dujardin, Stuart Gilbert, Jules Romains and Philippe Soupault, travelling by chartered bus - Beckett being one of ‘ingloriously abandoned’ on the way home [as excessively drunk] and hence excluded from official photo;

1929 [ cont.]: JAJ travels to Torquay with the Gilberts, July 1929, and engaged in revising Gilbert’s book; joined by HSW at Imperial Hotel; goes to see Kent’s Cavern; visits London to discuss ALP with Eliot at Faber & Faber and records the ending on gramophone for Ogden at the Orthological Institute; travels to Bristol (to whose citizens Henry II gave the charter of Dublin in 1172), August 1929; meets George Moore in London and offers him the French trans. of Ulysses (‘I hope you don’t mind my reminding you that I can read English’), and also a copy of Exagmination, sent on later; received letters from Moore in early Sept. 1929; Moore returns The Book Kerith (‘scribbled all over in search of an improved diction’, as he said); visits Dr. Euston (optham.), in London at John Drinkwater’s advice; JAJ visited by James Stephen who makes a formal proposal that he should complete the Wake; spends time at Stephens’s house in Kingsbury, London NW; briefly stays at Lord Warden Hotel, where the Irish manager is a reader of Ulysses; spends a week explaining the plan of Finnegans Wake to Stephens; JAJ mounts strenuous campaign for John O’Sullivan, then leading tenor at Paris Opéra [as Jean Sullivan], November 1929-31; “Fourth Watch of Shaun” appears in transition (Nov. 1929), the journal ceasing publication for two years after; death of Dr. Borsch; in 1929 Joyce began transcribe material from E. A Wallis Budge, Egyptian Book of the Dead (1895).