James Joyce: Notes - Textual History [2/4: A Portrait & Ulysses]

Notes on the Works (by Texts)

Notes on the Works (by titles)

[ top ]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916): 1: Joyce decided to rewrite his novel in Sept. 1907 while working on “The Dead”; conceived an entirely new structure for the material developed in Stephen Hero. According to Stanislaus, ‘he told me he would omit all the first chapters and begin with Stephen, whom he will call Daly, going to school and that he would write the book in five chapters - long chapters.’ (Diary entry 8 Sept. 1907 [unpub.] quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, [1965 Edn.], p.274; see under Commentary, supra).

See Ellmann’s comment: ‘The use of the name Dedalus must have seemed for the moment too strange, but it is hard to conceive of Joyce’s hero with the name Daly. In the plan of five chapters, however, Joyce had evidently hit upon the book’s final structure.’ (James Joyce, [1959] 1965 Edn., p.274)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), 2 - chronology of composition [vide Hans Waler Gabler, ‘Lost Years’]: The first chapter was finished by 29 Nov., 1907 [‘which is to say the material from Stephen Hero had been reformed as an opening’, Ellmann]; 3 chaps. had been completed by April 1908. JAJ then discontinued writing. He was afterwards encouraged to continue by Italo Svevo (8 Feb. 1909; Letters, II, p.227). According to Hans Walter Gabler [contra Ellmann], changes were then made in the first chapter, based on study of holograph fair copy in NLI. Gabler emphasises a revision-genesis - viz., ‘an additional stretch of narrative [may] have been the early part of Chap. IV’. Parts of MSS completed between Sept. 1907 to April 1908 were first drafts of a first half and do not survive as such. Chap. IV was complete and work was proceeding on Chap. V between 1909 and some time in 1911, when the MS was thrown on the fire and rescued. It was kept wrapped in newspaper for some months until work on Chap. V resumed after 1911. This was constructed ‘by intercalation of a contrasting episode into a homogeneous stretch of narrative’. Gabler notes evidence that the opening and concluding pages of the novel were ‘genetically interdependent.’ (Bibl. Hans Walter Gabler, ‘The Seven Lost Years of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, in Approaches to Joyce’s Portrait: Ten Essays, ed. Thomas F. Staley & Bernard Benstock (Pittsburgh UP 1976, pp.25-60.) [See further.]

The Portrait epigraph: ‘Daedalus interea Creten longumque perosus / exilium tactusque loci natalis amore / clausus erat pelago. “terras licet” inquit “et undas / obstruat: et caelum certe patet; ibimus illac: / omnia possideat, non possidet aera Minos.” / dixit et ignotas animum dimittit in artes / naturamque novat.’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, lines 183ff.)

Translation: ‘Meanwhile Daedalus, hating Crete and his long exile, and longing to see his native land, was shut in by the sea. “Though he may block escape by land and water,” he said, “yet the sky is open, and by that way I will go. Though Minos rules over all, he does not rule the air.” So saying, he sets his mind at work upon unknown arts, and changes the laws of nature.’

[The whole is available as an appendix to Robert Curtis, online - or copy, as attached.)]

[Note on the name ‘Daly’ - see Joyce’s brief flirtation with that family name for Stephen (instead of Dedalus) - as supra, and its place in Gerald Griffin’s Collegians - as infra. And note that John Daly was the name of a paternal uncle who was Mayor of Cork in 1871-72. See also Stanislaus Joyce’s diary record under Commentary, supra)]

Frank Budgen recalls: Joyce once remarked to Budgen that the most revealing element in the title of his novel [Portrait] is its modifying clause, “.. as a Young Man”. In ‘The Portrait in Perspective’, Hugh Kenner argued that Joyce set out to circumscribe his ‘futile alter ego’ in a system of stylistic ironies which check the uncompromising heroism of the earlier draft version of the novel, Stephen Hero. See Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses (1959), p.60, and Hugh Kenner, Dublin’s Joyce (1955), Chap. 8.

See Bruce Stewart, ‘Interloper at Eccles St.’, in Etudes irlandaises, p.73-100; ftn. 3; available online; accessed 20.09.2021.

Note that Budgen elsewhere writes that Stephen is like ‘a young cat sharpening his claws on the tree of life.’ (Making of Ulysses [1934], rep. edn. Oxford UP 1972, p.9; quoted in quoted in Eric Bulson, Introduction to James Joyce, Oxford UP 2006, p.62.)

A Portrait [... &c.] James Atherton (ed., A Portrait [... &c.], London: Heinemann 1964) is the first edition to emend the erroneous attribution of the epigraph to 18 in Ovid’s poem - all previous editions having copied the first edition in citing l.18. Thus Atherton: ‘Et ignotas anumum demittit in artes - Metamorphoses VIII, 188 [with end-note: ‘And he devoted his mind to unknown arts’]. For the erroneous citation, see for instance the Jonathan Cape Edition of 1939 in the Travellers’ Library which follows the re-set edition of 1924.)

Metamorphosis, Bk. 8, ll.183-85: ‘Daedalus interea Creten longumque perosus / exilium tactusque loci natalis amore / clausus erat pelago. “terras licet” inquit “et undas / obstruat: et caelum certe patet; ibimus illac: / omnia possideat, non possidet aera Minos.”’ See also ‘damnosasque erudit artes’ (Ibid., l.215.), and ‘ignarus sua se tractare pericla’ (ibid., l.236.)

W. G. Butler, One Hundred Latin Passages (London: Methuen 1937; 2nd edn. 1946)
LXXIX - DAEDALUS, IMPRISONED BY MINOS, MAKES WINGS (i)
5 10	Daedalus interea Creten, longumque perosus Exilium tactusque loci notalis amore Clausus erat pelago. “Terras licit,” inquit, “et undas Obstruat, at caelum certe patet: ibimus illac; Omnia possideat, non possidet aëra Minos.” Dixit, et ignotas animum dimittit in artes Naturamque novat. Nam ponit in ordine pennas, A minima coeptas, longam breviore sequente: Tum lino medias et ceris alligat imas, Atque ita compositas parvo curamine flectit, Ut veras imitetur aves.
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, viii. 183; Butler, op. cit., p.54.)
Notes: Butler was Headmaster of St. Faith’s School, Cambridge. His teaching anthology contains no translations. The annotations for LXXXIX speak of Daedalus as ‘a clever Athenian workman, [who] built the Labyrinth for Minos, king of Crete. [... b]ut having offended his master he was imprisoned in his own Labyrinth.’ Butler annotates grammatical points by line - viz., 1. Cretan, Object of perosus. Note the Greek Accusative in -n. 2. loci. Objective Genitive. 4. obstruat. Understand Minos. Concessive Clauses introduced by licet, cum, or quamvis, have their verbs in the Subjunctive. 5. possideat. Dependent on liceat. 5. aëra. Another form of Greek Accusative. 6. animum dimittit = ‘gives his mind to’. 8. i.e., the feathers were tapering, ‘beginning from the smallest, a shorter feather following a long one.’ (Ibid., p.98.) Butler scans the lines as hexameters.
LXXX - ICARUS, SON OF DAEDALUS, FLIES TOO HIGH (ii)
5 10	Icarus audaci coepit gaudere volatu, Deseruitque ducem caelique cupidine tractus Altius egit iter. Rapidi vicinia solis Mollit odoratas, pennarum, vincula, ceras. Tabuerant cerae: nudos quatit ille lacertos, Remigioque carens, non ullas percipit auras, Oraque caerulea patrium clamantia nomen Excipiuntur aqua, quae nomen traxit ab illo. At pater infelix, nec iam pater, “Icare,” dixit, “Icare,” dixit, “ubi es? qua te regione requiram?” “Icare,” dicebat: pennas aspexit in undis Devovitque suas artas corpusque sepulcro Condidit: et tellus a nomine dicta sepulti.
	(Ovid, Metamorphose, viii. 223; Bulter, op. cit., p.55.)
	Notes: 5. nudos, i.e. bare of wings. 8. nomen traxit ab illo. The sea into which he fell was called after him Icarum mare; it is part of the Archipelago between Greece and Asia Minor. 9. nec iam pater, i.e. because his son was dead. 12. sepulchro. Ablative of Place Where; in poetry the preposition is often omitted. 12. tellus dicta. Understand est. The island of Icaria, south of Chios. (Ibid., p.98.)

[ top ]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) - 2: A Portrait finished in 1913, when title page of National Library of Ireland MS is dated; JAJ offered first refusal to Elkin Mathews, Easter Day 1913 [though unfinished]; literary agent James B. Pinker fails to place the MS; serialised in The Egoist, established by Harriet Shaw Weaver for the purpose and ed. Dora Marsden, [2 Feb. 1914 to 1 Sept 1915]; Joyce was sending the finally revised MS to Pound from Jan. 1914 onwards.

Ellmann (in JJ) considers that the hiatus in Egoist serialisation after Chap. 3 arose because Joyce had not written the ensuing chapters but Hans Walter Gabler [holds] that the final shape of the novel was essentially resolved by 1912-13. T. Werner Laurie refused to publish the whole text without major alterations. Published in London by The Egoist in book-form (1917).

After rejections by Richards, Martin Secker, and Duckworth, Benjamin W. Huebsch published the first American Edn. [otherwise, the second edition]), New York (29 Dec. 1916); The Egoist Press edition of A Portrait appeared in London in February 1917, using Huebsch’s sheets. (Huebsch then brought out Dubliners in New York by importing sheets from Grant Richards of London.)

Note that the MS of A Portrait - not Stephen Hero - was given to the National Library by Miss Weaver. (See David Norris, “What Lies in Joyce’s Pandora’s Box”, in Irish Times, 12 Jan. 1999.) [See further - remarks in Rose and O’Hanlon, The Lost Notebook, 1989 - infra.

Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon, The Lost Notebook (Edinburgh: Split Pea 1989) cite the notebook entry “arrest 1902/1904”, which ‘signalled what appears on the surface to be Joyce’s revision of the time co-ordinates of Stephen’s movements in the interval between A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. According to both the manuscript draft V.A.3 and the base text of the Rosenbach faircopy of “Proteus”, Stephen was in Paris, in irrational fear of being arrested on a charge of murder, in February 1902. This surprisingly early date has been noted by Gabler (1980) who argues that “the events of the final chapter of A Portrait occur in the spring in term-time of what could be conceived of as Stephen’s first and only year” at University College. Thus, it would have been Spring 1901 “according to A Portrait’s overall implicit chronological framework ... permitting Stephen to be thought of as living in Paris in February 1902”. This thesis is convincing and, as we shall show, is supported by further argument and evidence. Continuing his argument, Gabler contends that the manuscript year “1902” may well be “a vestige of an abandoned time-scheme linking A Portrait in progress with the opening of a proto-Ulysses for which the date 16 June 1904 was not fixed”. What needs further clarification here is (a) the precise status of the proto-Ulysses envisaged; (b) when and why the time-scheme was introduced; and (c) if, when and why it was abandoned.’ (Rose & O’Hanlon, p.xv.)

See longer extracts in RICORSO Library > “Criticism > Major Authors” > James Joyce, via index or direct. - and see also remarks on the hiatus in the time-frame of A Portrait discussed in Hugh Kenner, “The Date of Stephen’s Flight”, in Ulysses (George Allen & Unwin 1980), [Appendix 1], pp.161-63. (Kenner’s appendix is referenced in Rose and O’Hanlon, op. cit., 1989, as supra.)

The Hell-fire sermon - which occupies much of Chapter IV of A Portrait and which reputedly drove Thomas Merton to his conversion was largely pillaged from an Italian work by Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti (1632-1703) entitled L’Inferno aperto al cristiano perchè non v'entri: Considerazioni delle pene infernali proposte a meditarsi per evitarle, which received an English translation as Hell Opened to Christians in 1844 with an illustrated Dublin edition in 1868 (48pp.). [For the Italian original, see online; for the English translation see copy - as attached.]

Source: The account of the Hell-fire sermon give here is taken from Jorn Barger’s Resources on A Portrait - online at web.archive - which contains copious details about all of Joyce’s books [last accessed 02.01.2023].

Revision notice: The date ascribed to the Hellfire Sermon, if aligned with the chronology of Joyce’s schooldays as the text suggests, answer to the calendar dates of 30 Nov.-3 Dec. 1896 but these have been revised in Joyce scholarship to 30 Nov.-3 Sat. Dec. 1898 - being early in his first year at UCD. Joyce’s epoch of sequel frequentation of prostitutes has similarly been pushed forward into his college days, in keeping with the chronology of the student play mention in the text - a college event and not a schooldays one. (See Barger, idem.)

[ top ]

A Portrait [... &c.] (1916) - 3: Stephen’s motto, ‘silence, exile and cunning’ [AP312] derives from Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisane (1847), in which Lucien de Rubempré says: ‘J’ai mis en pratique un axiome avec lequel on est sûr de vivre tranquille: Fuge ... Late ... Tace.’ (See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.365, with note to the effect that Stuart Gilbert brought the quotation to Ellmann’s attention.)

Note Oscar Wilde’s remarks on the same, as given infra. See also Franco Moretti’s remarks note on Lucien de Rubempré in Notes, infra.

Richard Ellmann tells us that Stephen’s motto is taken Honoré de Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisane (1847) in which Lucien de Rubempré and that he was informed of this fact by Stuart Gilbert (James Joyce [1959], OUP 1965), p.365; also p.786, n.30; but cf. James Joyce, rev. edn., 1982, p.354, n., which attributes the phrase to Le Médicin de compagne - as follows here; and see under Commentary, as supra.). Nonetheless, Balzac also uses the tag in his The Country Doctor [Médicin de compagne] (1833), where the central character Benassis reads the motto written on the wall of a Carthusian cell. The peculiarity of this episode, from a Joycean standpoint, is that Benassis has ‘felt drawn to the rule of Saint Bruno, and made the journey to the Grande Chartreuse’, where he meets with it. It may therefore be that Joyce is punning on the Bruno who founded the Carthusian order of silent monks (c.1030-1101; fnd. Carthusians, 1084) and the Bruno who was immolated by the Vatican.

Benassis is a doctor who has previously lived a dissolute life in Paris, and who lost his second love, Evelina (having abandoned his first). Now he is determined to pass his life in exile and transforms an impoverished village of Voreppe in the Dauphiné into a prosperous town within ten years. At the age of 50, he is encountered there by Commandant Genestas, a stoical ex-soldier of the Napoleonic army to whom he tells his story. He is now a seedy fifty-year old attended by a bossy housekeeper. At the close of the novel, having exchanged confessions with the soldier, he dies of a stroke.

Extract: ‘I felt drawn to the rule of Saint Bruno, and made the journey to the Grande Chartreuse on foot, absorbed in solemn thoughts. That was a memorable day. I was not prepared for the grandeur of the scenery; the workings of an unknown Power greater than that of man were visible at every step; the overhanging crags, the precipices on either hand, the stillness only broken by the voices of the mountain streams, the sternness and wildness of the landscape, relieved here and there by Nature’s fairest creations, pine trees that have stood for centuries and delicate rock plants at their feet, all combine to produce sober musings. There seemed to be no end to this waste solitude, shut in by its lofty mountain barriers. The idle curiosity of man could scarcely penetrate there. It would be difficult to cross this melancholy desert of Saint Bruno’s with a light heart.
 ‘I saw the Grand Chartreuse. I walked beneath the vaulted roofs of the ancient cloisters, and heard in the silence the sound of the water from the spring, falling drop by drop. I entered a cell that I might the better realize my own utter nothingness, something of the peace that my predecessor had found there seemed to pass into my soul. An inscription, which in accordance with the custom of the monastery he had written above his door, impressed and touched me; all the precepts of the life that I had meant to lead were there, summed up in three Latin words - Fuge, late, tace.’
[...]
 ‘So I have entered into the paths of silence and submission. The fuge, late, tace of the Carthusian brother is my motto here, my death to the world is the life of this canton, my prayer takes the form of the active work to which I have set my hand, and which I love - the work of sowing the seeds of happiness and joy, of giving to others what I myself have not.
  ‘I have grown so used to this life, completely out of the world and among the peasants, that I am thoroughly transformed. [...]’ (Trans. by (Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell; available at Gutenberg Project - online; accessed 16.01.2013.)

Another translation (1): The Country Doctor, [n. trans.] (Roberts Brothers; Boston 1887) - device ‘qui legit regit’).

‘I entered a cell that I might take the measure of my own nothingness; I breathed the peace profound my predecessor had known there, and I read with tender emotion the words he had written above his door, following the customs of a monastery; all the precepts of the life I sought to live were in those three Latin words, - Fuge, late, tace. (p.264.)
[...]
I was, as I have already told you, obliged to pass the night in this hamlet. During the night I believed I heard the voice of God in the compassion to which the state of this poor valley moved me. I had tasted the agonizing joys of motherhood; I resolved to give myself wholly up to them, to satisfy the maternal instinct in a wider sphere than that of a mother, by becoming a sister of mercy to the whole region, and continually healing the wounds of the poor I saw the finger of God marking out my destiny when I remembered that the first serious thought of my youth had led me to the study of medicine, and I resolved to practise my profession here. Moreover, for wounded hearts, silence and shade: I had said this in my letter; that which I had promised myself to do, I would carry out; [265] and so I entered the path of silence and resignation. The Fuge, late, tace, of the Carthusian is my motto in this place; my work is an active prayer; my moral suicide is the life of my district, over which I love to sow with outstretched hand the seeds of happiness and joy - giving that I have not. (p.266.) [Available online; accessed 16.01.2013.]

Note: the advert. material at the end of the book alludes to the “firm” (i.e., Roberts Bros.) rather than any named translator.

§

Another translation (2): The Country Doctor, trans. by G. Burnham Ives, in 1 vol., with five etchings by Charles Giroux, after paintings by Daniel Hernandez, Philadelphia: George Barrie & Son [1898], p.306.)

‘Attracted at first by the regulations of Saint-Bruno, I came on foot to the Grande-Chartreuse, absorbed by serious thoughts. That was a solemn day for me. [...; p.306]
I entered a cell to take the measure of my nothingness, I breathed the profound peace that my predecessor had enjoyed there, and I read with deep emotion the inscription he had placed over the door, according to the cloistral custom; all the precepts of the life I proposed to lead were summed up there by three Latin words: “Fuge, late, tace.” (p.307.)
[...] I had entered on the path of silence resignation. The Carthusian’s “fuge, late, tace,” is my motto here, my work is an active prayer, my moral suicide is the life of this distrinct, where I take keen delight in sowing happiness and joy, in giving what I have not, by putting forth my hand. The habit of living with peasants, my separation from the world, have really transformed me. My face has changed in expression, [...] I have acquired the carriage of a countryman, his speech, his costume, his free and easy manners, his ignorance of anything like dissimulation. [...] To-day I am absolutely indifferent to everythingt that is external, as well as to all those who move under the guidance of a single thought. I have no other object in life than to leave it, I do not intend to do anything to anticipate or hasten the end, but I shall lie down to die without regret, on the day when the summons comes. (p.309.) [Available online [copy in UCLA Library].

Original French: Je vis la Grande-Chartreuse, je me promenai sous ses vieilles voûtes silencieuses, j’entendis sous les arcades l’eau de la source tombant goutte à goutte. J’entrai dans une cellule pour y prendre la mesure de mon néant, je respirai la paix profonde que mon prédécesseur y avait goûtée, et je lus avec attendrissement l’inscription qu’il avait mise sur sa porte suivant la coutume du cloître; tous les préceptes de la vie que je voulais mener y étaient résumés par trois mots latins: Fuge, late, tace ... [Available at Willblog - online; 16.01.2013.]

Note: Willblog supplies the original paragraph in Médicin de compagne - as supra - and
remarks:

Balzac restait très marqué par sa visite à la Grande Chartreuse, près de Grenoble, ou il avait lu sur le mur d’une cellule du monastère, une inscription: «Fuge, late, tace» («Fuis, cache-toi, tais-toi»), qui lui inspira sur-le-champ le sujet du Médecin de campagne composé au début de l’année 1833. Son héros, le docteur Benassis, sera l’un des sosies de Balzac les plus complets qui figurent dans toute son ouvre.[Here quotes as supra.]
 Balzac réutilisera ironiquement cette formule en 1838 en la prêtant à Lucien de Rubempré (Splendeurs et Misères des courtisanes) [quotes]:

‘Mon cher, répondit Lucien, j’ai mis en pratique un axiome avec lequel on est sûr de vivre tranquille: Fuge, late, tace. Je vous laisse.’

Toujours vrai et d’actualitè aujourd’hui: Fuyez tant que vous pouvez les compagnies des hommes. Que votre vie soit cachèe. Gardez le silence aux hommes: un homme silencieux est un homme sage. [End.]

Note: The motto “Fuge, Late, Tace” serves Willblog as his own on his home page. [Willblog - online; 16.01.2013.]

Bibl. The Country Doctor [q. trans.] (London Caxton Publ. Co. [1899]), 352pp., ill.; and Do. trans. E[llen] Marriage, intro. by Marcel Girard [Everyman Library] (Dent 1906, 1911, 1933, &c. 1961; NY: Dutton 1923, 1961), xxv, 290pp. There is also an Athenaeum Press edition of [1896] and [1900] in a translation by Katharine Prescott Wormley. [See George Saintsbury’s bibliographical account of the publication of the novel, infra.]

Also issued as The Country Doctor; The Quest of the Absolute, and Other Stories, H[onoré] de Balzac, trans. by Ellen Marriage, with prefaces by George Saintsbury (Philadelphia, [Penn.]: Gebbie 1899), xiii, 384, ix-xii, 372pp., ill. [21cm.] CONTENTS: The Country Doctor; The Commission in Lunacy; The Atheist’s Mass; The Quest of the Absolute [Recherche de l’absolu]; The Unknown Masterpiece; Christ in Flanders; Melmoth Reconciled; The Red House.

George Saintsbury’s bibliographical account (Introduction, Dent edition): ‘Le Medecin de Campagne was an early book; it was published in 1833, a date of which there is an interesting mark in the selection of the name “Evelina,” the name of Madame Hanska, whom Balzac had just met, for the lost Jansenist love of Benassis; and it had been on the stocks for a considerable time. [...] The book was originally published by Mme. Delaunay in September 1833 in two volumes and thirty-six chapters with headings. Next year it was republished in four volumes by Werdet, and the last fifteen chapters were thrown together into four. In 1836 it reappeared with dedication and date, but with the divisions further reduced to seven; being those which here appear, with the addition of two, “La Fosseuse” and “Propos de Braves Gens” between “A Travers Champs” and “Le Napoleon du Peuple.” These two were removed in 1839, when it was published in a single volume by Charpentier. In all these issues the book was independent. It became a “Scene de la Vie de Campagne” in 1846, and was then admitted into the Comedie. The separate issues of Goguelat’s story referred to above made their appearances first in L’Europe Litteraire for June 19, 1833 ( before the book form), and then with the imprint of a sort of syndicate of publishers in 1842.’ [End] (Q.pp.; available at Gutenberg Project - online.)

Note: Benassis is called ‘The Napoleon of our valley, barring the battles’, in the translation by Ellen Marriage (in La Comèdie Humaine, London: Dent 1895-98; 1898, p.303; intro. by George Saintsbury - as supra.)

See also annotations by Jack Coulehan at Literature, Arts and Medicine Database (NYU) , who notes that the novel is concerned with the the doctor’s exportation of the numerous cretins in the village to an asylum as a measure of improvement and the possible causal connection with the condition of goitre. (Available online; accessed 16.01.2013)

[ top ]

A Portrait [... &c.] (1916) - 4: Stephen’s remark that ‘Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow’ bears some similarity to the ambiguous sentence that Mr. Daly poses to the eldest of his many children (called here “North-east”) in Gerald Griffin’s The Collegians (1829): Give me the construction of this: Mater mea sus est mala’ - to which the child replies, ‘My mother is a bad sow’, but is corrected by his father: ‘Mater, mother, mea, hasten, est, eats up (edere, my boy, not esse), mala, the apples.’ (Gerald Griffin, The Collegians, 1829; 1918 edn., intro. by Padraic Colum, Talbot Press [1918], pp.37-38.)

Who is Elias, who is he? - Joyce writes in Stephen Hero: ‘He appreciated not without pitiful feelings that legend of the mild heresiarch of Assisi. He knew, by instinct, that S. Francis’ love-chains would not hold him very long but the Italian was very quaint. Elias and Joachim also relieved the naif [sic] history.’ Note: Elias - sometimes taken to be a variant on Elijah - is not mentioned in the other works of Joyce, but A. E. Waite calls Elias a symbolic figurehead for a new school of alchemy and associates him with “Elias Artista” to whom Paracelsus refers in his Book Concerning the Tinctures of Philosophers. (See Alchemy Lab - online.) If he is not a real philosopher, it is very likely that his name may be nothing more than an artful exploitation of the identity of Elias Bouhéreau, the first Librarian at Library in question who was a Huguenot refugee appointed by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh in 1701 and the contributor of a valued collection of French Calvinist bibles. [BS 25.01.2013.]

[ top ]

A Portrait [... &c.] (1916) - 5: Stephen recites the line, ‘Brightness falls from the air / He had not even remembered rightly Nash’s line.’ (Portrait, Chap. V., corr. edn. 1967, p.238) - having a little earlier misremembered it as ‘Darkness falls from the air’ (ibid., p.237). The same line, with others surrounding it, is quoted by W. B. Yeats in his essay ‘What is ‘Popular Poetry’” (1901; in Ideas of Good and Evil, 1903) - where he writes: “[...] go down into the street with some thought whose bare meaning must be plain to everybody; take with you Ben Jonson’s “Beauty like sorrow dwelleth everywhere,” and find out how utterly its enchantment depends on an association of beauty with sorrow which written tradition has from the unwritten, which had it in its turn from ancient religion; or ake with yo these lines in whose bare meaning also there is nothing to stumble over, and find out what men lose who are not in love with Helen - “Brightness falls from the air, / Queens have died young and fair, / Dust hath clos’d Helen’s eye.” I pick my examples at random, for I am writing where I have no books to turn the pages of [...].’. (Rep. in Essays and Introductions, 1961, p.3-12; p.7; also in Richard Finneran, ed., The Yeats Reader [...], NY: Scribner 1997pp.345-51; p.348.) Note that Joyce makes similar use of Ben Jonsonœs “I was not wearier where I lay in A Portrait (Chap. V, corr. edn. 1967, p.178.)

Epiphany 30: ‘The spell of arms .. the wings of their ... youth.’ [AP, 256]: A. Walton Litz calls it ‘a this somewhat overwritten adolescent cry’ in its original form (Epiphany 30) which serves as ‘a true manifestation of Stephen’s romantic ambitions, sustained and strengthened by the irony that surrounds it’ in its ultimate location in A Portrait [Corr. Edn., ed. Robert Scholes, p.257].

(See Ellmann, et. al., eds., Poems and Shorter Writing of James Joyce, Oxford 1991, p.190; also Litz, ibid., p.159; and cf. shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth” in Stephen Hero - as attached.)

[ top ]

A Portrait [... &c.] (1916) - 6: Stephen is conversing with Cranly:

-You wish me to say, Stephen answered, that the rights of property are provisional, and that in certain circumstances it is not unlawful to rob. [...] Apply to the jesuit theologian, Juan Mariana de Talavera, who will also explain to you in what circumstances you may lawfully Kill your King and whether you had better hand him his poison in a goblet or smear it for him upon his robe or his saddlebow. Ask me rather would I suffer others to rob me, or if they did, would I call down upon them what I believe is called the chastisement of the secular arm?
 — And would you?
 — I think, Stephen said, it would pain me as much to do so as to be robbed. [AP, Def. Edn., 1968, p.250.]

Note: Don Gifford annotates Stephen’s ecclesiastical terminology in this fashion: ‘The verbal formula with which the Inquisition (the Holy Office) turned convicted heretics over to the state for execution. [...].’ (See Gifford, Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, California UP 1982, p.279.) He does not however gives any references to a text or texts in which the phrase was actually used. It actually occurs in much the same form in the Calendar of the Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1216-1225 (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office 1901) where it is said that sheriffs and bailiffs throughout England are been given have a mandate to ‘chastise by the secular arm [my italics] any Carmelite friar deviating from justice or attempting anything against the statute of his order [...].’ (p.1264-65). [BS]

[Note: The victims of the Inquisition (or the Holy Office) were thus delivered to the civil power because the Church had no authority to condemn to death or conduct an execution.]

The Holy Office is given in Italian in Berti’s Vita di Giordano Bruno as “Sant’ Uffizio dell’ Inquisizione (p.49 - online).

Here it is apparent that the terminology is not reserved for cases of heresy and nor is it the exclusive property of the Inquisition. As in all Rolls volumes - English or Irish - the text given here is a paraphrase made by a modern editor holding as closely as possible to the original. In this case the editor appear to be J. G. Black of the Public Records Office, ‘with some help from C. T. Martin’. The Preface, divulging this information, is signed by H. C. Maxwell Lyte (p.viii). [See Calendar .. Henry III - online].

Princeton University Library hold a volume entitled Bibliotheca Patrum - A New History of Ecclesiasticall Writers containing an account of the Old and New Testament; of the Lives and Writings of the Primitive Fathers; an Abridgement and Catalogue of their Works; Their Various Editions, and Censures Determining the Genuine and Spurious. Together with Judgement upon their Style and Doctrines; also A Compendious History of the Councils; with Chronological Tables of the Whole, Written in French by Lewis Ellies du Pin, Doctor of the Sorbon, and Regius Professor of Divinity in Paris. Volume the First, Containing the Authors that Flourished in the Three First Ages of the Church; the Second Edition, Corrected (London; Printed for Abell Swalle and Tim. Childe, at the Unicorn at the West-end of St. Paul’s Church-Yard, MDCXIII. [Available online.]

See also Ellies du Pin, A Compleat History of the Canon and Writers of the books of the Old and New Testament: by way of dissertation with useful remarks on that subject, Vol. 1: On the Books of the Old Testament, by L. E. Du Pin, Doctor of the Sorbonne [...] [Vol. 1 of MDCXCIX [1699] Printed for by H. Rhodes [... &c.] available at Google Books - online.]

See copy listed on catalogue of Marsh’s Library (where Joyce is known to have read, if not this title) - as given online.]

Note: First English Edition trans. by W. W., 13 Vols., 1692-99 - followed by twenty-five further English editions [see Di Mauro, infra]. This work is edited by William Wotton, being a translation of Nouvelle bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques, in 58 vols. (1686-]1719]), by Louis Ellies du Pin (1657-1719). .

William Wotton: ‘... as long as he never suffers the Sorbonist to break in upon the Historian, his Writings carry an Authority with them, greater than they could have done had they come from a Protestant. Truth, I confess, is the same whoever speaks it; yet all Men grant, that it carries a more Convictive Force along with it, when extorted from those whose Ingenuity over-bears their Interest, than when it freely comes from men that advance their Cause by telling it.’ (Quoted as epigraph in Dennis R. Di Mauro, “Gallican Vision, Anglican Perspectives: The Reception of the Works of Louis Ellies Du Pin into England” (Washington: CUA 2012), p.iii [see infra].

Note: Du Pin’s Bibliothèque was put on the Roman Catholic Index after his death (10 May 1757). See Open Library notice on 1st Edition - online.)

See also Dennis R. Di Mauro, “Gallican Vision, Anglican Perspectives: The Reception of the Works of Louis Ellies Du Pin into England” [PhD diss.] (Washington: Catholic University of America 2012) [available as pdf - online.].

Extracts:

[“Two letters atributed to Pope Pontian”:] In the Second Epistle of the same Pope, we read, 1. That disobedient Clerks should be delivered up to the Secular Arm (p.178.)

[“Of the Councils held at Antioch of the Fourth Century” - Canons of the Council of Antioch:] The 5th is, That if a Priest, despising his bishop, separate from the Church, and make private Meetings, and will not obey his Bishop, when he shall be admonished and called back again two or three times, he can no longer hope to in his Office, and if he continue to trouble the Church, the Aid of the Secular Arm may be implor’d to chastise this seditious Person. (p.257.) [Long s [f] for s modernised here.] (Available at Google Books - online.)

In more modern times the phrase was used facetiously by English writers, as in a review-article on works about Dr. Parr in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XXIX (1831) - viz., ‘He loved no high or aerial standards in morals or in religion. Visionaries, who encourgaged such notions, he viewed (to express it by a learned word) as [Greek] and as fit subjects for chastisement of the secular arm’ (p.68). This is hardly a Joycean source and it must have been current in more earnest ecclesiastical contexts known to him as a pupil or a student. In her account of the last days of Giordano Bruno in The Life of Bruno, the Nolan (London: Trübner 1887), I[sabella] Frith writes that the philosopher was ‘handed over to the secular arm’ by the Holy Office (p.300) while, in his corresponding narrative in Giordano Bruno (London: Macmillan 1903), J. Lewis McIntyre uses the more prosaic phrase ‘secular authorities’ to describe that transaction. (pp.92, 94). Joyce is most likely to have met the phrase first in the course of his Jesuit education and to have recognised its thrust in the last mentioned works. [BS 29.01.2013.]

[ top ]

A Portrait [... &c.] (1916) - The reality of experience: Stanislaus Joyce employs just this phrase in recollecting a conversation with his brother where the two are discussing the relation between reality and the events of Joyce’s play A Brilliant Career. Stanislaus writes that he ‘thought the weakness of the play was principally that the crisis was a plastic creation of the imagination with no basis in actual experience’, to which Joyce counters, ‘How can you know [...] whether Ibsen’s scenes have any basis in actual experience, or not?’, leading Stanislaus to say in reply: ‘[...] I fancy the reality of experience has a way of making itself felt.’ (MBK, p.130.) Cf. A Portrait: ‘I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience [...]’ (AP, Corr. Edn., 1964, p.257.)

Testimony of the Rocks: ‘A day of dappled seaborne clouds’, the phrase that Stephen mulls over in A Portrait [AP170], comes from Hugh Miller’s The Testimony of the Rocks (1869), p. 237. (See C. George Sandelescu, The Joycean Monologue: A Study of Character and Monologue in Joyce’s Ulysses against the Background of Literary Tradition (Wake Newslitter: Colchester 1979); and Do. [rev. edn.] (Bucharest: Editura Pentru Literatură Contemporană 2010 - available online). See further under Notes > Literary Figures > Hugh G Miller - infra.]

Note : See also the reference to Testimony of the Rocks it as the work of an ‘evangelical Scottish geologist’ in Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (California UP 1971). Query: find provenance of this source identification in Joyce scholarship.

A Portrait [... &c.] (1916) - Contrabit orator: ‘He had learnt what little he knew of the laws of Latin verse from a ragged book written by a Portuguese priest. / Contrahit orator, variant in carmine vates.’ (Portrait, 179.) The sentences are quoted by Fritz Senn in a Facebook message of 13.09.2018 with the attached image of the original pedagogic text:

Posted on Facebook by Fritz Senn (13.09.2018.)

Viz., Manuel Alvarez [Emanuel Alvarus, 1526-83], Latin Prosody ...

[ top ]

Giacomo Joyce [written 1911], partially quoted in Ellmann’s 1959 biography and published in full, ed. Richard Ellmann, in January 1968; the 2nd edn., May 1968, contains revised and reset preface identifying Amalia Popper as the female student who inspired it, already identified as such in the biography. Ellmann considerd the 16 page MS a novel (Giacomo Joyce, Intro., p.xxv), but Hans Walter Gabler suggests that it is in a real sense a second series of Joyce’s Epiphanies (see Garland Archive 2, p.xxx).

According to Ellmann, the events and moods collocated in Giacomo Joyce took place between late 1911 and the middle of 1914; Gabler argues that Joyce probably began writing in 1913 or 1914, and added to it in the next few years (Archiv., idem). Once he had decided not to publish it separately, he incorporated phrases and passages into Chap. 5 of A Portrait and in Ulysses. He mentioned it implicitly to Pound when he answered his query about publishable writings with an additional note about ‘some prose sketches, as I told you, but they are locked up in my desk in Trieste’ (Letters, I: 101).

Note that Joyce recorded Signorita Popper’s father’s cautionary remark to him, ‘Mia figlia ha una grandissima ammirizione per il suo maestro inglese’, noting its mixture of ‘courtesy, benevolence, curiosity, trust, suspicion, naturalness, helplessness of age, confidence, frankness, urbanity, sincerity, warning, pathos, compassion: a perfect blend.’ (Letter to Frank Budgen.)

[ top ]

Exiles (1918): Richard Rowan and his wife Bertha - returned from Italy; Robert Hand (in love with Bertha), and his cousin Beatrice; Archie, son of Richard and Bertha, and Brigid, the maid; called by Joyce a play in ‘three cat and mouse acts’ (Exiles, Granada Publ. 1979, Notes, p.155). The play reflects Joyce’s jealousy of Nora triggered by Vincent Cosgrave who told her that Joyce was mad and that his love wouldn’t last (Ellmann, James Joyce, 1966, p.144), and whom intimated to Joyce that he had had an affair with Nora. Robert and Richard have previously shared a cottage in Ranelagh as young men; both loved Bertha. Robert and Beatrice briefly engaged after Richard’s departure. Also reflects Joyce’s attempt to thrust Nora into a relationship with Roberto Prezioso (‘the sun shines for you’), a Venetian journalist whom they knew in Trieste and whom Joyce ultimately subjected to public humiliation, reducing him to tears. Joyce wrote: ‘Everyman is Robert ... and would like to be Richard’ (Exiles, 1979, Notes, p.148.) Further: ‘The bodily possession of Bertha by Robert, repeated often, would certainly bring into almost carnal contact the two men. Do they desire this. To be united, that is carnally through the person and body of Bertha as they cannot, without dissatisfaction and degradation - be united carnally man to man as man to woman?’ (Ibid., p.156.) See also remarks of An Saddlemyer, in Commentary, supra.

Exiles (1918) - Cat. of Univ. of Buffalo “Bloomsday” Exhibition, 8 June - 22 Sept. 2004): Joyce made copious notes on Exiles as he was writing it. These are unlike the extant notes for his later works. His Exiles notes are more like a commentary on his play. Some of the material in them seems to directly feed into Ulysses. For example, he discusses the 19th Century French writer Paul de Kock, who is mentioned in the novel. More significantly, Joyce’s characterizations of Bertha here clearly anticipate Molly Bloom. A transcription of these notes was first published in 1951 along with the play.

Exiles (notice in Wikipedia) Exiles was forced into publication [by Grant Richards] before production despite the best efforts of both Joyce and Ezra Pound to whom Joyce had shown the transcript in the fall of 1915. The production eventually premiered in Munich to largely unfavorable reviews. Harold Pinter’s staging of Exiles in 1970 received greater praise, with many critics claiming that the play had been &147;revived.”[6] A 2006 production directed by James Macdonald at the Natio’s Exiles’, in NY Times (21 July 1946); Padraic Colum, Introduction to Exiles (London: Panther Books 1979), pp 7-8; Jonathan Goodwin, ‘Exiles in the Grey Area’, in James Joyce Quarterly, 51, 2-3 (2014); John MacNicholas, ‘The Stage History of Exiles’, in James Joyce Quarterly, 19, 1 (January 1981), pp.9-26; Michael Billington, ‘Exiles’, in The Guardian (3 August 2006). [See digital copy as Exiles: A Play in Three Acts - available at Gutenberg Project online; accessed 20.09.2021.]

Exiles: Commenced in 1913 and finished in April 1915, it was rejected by Yeats on behalf of the Abbey Theatre (Dublin) and then by the Stage Society in London [and several other companies] but published by Grant Richards in 1918 and first produced unsuccessfully in Munich in 1919. A production by Harold Pinter at the Mermaid Theatre (London) in 1970 resulted in a re-estimation of its theatrical value though it always remains more interesting as a Joycean document rather than a compelling play in its own right. The play is set in Dublin in 1912 and the setting named as Merrion and Ranelagh, two suburbs of Dublin. Joyce called it ‘a cat-and-mouse play in three acts’ [BS].

Exiles according to Joyce: ‘I began writng Exiles in the spring of 1914 on notes and began to draft it in August 1914. I brought the MS with here [to Zurich] from Austria in July 1915 and finished the play here in September 1915.' (Letters of 1917, Vol. I:104-50]. See John MacNicholas, James Joyce’s `Exiles': A Textual Companion (Garland 1979). Further, MacNicholas argues that Joyce wrote most of the notes while composing acts II and III but that he had probably already drafted parts of ACt. I. He seems to have written Act I without notes and in a very fluent manner, working out the drama’s contents as he drafted and revised. He considered the play finished in April 1915. He revised and reinscribed Act I while the play was being typed in July 1915. ( Michael Groden, ‘A Textual Publishing History’, in A Companion to Joyce Studies, ed. Zack Bowen, & James Carens, Garland 1984, pp.89-90.) Bibl., MacNicholas, ‘Joyce’s Exiles: The Argument for Doubt,’ in JJQ, 11 (1973) pp.33-40; and MacNicholas, ‘The Stage History of Exiles,’ in JJQ 19 (1981) 9-26. See also Simon Evans, The Penetration of Exiles (q.d.).

Before Sunrise [trans. of Michael Hauptmann, Vor Sonnenaufgang: For Joyce’s MS, see The James Joyce Archive, Vol. 2: Notes, Criticism, Translations & Miscellaneous Writings, ed. Hans Walter Gabler & Michael Groden (NY: Garland 1979), pp.332-530) - ref. in Ann Saddlemyer, ‘James Joyce and the Irish Dramatic Movement’, in James Joyce: A Joyce International Perspective, ed. Sheil Bushrui & Benstock (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1982, p.192, & n.16 [p.208].

[ top ]

Ulysses (1922)

‘I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.’ (See Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of "Ulysses" (1934), Chap. IV.

Planning Ulysses: Having previously indicated that he had conceived a story about Mr. Hunter - the travelling salesman who rescued him in a fracas in Nighttown [?] - and later: ‘Ulysses never got any forrader [sic for further] than the title’ [6 Jan. 1907; Letters, II, p.209] — before going on: ‘I have other titles, e.g., The Last Supper, The Dead, The Street, Vengeance, At Bay: all of which stories I could write if circumstances were favourable.’

Letters to Stanislaus: ‘I have a new story in my head. It deals with Mr. Hunter.’ (30 Sept. 1906; Letters, 1966, Vol. II, p.168; Sel. Letters, Faber 1975, p.112.) Further: ‘I thought of beginning my story Ulysses: but I have too many cares at present’; also ‘How do you like the name for the story about Hunter?’ (Both 13 Nov. 1906; Letters, II, pp.190, 193.) On 10 Nov. 1907, Stanislaus tells his diary that his brother would expand the story into a ‘short book’ which he now envisaged as a novel and would be a Dublin Peer Gynt, 10 Nov. 1907 (See Ellmann, James Joyce [1959], 1965, p.274.) In December he asked Stanislaus to ‘[w]rite to [him] about Mr. Hunter.’ (3 Dec. 1906; Letters, II, p.198) but by January 1907, he was writing that ‘Ulysses never got any forrader [sic for forward] than the title.’ (6 Jan. 1907; Letters, II, p.209.) [See also under Quotations > On the Works > Ulysses - supra.]

Joyce read Charles Lamb’s The Adventures of Ulysses (1803) as part of the Intermediate Syllabus (Preparatory level).

The date of Ulysses - Bloomsday, in effect, is first mentioned in the novel in the “Wandering Rocks” episode: ‘16 June 1904.’ (U10.376).

Bloomsday 1: When Joyce attended a ballet with Nora at invitation of Gilbert [Vivian] Seldes, editor of The Dial), on 16 June [1924] - he raged at her manifest ignorance of the significance of the day: ‘this is the day on which that book is supposed to have taken place.’ (See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, rev. edn. 1982, pp.525-26.) Geldes, who was American and Harvard-educated, worked in London during World War I and edited The Dial on his return. He published Eliot’s “The Wasteland” in that journal and wrote a long, glowing review of Ulysses in The Nation in 1922. He travelled to Europe in Jan. 1923 and returned to New York in 1924. There is a Wikipedia entry which mentions only the Nation review.

Reviewing Ulysses: In the “Shem the Penman” chapter of Finnegans Wake, Joyce seems to speak of Ulysses from the aggressive standpoint of Shaun as his ‘usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles’ [FW 179] and an ‘epical forged cheque drawn on the public for his own private profit’ [FW 181]. The latter phrase possibly echoes the penultimate sentence in A Portrait: ‘I go for the millionth time to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.’ (AP257.)

Ulysses of Homer - Joyce said to George Borach: ‘The most beautiful, all-embracing theme is that of the Odyssey. It is greater, more human, than Hamlet, Don Quixote, Dante, Faust. The rejuvenation of old Faust has an unpleasant effect upon me. Dante tires one quickly; it is as if one were to look at the sun. The most beautiful, most human traits are contained in the Odyssey [..]. I find the subject of Odysseus the most human in world literature.’ (‘Conversations with James Joyce’, in Portraits of the Artist in Exile, ed. Willard Potts, Washington UP 1979, pp.69-70; quoted in James Pribek, ‘Joyce and Newman’, in Voices on Joyce, ed. Anne Fogarty & Fran O’Rourke, UCD Press 2015, p.194.)

Further: ‘Ulysses didn’t want to go off to Troy: he knew that the official reason for the war, the dessemination of the culture of Hellas, was only a pretext for the Greek merchants, who were seeking new markets.’ (Joye to Borach; quoted in Michael Seidel, Epic Geography: James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, Princeton UP 1976, p.32.

Further: ‘Ulysses is son to Laertes, but he is father to Telemachus, husband to Penelope, lover of Calypso, companion in arms of the Greek warriors around Troy and King of Ithaca. He was subjected to many trials, but with wisdom and courage came through them all. Don’t forget that he was a war dodger who tried to evade military service by simulating madness. He might never have taken up arms and gone to Troy, but the Greek recruiting sergeant was too clever for him and, while he was ploughing the sands, placed young Telemachus in front of his plough. But once at the war the conscientious objector became a jusqu’auboutist. When the others wanted to abandon the siege he insisted on staying till Troy should fall.’ (Joyce to Borach,] quoted Dan Chiasson, ‘Ulysses and the Moral Right to Pleasure‘, in The New Yorker, 16 June 2014 - online; accessed 13.05.2017.)

See also introductory sentence: ‘For Joyce, Homer’s hero was the only complete person in literature. Hamlet was a human being, Joyce said, but he was ‘son only’

‘Why was I always returning to this theme ..? I find the subject of Ulysses the most human in world literature. Ulysses didn’t want to go off to Troy; he knew that the official reason for the war, the dissemination of the culture of Hellas, was only a pretext for the Greek merchants, who were seeking new markets. When the recruiting officers arrived, he happened to be plowing. He pretended to be mad. Thereupon they placed his little two-year-old son in the furrow. Observe the beauty of the motifs: the only man in Hellas who is against the war, and the father. Before Troy the heroes shed their lifeblood in vain. They want to raise the siege. Ulysses opposes the idea. [He thinks up] the stratagem of the wooden horse. After Troy there is no further talk of Achilles, Menelaus, Agamemnon. Only one man is not done with; his heroic career has hardly begun: Ulysses. (Joyce to George Borach, quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce [1959] rev. edn. 1982.)

‘It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life)... It is also a kind of encyclopedia. My intention is not only to render the myth sub specie temporis nostri. It is also to allow each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the somatic scheme of the whole) to condition and even to create its own technique. (Letter to Carlo Linati, 21 Sept. 1920; Letters, I, p.146-47 [err. Harriet Shaw Weaver].)

‘My head is full of pebbles and rubbish and broken matches and bits of glass picked up ‘most everywhere. The task I set myself technically in writing a book from eighteen different points of view and in as many styles, all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen, that and the nature of the legend chosen would be enough to upset anyone’s mental balance.’ (Letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 24 June 1921; Selected Letters, 1975, p.284; see further under Extracts from Letters [Quotes 5] - as infra.)

[ “Notes on James Joyce’s Ulysses” by Gerry Carlin & Mair Evans - online; accessed 13.05.2017. ]

[ top ]

Ulysses - by chapter-by-chapter

Ulysses - Random House Edition (1934) - a summary of remarks on Random House edition [Exhibition Catalogue - SUNY, Buffalo]: Whereas Bennett Cerf assumed his typesetters were working from a copy of Ulysses in the Shakespeare and Company 1927 printing, they were in fact using the pirated edition published by Samuel Roth in New York in 1929, being a forgery based on that edition - so closely, in fact, that it still fools booksellers. In consequence, Random House edition carried the numerous errors originating with Roth’s edition. For the 1940 Modern Library imprint, Cerf had the 1934 edition carefully proof-checked against one of the Odyssey Press printings to remove the worst mistakes but with only partial success. The 1949 Random House reprint edition reverted back to the uncorrected 1934 text reinstituting the errors from the illegal Roth edition in the American trade edition. (See Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo, ‘A Centennial Bloomsday at Buffalo’ [2004; text by Sam Slote] > James Joyce, Ulysses, 1934 (first authorized American edition) [Item 71, Case IX] - online; accessed 04.07.2014.)

“Telemachus”: the first chapter of Ulysses ends with a quotation from the liturgy for the dead: Liliata rutilantium. / Turma circumdet. / Iubilantium te virginum - being the Ordo Commendationis Animae [Recommendation of a Departing Soul] and meaning: ‘May the crowd of joyful confessors encompass thee; may the choir of blessed virgins go before thee.’

Joyce / Budgen: ‘I just got a letter asking me why I don’t give Bloom a rest. The writer of it wants more Stephen. But Stephen no longer interests me to the same extent. He has a shape that can’t be changed. Bloom should grow upon the reader through the day. His reactions to things displayed in his unspoken thoughts should be not brilliant but singular, organic, Bloomesque.’ (Joyce quoted by Frank Budgen, in James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, 1960 [4th printng 1967], p.105.)

Further: Joyce tells Budgen that the reader ‘will know early in the book that Stephen Dedalus’s mind is full like everyone else’s of borrowed words.’ [Letters, Vol. I, 1957; 1966, p.263.]

Note: When Joyce visited the sculptor August Suter, who was working on a statue of Karl Spitteler taking the figure of Prometheus in his poem “Prometheus and Epimetheus” as model, Joyce asked, “What sort of a mnument would you make for me”, and when Suter replied, “I suppose - Mr. Bloom”, Joyce said gravely: “Mais non! Mais non!” (See Richard Ellmann, James Joyce [rev. edn.] 1982, p.526.)

“Proteus”: ‘signature of all things I am here to read’: Stephen’s phrase reflects the title of Jacob Boehme’s work, The Signature of All Things, a copy of which Joyce held in his [Trieste] library (see Ellmann, James Joyce, 1959, p.794.) In Dublin’s Joyce (1955), Hugh Kenner argues that “signature” is a reference to the role of signate matter in St. Thomas’s hylomorphism which he identifies as the underlying epistemology of the Joycean epiphany and the rule of Joycean style. (See also Weldon Thorton, Allusions in Ulysses, N. Carolina UP 1961, 1968, p.41 - where both of these are cited.

See Antoine Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism, translated by Christine Rhone (SUNY Press 2000). [Originally published as Acces de l’esoterisme occidental, Tome II, 1996 Editions Gallimard]: ‘With Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) the theosophical current acquired its definitive characteristics, the Boehmean work representing something like the nucleus of that which constitutes the classical theosophical corpus. One day in 1610, while contemplating a pewter vase, Boehme had his first “vision”, a sudden revelation, through which he gained at one stroke an intuitive awareness of the networks of correspondence and of the implications between the different worlds or levels of reality. He then wrote his first book, Aurora, which I am inclined to see as the definitive birth of the theosophical current strictly speaking. This book was followed by many others (all written in German), and in turn, by those which numerous other spiritual thinkers wrote in the wake of Boehme’s thought.’ (p.7; in “the Birth of the First Golden Age of Theosophy ... &c. / Genesis and Appearance”.)

“Proteus”: Don Gifford, annotating the same phrase [‘signature of all things I am here to read’] quotes Boehme in The Clavis (p.19), where he writes that Mercury, ‘the word or speaking’, means ‘the motion and separation of nature, by which everything is figured with its own signature’, and further quotes from his Signatura Rerum, Chap. 1, beginning: ‘All whatever is spoken, written or taught of God, without the knowledge of the signature is dumb and void of understanding; for it proceeds only from an historical conjecture, form the mouth of another, wherein the spirit without knowledge is dumb; but if the spirit opens to him the signature, then he understandss the speech of another; and further, he understands how the spirit has manifested and revealed itself (out of the essence through the principle) in the sound of his voice.’ (Gifford and Seidman, Ulysses Annotated, California UP 1988, p.45.)

“Proteus” - George Berkeley: The allusion to Berkeley’s Idealism in the “Proteus” episode is concentrated in the phrase ‘coloured signs’, which Gifford ascribes to a passage in An Essay Towards a the New Theory of Vision (1709) to the effect that we do not ‘see’ objects as such; rather we see only coloured signs and then take these to be objects. (See Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated, California UP 1988, p.44-45.)

Note: the section from the Theory of Vision which Gifford actually quotes (i.e., Sect. 46) deals with the different ‘ideas intromitted by each sense’ in response to a passing carriage, and from which we infer a carriage having seen them associated before, but does not actually involve the phrase ‘coloured signs’ at all. (See Gifford, op. cit., 1988, p.45.)

Note: There is no entry on ‘coloured signs’ in Weldon Thornton’s Allusions in Ulysses (1961, 1968) - though Berkeley is the subject of a note in the course of which he writes that “Stephen’s statement about the veil and the shovel hat means that Berkeley found reality inside his head”. (Allusions, p.63.)

[ top ]

Nacheinander & Nebeneinander

Don Gifford: In Ulysses Annotated (California UP 1984), Gifford expounds nacheinander and nebeneinander in the context of Lessing’s Laocoon (1766) where that German playwright-philosopher sets out a distinction between the visual arts and poetry in which the former deals in actions which occur one after another in time-sequence (nacheinander) and the treats of an some object or event in such a way that ‘its different parts [are seen to be] developing in co-existence (nebeneinander) in space’ (See Gifford, op. cit., pp.45, 63).

Declan Kiberd, Ulysses and Us (London: Faber 2009): ‘The danger of thinking, of uninterrupted interior monologue, is the risk run by pure theory unchastened by [67] any sense of fact: that one can wade too far out into the waters of private reverie, either sinking in the shoals or being overwhelmed by the incoming tide. Stephen fears that if there is no God, then he may drown in the spray of phenomena: one damned thing after another. As early as 1899, the Dutch critic Ernst de Peerdt had said that the visual field was not a timeless unity but a sequence of different perceptions: “it is precisely those moments that we put together as a simultaneity, a Nebeinander [sic], which constitutes a sequence, a Nacheinander, in the seeing of an object.” The figure of a lost soul gazing out to sea is a sign of the melancholic intellectual of lare Romantic art. “My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm,” said the painter Edvard Munch, “jumping from stone to stone.”
[...]
One of the reasons for his [Stephen’s] immobilisation in this episode is that he can never act without first indulging in a history of the narrative underlying any possible action. (In this at least, he has something in common with his author, who cannot write Ulysses without first reprocessing the classical texts of the past.) ’ (Kiberd, op. cit., p.67; citing de Peert’s analysis as givne in Stephen Kern in The Culture of Time and Space, Harvard UP 2003, p.22.)

Kiberd reprises this idea in a different vein - speaking of the similarity between the temporal scheme of Ulysses and the cinematic technique known as montage: ‘The brief vignettes of this episode “Wandering Rocks”] have been described as filmic and so they are, like those early movie “shorts” which show a coin being thrown or people taking a book in hand, just to demonstrate how movement rather than mere stillness can now be rendered on camera. But the shards are also like the fragmented sections of a recovered bardic poem; it’s not at all clear just whatorder they might be placed in (a problem also with elements of the eighth and ninth Books of Moses). While offering to fill out the wider social panorama, “Wandering Rocks” as a collection of shards which do not amount to a linked narrative is a paradigm of the refusal of Ulysses to become a novel. Each fragment has limited levels of meaning but each is pushed away from the structure of sequential plot towards a form of simultaneity. No longer is it just the previous twelve or twenty-four hours which weigh on the minds of the characters. Now there is a further condensation down to the “quiet hour” between three and four o’clock, on the dailiest day in a sun-drenched city of Edwardian paralysis. What is celebrated, amid that paralysis, is the random, uncontrollable circulation of bodies through the streets.’ (Kiberd, op. cit., 2007, p.167.) [BS - Sep. 2024.]

[Note: the commentary above invites comparison with both Luke Gibbons more express comparison of the episode with the cinematic theory of Sergei Eisenstein known as montage - as infra - but also with the conceptsb of Nebeneinander and Nacheinander which Stephen Dedalus has learnt from Lessing or an intermediary author, and recalls in the , “Proteus” episode of Ulysses - as recounted by Joep Leerssen shows - infra.]

Joep Leersson - Lessing’s terms which Stephen employs in the “Proteus” episode of Ulysses are the subject of extended commentary in Joep Leerssen’s Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representation of Nineteenth-Century Ireland Cork UP/Field Day 1996, commencing with the Introduction: ‘Another way of bringing the complex Irish relation of selfhood and sameness to light is to apply to textual representations a distinction which was first made by Lessing in his Laokoon (1766), and which was echoed by Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses: the one between Nebeneinander to Nacheinander, consecutiveness and contiguousness. Artistlc representations can concentrate either on the spatial arrangement of objects into a spectacle, or the temporal concatenation of events into a narrative. Interestingly, as we shall see, one way of unifying history proved to be to rearrange its consecutive events from a narrative order into a spectacle, a conspectus of juxtaposed “freeze-frame” images.’ (Leerssen, op. cit., 1996, p.7.)

Leerssen returns to the distinction when discussing the tendency towards melodramatic tableau in Lady Morgan’s The Wild Irish Girl where spectacle is employed in place of narrative action (usually intended by explanatory notes on the antiquarian points concerning Gaelic society involved: ‘Spectacle, by its very nature, must punctuate and suspend narrative: spectacle is the presentaton of a discrete situtation rather than the setting forth of a train of events. Spectacle represents objects in space as opposed to narrative which represents object is time: the oppositioin was made famous by Lessing’s Laokoon, which opposed Nebeneinander to Nacheinander, the plastic principle of spatial arrangement as opposed to the dramatic principle of temporal-evenemential [sic] arranging.’ (Leerssen, op. cit., 1996, p.66.)

He again compares Lessing’s Nebeneinander and Nacheinander distinction to the antiquity/history distinction inaugurated by Francis Bacon under the form of historia and antiquitates - elucidating the grammatical sense of the German terms as a distinction ‘between the plastic and the dramatic arts in terms of the use that is made of space and time: narrative arranges its constiution elements in time, and forms a succession (what Lessing called a Nacheinander or “one-after-the other”) where spectacle arranges its constituent elements in space and forms a Nebeneinander (‘one-next-to-the-other’; cf. above p.7 [i.e., in the Introduction, quoted above].’ Leerssen goes on to suggest that the resort of Irish antiquarians to their anochronistic method of description of historical monuments tending to support the theory of a Phoenician invasiion of Ireland was due to the absence of a ‘realiable historical information [which] could plausibly be contextualised’, with the result that -[t]he main framework of interpretation was based on the Bible and the semi-fabulous references in ancient geographers like Strabo and Plinius.’ (p.67.)

[Cont.:] ‘As a result, the antiquarian analysis of the ancient past turned around in speculative circles trying to explain national origins in terms of the [68] migrations of the tribes descended from the sons of Noah or the nations vaguely described as Celtae, Scythae, or Hyperboreans by Roman and Greek sources. [...] Monuments and museums afforded a possibility of witnessing, in a public and accessible place, the past in its immediate “hands-on” presence, redeemed from its transience and inaccesibility [sic] in an unretrieved preterite. present for us to behold as spectacle and contemporary Nebeneinander; a psychological need which previously had actuated the antiquarians was thus satisfied. [...] That is the antiquarian impulse as we have observed in Lady Morgan; it is also to be observed in the novels of Walter Scott.’ (Leerssen, op. cit., 1996, p.69.)

Leerssen specifically refers to the interpretation of the renowned Irish round towers in terms of this distinction: ‘Round Towers, per se, in their picturesque presence, transfigured the Nacheinander of past history into Nebeneinander and lent substance to the transitoriness of history. Not for nothing did Round Towers figure prominently and ubiquitously among the symbols representating Ireland, alongside shamrocks, harps, [...] Round Towers were the most durable the most obvious icon of the existence and persistence of a specifically Irish presence.’ (Op. cit., 1996, p.110.)

Leerssen returns to Lessing’s famous distinction in speaking of Thomas Davis’s “Hints for Irish Historical Paintings” [Nation essay] of which he writes: ‘This essay by Davis, above any other text, exemplifies the substitution of Nacheinander by Nebeneinahder, turning a succession of disparate events into a spectacle of juxtaposed objects.’ (Op. cit., 1996, p.149.)

Again, in quoting James Will’s The Irish Nation: Its History of Its Biography ([1845]), Leerssen writes adds the following to the footnote reference for the passage in question: ‘Luke Gibbons comment on this passage that its disjointed, oneiric sense of history corresponds to Eisenstein’s theory of filmic montage (the cross-cutting on diverse images), and so foreshadows the fragmented construction of [James Joyce’s] Ulysses’ - and refers further to his own comments on “Wandering Rocks” chapter in that novel which he related to Stephen’s thoughts [in “Proteus”] on Lessing’s Nebeneinander and Nacheinander. (See further under James Wills [q.v.] - as infra.)

See also Leerssen’ Conclusion in which the returns to the Nebeneinander/Nacheinander in his discussion of ‘the attempt to create ideal Irelands [which] often involve the substitution of the historical Nacheinander by a spectacular Nebeneinander.’ (Op. cit., 1996, p.226. Note further remarks on Joyce: ‘In the case of Dublin, the work of James Joyce offers an interesting example of how one and hte same place can be seen as peripheral at one moment, central at the next [...’ (227-31ff; p.227):

‘There can be no stronger contrast than between the stagnant Dublin of  Dubliners and the vibrant Dublin of Ulysses. Joyce himself appears to revel in the depiction of a Newtonian Dublin, where time and space coexist in a physical, dynamic relationship, dominated by movement and crisscrossing trajectories through space and time, where space divided by time equals speed. This Dublin he constructed with the quintessential organizing tools of space and time: a map and a watch, dovetailing Nebeneinander and Nacheinander in what is fittingly the book’s central episode: The Wandering Rocks. [sic; quoting Frank Budgeon on Joyce’s use of a map and time measures in the chapter.] That episode, set squarely in the middle of Bloomsday and of Ulysses, opens with, precisely, a Jesuit, the superior, the very reverend John Conmee, S.J., resetting his smooth watch - one of the central images in the entire work. If the description of Dublin is fragmented and cubistically broken up (Luke Gibbons speaks quite rightly of a ‘montage’ technique ), the effect is not so much to represent an alienated, fractured state of affairs or state of mind, but rather to celebrate the multifarious and complex ways in which the various elements of this Newtonian universe interact, cross paths, gravitate, attract and repel each other.’ (Ibid., p.228.)

Further: ‘The great originality of Joyce is that he dared to describe an Irish setting in terms of its normalcy - for that was precisely the quality which all earlier authors, whatever their persuasions and sympathies, had denied Ireland. It took, then, one of the greatest innovatory geniuses in European literature to break through the mould of the ingrained discourse of marginality and allochrony which had dominated and suffused the representation of Ireland. In retrospect, that fact makes clear how very protean and all-pervasive that mode of imagining Ireland had been in the nineteenth century; and even today its abiding influence remains noticeable. The acknowledgement of normalcy is still very rare in Ireland-related discourse.’ (p.231.) [For full-text copy on Leerssen’s ‘Conclusion’ - see attached.]

Note: The day on which Ulysses is set, ‘16 June 1904’ - that is, Bloomsday in Joycean lore - is first cited in the “Wandering Rocks” episode of the novel (U10.376).

[ top ]

“Calypso”: See allusions to Eccles Street in Ulysses - as attached.

“Lotus-Eaters”: Martha Clifford writes, ‘I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world [sic]. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word. Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?’ (Ulysses: Corrected Edition, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, 1984, 5.243; my italics.) The occasion of her letter is a reply to one of his, presumably to one of hers instigated by the advertisement he has placed in the Irish Times: ‘Wanted smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work’. in “Hades”, Bloom reflects: ‘There is another world after death named hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet.’ (U6.1001.)

Note - A Portuguese translation unavoidably misses the pun: ‘Eu o chamei de menino levado porque não gosto daquele outro planeta.’ (Bernardina da Silveira Pinheiro, Ulisses, Rio de Janeiro: Alfaguara.)

[ top ]

“Aeolus”: The Penguin edition of Ulysses omits the section heading “ORTHOGRAPHICAL” (p.122), as noted by Fritz Senn in ‘Righting Ulysses’, in James Joyce: New Perspectives, ed. Colin MacCabe (Harvester 1982), p.7.

“Aeolus” Recording: Joyce read the speech of J. P. Taylor, as recited by Professor McHugh, with Stephen’s mental interpolations, on a vinyl recording made at Shakespeare & Co. for private circulation in 1924. Due to failing sight, he had to commit the passage to memory, resulting in several re-takes before the final version was completed. The first mention of the recording seems to be in a 1935 Beach catalogue of Joyce material, where it was erroneously listed in the following style: ‘Phonograph record of a reading by James Joyce from Ulysses pages 136-137, recorded by His Master’s Voice on one side only....Signed James Joyce, Paris, 17 November 1926 (date of recording). Only remaining copy of the 30 that were made.’ At the Sotheby’s auction in New York on 11 June 2013. (See Irish Times report by Eoin Burke-Kennedy, 31 May 2013.) [The recording can be heard in Youtube format at The Irish Times - online; also available at Youtube - online. Both accesssed 10.06.2013. ]

“Lestrygonians” [on the sentence, ‘Perfumes of embraces assailed him. His hungered flesh obscurely, mutely craved to adore’, Joyce said: ‘No, ... I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. There is an order in every way appropriate.’ (Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of “Ulysses”, OUP 1972 Edn., p.20; quoted in Fritz Senn in ‘Righting Ulysses’, in James Joyce: New Perspectives, ed. Colin MacCabe, Harvester 1982, p.27 [n.4.]) [The sentence is quoted from Ulysses: A Facsimile of the Manuscript, 1975, p.15.]

“Cyclops”: In the “Cyclops” chapter of Ulysses, Bloom tells the Citizen, ‘I’m Irish. I was born here’. This is not unlike the the story told by Gian Rinaldo Carli of a man who explains to the occupants of a café in Milan that he was neither from that city nor a foreigner, saying, ‘I am an Italian.’ See the Wikipedia article on the Italian “Risorgimento” [reunification]:

‘I'm Irish. I was born here’: ‘[...] A sense of Italian national identity was reflected Gian Rinaldo Carli’s Della Patria degli Italiani, written in 1764, a very famous “much-quoted article telling how a stranger entered a café in Milan and puzzled its occupants by saying that he was neither a foreigner nor a Milanese. ‘Then what are you?’ they asked. ‘I am an Italian,’ he explained.” (See Edgar Holt, The Making of Italy: 1815-1870, NY: Murray 1971, pp.22-23.) [Bibl., Alessandro D’Ancona and Orazio Bacci, Manual della letteratura italiana (G. Barbarà 1906) cited in Wikipedia - online.]

“Scylla & Charybdis” - Stephen: ‘Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions.’ ( Ulysses, Bodley Head 1965, p.264.) ‘Gorbellied’ - meaning large-girthed with protruberant stomach (cf. pot-bellied) is a recurrent epithet in Henry Urquehart’s translation of Rabelais’s Garantua and Pantegruel (1653).

Breechpad: At the end of the episode, Stephen dreams of an encounter like the one that lies ahead with Bloom: ‘The portico. / Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.’ (U9.1205.) This is usually construed as a reference to Bloom’s lemon soap for Molly.

For Gogarty, who spots Bloom, the dangers are paramount: ‘The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner’ (U9.1209) - to which he adds: ‘O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad. Manner of Oxenford.’ (U9.1211).

Internet: There is a note on the word at Michael Quinion’s Worldwidewords website - online. See also Wordnik - online. Urquehart’s translation of Rabelais’ classic is available at Gutenberg Project - as text. (See also sundry examples - as attached.)

[ top ]

[“Wandering Rocks”]

“Oxen of the Sun” [1]: The models for the stylistic parodies of that chapter in Ulysses (1922) are: Primitive chant [‘Deshil holles ...’]; Sallust & Tacitus [‘Universally that person’s ...]; medieval chronicle [‘it is not why therefore ...’]; Anglo-Saxon prose [‘Before babe was born ...’]; Middle-English prose [‘Therefore everyman ...’]; Travels of Sir John Mandeville (14th c.) [‘And whiles they spake ...’]; Sir Thomas Mallory (Morte D’Arthur) [‘This meanwhile this good ...’]; Elizabethan chronicle [‘About that present time ...’]; John Milton, Richard Hooker & Sir Thomas Browne [‘To be short this passage ...’]; John Bunyan [‘But was Boasthard’s ...]; John Evelyn & Sam. Pepys, diarists [‘So Thursday sixteenth ...’ Daniel Defoe [‘With this came up ...’]; Jonathan Swift [An Irish bull in ...’]; Joseph Addison & Richard Steele (18th c.) [‘Our worthy acquaintance ...’]; Laurence Sterne [‘Here the listener who ...’]; Oliver Goldsmith [‘Amid the general vacant ...’]; Edmund Burke [‘To revert to Mr. Bloom ...’]; Richard Sheridan [‘Accordingly he broke his mind’]; Junius (18th c.) [‘But with what fitness ...’]; Edward Gibbon [‘The news was imparted ...’]; Sir Horace Walpole [‘But Malchias’ tale ...’]; Charles Lamb [‘What is the age ...’]; Thomas de Quincey [‘The voices blend and fuse ...’]; Walter Savage Landor [‘Francis was reminding ...’]; T. B. Macaulay [‘However, as a matter of fact ...’]; T. H. Huxley [‘It had better be stated ...’]; Charles Dickens [‘Meanwhile the skill ...’]; Cardinal Newman [‘There are sins or ...’]; Walter Pater (‘The stranger still regarded ...’]; John Ruskin [‘Mark this father ...’]; Thomas Carlyle: [‘Burke’s, Outflings my lord ...’]; US slang and assorted colloqualisms [‘All off for a buster ...’]. See letter to Frank Budgen, for Joyce’s account of these styles: ‘until it ends in a frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel. This progression is also linked back to each part subtly with some foregoing episode of the day and, besides this, with the natural stages of development in the embryo and the periods of faunal evolution in general. [...] Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo / how’s that for high?’ (Letter of 20 March 1920, in Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, 1975, p.252; see longer extract under Quotations, infra.)

Joyce on “Oxen of the Sun”: ‘[...] a nine-parted episode without divisions [...] linked back at each part subtly with some foregoing episode of the day and, besides this, with the natural stages of development of the embyro and the periods of faunal evolution in general.” (Letters, 1, 139-40; quoted in Maria Tymoczko, ‘Joyce’s Postpositivist Prose Cultural Translation and Transculturation’, in Irish Studies in Brazil, ed. Munira H. Mutran & Laura P. Z. Izarra, Associação Editorial Humanitas 2005, p.263.)

“Oxen of the Sun” [2] - Richard Ellmann (James Joyce, 1959) writes that Joyce kept before him a diagram showing the ontogeny of the foetus during nine months, and also studied Saintsbury’s A History of English Prose Rhythm, quoting extensively from his letter to Frank Budgen describing the stylistic effects of the chapter [see under Quotations, infra.]

Further: ‘The intricacy of this scheme should not conceal a fact about all Joyce’s writing which he had mentioned to Budgen, that his complexity was only in his means. “With me,” he said, “the thought is always simple.” [Interview with Budgen, 1954.] T. S. Eliot read the episode as a revelation of the “futility of all the English styles” [Virginia Woolf, Writer’s Diary, ed. L. Woolf, 1954, p.50; 26 Sept.1922] but it is likely that Joyce intended the desecration of style to suit the mood of desecration which pervades the episode and is implicitly condemned in it. He worked 1,000 hours by his own calculation on the episode; his mind was so possessed by his theme that he felt as though he were himself eating himself the oxen, as though they were everywhere. It was hard to sit down to a meal without having his stomach turn. He was relieved to be able to write to Budgen on May 18: “The Oxen of the bloody bleeding Sun are finished.”’ [Letter, in Cornell Library]. Miss Weaver’s comment on it was, “I think this episode might also have been called Hades for the reading of it is like being taken the rounds of hell.” [Letter, 30 June 1920.]

“Oxen of the Sun” [3] - Richard Ellmann (James Joyce, 1959) writes of a colloquy between Joyce and Harriet Shaw Weaver: ‘Joyce had not intended anything so infernal, but was interested and asked her, “Do you mean that the Oxen of the Sun episode resembles Hades because the nine circles of development (enclosed between the headpiece and the tailpiece of opposite chaos) seem to you to be peopled by extinct beings?” [Letter, 16 Aug. 1920.] No, Miss Weaver replied [...; Letter, 25 Aug. 1920]’ (Ellmann, op. cit., p.490; 1982, p.475ff.) .

“Oxen of the Sun” [4] - Sarah Davison writes of Joyce’s literary sources for “Oxen of the Sun”: ‘Saintsbury was only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to editions of primary material, we now know that Joyce also raided several other prose anthologies to construct his parodies, including: William Peacock’s English Prose from Mandeville to Ruskin (1903); A.F. Murison’s Selections from the Best English Authors (Beowulf to the Present Time) (1901); and Annie Barnett and Lucy Dale’s An Anthology of English Prose, 1332 to 1740 (1912). (See Davison, ‘Joyce’s Incorporation of Literary Sources in “Oxen of the Sun”’, in Genetic Joyce Studies, 9 (Spring 2009) [online; accessed 21.05.2010]. Note: Davison refers in particular to Robert Janusko, The Sources and Structures of James Joyce’s “Oxen” (Epping 1983), pp. 79-82.

“Oxen of the Sun” [5] - Declan Kiberd writes: ‘In Ulysses that shipwreck is telescoped with the slaughtering, for it is the traditional styles of written English which are both slaughtered and wrecked in Joyce’s treatment. The anthology on which he based many of his parodies was made by William Peacock [i.e., English Prose from Mandeville to Ruskin (1903)]. Designed to illustrate Darwinian notions of evolution, it was a smug selection of the best that had been thought and said over the centuries in which English developed as a modern literary language. Such anthologies were often brought to places like colonial India or colonial Ireland, to be studied there by native elites who might learn by imitating English masters how to assimlialte themselves to the project of the British Empire. [...]’ (p.211; see further under Kiberd (q.v.) - as infra.)

“Oxen of the Sun” [3]: Fritz Senn, ‘Righting Ulysses’, in MacCabe, op. cit. (1982): ‘We still have not yet assimilated a performance like “Oxen of the Sun”, a jerky array of fake-historical re-rightings modelled on the style of particular authors or periods, but with anachronistic checks working against facile systematisation.’ (p.15.) Viz., examination of the Notebooks and the text reveals that Joyce did not exclusively - or even very largely - embody phrases from a given author in the parody assigned to each in this listing but employed a much more heterogeneous conception of stylistic normalcy in striking the dominant note of each section.

[ top ]

[ See Joyce’s own remarks on the “Sirens” episode under Quotations, supra. ]

“Nausicaa”: ‘Nausikaa is written in a namby-pampy jammy marmalady drawerys (alto là) style with effects of incense, mariolatry, masturbation, stewed cockles, painter’s palette, chit chat, circumlocution, &c., &c.’ (Letter to Frank Budgen, 3 Jan. 1920; Letters, I, p.135; quoted in quoted in Stephen Heath, ‘Ambiviolences: Notes for reading Joyce’, in Attridge & Ferrer, eds., Post-structuralist Joyce, Cambridge UP 1984, p.64, n.40.)

Note: There are 67 instances of the word ‘little’ used as an affectionate dimunitive in the “Nausicaa” episode. [BS]

[ top ]

“Circe”: Bloom’s button - cf. Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Thou wert better in a grave than to answer with thy uncover’d body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? ... Thou are the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, fork’d animal as thou art. Off, of, you lendings! Come, unbutton here.’ (King Lear, III.iv; quoted in Vicki Mahaffey, Reauthorizing Joyce, Cambridge UP 1988, p.162.)

“Circe”: Stephen’s sentences, ‘What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself. [...; &c.]’ (Ulysses, Bodley Head Edn., 1967, p.606, are indebted to Benedetto Croce’s: (See Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.351 ftn.; and see further from Richard Ellmann, op. cit., under Croce in Notes, infra.)

May Joyce in “Circe”: In “Circe” chapter of Charles Lamb ”s Adventures of Ulysses (1808), Ulysses is sent by Circe to visit Tiresias in Hades to find out whether he will ever return home. She instructs him to dig a pit and fill it with milk, honey and the blood of a ram and a ewe and to await for the dead to come to drink it in the sacred wood of Prosperine - Tiresias first and then the others. ‘[...] Now his mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint from her son, and now she knew him to be her son, and inquired of him why he had come alive to their comfortless habitations. And she said that affliction for Ulysses’s long absence had preyed upon her spirits, and brought her to the grave. / Ulysses’s soul melted at her moving narration, and forgetting the state of the dead, and that the airy texture of disembodied spirits does not admit of the embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about her to clasp her: the poor ghost melted from his embrace, and, looking mournfully upon him, vanished away.’ (See The Works of Charles Lamb, ed. Alfred Ainger [Edition de luxe; 1000] (London & NY: The Chesterfield Society [1888]), p.283 - available at Intenet Archive - online; accessed 27.04.2022.)

“Circe”: for the source of “the harmonial philosophy” see The Harmonial Philosophy: A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis [ ... ] including his natural and divine revelations, great harmonia, spiritual intercourse [...] (London: William Rider & Son 1917) - cited as one of Joyce’s preparatory readings for the ‘Circe’ chapter in Paris, 1920. (See Harold Beck & John Simpson, ‘Writing Elijah’, at James Joyce Online - online.)

See also James Joyce: Online Notes - note on the following sentence in Ulysses: ‘Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A. J. Dowie Christ and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that?’ (15.2204-6.) “Harmonial philosophy” was explained by its inventor, the American spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910), as ‘an investigation into the investigative causes of things, which investigation leads the investigator deep into the spiritual origin of all things’ (Great Harmonia, 1851, vol 2, p. 133). Joyce noted the expression in his Circe notesheets (Herring 299), along with ‘table-rapping’, ‘crystal gazing’, ‘psychometry’, ‘Something Within’, and ‘cosmic forces’, and from here introduced it into the Elijah passage of Circe. The term had experienced something of a boost just prior to Joyce’s work on the Circe notesheets through the publication of The harmonial philosophy: a compendium and digest of the works of Andrew Jackson Davis [...] including his natural and divine revelations, great harmonia, spiritual intercourse, ‘edited with a preface, biographical summary and notes by a doctor of hermetic science’ (London: William Rider & Son Ltd., 1917). Roughly contemporary with Thomas Jefferson Shelton’s Sunphone Sermons in Oakland, California, we might note the following talk by the First Church of Psycho Science there: ‘Church Notices ... First Church of Psycho Science. Corinthian Hall, Pacific Bldg., 16th and Jefferson Streets, Oakland, H. Robert Sinclair, Pastor. Sunday, 7:45 P. M. Subject, The Phenomena of Psycho Science, its Vital Necessity to the Harmonial Philosophy, By the Pastor. Bring your friends. Admission free.’ (Oakland Tribune ;(California) (1917) 11 August, p. 7.) [James Joyce: Online Notes - online; accessed 28.11.2020.]

[ top ]

“Eumaeus”: Gilbert wrote: ‘The Eumaeus episode - I remember Joyce insisting on this point - was meant to represent the intercourse and mental state of two fagged out men.’ (Quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, 1982 edn., p.362n.; cited in Maria Tymoczko, ‘Joyce’s Postpositivist Prose Cultural Translation and Transculturation’, in Irish Studies in Brazil, ed. Munira H. Mutran & Laura P. Z. Izarra, Associação Editorial Humanitas 2005, p.263.)

[ top ]

“Ithaca” (I): Joyce told Harriet Weaver that Ithaca was ‘the ugly duckling of [Ulysses] and therefore, I suppose, my favourite.’ (Ellmann, JJ, 1983, p.500. ) He also called “Ithaca” ‘in reality the end, as Penelope has no beginning, middle or end’ (L1, p.172) and described it as a ‘mathematico-astronomico-physico-mechanico-gemometrico-chemico-sublimation of Bloom and Stephen’ Letters I, 164) and spoke of its “tranquilising spectrality” (Letters I, 176) while referring to it as ‘encylopaedic’. He further suggested that the reader of Ithaca would ‘know everything [but] know it in the baldest coldest way” (Letters 1, 159) while referring to its ‘dry rock pages’ (Letters I, 173). On the other hand, the farewell scene in “Ithaca” has a demonstrable connection with Purgatorio, Canto I - especially as regards ‘its notable image of lustration’ - as Mary T. Reynolds writes in Joyce and Dante: The Shaping Imagination (Princeton UP 1981, p.123-34.) All cited in Andrew Gibson, ed., Joyce’s “Ithaca” [European Joyce Studies 6] (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi 1996), pp.1-8.

The style as given by Joyce himself in the Gilbert schema is ‘catechism (impersonal)’. An early draft includes the planned section headings: ‘street’, ‘kitchen’, ‘garden’, ‘parlour’, ‘bedroom’ - divisions abandoned in the completed chapter. (See Patrick Hastings, The Guide to Ulysses, John Hopkins 2022; online edition - citing Spielberg quoted in A Walton Litz, “Ithaca”, in James Joyce’s Ulysses: Critical Essays, ed. Clive Hartand David Hayman, Californai UP 1977), p.398. Note: Hastings quotes Karen Lawrence ”s remark that “Circe” is the past served hot and “Ithaca” is the past served cold (in Lawrence, The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses, Princeton UP 1981, p.154).

Mangall’s Questions: Joyce’s schoolbooks at Clongowes included Richmal Mangall’s Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People, anon. in 1800; 14 edns. by 1818 (See Robert Hampson, “Allowing for Possible Error”: Education and Cathecism in “Ithaca”’, in Joyce’s “Ithaca”, ed. Andrew Gibson [European Readings], Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi 1996. See also notice on Magnall’s book for in Abebooks citing details:

Richmal Magnall, Historical and Miscellaneous Questions, for The Use of Young People; with a selection of British and General Biography, etc, etc. By Richmal Mangnall. Fifteenth Edition, Corrected And Improved. Published by vLondon: Printed For Longman Hurst Rees Orme and Brown Paternoster-Row; And Hurst Robinson And Co Cheapside, 1820, 447pp. [Colophon.] ‘Richmal Mangnall (1769-1820) was an English schoolmistress and writer of a famous schoolbook [...] born on 7 March 1769, probably in London [...] one of seven children of James Mangnall of Hollinhurst, Lancashire, and London, and Richmal, daughter of John Kay of Manchester to survive infancy. One brother, James, became a London solicitor, another, Kay, died in the East Indies in 1801. Her parents died about 1781, when she was adopted by an uncle, also John Kay, a Manchester solicitor. The first edition of her Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People (1798) was printed privately and anonymously for use in the school. It was then taken up by the London publishing firm Longman, whose still anonymous 1800 edition was dedicated to John Kay. The book became generally known as Mangnall’s Questions and was ‘the stand-by of generations of governesses and other teachers.’ It had appeared in 84 editions by 1857. Its ‘level, plain, humane’ judgments have been associated with the Age of Enlightenment, and became more open to criticism in the Victorian age, although the catechism type of textbook remained dominant. The British Constitution met with her approval, as did her country’s abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, but Wellington was rebuked for vanity and egotism, and Rabelais for lacking ‘that delicacy without which genius may sparkle for a moment, but can never shine with pure, undiminished lustre.’ (Citing Wikipedia). A biog. note on Charles Palmer Baldry (1815-1881), the author of the owner’s inscription is also given, citing Family History Research. (Chelton Books in Abebooks - accessed 22.04.2022.) An edition came out from Hurst, Longman, in 1820 (viii, 447pp.);another W. H. Allen in 1890; another from Hodder & Stoughton in 1892 (v, 495pp.); another from Longman, Green & Co. in 1908 (578pp.)

“Ithaca” (2) - see Barbara Stevens Heusel, ‘Parallax as a Metaphor for the Structure of Ulysses’, in Studies in the Novel, 15, 2 (Summer 1983), pp.135-46 - ‘The significance of Stephen’s meeting Bloom is that the reader experiences “depth perception”. Joyce’s strategic placing of the parallax images suggests that the view points of view, Stephen’s and Bloom’s, are subtly superimposed until the urination seen in which literal convergence of their creations, water, foreshadow a fuller vision of life.’ (p.135; available at JSTOR - online.)

Note: Heusel has also written on “Joyce and the Drama of Cognition: Escher as a Visual Analogue Joyce and the Drama of Cognition: Escher as a Visual Analogue”, in Twentieth Century Literature (Winter, 1988), pp.395-406.

“Ithaca” (3) - “Ithaca” & organisms: In “Ithaca” and Bloom is ‘conscious that the human organism, normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons’ (U820), while Stephen and Bloom stand side by side with him in “Ithaca” while both employ their ‘their organs of micturition’ (U825) in the back yard of 7 Eccles Street. Likewise, in “Ithaca”, the ‘male organism’ and ‘female organism’ joined in ‘energetic copulation’ makes room for a scientific discourse on the ‘energetic piston and cylinder movement’ involved. (U864). [BS]

“Penelope”: Joyce called the last episode of Ulysses ‘the clou’ - meaning the nail and the final word: ‘Penelope is the clou of the book. The first sentence contains 2500 words. There are eight sentences in the episode. It begins and ends with the female word Yes. It turns like the huge earthball slowly surely and evenly round and round spinning. Its four cardinal points being the female breasts, arse, womb and sex expressed by the words because, bottom (in all senses, bottom button, bottom of the glass, bottom of the sea, bottom of the heart) woman, yes. Though probably more obscene than any preceding episode it seems to me to be perfectly sane full amoral fertilisable untrustworthy engaging shrewd limited prudent indifferent Weib. Ich bin das Fleisch das stets bejaht. [trans., Woman. I am the flesh that always affirms.]’ (Letter to Frank Budgen, 16 Aug. 1921, in Letters, Vol. 1 p.170; Sel. Letters, ed. Ellmann, p.285.)

[ top ]

Ulysses: An unwritten chapter ...

In 2001 Daniel Ferrer described the newly discovered pages of the “Proteus and Sirens” Notebook (NLI MS 36,639/03/B, p.28) which take the form of a page-length compilation of notes based on the Homeric narrative of “Lacedemon” in the Odysses, and which he then believed to be intended as is the fourth episode that Joyce was planning for the Telemachiad in 1915. In a subsequent articles of 2014, he gives a more detailed account of the page of notes and draws further conclusions, discounting the first conjecture and supporting Michael Groden’s view that it was in fact intended as a component of “Scylla and Charybdis”. (See Michael Groden (1984: 93) suggested, Joyce was probably thinking of “Scylla and Charybdis”. See also Hans Walter Gabler, 1990: 222-223)-

Transcription of NLI MS 36,639/03/B, p. 28 - based on high-resolution photo in National Library catalogue (Dublin) - given in Ferrer, ‘An Unwritten Chapter [...]’, in Item (Oct. 2014). Details of the NLI notebook are cited as follows in Ferrer, ‘What Song the Sirens Sang’, in JJQ, Fall-Winter 2012-13, pp.319-33; ‘Notebook, no covers, 22 x 17.8cm, graph paper, 28 pages; pp.1-9 Proteus, pp.10-27, Sirens; p.28 notes from Homer [...]’ (p.319; available in MUse - online; accessed 26.02.2023.)

Ferrer writes that he examined the notebook on arrival and reported in 2001 on the existence in it of a note-form sketch for an unwritten chapter on a page headed “Lacedemon”. His resumé of the extensive commentary on the notes - which he has transcribed into typescript as shown [right] - takes the following form: À la fin d’un cahier qui contient de très importants brouillons pour Ulysses on trouve une page de notes intitulée “Lacedemon”. Cette page, jusqu’à présent négligée, présente un intérêt exceptionnel par son ancienneté, par sa forme, par son contenu et par le rôle qu’elle a joué dans la genèse d’Ulysse. Il s’agit de notes prises à partir du quatrième chant de l’Odyssée, dans la traduction anglaise de Butcher et Lang. On voit comment Joyce s’approprie le texte homérique et le rapportant à l’histoire irlandaise, à sa propre histoire familiale et au livre qu’il projette. On y voit aussi Joyce renoncer à écrire un chapitre consacré à Lacédémone et s’orienter vers un épisode consacré aux aventures de Protée qui ne constituent qu’un détail du quatrième chant de l’Odyssée.

Note: Ferrer transcribes the passages from Butcher and Lang’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey which Joyce evidently used as his Homeric source at that time - placing the notes on the “Lacedemon” episode as anterior to those for Proteus on the basis of a comparison between the lesser version of some elements in the latter and their more extended occurrence in the former which makes up the earlier section of the same notebook. Chief of these forensic elements is the tag ‘school of seals’ borrowed from Butcher & Lang and the fuller phrase ‘school of turtlehide whales stranded’ in the “Proteus” draft contained a page earlier in the same notebook (MS 36,639/07/A, p.7) - a phrase actually from D. A. Chart’s Story of Dublin (1907) which Ferrer cites here as also given in the notes but without referring to its place in “Proteus”. [See also under Chart - supra.] Bibl.: The translation of the Odyssey translation used by Joyce at this point is cited as Samuel H. Butcher & Andrew Lang, Odyssey if Homer Done into English Prose (London: Macmillan 1879).

Note: I am unable to trace the source of the 2001 article at the present time [cursory revision of 25.02.2023] but see Ferrer’s more detailed account as ‘An Unwritten Chapter of Ulysses?: Joyce’s Notes for a “Lacedemon” Episode’, in Item: Institut des texted et manuscrits modernes (27 Oct. 2014) - available online; accessed 05.11.2014 and again 25.02.2023). See also Ferrer, ‘What Song the Sirens Sang ... Is No Longer Beyond All Conjecture: A Preliminary Description of the New “Proteus” and “Sirens” Manuscripts’, in James Joyce Quarterly [JJQ] 50:1-2, Fall-Winter 2012-13), pp.319-33. [Editorial notice by BS 26.02.2023.]

[ top ]

Finnegans Wake (1939) - (1): begun in 1922 by accumulating material, chiefly in the form of isolated phrases, in a large notebook, Buffalo Notebook VI.A, which has been published as Scribbledehobble (1961; see extract). On March 10, 1923, Joyce wrote a draft of the episode called “King Roderick O”Conor” (380-82), and followed quickly with “Tristan and Isolde” (pp.384-86), “St. Kevin” (pp.604-06) and “The Colloquy of St. Patrick and the Druid” (pp.611-12). Reshaping the “Tristan” episode, he produced “Mamalujo” (pp.383-99; 2.iv). The eight sections of Book I were written more or less consecutively in 1923, excepting 1.i and 1.vi which were added during 1926-7. From 1924 to 1926, he worked on the “four watches of Shaun” (3.i, ii, iii and iv.) The writing of Book II was long drawn out (1926-1938), due to Joyce’s increasing eye-trouble, the mental ill-health of his daughter Lucia, and his discouragement at the poor reception of “Work in Progress”. Book IV, the “Ricorso”, was completed fairly rapidly in 1938. Some parts of the book came into existence easily and were published in preliminary form in magazines, Ford Madox Ford’s Transatlantic Review (April 1924). Parts of Finnegans Wake published in Eliot’s Criterion (July 1925), Adrienne Monnier’s Navire d’argent (October 1925); Ernest Walsh’s This Quarter (Autumn-Winter 1925-26), and then in Eugene and Maria Jolas’s transition (April 1927-April/May 1938). 12 instalments were published between 1928 and 1937, mostly in the literary review transition; other parts appeared as separate publications, viz., Anna Livia Plurabelle (1928, FW 1.viii); Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (1929) - which includes “The Mookse and the Gripes” (FW 152-59) and “The Ondt and the Gracehoper” (FW 414-19), as well as “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump” - earlier known as “The Triangle” - being the core of III.2 (FW 282-304); Haveth Childers Everywhere (1930, FW 532-54); The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies (1934, FW 2.i), and Storiella As She Is Syung (1937, FW 260-75 & 304-08). The first copy of the completed book reached Joyce from Faber and Faber on 20 January 1939 - in time for his 57th birthday. Joyce’s brother denounced the “drivelling rigmarole” as early as 1924, while Ezra Pound wrote on 1 Nov. 1926 that he could make nothing of the new work. Miss Weaver wondered on 4 February 1927 if he were not wasting his genius while Wyndam Lewis published an attack on all his writings later in that year. See also Oliver St. John Gogarty [q.v.]. See chart of extract publication, Appendix [infra].

Scribbledehobble [1922]: ‘Arabian nights, serial stories, tales within tales, to be continued, desperate story-telling, one caps another to reproduce a rambling mock-heroic tale.’ (James Joyce’s Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for “Finnegans Wake”, ed. Thomas E. Connolly, Northwestern UP 1961, p.25; quoted in Jean-Michel Rabaté, ‘Silence in Dubliners’, in James Joyce: New Perspectives, ed. MacCabe, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1982, p.52.)

Tristan and Isolde: Joyce read the first part T[homas] Sturge Moore’s 2-part article ‘Tristran and Isold’ [sic] on versions of that tale in the issue of The Criterion: A Quarterly Review, ed. T. S. Eliot (Oct. 1922), in which the English translation of Valèry Larbaud’s address on Joyce before the launch of Ulysses was printed for the first time. Also in that issue was Eliot’s “The Waste Land”.

‘I think I will write a history of the world.’ (Joyce to HSW during August 1922, as told to Richard Ellmann in 1955; see Ellmann, James Joyce (rev. edn. 1984; cited in Jorn Barger, ‘Origins of Finnegans Wake’ [blogspot], 23 June 2014 - online [accessed 02.01.2023].

[ top ]

SIGLA of FW

The Sigla of Finnegans Wake
	Cf., further symbols in Wake Notebooks: X - crossroads ahead (VI. B.8.143j), ? - village (VI.B.8.143.k), A - assback bridge over stream (VI.B.8.144a), V - hillock (VI.B.8.144b) ? - Cul de sac deadwallend of a graveyard (VI.B.8.144c), delta (i.e. A), pyramid’ (VI.B.8.144d) ?- pastrycook carrying on his brainpan a mass of lovejelly’ (VI.B.8.144e) L girl lying on causeway with one leg heavenwards, lacing her shoe (VI.B.8.145a). James Joyce Archive, Vol. 30: A Facsimile of Buffalo Notebooks VI.B.5 - VI.B.8, prefaced & arranged by David Hayman (NY: Garland Publ. 1978, p.366.) See also Joyce’s letter to Miss Weaver in June 1924: ‘I showed Mr Larbaud the signs I was using for my notes: [?] - HCE [?] - Anna Livia [?] Shem [V inverted] - Shaun. He laughed at them, but it saves time’. (27 June 1924; Letters, Vol. 1, p.216.
Note: Left-hand image taken from Nicholas A. Fargnoli & Michael Patrick Gillespie, Critical Companion to James Joyce: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work [rev. edn.] (Facts on File 2006) p.92; cols. 1 & 2 - here combined].
Note further the signs for vulva in Wake notebooks: ‘bush pyramid A’ (VI.B.1.0235b); ‘trees look at A nude/legs in the air/a whole grove [is]/looking on.’ (VI.B.1.055i); and ‘delta=pubic A’ (VI.B.1.065i). (The foregoing materials supplied by Jonathan McCreevy [PhD Candidate UU, prepared for a conference paper and using perfect symbols prepared as computerised fonts.)
Cf. basic resemblance to the ‘symbols’ employed for Circle, Triangle, Parallelogram, Parrallelogram, Perpendicular, in John Casey, The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1885) - as infra.
Note the basic similarity of the Sigla and the symbols given in Casey’s Euclid - as attached - considered as a possible origin or inspiration of the whole sigla system in FW.

[ top ]

The Battle of the Books: Finn’s Hotel

In September 1992, Danis Rose of Dublin announced the ‘discovery’ of an unknown collection of short stories written by Joyce in 1923, between Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Rose claimed Joyce’s intended title had been “Finn’s Hotel”. These were to be published by Viking/Penguin in March 1993, but that date has been postponed indefinitely. [ For bibliographical information - see Finn’s Hotel under Works - supra. ] In the Times Literary Supplement in February 1993, Stephen James Joyce (Joyce’s grandson) declared that the Joyce Estate did not accept Rose’s claims, and would not allow this work to be published. Rose had also announced his ’corrected’ edition of FW for 1995, but Stephen has vowed to block that, too. Finn’s Hotel: the stories: You can read the Finn’s Hotel stories in any of three published formats: The first issue of The James Joyce Review (1957) included most of them in transcriptions made by by M.J.C. Hodgart. Easier to find might be David Hayman’s 1963 “First Draft Version of FW” (FDV) or the massive 63-volume James Joyce Archive, Garland’s facsimile edition of all Joyce’s manuscripts and notebooks (JJA). The latter offers every level of draft; Rose presumably intended to use the typescripts that were approximately third drafts; these were also what Hodgart used. 1. Roderick O’Conor (FDV203-4, JJA55 p.463-65) (in published FW pp.380-82) 2. Tristan and Isolde (FDV208-12, JJA56 p.20-24) (FW pp.383-99, mixed with Mamalujo) 3. Saint Kevin (FDV273-4, JJA63 p.38e-f) (FW pp.604-606) 4. Berkeley and Patrick (FDV279, JJA63 pp.148-165) (FW pp.611-12) 5. H.C.E. (FDV62-3, JJA45 p14-17) (FW pp.30-34) 6. Mamalujo (FDV213-19, JJA56 p71-80) (FW pp.383-99, mixed with T&I) 7. The Revered Letter (FDV81-3, JJA46 p281-87) (FW pp.615-19)

From Jorn Barger’ Wake webpage - online [defunct 02.02.2023], text supplied in email by Ross Chambers.

[ top ]

[ top ]

Notes on St. Patrick & the Druid

1: The above sketch corresponds to a considerably longer passage in the “Ricorso” section [i.e., Bk. 4] of Finnegans Wake (1939 & edns.), pp.611-14. It was the third episode of “Work in Progress” to be composed by Joyce, being produced in the spring of 1923, as shown in in the manuscripts of Finnegans Wake presented to the British Museum by Harriet Shaw Weaver. In the above version, the crossed-out phrases are those which Joyce altered in a first revision made during the same early period. A later, and much more extensive, revision was made in 1936 when the phrase ‘panepiphanal world’ and all its cognates (e.g., ‘heupanepiworld’) were added by Joyce to complicate the text - almost to an unfathomable extent. 2: Joyce wrote to Miss Weaver: ‘I am sorry that Patrick and (?) Berkeley are unsuccessful in explaining themselves. The answer, I suppose, is that given by Paddy Dignam’s apparition: metapsychosis. Or perhaps the theory so well set forth (after Hegel and Giambattista Vico) by the four eminent annalists who are even now treading the typepress in sorrow will explain part of my meaning. I work as much as I can because these are not fragments but active elements and when they are more and a little older they will begin to fuse of themselves.’ (9 oct. 1923; Letters , I, p. 204.) 3 - Joyce to Budgen (20 Aug. 1939; Hotel Schweizerhof, Bern): ‘[...] Reread the second phrase in the hagiographic triptych in Part IV (S. L. O’Toole is only adumbrated). Much more is intended in the colloquy between Berkeley the arch druid and his pidgin speech and Patrick the arch priest and his Nippon English, it is also the defence [397] and indictment of the book itself, B’s theory of colours and Patrick’s practical solution to the problems. Hence the phrase in the preceding Mutt and Jeff banter, “Dies is Dorminus master” = Deus est Dominus noster plus the day is Lord over sleep, i.e., when it days’. (Selected Letters, 1975, pp.397-98; Letters of James Joyce, Vol. I, ed. Stuart Gilbert [1959], 1966 Edn., p.406.) 4: ‘Between writing the first draft in 1923 and the revision in 1938, Joyce brought the characterisation of St Patrick and the Archdruid in line with those being developed for Shem and Shaun throughout the seventeen years of “Work in Progress”, and changed Berkeley from towering over Patrick to the one being towered over.’ (Grace Eckley, “Finnegans Wake, 4.1 [Ricorso]”, in A Conceptual Guide to “Finnegans Wake”, ed. Michael H. Begnal & Fritz Senn, Pennsylvania State UP 1974, pp.223-24.) 5: ‘Among St. Patrick’s major exploits were this defiance of royal authority in lighting a fire at Slane in Holy Saturday. This led to an unsuccessful vivitation by the instruments of King Laoghaire (Leary); the vital clash did not however occur until Easter Sunday. It took the form of a contest of miracles performed at Tara before the king by his druid Lucat Mael and by Patrick. The saint was consistently able to surpass the druid and eventually destroyed him. The particular miracle featured in Finnegans Wake involves the darkness brought over the land by Lucat Mael’s invocations. Requested to dispel it, he announced that he would be unable to do so until the following day. Patrick caused it to vanish instantaneously. As the sun shone forth once more, all the people cried out glorifying Patrick’s God.’ (Roland McHugh, The Sigla in Finnegans Wake, 1979, p.108.) [Recte - in the Lebar Brecc recension, it is snow not darkness that Lucat Mael brings on and then fails to dispel, saying, ‘I cannot ... till tomorrow ...’.] 6: a source for ‘saffron kilt’ can be found in John Eglinton’s reference to the ‘saffron-coloured kilt’ of a writer of the Cervantes type whose appearance in Ireland he predicts in Anglo-Irish Essays (Talbot Press 1917), pp.88-89 - as quoted in Vivian Mercier, ‘John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of “Scylla and Charybdis”,’ in James Joyce: An International Perspective, ed. Suheil Bushrui & Bernard Benstock (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1982), p.78. 7: Another source of saffron kilt can be found in C. P. Curran’s James Joyce Remembered (OUP 1968), where he remarks of Joyce’s paper on J. C. Mangan: ‘[...] Mangan spoke of this deplorable parent of his as a “boa-constrictor”. In Finnegan Wake (London, 1939, p.180) Joyce wrote of his own as a “Boer-constructor” what time Shem the Penman was still a lexical student. His first audience no doubt missed the parallel, but they did not fail to pick up his allusion to Mangan as lamenting no deeper loss to his country than the loss of plaids and interlaced ornament. This topical, now obscure, allusion pointed to Edward Martyn’s Maeve whose exacting love required her pattern of Celtic youth to equal “the rare and delicate perfection” of Celtic ornament. It pointed also, and more immediately, to the new evangel of national dress preached in saffron kilt and plaid to the Literary and Historical just a fortnight before by Fournier d’Albe, an assistant lecturer in physics [15] at the College of Science - better known to us as the inventor of the particoloured, druidical Pan-Celts.’ (p.16.) 8: See letter to George and Helen Joyce relating the story of St. Patrick at Tara in Italian - presumably in the context of Joyce’s sending his son some a copy of the Cry of the Deer by St. Patrick as a singing piece - in Notes > “Literary Figures I” - as infra. In it, Joyce identifies Gaelic Ireland as a pentarchy with a central monarchy forming the fifth kingship.

[ top ]

[ top ]

Finnegans Wake (3) - “The Revered Letter” [aka “The Hen”] - First Draft - Dec. 1923]: ‘Revered Majesty / well I’ve heard all these muckbirds what they’re bringing up about him and they will come to no good. The Honourable Mr Earwicker my devout husband and he is a true gentleman which is what none of the sneakers ever will because a sings the royal [...]. Yours affectionately / Dame Bessy Plurabelle / xxxx’ (BL 47471b-36; JJA 46, 261; cf. FW 615.11-18; BL 47471b - 42; JJA 46: 295; cf. FW 619.17)

Further: ‘About that original hen. Midwinter was in the offing when an iceclad shiverer [ Kevin ], merest of bantlings, observed a cold fowl behaviourising strangely on that fateful midden (dump for short) afterwards changed into an orangery when in the course of deeper demolition unexpectedly it threw up a few ^spontaneous^ fragments of orange peel, the last remains by some unknown sunseeker illico way back in his mistridden past.’ (BL 47473-33; James Joyce Archive, Vol. 46, p.327; cf. FW 110.22-26.)

The TUNC page - first draft 1923: ‘[...] the studious omission of the year number and era name from the date, the one and only time our copyist seems at least to have grasped the beauty of restraint, ^then^ the cruciform postscript from which three basia or shorter and smaller oscula have been carefully scraped away plainly inspired ^ing^ by the tenebrous Tunc page of the book of Kells [...].’ (BL 47473-26; JJA Vol. 46, p.318.)

Source: The above quoted in Jonathan McCreedy, UU Diss. [draft] 2012 - adding: ‘ According to [David] Hayman [i.e., Structure and Motif in FW, 1967], this draft was composed in early 1924. The draft is short and it principally adds [new] material to the larger draft 1.3/4.3 (JJA, Vol. 46, p.321). It also adds material to three Book I chapter 7 drafts written in early 1924: 1.*1 (see JJA, Vol. 47, p.329), 2.*0 and 1.3* [asterisks for var. sigla]. See JJA, Vol. 47, p.335. As a whole, the draft provides “extra draft material” for use in I.5 and I.7. (See JJA, Vol. 46, p.321).’

Finnegans Wake (4) - Shem’s Latin sentence, ‘antiquissimam flaminum amborium Jordani et Jambaptistae mentibus revolvamus sapientiam: totum tute fluvii modo mundo fluere, eadem quae exaggere fututa fuere iterum inter alveum fore futura, quodlibet sese ipsum per aliudpiam agnoscere contrarium, omnem demun amnem ripis rivalibus amplecti’ (FW 287.23-28), translates as: ‘Let us ... turn over in our minds that most ancient wisdom of both the priests Giordano and Giambattista: the fact that the whole of the river flows safely, with a clear stream, and that those things which were to have been on the bank would later be in the bed; finally, that everything recognises itself through something opposite and that the stream is embraced by rival banks.’ (See Roger McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, Johns Hopkins, 1980, p.187.)

Finnegans Wake (5) - Sigla [I]: The locus classicus for the sigla-list in Finnegans Wake is the Nightlessons chapter: ‘The Doodles family, ‡, ‡, ‡, X, F, V, ‡.’ (FW299, n4) while the first listing of the sigla in the notebooks is: ‘‡ A ‡ I S ‡ V’ (James Joyce Archive, Wake Notebooks, VI.B.6.101f.). [Note: ‡ for characters which cannot be reproduced here - but see facsimile at Sigla - supra.]

Finnegans Wake (5) - Sigla [II]: ‘In March 1924, Joyce sent Miss Weaver a list of the “sigla” which he used to construct the character-parts of the new work. The sigla are geometrical rather than alphabetical, although some such as, notably, those for Tristan and Isolde which involve the letter T in its upright and its inverted form, also function as initials of their names. The sign for Shaun, however, resembles an inverted V and has no connotation with the alphabet at all. Instead it appears derive from the equilaterial triangle (or delta) that stands for ALP in the same list - just as the square-sided C used for Shaun derives from the squared M signifying HCE. It should be added that any notion of equivalance between those “characters” and the signs is subject to the qualification that the characters, no matter how ubiquitously they appear under various morphological forms, are actually manifestations or the sigla rather than vice-versa. Thus, the sigla are not short-hand for the dramatic personae of the Wake so much as the original building blocks themselves. This said, it is clear that there was, in Joyce’s thinking, a clear element of extrapolation from the basic familial roles - father, mother, sons, daughter - and some historical archetypes -lover, evangelist, conqueror, traitor. In this sense the characterological scheme of Finnegans Wake is fundamentally geometrical and cosmographical rather than historical and personal.’

[ top ]

Finnegans Wake (6): The compilation order of the extant Finnegans Wake notebooks held in State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, and catalogued there without regard to that order, is as follows: VI.B.10, VI.B.3, VI.B.25 & VI.B.2, VI.B.11, followed by VI.B.6 and VI.B.1 (Winter 1923/Spring 1924 ); followed by VI.B.14 (Aug.-Nov. 1924).

Roderick O’Conor - aka The First Fragment (composed in 1923)

Ftn. to David Hayman & Sam Slote, Probes: Genetic Studies in James Joyce [European Joyce Studies 5] (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi Press 1995), p.183 [available online; accessed 09.06.2016].

[ top ]

“The Triangle” (FW 293) was drafted in 1926 and afterwards called “The Mathematical Lesson” in draft 8.6 (JJA, 52:85); later again called “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump” (in transition, Feb. 1928), and then published as Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (NY 1929) before final revisions in 1928, prior to its incorporation in the “Night Lessons” chapter of Finnegans Wake (1939) as FW 282.05-304.04.

Euclid Euclid’s 1st Proposition [The Elements of Euclid For the Use of Schools and Colleges, ed. Isaac Todhunter (Macmillan 1869)]   ‘Vieus Von DVbLIn’ - FW 293. [Images from Jonathan McCreedy, ‘“Ocone! Ocone!”: ALP’s 3D Siglum and Dolph’s “Dainty” Diagram’, in Genetic Joyce Studies, 11, Spring 2011, n.11 - available online.]

Note: The diagram is based on John Casey, The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid and Propositions: I-XXI of Book XI [... &c.; 17th Edn.] (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co. 1902). See Luca Crispi, “Storiella as She Was Wryt: Chapter II.2”, How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake: A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide, edited by Crispi & Sam Slote (Wisconsin UP 2007), p.243, n.19 [cited in McCreedy, op. cit. - online.)

[See also illustrations of pages from Casey’s Euclid (1885 Edn.) - as infra.]

McCreedy writes: ‘The chapter “Plain Geometry” in Margaret [C.] Solomon’s Eternal Geomater: The Sexual Universe of Finnegans Wake [Southern Illinois UP 1969], the most influential and complete study of the diagram in criticism, puts forth an argument that Joyce originally designed the figure with superimposed rectangular lines over its basic structure of two interconnected circles and triangles. The compositional sigla of the characters HCE, Shaun, Tristan, ALP and Issy [see note] are visually integrated together within this scaffolding, creating a unified collection of all Earwicker family members within the diagram. Since the sigla are superimposed on top of one another, Solomon argues that all the characters are engaging in intercourse, which is incestuous as well as bi-sexual.’ (Solomon, op. cit., p.105.) McCreedy adds: ‘In a further development of her theory, Solomon interprets four dimensions within the structure of the diagram.’ (Ibid., pp.120-129.) [Note: McCreedy supplies in-text icons in .png format for each of the sigla corresponding to the characters named.] Further [McCreedy]: “The Triangle”, the canonical title for this section of Finnegans Wake, was coined in critical discourse by Walton Litz. It is based on the concluding line of a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver wherein Joyce refers to the section as “the triangle”. See A. Walton Litz, The Art of James Joyce, (NY: OUP 1964), p.89. Its title changed twice during its composition: “The Mathematical Lesson” in draft 8.6 (JJA 52:85) and “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump”, published as one of the Tales Told of Shem and Shaun collection in 1929. Further [McCreedy, pertaining to his Dantean interpretation]: ‘In 1928, following a compositional hiatus of one year and a half, Joyce, in preparation for publication in transition 11’. [...] The Paradise structure is centred upon one short line in 8AC.*0: “^Now I’ll show you your geometer^” (JJA 53:5; cf. FW 296.31-297.1), which quotes from its [the Paradiso’s] final canto whilst including the geometric theme of the section. It seems, in 8AC.*0, Dolph includes the line to define the two circles in the diagram which like the ten-fold orbital network of Paradise rise above Purgatory and the Inferno. In XXXIII, Dante, in the presence of God, cannot express what he sees: “As the geometer [he] applies / To square the circle, nor for all his wit / Finds the right formula, howe’er he tries, / So strove I with that wonder.” (Paradise. XXXIII.133-136) [1]. Dolph disassociates himself from Paradise, as he has already done so with Purgatory, and the theological desire to be cleansed of his sins. Paradise is known to Dolph, but although it is observed and described in “The Triangle” it is never entered or explored because his sins do not permit him, in conjunction with his refusal to repent. However, in 8(ABC).*1, the presumably male “geometer” of 8AC.*1 is re-assigned as female in 8(ABC).*1: “^the^ whom ^of^ your first ^eternal^ geome^a^ter.” [2] The Dantean allusion may be hidden in 8(ABC).*1 since it is supplanted by the “geomater” or Earth Mother symbolism characteristic of ALP. However, as Dolph’s interaction with Kevin is not associated with the Paradise, but rather with the Inferno, Joyce does not replace it. Instead, he develops his new animistic idea with the image of “^the whom^” inside the Earth, which is where his two characters will shortly descend during Dolph’s Harrowing of Hell. In the 1934 drafts of “The Triangle”, Joyce included such references to Paradise within its marginalia, rebuilding its structure, demolished in 8(ABC).*1. The II.2 margin notes, with their detachment from the main narrative of “The Triangle”, as if above its text on a higher plane, are related to this heavenly, theological content. Notes: 1.] See Mary T. Reynolds, Joyce and Dante: The Shaping Imagination, Princeton UP 1981): ‘Dante’s image of the geometer who sets himself to square the circle, and cannot find the principal he needs, becomes in the canto a statement of the inability of man to express deity in terms of humanity.’ (p.210.) 2] The “geometer” in 8AC is more than likely Euclid himself. At close inspection, the “a” of “geomater” is superimposed over the “e” of “geometer”, so it is as late 8(ABC).’ [McCreedy, op. cit. - available online; accessed 18.03.2015.]

[ top ]

John Casey, The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1885) - A Sourcebook for “Night Lessons” (Finnegans Wake, 1939, Chap. 2:2) - available at Internet Archive - online;

[ See more pages in Joyce > Appendices > Books > Finnegans Wake > Triangle - as attached.

Finnegans Wake (8) - Thunderwords: The accepted derivation of the thunderwords in Finnegans Wake is Vico’s Scienza Nuova in which he writes of the thunder that drove men into caves and thuse founded the first human institutions. There is also, however, an allusion to thunder in Dante’ Divine Comedy where he speaks of the noise of the crowd as thunderous and therefore inaudible: &145;These words, I saw, had summoned many flames, / descending step by step; I saw them wheel / and, at each turn, become more beautiful. / They joined around him, and they stopped, and raised / a cry so deep that nothing here can be / its likeness; but the words cried I could / not understand - their thunder overcame me.’ (Il Paradiso, Canto XXII, ll.136-42; trans. Allen Mandelbaum, Bantam Classics 1984; posted by Clint Carroll at “Reading Finnegans Wake” - Facebook Group [online; 04.08.2021.] (See further on Joyce and Dante under RICORSO > Joyce > Notes > Literary Figures - supra.)

[ top ]

The Critical Writings: Stanislaus Joyce published reviews by Joyce with Ellsworth Mason in 1955, and was editing the reviews and lectures with Mason when he died in the year, the task being completed by Mason and Ellmann (1959). Originals held in Stanislaus Joyce Archive at Cornell University contain translations from the Italian said by Stanislaus to have been arranged [i.e., organised] by him and undertaken by students, but believed by Georgio Melchiori and Kevin Barry to have been made by Joyce himself. (Review of Kevin Barry, ed., Occasional Critical and Political Writings, 2001; q.source.)

The Joyce Papers NLI (2001) [National Library of Ireland/NLI] - became the subject of an investigative writing by Sean J. Murphy: ‘In December 2000, the National Library of Ireland purchased from Christie’s in New York a 27-page draft of the Circe episode in Ulysses at a cost of ”1.4 million. [...] Meanwhile, the trade in Joyceana continued, and Sotheby’s concluded another spectacular sale in July 2004, which included an explicit three-page letter sent by the author to his wife Nora in 1909. This letter had supposedly lain for the best part of a century “hidden in the pages of an old book” complete with its stamped envelope, and was purchased by an anonymous bidder for the staggering sum of £240,800. A play had actually been written in 2001, entitled Her Song be Sung, and performed in Dublin in 2004 before the sale, which imagined just such a discovery of an erotic Joyce letter in an old book [said to have been among Stanislaus Joyce’s possessions] It is true that fact can be stranger than fiction, but sometimes fiction masquerades as fact...’. (Murphy, ‘Irish Historical Mysteries: The Trade in Joyce Manuscripts’ - and see further extracts relating to subsequent purchases - as infra.)

See also Ramona Koval, “Literary Copyright & the Estate of James Joyce” at Radio National/Books and Writing - online; cited in Murphy, op. cit. - dealing, inter alia, with Stephen Joyce’s removal and destruction from the collection of papers donated by Paul Léon in 1941 those private letters between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle [presumably written in 1909] which he considered private and potentially discreditable to this grandfather’s reputation.

[ top ]

The Joyce Papers 2002 [1]: A government jet touched down at Northolt outside London with a vast and previously unsuspected archive of manuscript material by James Joyce; purchased at €12.6 expense (£8 million); incls. amended proofs of Finnegans Wake; 19 documents relating to Ulysses of which at least eight appear to be early drafts; papers conveyed to Ireland by Síle de Valera, Minister for Culture. (See Terence Killeen, ‘Vast manuscript archive arrives in Dublin’, in The Irish Times, 30 May 2002).

See Michael Groden, ‘The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: A Statement and Document Descriptions’, in James Joyce Quarterly, (Fall 2001), pp.29-51:

‘For the most part, the existing Joyce collections were in place by 1960. No other major documents surfaced in almost forty years, and the record seemed fixed. Then, in 2000, a draft of the “Circe” episode of Ulysses came to light, and the National Library of Ireland purchased it. The next year, even more surprisingy, came a draft of the “Eumaeus” episode - hardly anyone knew this draft existed, and almost no one knows who bought it at auction. (I certainly do not.) These two documents opened up the tantalising possibilibity that yet more materials survived. Now, all at once, we are presented with two notebooks from Joyce’s early adult years, a few documents for Finnegans Wake, and, especially, four notebooks full of notes for Ulysses and sixteen drafts of Ulysses covering almost half (eight) of the book’s eighteen episodes - once again Ulysses demonstrates without a doubt that it is the novel of the twentieth century.’ (p.31.)

See also Michael Groden, ‘The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: A Narrative and Document Summaries’, in James Joyce Quarterly (Fall 2002), pp.1-16.

[ top ]

The Joyce Papers 2002 (NLI MS 36,649) [2] - comprising early materials [i.e., Paris/Pola Notebook]; drafts, &c., of parts of Ulysses; proofs &c. The materials acquired by the Library were the property of Mr and Mrs Alexis Léon, and were acquired through the agency of Sotheby’s, London. Mr Léon’s parents, the late Paul and Lucie Léon, were close friends of Joyce from 1928 onwards. / Mr and Mrs Alexis Léon decided that the National Library of Ireland should be given first refusal on the new collection because they hoped it thus would come to the Library to which Mr Léon’s father had donated the extensive collection of James Joyce–Paul Léon letters in 1941 [presumably those entrusted to Count O’Kelly in Paris]. / The acquisition, which cost £8 million sterling (€12.6 million at May 2002 exchange rates), is to be funded, over a three year period, from the Heritage Fund, established in 2001 by the then Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Síle de Valera TD, and with support from the AIB Group under the tax credit scheme - viz., Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997, Sect. 1003 (See Irish Times Report).

See also Michael Groden, “The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: A Statement and Document Descriptions”, in James Joyce Quarterly, 39, 1 (Fall 2001) pp.29-51; Groden, “The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: A Narative and Document Summaries”, in Journal of Modern Literature, 26, 1 (Fall 2002), pp.1-16; Groden, “The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: An Outline and Archive Comparisons”, in Joyce Studies Annual (2003) pp.5-17; Peter Kenny [NLI], comp., The James Joyce Papers 2002 (Dublin: National Library of Ireland, n.d.)

Notebooks: The Joyce Papers 2002 - held in NLI as MS 36,649 - include the Notebook of 1903-04 which was previously treated as two separate sources, viz., the “Paris Notebook” and the “Pola Notebook”, the then-known contents of which Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann (eds., Critical Writings, 1966) copied from the extracts given in Herbert Gorman’s contemporary life biography, James Joyce (1939), pp.96-99, 133-35. This is now catalogued as NLI MS 36,649/2/A. Reviewing the online version of the Joyce Papers at NLI in an Irish Times article of 7 May 2012, Terence Killeen calls it -

‘[...] a commonplace book, which Joyce used for an unusual variety of purposes: as an account book, as a repository of various passages and poems from his reading that struck him (Ben Jonson is a particular favourite); reading lists; thoughts and reflections on aesthetics; remarks on friends (J. F. Byrne, for instance); and, eventually, notes for Dubliners and for the figure of Stephen Dedalus as he emerged in the later fiction (some of the notes even look forward to Ulysses). [...] It was purchased and begun in Paris in 1903, and it is gratifying to see an entry in the accounts list of a payment of some 16 francs from The Irish Times (this was for an interview with French motor ace Henri Fournier). An unusual feature of this copybook is that it was used for an extremely long period, from 1903 in Paris to around 1912 in Trieste. This alone gives it a special place.’ (See Killen, ‘Joycean joy after library says “yes”’, in The Irish Times, [Mon.] 7 May 2012 - online.)

The rediscovered Notebook was made available by the NLI - along with other papers in the NLI holdings - under the rubric ‘more service enhancements’ on the NLI frontpage [online; not found at 20.05.2012 - BS]

NLI Notice: Following the expiration of the fifty year period stipulated by Paul Léon the Joyce-Léon Papers were opened in the National Library of Ireland. The nineteen envelopes were found to contain correspondence and other papers in a rough chronological order. The papers fell into five main groups: the correspondence of James Joyce and Paul Léon, the correspondence of James Joyce and Paul Léon with Harriet Shaw Weaver, general correspondence with Joyce’s friends, acquaintances and admirers, business correspondence with his solicitors, agents and publishers and miscellaneous personal and household accounts. (Patricia Donlon, Foreword to The James Joyce Paul Léon Papers: A Catalogue / Catherine Fahy. - Dublin: National Library of Ireland.) [See The James Joyce-Paul Léon Papers at the National Library of Ireland: Catalogue - online; accessed 29.10.2014.]

The following information on the Paris and Pola notebooks comprised in it were supplied in the extracts copied from Herbert Gorman’s James Joyce (1939) in The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason & Richard Ellmann (NY: Viking Press 1966):

“Paris Notebook”
Published in Gorman [viz., Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, 1939, pp.96-99]. The manuscripts from which Gorman was working no longer exist. The Slocum Collection of the Yale University Library contains in one holograph manuscript sheet, written on both sides, what probably was an earlier draft of the first two items printed belows (dated Feb. 13 and March 6). While essentially the same as the printed version, this text contains minor variations in diction, of which the most important are noted below. [E.g., Yale MS reads: ‘which an improper art aims at exciting ...’ for which in an improper art aims at exciting ...’] (Critical Writings of James Joyce, NY: Viking Press 1966, p.143, n.; also cited prefatorily CW, p.11)

“Pola Notebook”
Published in Gorman, pp.133-35. The manuscripts from which Gorman was working no longer exist, but there is a single holograph manuscript sheet in the Slocum Collection of the Yale University Library that is probably a first draft of the first item printed below (dated 7 XI 04). Except for two small changes in diction, this text is identical with the printed version. (Critical Writings of James Joyce, NY: Viking Press 1966), p.146, n.)

“Subject Notebook”
The Subject Notebook (NLI 36,639/3) - being part of the 2002 Joyce Papers at NLI - is a type of commonplace book which resembles the Alphabetical (or Trieste) notebook (Cornell MS 25, compiled in 1910 for A Portrait) and the Scribbledehobble notebook (Buffalo VI.A, compiled in 1923 for Finnegans Wake), in that the contents are arranged under specific subject headings.

See Wim Van Mierlo, ‘The Subject Notebook: A Nexus of Composition History of Ulysses - A Preliminary Analysis’, in Genetic Joyce Studies, No. 7: ‘Joyce began compiling the Subject Notebook in October 1917. This terminus a quo can be firmly established because he purchased the copybook from D. Pellanda in Locarno (“Modello c | Quaderno [emblem] Officiale | Aritmetica | per tutti le Classi delle Scuola primarie e maggiori”), where he went in the middle of the month for the mild weather to recover from an attack of glaucoma [1] In addition, two entries in the notebook can be traced to the Frankfurter Zeitung, one to an article titled “Im polnischen Mekka | Kosciuszko-Feier in Rapperswil am Zürichsee” (16 October 1917) (f.[8v]), the other to an article by Rudolf Lothar, “Über Wesen und Wert dramatischer Motive” (26 October 1917) (f.[3r]). I have not yet been able to establish a terminus ad quem, but a good proportion of its compilation was the result of an intensive period of note taking, since usage was almost immediate. Material was used for “Proteus” V.A.3 (late 1917), including “LB’s | letter: | headache | menstr[uous] | (monthly)” (extradraft marginal note, V.A.3-15) (f.[2r]); “I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship half twelve. By the way, go easy with that money” (V.A.3-3; U3.58-59) (f.[6r]); “Someone <would> was to read them there <in about> after thousand years, <time you thought> a mahavantara” (V.A.3-6; U3.143-4) (f.[7v]); “Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, [...] immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting” (V.A.3-2; U 3.42-44) (f.[7v]); “Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke[...] under Clerkenwell walls” (V.A.3-9; U3.246-8) (f.[8v]); “On a field tenney a buck trippant proper unattired” (V.A.3-13; U3.336-7) (f.[17v]). Two other notes even found their place in the now earliest extant draft in the “Proteus”-“Sirens” copybook (NLI 36,369/7A). The first influenced a passage that remained virtually unchanged until the published book: “The dog ambled about, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something he lost in a past life” (p.[1]); it was borrowed from Otto Weininger’s Über die letzten Dinge. The second note is also very much connected with Joyce’s borrowings from Weininger and appears close to Stephen’s rendering of Berkeley’s perception of the world in heraldic form as all space “hatched” on a flat surface or cloth (p.[9]; U3.417-18): Stephen’s contemplations on sense perception are connected with Weininger’s ideas about the relationship of time to space, the “nacheindander” and “nebeneinander”. [Cont.]

[Wim Van Mierlo, ‘The Subject Notebook ... &c.’ - cont.:] ‘Joyce continued using the notebook over a period of at least two years, with some considerable mining in 1919 when he prepared a copybook draft of “Cyclops” (V.A.8 and NLI 36,639/10); other entries were used in “Wandering Rocks” and “Circe”. Some examples of usage include: “<Where are the ships>. And the beds of Barrow and Shannon that they won’t deepen. Where is the government would leave half a million acres of marsh in the middle of the Country to make us all die of consumption” (V.A.8-45; U12.1256-7), “Professor Pokorny’s “interesting point” that there is “no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth” (Rosenbach Ms f.38; U10.1078-82) (f.[8v]); the fortune-telling sequence in which Zoe reads Stephen’s (“Thursday’s child has far to go”, U15.3687; f.[6r]) and Bloom’s palm (Knobby knuckles for the women”, U15.3698-9; f.[2r]). Not all of the entries were culled straight from the Subject Notebook, however; an apparently random set of notes was lifted from the notebook and entered on the “Cyclops” 10 notesheet and on “Circe” 3 (see below). As late as the 1930s, material also resurfaced in “Work in Progress”, when Madame Raphael transcribed the remaining notes in VI.C.7 (255-269).’

Bibl. incls. Michael Groden, ‘The National Library of Ireland’s New Joyce Manuscripts: an Outline and Archive Comparisons’,Joyce Studies Annual, 14, ed. Thomas F. Staley (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); Rodney Wilson Owen,James Joyce and the Beginnings of Ulysses (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1983); Peter Kenny, comp.,The James Joyce Papers 2002 (Dublin: National Library of Ireland, n.d.); Phillip F. Herring, ed., Joyce’s Notes and Early Drafts for Ulysses: Selections from the Buffalo Collection [Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1977]; Danis Rose & John O’Hanlon, ed., The Lost Notebook: New Evidence on the Genesis of Ulysses (Edinburgh: Split Pea Press, 1989); William H. Quillian, ‘Shakespeare in Trieste: Joyce’s 1912Hamlet Lectures’, in JJQ 12 (1974-75): 7-63; Michael Patrick Gillespie, Inverted Volumes Improperly Arranged: James Joyce and His Trieste Library (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1983).

[Available online - accessed 20.05.2012.]

[ top ]

Ballyhoo

NLI Joyce Papers (free access): On Tuesday, 10 April 2012 the National Library of Ireland made its holdings of James Joyce manuscripts available cost-free online - deemed to be the first time that such an initiative has been been undertaken by any institution, world-wide. The decision was apparently arrived at in response to the publication of draft-pages of Finnegans Wake acquired by Library in 2005 which had been transcribed by Danis Rose and issued in the Houhnhynm imprint of Lilliput earlier in 2012. The papers can be reached via the NLI Catalogue online. [i.e., https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000194606].

Bibl. The Early Commonplace Notebook or “The Notebook with accounts, quotations, book lists, &c.” - being the notes identified without sight as the [so-called] Paris and Pola Notebooks in The Workshop of Daedalus (1965) - listed in NLI catalogue of Joyce Papers 2000 as MS 36, 639/2/A - available online [accessed 11.03.2022]. The contents of the school exercise book for mathematics with a laurel wreath on the cover are: 1 numbered pages; 10 unnumbered pages with text; blank page; small fragment remaining from removed page; 2 unnumbered pages with text; 38 blank pages [i.e. 82 pages + fragment]. (NLI.) Note that the existence of a unified note incorporating both the so-called Paris and Pola Notebooks was disclosed by the NLI acquisition of same after the publication of the Occassional Writings (ed. Kevin Barry, 2000), in which the contents are selected and separated in the usual fashion. See however Fran O’Rourke, Joyce’s Quotations from Aristotle: “Allwisest Stagyrite” [Joyce Studies, 21] (National Library of Ireland 2004) [pamph.]

[ top ]

The Joyce Papers 2002 [3] Sean J. Murphy writes that the documents made available in response to his own request for sight of the contract of sale between the National Library [and the vendor] give grounds for doubting if the Léons, who sold the MS materials to the Library for a large sum (€12.6 million) actually had legal title to them. Murphy writes: ‘[A] series of Joyce’s notebooks for Ulysses, numbered 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8, are in State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and can be acccounted for in that (as the writer has been informed) 1, 2, 4 and 7 were sold on by Sylvia Beach, while 6 and 8 were among material sold by Joyce’s family to the university after the war, which material had earlier been duly returned to its possession in accordance with Paul Léon’s instructions. The missing notebooks numbered 3, 5 and 9 are among the manuscripts acquired from the Léons by the National Library, and the question arises as to whether these might have somehow become detached from the material Paul Léon had rescued on Joyce’s behalf, or whether they could have been an earlier gift to him from Joyce. Alexis Léon was quoted at the time of the 2002 sale as insisting that the manuscripts had nothing to do with the documents which his father had rescued from Joyce’s flat. Yet one Internet commentator observed, ‘The way this is phrased suggests to me that Alexis Léon knows he’s on shaky ground in claiming ownership’.

Further: ‘[...] How the Finnegans Wake manuscripts slipped from the National Library’s grasp in 2004 and into the hands of Laura Barnes remains therefore something of an unresolved mystery. While serious negotiations to purchase the manuscripts got under way with Ms Barnes’s agent Sotheby’s in December 2004, it was not until June 2005 that the Library was in a position to sign a contract of sale, having secured funding support from Allied Irish Banks via the Section 1003 tax relief provision.

‘The identity of the vendor Ms Barnes was stated not to have been revealed to the Library until as late as May 2005, and in February 2006 Sotheby’s informed National Library Director Aongus Ó hAonghusa that ‘she would obviously prefer it if her name did not come out at all’. The contract described the vendor of the manuscripts as ‘Laura Rosenfeld (also known as Laura Barnes)’, but contained a confidentiality clause stating that the details of the contract should not be released, save as might be required legally or in response to an FOI application. 

Murphy concludes: ‘[W]hy continue to withhold the vendors’ warranties, and why not produce more firm evidence such as a bill of sale? Why the continuing secrecy, and the frankly provocative decision to refuse the Joyce Estate information which might allay its concerns? In short, why prolong a controversy unnecessarily by refusing to be more transparent in relation to the expenditure of a sum of public money as large as €12.6 million? At a time when fiscal rectitude has resulted in cuts in health and education, and inevitably also restrictions in cultural spending, these questions take on an even greater urgency.’ (See Sean J. Murphy, ‘Irish Historical Mysteries: The Trade in Joyce Manuscripts’ - online; still accessible at 12.03.2022.)

[ top ]

The Joyce Papers 2005 - cont.: In regard to the later purchase of 6 pages of “Work in Progress” dating from 1923 from Laura Barnes in 2005 - she having acquired them from Jean-Claude Vrain before selling them on advantageously to the National Library of Ireland, Murphy writes: ‘At this stage the writer admits that it is just not possible to connect all the contradictory dots in relation to the Finnegans Wake manuscripts purchased in 2005 by the National Library of Ireland from Laura Barnes (aka Rosenfeld, aka Weldon). Furthermore the picture remains blurred in regard to the earlier cache of Joycean manuscripts acquired in 2002 from Alexis Léon. Since 2000 the National Library has spent approximately €15 million of public funds acquiring manuscripts of James Joyce. Such a large expenditure on literary manuscripts requires the highest levels of transparency and accountability, and it is not acceptable that questions should remain unanswered with regard to provenance and cost, as well as relations between a vendor and National Library staff’ - this last remark being an allusion to Dr. Lucca Crispi and others who previously worked with Barnes both in America and Ireland.

The Joyce Papers 2005 - cont.: Murphy has also identified a transaction in which Barnes acted as a purchasing agent for the Library in relation to a post-card written by Joyce. He quotes the official report of the Irish Comptroller to the effect that ‘circumstances surrounding the sourcing of the material and the level of interaction that is inevitable within a limited community of persons in a specialised field strongly suggests that more robust contractual and ethical arrangements may be required to protect the State’s interests where such factors come into play’ - and directs the reader to the Irish Government website of the Oireachtas’ Public Accounts Committee where the then Librarian Aongus Ó hAonghusa gives evidence on the matter, specifically as regards the ultimate purchase from a former employee of an item which the Comptroller’s report indicates had formerly been offered by the first vendor for a lower.

[ To see an extract from the Oireachtas minutes for 9 Oct. 2008, go online - or see the relevant extract, as attached - or go to Sean J. Murphy, op. cit., online; all accessed 18.11.2011. ]

[ top ]