James Joyce: Quotations (5) - Extracts from the Letters
To Henrik Ibsen (March 1901) [Joyces English draft]: What shall I say more? I have sounded your name defiantly through the college where it was either unknown or known faintly and darkly. I have claimed for you your rightful place in the history of the drama. I have shown what, as it seemed to me, was your highest excellence - your lofty impersonal power. Your minor claims - your satire, your technique and orchestral harmony - these, too, I advanced. Do not think me a hero-worshipper - I am not so. And when I spoke of you in debating societies and so forth, I enforced attention by no futile ranting. / But we always keep the dearest things to ourselves. I did not tell them what bound me closest to you. I did not say how what I could discern dimly of your life was my pride to see, how your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead, how your wilful resolution to wrest the secret from life [gave] me heart and how in your absolute indifference to public canons of art, friends and shibboleths you walked in the light of your inward heroism. And this is what I write to you of now. Your work on earth draws to a close and you are near the silence. It is growing dark for you. Many write of such things, but they do not know. You have only opened the way - though you have gone as far as you could upon it - to the end of “John Gabriel Borkman” and its spiritual truth - for your last play stands, I take it, apart. But I am sure that higher and holier enlightenment lies - onward. (Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, London: Faber & Faber 1975, p.7.)
To Lady Gregory (Nov. 1902): [...] I know there is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to my church as a human being, and accordingly I am going to Paris. [...] I do not know what will happen to me in Paris but my case can hardly be worse than it is here. [...] I am not despondent however for I know that even if I fail to make my way such failure proves very little. I shall try myself against the powers of the world. All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. And though I seem to have been driven out of my country here as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine. (Typescript copy made by Lady Gregory, held among the papers of W. B. Yeats, with an inscription on verso in WBYs hand; Letters, ed. Stuart Gilbert, Vol. I [1957], 1966, p.53; Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, London: Faber & Faber 1975, p.8.)
To his mother (20 March 1903) - from Paris: My book of songs will be published in the spring of 1907. My first comedy about five years later. My Esthetic about five years later again. (This must interest you!) Yeats (who is impressionable) said he knew me ony a little time and in that time I had roared laughing at the mention of Balzac, Swinburne &c. I have more than once upset a whole French café by laughing ... (Letters, Vol. 2, [1957] 1966, p.38.) [ top ] To Nora [29 Aug. 1904, 60 Shelbourne Road]: [...] I may have pained you tonight by what I said but surely it is well that you should know my mind on most things? My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity - home, the recognised virtues, classes of life, and religious doctrines. How could I like the idea of home? My home was simply a middle-class affair ruined by spendthrift habits which I have inherited. My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my fathers ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct. When I looked on her face as she lay in her coffin - a face grey and wasted with cancer - I understood that I was looking on the face of a victim and I cursed the system which had made her a victim. We were seventeen in family. My brothers and sisters are nothing to me. One brother alone is capable of understanding me. [i.e, Stanislaus; but see letter to Mrs. Joyce: Georgie understood me, I am beginning to think, 20 March 1903; SL, p.20.] / Six years ago I left the Catholic Church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made myself a [25] beggar but I retained my pride. Now I make open war upon it by what I write and say and do. I cannot enter the social order except as a vagabond. I started to study medicine three times, law once, music once. A week ago I was arranging to go away as a travelling actor. I could put no energy into the plan because you kept pulling me by the elbow. The actual difficulties of my life are incredible but I despise them. [...; cont.] (Letters, II, p.48.)
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[ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (7 Feb. 1905) - cont.: [...] My life is far less even than formerly. I reach prostrating depths of impersonality (multiply 9 [to the power of] 4 by 17 - the no of weeks) but on the other hand I reach levels of great satisfaction. I am sure however that the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned lie and that there cannot be any substitute for the individual passion as the motive power of everythign - art and philosophy included. (p.54.)
To Stanislaus Joyce (12 July 1905): [...] There is a neat phrase of five words in The Boarding House: find it. [...; p.63.] You will remember the circumstances in which I left Ireland nine months ago. Like everything else that I have done in my life it was an [92] experiment. I can hardly say with truth that it was an experiment which has failed seeing that in those nine months I have begotten a child, written 500 pages of my novel, written 3 of my stories, learned German and Danish fairly well, discharged the intolerable (to me) duties of my position and swindled two tailors. [...] I must, first of all, tell you that Trieste is the rudest place I have ever been in. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the incivility of the people [...; 93] The Trieste people are great stylists in dream, often starving themselves in order to be able to flaunt good dresses on the pier [...; 94] She [Nora] seems to me to be in danger of falling into a melancholy mood which would certainy inure her health very much. I do not know what strange morose creature she will bring forth after all her tears and I am even beginning to reconsider the appositeness of the names I had chosen (George and Lucy). [...] The child is an unforgettable part of the problem. I suppose you know that Nora is incapable of any of the deceits which pass for current morality and the fact she is unhappy here is explained when you consider that she is really very helpless and unable to cope with any kind of difficulties. [...; 95] I often thing to myself that, in spite of the seeming acuteness of my writing, I may fail in life through being too ingenuous, and certainly I made a mistake in thinking that, with an Irish friendship aiding me, I could carry through my general indictent or survey of the island successfully. The very degrading and unsatisfactory nature of my exile angers me and I do not see why I should continue to drag it out with a view to returning some day with money in my pocket and convincing men of letters that, after all, I was a person of talent. [...; 96; lays out plan to rent a cottage outside Dublin; p.97.] (Letters, II, 1966, pp.92-97; Selected Letters, 1975, pp.63-68.) [ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (19 July 1905): [...] Many of of the frigidities of The Boarding House and Counterparts were written while the sweat streamed down my face on to the handerchief which protected my collar. [...; p.69 - and see note, infra.] Further: The preface to The Vicar of Wakefield which I read yesterday gave me a moment of doubt as to the excellence of my literary manners. It seems improbable that Hardy, for example, will be spoken of in two hundred years. And yet when I arrived at page two of the narrative I saw the extreme putridity of the social system out of which Goldsmith had reared his flower. Is it possible that, after all, men of letters are no more than entertainers? These discouraging reflections arise perhaps from my surroundings. The stories of Dubliners seem to be indisputably well done but, after all, perhaps many people could do them as well. Maupassant writes very well, of ocurse, but I am afraid that this moral sense is very obtuse. The Dublin papers will object to my stories as to a caricature of Dublin life. Do you think there is any truth in this? At times the spirit directing my pen seems to me so plainly mischievous that I am almost prepared to let the Dublin critics have there way. All these pros and cons I must for the nonce lock up in my bosom. Of course I do not think that I consider contemporary Irish writing anything but ill-written, morally obtuse formless caricature. / The struggles against conventions in which I am at present involved was not entered into by me so much as a protest against these conventions as with the intention of living in conformity with my moral nature. There are some people in Ireland who would call my moral nature oblique, people who think that the whole duty of man consists in paying ones debts; but in this case Irish opinion is certainly only the caricature of the opinion of any European tribunal. [...] my present lamentable circumstances seem to constitute a certain reproach against me. [End.] (Selected Letters, 1975, p.70.)
To Aunt Josephine [Mrs. William Murray] (31 Dec. 1904): [...] I am trying to move on to Italy as soon as possible as I hate this Catholic country with its hundred races and thousand languages, governed by a parliament which can transact no business and sits for a week at the most and by the most physically corrupt royal house in Europe. Pola is a back-of-God speed palce - a naval Sibera - 37 man owar in the harbour, swarming with faded uniforms. [...] I spit upon the image of the tenth Pius. Faithfully yours Jas A. Joyce. (Selected Letters, 1975, p.49.) [ top ] To Grant Richards (13 March 1906): You suggest I should write a novel in some sense autobiographical [132]. I have already written a thousand pages of such a novel, as I think I told you, 914 pages to be accurate. I calculate that these twenty-five chapters, about half the book, run into 150,000 words. But it is quite impossible for me in present circumstances to think the rest of the book much less write it. This book also has the defect of being about Ireland. (Letter to Grant Richard, 13 March 1906, in The Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1, ed. Stuart Gilbert, NY: Viking Press 1957; 1966, p.131-32.)
To Grant Richards (23 June 1906): I send you a Dublin paper by this post. It is the leading satirical paper of the Celtic nations, corresponding to Punch or Pasquino. I send it to you that you may see how witty the Irish are as all the world knows [...] you will see for yourself that the Irish are the most spiritual race on the face of the earth. Perhaps this may reconcile you to Dubliners. It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs [89] about my stories [...] I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass. (Letter to Grant Richards, 23 June 1906; Stuart Gilbert, ed., Letters, Vol. 1 [1957], Viking Edn. 1966 [ed. Richard Ellmann], pp.63-64; also in Ellmann, ed., Selected Letters 1975, p.90.) [ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (19 Aug. 1906): [...] How the devil did you think the news about Kettle would interest me? But I would like to see a copy of Dialogues of the Day. I have written three paragraphs to add to A Painful Case, but I dont know if I can rewrite it. I would like also to rewrite After the Race but if G.R. sent me the proofs I would pass the book as it is. The case of perfection is very unprofitable. / Send me on the news. Today I discovered a photograph of Billy Walsh [Archb. of Dublin, &c.] in a prominent street. Would you like to see some copies of LAsino - the Italian anti-clerical newspaper. I absorbed the attention of the tree clerks in my office a few days ago by a socialistic outburst. One of them is a German and he was ridiculing Lombrosianism and antimilitarism. He said when children cried they should be caned, favoured corporal punishment in schools, conscription, religion, &c. I think he was surprised not to find an ally in an Inglese. Item: English and Americans abroad talk at the top of their voices. (Letters, II, 1966, p.151; Selected Letters, 1975, p.97.)
To Stanislaus Joyce (25 Sept. 1906; Via Frattina 52, II, Rome): Dear Stannie, At present Monday morning I am anxiously waiting for a remittance from you. My assets are two centesimi as yesterday I had to get shaved and to pay a laundry bill and to buy medicine for Georgie who has a bad cold on his chest. I wrote yesterday again to G[rant] R[ichards] a pressing letter asking him to reply by return of post. I sent you yesterday the U.I. with an article by Gogarty of which I hope you will appreciate the full flavour. The part about the chummies is particularly rich. I {164} am delighted to see that this is only an instalment. Aunt J has left off sending me Skeffingtons paper or writing at all. I must be a very insensible person. Yesterday I went to see the Forum. I sat down on a stone bench overlooking the ruins. It was hot and sunny. Carriages full of tourists, postcard sellers, medal sellers, photograph sellers. I was so moved that I almost fell asleep and had to rise brusquely. I looked at the stone bench ruefully but it was too hard and the grass near the Colosseum was too far. So I went home sadly. Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmothers corpse. [See note.] Isnt it strange that O.G. should be anathemising ugly England just [108] when I wanted to be in an English watering-place. As for the eating houses which must be erected for Sludge: O.G. should travel a little in beautiful Italy and artistic France. Mrs G. mustnt have been very entertaining while in England since O.G. found time to write those two columns. I notice by the way that Cohn isnt earning his money lately. At any rate he hasnt contributed any peatballs to the U[nited] I[rishman] for a long time. On the way home from the Forum being very tired I went into a Dominican church where I found a comfortable straw chair. I watched two nuns at confession. Confession over confessor and penitents left the church in the direction of the cloister. But the nuns came back very shortly and knelt down beside me. Then vespers began. Then there was the rosary. Then there was a sermon. The gentleman who delivered this addressed most of his remarks to me - God knows why. I suppose I looked pious. I didnt wait for benediction. While listening to the service a most keen regret seized me that I could not gain for myself from historical study an accurate appreciation of an order like the Dominicans. I think my policy of substracting oneself and ones progeny from the church is too slow. I dont believe the church has suffered {165} vitally from the number of her apostates. An order like this couldnt support their immense church with rent &c on the obolos of the religious but parsimonious Italian. And the same, I expect, in France. They must have vast landed estates under various names, and invested moneys. This is one reason why they oppose the quite unheretical theory of socialism because they know that one of its items is expropriation. [Cont.]
[ Note: pagination of Selected Letters (1975) in square brackets; that of Letters, II (1966) in bow-brackets. ] To Stanislaus Joyce (25 Sept. 1906) - cont.: I received today in the nick of time your remittance of 17 Lire. The only fear I have now is that they wont pay me on the 9.9th. With this money I can get along till Thursday evg. Kindly let me know how much I am to send you back on the 1st and in what manner. I will wait to see if I am to be continued here and if so I will go to the B.S.2 about you. Do you think I should waste 2 lire on buying a book of Gissings - or ought I buy a volume of Bret Harte. I have often confessed to you surprise that there should be anything exceptional in my writing and it is only at moments when I leave down somebody elses book that it seems to me not so unlikely after all. Sometimes thinking of Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have reproduced (in [109] Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of the city for I have never felt at my ease in any city since I left it except in Paris. I have not reproduced its ingenuous insularity and its hospitality. The latter virtue so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe. I have not been just to its beauty: for it is more beautiful naturally in my opinion than what I have seen of England, Switzerland, France, Austria or Italy. And yet I know how useless these reflections are. For were I to rewrite the book as G[rant] R[ichards] suggests in another sense (where the hell does he get the meaningless phrases he uses) I am sure I should find again what you call the Holy Ghost sitting in the ink-bottle and the perverse devil of my literary conscience sitting on the hump of my pen. And after all Two Gallants - with the Sunday crowds and the harp in Kildare street and Lenehan is an Irish landscape. The fuss made about Gorky, I think, is due to the fact that he was the first of his class to enter the domain of European literature. I, not having Gorkys claim, have a more modest end. Ibsen himself seems to have disclaimed some of the rumorosity attaching to A Dolls House. He said testily to one Italian interviewer, if you can believe the I[rish] I[ndependent]. But you people cant understand it properly. You should have been in Norway {166} when the Paris fashion journals first began to be on sale in Christiania. This is really my reason for constantly plaguing reluctant relatives at home to send me papers or cuttings from them. I wish there was an Irish Club here. I am sure there are ten times as many Irish and American-Irish here than Scandinavians. By the way, how did stupid old Aibsen [sic] make out the bit here? Teaching is impossible: he must have been in some German office. [Cont.] [ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (25 Sept. 1906; from Rome) - cont.: In my opinion Griffiths speech at the meeting of the National Council justifies the existence of his paper. He, probably, has to lease out his columns to scribblers like Gogarty and Cohn, and virgin martyrs like his sub-editor. But, so far as my knowledge of Irish affairs goes, he was the first person in Ireland to revive the separatist idea on modern lines nine years ago. He wants the creation of an Irish consular service abroad, and of an Irish bank at home. What I dont understand is that while apparently he does the talking and the thinking two or three fatheads like Martyn and Sweetman dont begin either of the schemes. [110] He said in one of his articles that it cost a Danish merchant less to send butter to Christiania and then by sea to London than it costs an Irish merchant to send his from Mullingar to Dublin. A great deal of his programme perhaps is absurd but at least it tries to inaugurate some commercial life for Ireland and to tell you the truth once or twice in Trieste I felt myself humiliated when I heard the little Galatti girl sneering at my impoverished country. You may remember that on my arrival in Trieste I actually took some steps to secure an agency for Foxford tweeds there. What I object to most of all in his paper is that it is educating the people of Ireland on (the old pap of racial hatred whereas anyone can see that if the Irish question exists, it exists for the Irish proletariat chiefly. I have expressed myself badly, I fear, but perhaps you will be able to get at what I mean. A Belfast linen company does a great deal of business in Rome through this bank. On the whole I dont think it fair to compare him with a stupid mountebank like Knickerbockers.) / Georgies cold seems to be better. He can walk across the room by himself now and he has two new teeth. Certainly Rome must be very healthy. It is now noon and I am quite hungry. Last night, for example, {167} for dinner I had soup, spaghetti al sugo, half a beefsteak, bread and cheese, grapes and a half litre of wine. The wine here is like water, poor stuff, in my opinion! The fruit is very dear. The stupid foreigners that come here in swarms put up the price of everything. Twenty years ago, I hear, it was much cheaper. JIM. (Selected Letters, 1975, pp.108-11; Letters, II, pp.164-68.)
[ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (13 Nov. 1906; from Rome): [...] I thought of beginning my story Ulysses: but I have too many cares at present. Ferrero [Grandezza e decadenza di Roma, 5 vols., Milan 1902-07] devotes a chapter in his history of Rome to the Odes of Horace: so, perhaps, poets should be let live. In his book Young Europe [lEuropea giovane, Milan 1897 ] which I have just read he says there are three great classes of emigrants: the (I forget the word) [viz, plasmativa]: it means conquering, imposing their own language, &c.), the English: the adhesive (forming a little group with national traditions and sympathies) the Chinese and the Irish!!!!; the diffusive (entering into the now society and forming part of it) the Germans. He has a fine chapter on Antisemitism. By the way, Brandes is a Jew. He says that Karl Marx has the apocalyptic imagination and makes Armageddon a war between capital and labour. The most arrogant statement made by Israel so far, he says, not excluding the gospel of Jesus is Marxs proclamation that socialism is the fulfilment of a natural law. In considering Jews he slips in Jesus between Lassalle and Lombroso: the latter too (Ferreros father-in-law) is a Jew. / We got notice yesterday. So I have to look for a new room. Tomorrow my money will be all gone. I am relying on a pupil who begins lessons tonight. He is taking 10 lessons for 20 lire. [..., 190; ensuing includes remarks on William Bulfin, aka Che Buono.] By the way, they are still at the venereal excess cry in Sinn Féin. Why does nobody compile statistics of venereal excess from Dublin hospitals? What is venereal excess? [...] Anyway, my opinion is that if I put down a bucket into my own souls well, sexual department, I draw up Griffiths and Ibsens and Skeffingtons and Bernard Vaughans and St. Aloysius and Shelleys and Renans water along with my own. And I am going to do that in my novel (inter alia) and plank the bucket down before the shades and substance above mentioned and see how they like it: and if they dont like it I cant help them. I am nauseated with their lying drivel about pure men and pure [192] women and spiritual love and love for ever: blatant lying in the face of the truth. I dont know much about the scaince of the subject but I presume that there are very few mortals in Europe who are not indanger of waking some morning and finding themselves syphilitic. The Irish consider England a sink: but, if cleanliness be important in this matter, what is Ireland? Perhaps my view of life is too cynical but it seems to me that a lot of this talk about love is nonsense. A womans love is always maternal and egoistic. A man, on the contrary, side by side with his extraordinary cerebral sexualism and bodily fervour (from which women are normally free) possess a fund of genuine affection for the beloved or once beloved object. I am no friend of tyranny, as you know, but I many husbands are brutal the atmosphere in which they live (vide Counterparts) is brutal and few wives and homes can satisfy the desire for happiness. In fact, it is useless to talk about this any further. I am going for lunch. (Letters, II, 1966, pp.190-92; Selected Letters, 1975, pp.128-30.)
[ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (?1 Feb. 1907; Via Monte Brianzo 51, IV°, Rome): Dear Stannie - I read in the D.M. [?Daily Mail] under the heading Riot in a Dublin theatre that a clerk named Patrick Columb and someone else were put up at the Police Courts for disorderly conduct in the Abbey Theatre at a performance of Synges new play The Playboy of the Western World [27 Jan. 1907]. The story, I believe, is of a self-accused parracide with whom all the girls of a district FALL IN LOVE. The clerk P.C. said (he was fined 40s. or 14 days) that nothing would deter him from protesting against such a slander on Ireland. There was also booing at certain strong expressions in the play. The evening ended in confusion. A [143] Trinity college youth created another row by singing God Save the King. W. B. Y. gave evidence and said he could not hear one word of the play. They had decided, on account of the organised opposition, to run the play for a week longer than they had first intended. He would send free tickets to any who had been prevented from hearing the play. It was Synges masterpiece, he said: an example of the exaggeration of art (I am glad he has got a phrase to add to that priceless one of Saint Boooooof about style)[.] Synge was interviewed and said he claimed the right as an artist, to choose whatever subject he wished! I am waiting for the Dublin papers. Columb must either have been forsaken by Kelly or have returned to his office since he is called a clerk. I suspect Synges naggin is on the increase. I knew, before now, that there was a schism in the theatre: as all of Columbs plays have been given by the Irish Theatre and the reviews of Yeats and Lady Gregory and Miss Hornymans [sic; caps] productions which have appeared lately in Sinn Féin have been hostile. Yeats says the Irish obeyed great leaders in the past but now they obey ignorant committees. I believe Columb and the Irish Theatre will beat Y and L.G. and Miss H; which will please me greatly, as Yeats cannot well hawk his theatre over to London. However I am sure that many of the hermetists dont know which to choose. It is lucky for O.G. that his mourning allows him to wait a little longer. Synge will probably be condemned from the pulpit, as a heretic: which would be dreadful: so that Stiffbreeches [Eglinton] and Ryan really ought to start another paper in defence of free thought, just for a week or so. Im sure Ryan is the man for it. I suppose Sinn Féin and The Leader will find out all about Synges life in Paris: which will be nice for Lady G and Miss H. And as for pore old A.E. I suppose he is nibbling cabbages up in Rathgar in quite an excited frame of mind at the amount of heresy which is rife in Dublin. Starkie writes a poem in Sinn Féin about the world-fruit withering on the tree and there being none to pluck it. But enough now of the mummers. That Southern X [for Cross; 144] chap, Señor Bulfin, who is I am assured an Irishman, has a letter in Sinn Féin, ridiculing the Union Jack regatta at Galway. Two columns are consumed by his account of the talk of the classes. Ex: Nice weather O, chawming Chawming regatta O, rawtha Funny how little interest the country takes in these things Quite to awfally funny, doncherknow! He makes great fun of the shake-hands over the five-bar-gate and the [breaks off]. (Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, Faber 1975, pp.140-43.) [Note: Ellmann explains in a footnote that Joyce mistook the father of the writer for his son; see under Padraic Colum - supra.] [ top ] To Stanislaus Joyce (11 Feb. 1907; Via Monte Brianzo 51, IV°, Rome): Dear Stannie - I sent you yesterday copies of the F[reemans] J[ournal]. containing fuller [146] accounts of the Abbey Riots. The debates [at the Abbey Th. on 4 Feb.] must have been very funny. Our old friends Skeff. and Dick Sheehy seem to have just been taking a walk round themselves since October 1904. I read Sheehans with pleasure and surprise. I would like, however, to hear the phrases which drove out the ladies with expressions of pain on their facers The pulpit Irishman is a good fellow to the stage Irishman [quoting Sheehan as reported in FJ; Ellmann ftn. 4]. I see that Synge uses the word bloody frequently, and the great phrase was if all the girls in Mayo were standing before me in their shifts, wonderful vision. Yeats is a tiresome idiot; he is quite out of touch with the Irish people, to whom he appeals as the author of Countess Cathleen. Synge is better at least he can set them by the ears. One writer speaks of Synge and his master Zola(!) so I suppose when Dubliners appears they will speak of me and my master Synge. Of course just the very week I wanted it most Aunt J[osephine] did not send Sinn Féin. As I told you before I think the Abbey Theatre is ruined. It is supported by the stalls, that is to say, Stephen Gwynn, Lord X, Lady Gregory etc who are dying to relieve the monotony of Dublin life. About Synge himself I cannot speak. I have read only one play of his Riders to the Sea, which made Yeats first think of the Greeks (who are always with us) and then of the early plays of the most Belgian of Shakespeares [viz., Maeterlinck]. Synge asked me to read it in Paris and when I [147] told him what I thought of it and expounded a long critical attack on the catastrophe as he used it he did not pay the least attention to what I said. So perhaps his later work has merit. If Synge really knows and understands the Irish peasant, the backbone of the nation, he might make a duodecimo Björnsen. Colum is out of the question and Russell and Coosins [sic]. Sheehan seems to be a little different from the other young men with ideas in Ireland. I suspect he must have got a high place in all his exams and so can afford to treat the church on equal terms. This whole affair has upset me. I feel like a man in a house who hears a row in the street and voices he knows shouting but cant get out to see what the hell is going on. It has put me off the story I was going to write - to wit, The Dead [The Dead]. / I am reading at present some of the old Italian story-tellers, such as Sermini, Doni &c. and also Anatole France. I wonder how he got his name. Crainquebille [i.e., Laffaire Crainquebille, 1903] of course, is very fine and parts or rather phrases of his of his other books. However I mustnt complain since he suggested Ivy Day in the Committee Room, and has now suggested another story The Dead. It is strange where you get ideas for stories. Stupid little Woodman gave me The Boarding House, Ferrero The Two Gallants. Others I though of myself or heard of. I havve some kind of thing stirring in my head at present, but winter is my close season. [...] (Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, Faber 1975, pp.147-48.)
To Stanislaus Joyce ([1] March 1907): [...] I have come to the conclusion that it about time I made up my mind whether I am to become a writer or a patient Cousins. I foresee that I shall have to do other work as well but to continue as at present would certainly mean my mental extinction. It is months since I have written a line and even reading tires me. The interest I took in socialism and the rest has left me. I have gradually slid down until I have ceased to take any interest in any subject. I look at God and his theatre through the eyes of my fellow-clerks so that nothing surprises, moves, excites or disgusts me. Nothing of my former mind seems to have remained except a heightened emotiveness which satisfies itself in the sixty-miles-an-hour pathos of some cinematograph or before some crude Italian gazette-picture. Yet I have certain ideas I would like to give form to: not as a doctrine but as the continuation of the expression of my self which I now see I began in Chamber Music. These ideas or instincts or intuitions or impulses are purely personal. I have no wish to codify myself as an anarchist or socialist or reactionary. The spectacle of the procession in honour of the Nolan [on 17 Feb.] left me quite cold. I understand that anti-clerical history probably contains a large percentage of lies but this is not enough to drive me back howling to my gods. This state of indifference ought to indicate artistic inclination, but doesnt. Because I take a fortnight to read a small book. I was about two days making up my mind to go and see the Dusk of the Gods. I weighed the cold, the distance, the crush, discomfort &c. Finally I went and tried to interest myself but was considerably bored. [217]
[ top ] To Nora Barnacle [Joyce] (22 Aug. 1912): When we go back to Trieste will you read if I give you books? Then we could speak together. Nobody love you as I do and I should love to read the different poets and dramatists and novelists with you as your guide. I will give you only what is finest and best in writing. Poor Jim! He is always planning and planning! / I hope I shall have good news tomorrow. If only my book is published then I will plunge into my novel and finish it. / [310] The Abbey Theatre [sic] will be open and they will give plays of Yeats and Synge. You have a right to be there because you are my bride: and I am one of the writers of this generation who are perhaps creating at last a conscience for the soul of this wretched race. Addio! (Letters, II, pp.310-11.)
To Mme [Fanny] Guillermet (5 August 1918): Le problème de ma race est si compliquée que nous avons besoin de tous les moyens d'un art élastique pour croquis - sans le résoudre. Je suis d'avis qu'un pronounciation personnels ne sont plus permis. Je suis obligé de le faire à travers la scène et le caractère de mon pauvre invention.) [Trans.: The problem of my race is so complicated that we need all the means of an elastic art for sketch - without solving it. I am of the opinion that a personal pronounciation is no longer allowed. I am forced to do it through the stage and the character of my poor invention.] (Letter to Mme Guillermet, 5 Aug. 1918, in Letters of James Joyce, ed. Stuart Gilbert, NY: Viking 1957; 1966 [Vol. I], p.18.) [ top ] To Harriet Shaw Weaver [on giving her the MS of A Portrait, which now resides in the NLI] (6 Jan. 1920): The original original I tore up and threw in to the stove about eight years ago [viz., 1912] in a fit or rage on account of the trouble over Dubliners. The charred remains of the MS were rescued by a family fire brigade and tied up in an old sheet where they remained for some time. I then sorted them out and pieced them together as best I could and the present MS is the result. (Selected Letters, 1975, p.247; also [in part], Letters, I, p.136.) [Note: Anomalously, only an abridged version of this oddly misleading letter - commencing The original original ... - appears in Letters, I p.136 - presumably for reasons to do with the appearance of Stephen Hero and its inclusion in Theodore Spencers Introduction to the same, in 1944, &c.)] [ top ] To Carlo Linati (Sept. 1920): No English printer wanted to print a word of [Ulysses]. In America the review was suppressed four times. Now, as I hear, a great movement is being prepared against the publication on behalf of puritans, English imperialists, Irish republicans and Catholics - what an alliance! Golly, I deserve the Nobel peace prize. (SL, 271, n1 [trans.]; quoted in Lean Culligan Flack, Cyclops, Censorship, and Joyces Monster Audiences, in James Joyce Quarterly, Spring 2011, pp.435-36.)
To Harriet Shaw Weaver (February 1920): A Mr Heaf or Heap of the Little Review wrote to me a very friendly and complimentary letter in which he said that the U.S.A. censor had burned the entire May issue and threatened to cancel their licence if they continue to publish Ulysses. This is the second time I have had the pleasure of being burned while on earth so that I hope I shall pass through the fires of purgatory as quickly as my patron S. Aloysius. (Letters, I, [NY: Viking Press 1966 [rep. edn.] Vol. I, p.137.)
To Harriet Shaw Weaver (24 June 1921; MS British Museum; Selected Letters, Faber 1975, pp.281-84): Apparently we were both alarmed and then relieved for different reasons. I can only repeat that I am glad it is not any trouble of your own and as for myself having been asked what I have [281] to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon me I would like to rectify a few mistakes. [Goes on to write of a nice collection ... of legends which have gathered around him including the reputation of a tout petit bourgeois; and dipsomania.] One woman here originated the rumour that I am extremely lazy and will never do or finish anything (I calculate that I must have spent nearly 20,000 hours in writing Ulysses). A batch of people in Zurich persuaded themselves that I was gradually going mad and actually endeavoured to induce me to enter a sanatorium where a certain Doctor Jung (the Swiss Tweedledum who is not the be confused with the Viennese Tweedledee, Dr Freud) amuses himself at the expense (in every sense of the word) of ladies and gentlemen who are troubled with bees in their bonnets. / I mention all these views not to speak about myself or my critics but to show you how conflicting they all are. The truth probably is that I am a quite commonplace person undeserving of so much imaginative painting. There is a further opinion that I am a creafty simulating and dissimulating Ulysses-like type, a ljejune jesuit, selfish and cynical. There is some truth in this, I suppose: but it is by no means all of me (nor was it of Ulysses) and it has been my habit to apply this alleged quality to safeguard my poor creations for on the other side, as I stated in a former letter, I removed so much of any natural wit I had that but for your intuitive help I should be destitute. (pp.282-83.)
[ top ] To Frank Budgen (16 August 1921): 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. [Woman. I am the flesh that always affirms.] (Letters, Vol. 1 p.170; Sel. Letters, ed. Ellmann, p.285.) To George Antheil (3 Jan. 1931): I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description. ([3 Jan. 1931,] Letters, Faber 1966, Vol. I, p.297; also quoted in Declan Kiberd, Ulysses and Us, Faber 2009, p.117.)
[ top ] James Joyce, The Cat and the Devil - in a letter to Stephen Joyce of 10 August 1936.
[ top ] To Con Curran (6 Aug. 1937; quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, 1957 & edns., p.717.) I am trying to finish my wip [Work in Progress] (I work 16 hours a day, it seems to me) and I am not taking any chances with my fellow-countrymen if I can possibly help it until that is done, at least. And on the map of their island there is marked very legibly for the moment Hic sunt Lennones. But every day in every way I am walking along the streets of Dublin and along the strand. And hearing voices. Non dico giammai ma ancora. To Frank Budgen (20 Aug. 1939) - on The Colloquy of Saint and Sage (FW - Ricorso [611-14]):
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