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Douglas Hyde and James Joyce
| Note: The following remarks refer to literary borrowings from and allusions to Douglas Hyde in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). See also remarks under Notes - supra. |
| 1: Plagiarising Hyde |
Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No. Must be two of em. Glue ’em well. Mouth to her mouth’s kiss.
His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her womb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy’s letter. Here. Thanking you for hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That’s twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter. [“Proteus” episode; U60.] |
Note: The kiss given here as a line for a poem-in-the-making on Stephen’s part is actually an echo of a phrase at the close of Hyde’s ‘literal’ translation of “My Grief is on the Sea” in Abhrá in Grádh Chuúige Connacht, or Love Songs of Connacht (1893) - viz., ‘My sorrow I am not, / And my thousand loves / On board of a ship / Voyaging to America. A bed of rushes was under me last night / And I threw it out / With the heat of the day. / My love came To my side, Shoulder to shoulder / And mouth to mouth.’
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| [ See pages of Hyde’s Love Songs of Connacht [1893] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1909) - as attached. ] |
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| 2: Hyde’s epilogue |
Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
—Haines is gone, he said.
—Is he?
—I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic, don’t you know, about Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn’t bring him in to hear the discussion. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy it.
Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
To greet the callous public
Writ, I ween, ’twas not my wish
In lean unlovely English. |
—The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
— People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. [...; U238].
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| The lines italicised here [Joyce’s itals.] form the first stanza of the six-stanza poem which appended by Hyde as envoi to The Story of Early Gaelic Literature (1894, pp.173-74) - where he offered it as an example of a meter (viz., deibhihde) widely used by ancient Irish bards but subsequently lost. (Cited in Gifford, Ulysses Annotated: Rev. & Expanded California UP 1974, p.200 [online; 30.04.3021] and also in Sam Slote, ed. & annot, Ulysses (Alma 2015) [Kindle Edn.].) |
| Joyce likewise echoes the phrase ‘lean unlovely English’ in parenthesis later in the same episode when he says: “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses where he says of Shakespeare: ‘That is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward.’ (Ulysses, Bodley Head Edn. 1960, p.252; Gabler Edn., 1984, 9.96-114). |
Add remark: The effect is to make Hyde’s account of a prosodic feature of classical Irish poetry seem like an apt description of Shakespeare’s style. [BS]
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| 3: Hyde’s Lovesongs |
[...]
Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled: [253]
—Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.
A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.
—To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like Synge.
Mr Best turned to him:
—Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll see you after at the D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht.
—I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here? [U252-53.]
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(Refs. in square brackets to the Bodley Head 1960 edn.) |
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