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James Joyce: Notes (4)- Sundry Remarks
Sundry Remarks [ top ]
Congowes Wood (2): Peter Costello prints a diary by Daniel OConnell, Jnr. (1816-1897) held in the National Library, inside the cover of which are written the words: Clongowes Wood College Clane Ireland Europe Eastern Hemisphere [sic] the World, which he calls a formula countless boys have since written. (Costello, Clongowes Wood: In A History of Clongowes Wood, 1814-1989, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989, p.35.) [ top ] Leoville (Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock) - see Gerard Quinn, Joyce and Blackrock, in Blackrock Society Proceedings (2004): [...] the family moved from Bray to a less expensive house, 23 Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock, Dublin. The house, which is still called Leoville, stands at the intersection of Carysfort Avenue and the new Blackrock bypass. Joyce lived in this house from January 1892 till January 1893. Further, quotes Stanislaus Joyce: I preferred the house in Blackrock [to] the one in Bray ... [I attended] school in Sion Hill Convent, but so far as I can remember my brother was left to his own devices at at home. And: I believe his first essays were written here at Leoville, Blackrock. ... I remember ... my brother writing in the afternoon till tea-time at the big leather-covered desk in the corner of the diningroom. (My Brothers Keeper, pp.44-ff.; here p.77.) [ top ] Christmas dinner?: There is a conflict in the biographical record regarding the location of the celebrated Christmas Dinner scene in A Portrait, Richard Ellmann placing it in Bray and Peter Costello in Blackrock (though Costello does not in fact give notice of the conflict). Relatedly, there are differences about the date at which James Joyce last attended and was withdrawn from Clongowes Wood College. Ellmann writes that James Joyce left Clongowes in June 1891, as a result of his fathers increasing financial troubles (James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.34); Peter Costello writes that JAJ returned from Clongowes, prob. to recover from fever, in late Oct. or early Nov. 1891 (Years of Growth, 1992, p.101-02) and suggests that he briefly returned on recovering. He also remarks that Joyce père left the final account term unpaid. Ellmann places the Christmas dinner row in A Portrait at Martello Terrace, adding in a footnote that it was loud enough to be heard by the Vances across the street - information based on an interview with Eileen Vance Harris conducted by Carlyle King in Dec. 1953 (JJ, p.33 & n.). Costello writes that the Joyces were certainly at their new house [in Blackrock] by the end of 1891 and that it may be safely said that James returned to Clongowes for only a few weeks, and that by Christmas 1891 the Joyces were living at Blackrock. (YG, p.103.) Costello, taking the chronology in A Portrait earnestly, computes that Joyce was in the Infirmary at Clongowes on the 5-6th October - 76 days from the end of term as Stephen records in calendar - thus coinciding with the death of Parnell (YG, p.101). According to Ellmanns chronology, Stephen is at home at the time of Parnells death on 6 October 1891, and at the Joyces are in Bray at the time of the dinner-table fracas recounted in A Portrait. By Costellos reckoning, Stephen comes home after Parnells death and the Joyces remove to Blackrock before the dinner-table row; Dante (Mrs Conway) is also placed in the house until her departure four days after the episode (28 Dec.). In regard to Joyces departure from Clongowes, a simple solution might be to suppose that Ellmann has written June 1891 for June 1892; but Joyce did not attend school in the new year of 1892, at which date Ellmann places the removal to Blackrock (viz., beginning of 1892: p.34.) Ellmanns placing of the Christmas dinner scene in Bray is based on Eileen Vance Harriss interview (above). His reason for recording the removal of Joyce from Clongowes at June 1891 is not stated. Costello calls on the school record made by the new rector Fr. Matthew Devitt in autumn 1891 to show that Joyce returned there in autumn 1891, came home to convalesces after illness in early October, briefly returned to school and did not attend at Clongowes in the new year or ever after. His sojourn at home without schooling is therefore extended to one full year. As to place of residence, Costello cites the birth certificate of Eva to show that the Joyces were in Bray in November but argues that their listing at Blackrock in the city directory of 1892 - being based on figures collected in October 1891 - suggests that a lease was taken on either the Michaelmas or Martinmas quarter days (29 Sept. or 11 Nov.) but that the move was postponed during the final days of Mrs Joyces pregnancy. This opens the possibility that it was deferred for even longer. However Costello does not think it was postponed into 1892, which would bring it back into line with Ellmanns chronology. These differing constructions on the available facts and reports can only be reconciled on the grounds that Joyce did continue at Clongowes in autumn 1891 and did not return in the new year; that the Joyces did lease a house in Blackrock in autumn 1891 but did not occupy it until the new year. In that way, Joyce is admitted to be at Clongowes at the time of Parnells death - and probably in the infirmary also - while the dinner row can be seen as taking place where Eileen Vance Harris asserts it did (although she can only be repeating what her elders told her at the time - if her memories of childhood are exceptionally strong - or sometime after.) [ top ] University College, Dublin (then the Royal University of Ireland), which Joyce attended autumn 1989-autumn 1902, occupied the former buildings of the Catholic University of Ireland, 1854-58, fnd. by Hierarchy under the rectorship of John Henry Newman and re-esetablished in 1879 with Royal University of Ireland as an examining body charged with publishing syllabi and setting papers for which candidates were prepared in Queens Colleges and others incl. Magee College in Derry. The College on St. Stephens Green was in the charge of members of the Society of Jesus [Jesuits], who filled most of the teaching posts. In 1908 UCD became part of a federal university consisting of the colleges in Cork [UCC], Dublin [UCD], and Galway [UCG], while the Queens University of Belfast was established as a separate university. This was the result of agitation largely on the part of the Graduate Association of University College, Dublin. In the 1980s St. Patricks College, Maynooth, which had been inaugurated in 1800 as a government-funded Roman Catholic seminary under the authority of the Catholic hierarchy, became a recognised university institution within the National University of Ireland. 15 Ushers Island, Dublin 8, being the rented home of the Morkans sisters where they taught music and thence the scene of Joyces story The Dead, was purchased by Brendan Kilty with a view to reopening on Bloomsday in 2001. [ top ] Surge Illuminare [psalm & intriot]: In the opening sentences of the Epiphany episode of Stephen Hero set on Eccles Street, Dublin (pp.187-88), where we are repeatedly told that it was a misty evening in the misty Irish spring (p.187.). Perhaps this is intended to echo the Surge Illuminare of the Introit of the liturgical feast on Jan. 6 of each year: And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy rising. (Isaias 60.1-6). Coincidentally or otherwise, the same verse is quoted as an epigraph at the head of the Bethu Pathraic [Life of St. Patrick] by Muircu maccu Machtheni in the Tripartite Life of Patrick, issued by Whitley Stokes in 1887. In this way Joyce also - accidentally or otherwise - configures himself as a missionary to the Irish. It is possibly for this reason that he gives so large a place to St. Patrick in the scheme of Finnegans Wake - both in the sigla and in the Ricorso, where The Colloquy of Balkelly and St Patrick [FW614-15] figures among one of the first episodes of that book to have been composed. (See further St. Patrick, q.v., Stokes edition - especially remarks on the contest at Tara and the wizards cloak;, infra.)
Bloomagains Wake: The full Latin version as given in the Missal is ironically recited in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses (Penguin Edn. 1988, p.338). Here it serves to place Leopold Bloom in the role of Elijah, the promised messiah. In Stephen Hero it reveals Stephen in the character of a redeemer to his people, or one capable of reversing the condition in which they find themselves before his advent: There was a mist upon the people. In setting all of this at Eccles St., Joyce may also have been attempting to establish his own secular church of the imagination since eccles. is the common abbreviation for ecclesia. This, notwithstanding the fact that the street is already named after Sir John Eccles. [BS] (See further under Notes 1, supra.) [ top ] Securus judicat orbis terrarum: John Henry Newman was led to doubt the truth of Anglican theology when he read Cardinal Wisemans article on The Anglican Claim in the Dublin Review, citing the words of Augustine of Hippo against the Donatists, securus judicat orbis terrarum [the verdict of the world is conclusive]) - a formula suggesting that the teaching of antiquity is subject to a universal test. Newman wrote in response: For a mere sentence, the words of St Augustine, struck me with a power which I never had felt from any words before [...] they were like the Tolle, lege, Tolle, lege, of the child, which converted St Augustine himself. Securus judicat orbis terrarum! By those great words of the ancient Father, interpreting and summing up the long and varied course of ecclesiastical history, the theology of the Via Media was absolutely pulverised. (Apologia, Pt. 5; quoted on Wikipedia website Newman page online; accessed 28.08.2010.) [ top ] Superstition: Joyce believed 1921 to be a lucky year as adding up to 13 though that was also the sum of the year in which his mother died and was to be the sum of the date of his own death in 1929. Richard Ellmann writes in a footnote to James Joyce (1959): Joyce knew the superstitions of most of Europe, and adopted them all. (Joyce, p.531.) [ top ] Trojan letters: An exchange of letters between Stephen Joyce and Danis Rose, editor of the Readers Edition of Ulysses, was printed in the Times Literary Supplement, 27 June & 12 July 1997, in which the former accuses the latter of the rape of Ulysses and the latter answers, there can only be alternative editions in which different ends are realised, either well or badly, and To conclude as Stephen James Joyce does, that I have raped Ulysses, is to admit to a profound incomprehension of the innate instability of Joyces text and of the rationale behind the present edition. Lodgers in Zurich: Joyce and Nora signed their names in the guest ledger at the Gasthaus Hoffnung, at 16 Reitergasse, Zurich, although an unmarried couple. The manner in which they did so - what names they wrote - remains a mystery since the guest book was destroyed when the River Sihl flooded in recent times. (See Bob Isaacson, James Joyce Pilgrimage, in Santa Barbara Independent [June 16 2004]; reprint on Isaacsons blog page, online; accessed 13.08.2010. Note: The informant is Fritz Senn.) [ top ] Type of our race: In arguing that Mangan is the type of his race in as much as [h]istory encloses him so straitly that even his fiery moments do not set him free from it [CW81], Joyce echoed the rhetoric of the other students at the Royal University in a letter to the Freemans Journal of May 1899 complaining that Yeats had portrayed the type of our people [as] a loathesome brood of apostates [JJ69]. By contrast - and in a later riposte in the Portrait he identified the type of his race as the batlike soul of the woman who calls a stranger to her door [AP] [ top ] First copy of Ulysses: Sylvia Beach collecting 2 copies of the Shakespeare & Co. First Edition of Ulysses sent to Paris by Maurice Darentiere in Marseille and collected from the guard of the Dijon-Paris train at 7 a.m. (copies nos. 901 & 902); JAJ signs and presents first copy to Nora, who offers to sell it to Arthur Power; further copies arrive from Dijon (nos. 251 & 252), 5 Feb. [Selected Letters, 1975, p.288]; HSW lodges the first copy [presum No. 1] with National Library of Ireland [query date]. Homerics: Joyces reading for Ulysses included Charles Lambs Adventures of Ulysses [1803] but also Victor Bérards Did Homer Live? (NY 1931). [See Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses.] [ top ] Molly/antidote: For Harry Blamires, Molly is an antidote to the sterility of Dublin when Joyce takes a plunge into the flowing river of her mind: if we have hitherto been exploring the waste land, here are the refreshing, life-giving waters, that alone can renew it. (Guide, q.p.) Ben Bloom Elijah: the ascent of Bloom at an angle of forty-five degrees like a shot [shit] off a shovel is modelled on the Bible (2 Kings, 2:11): Behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven. Film: Joseph Strick, Ulysses (q.d.), with Milo OShea, et al.; also Nora (2000), a film, with Susan Lynch in title role and Ewan McGregor as the young Joyce;, Note also Fionnula Flanagan as Molly Bloom in James Joyces Women (1985). [ top ] Union Jacks: speaking of her conversations in Vichy with Valéry Larbaud, Patricia Hutchins writes: I was told, a little ruefully, how he had given instructions for his special copy of Ulysses to be bound with the colours of Ireland as part of the cover, and it had arrived with a Union Jack ensconced there. That raises a nice point, I laughed. For the book was written under the British regime, or about that period anyway. And Joyce was not what one would call a nationalist; he stood apart from it all. Indeed, I think it best to leave it there. (James Joyces World, London: Methuen 1957, p.195.) Note also that Bloom has a compactly furled Union Jack inside his living-room door in Ulysses (Bodley Head Edn., 1966, p.829.) [ top ] Finnegans Wake [the ballad]: Mickey Maloney raised his head, / When a gallon of whiskey flew at him; / It missed, and falling on the bed/The liquer scattered over Tim / Och, he revives! See how he raises!/And Timothy, jumpoing from the bed,/Sez, Whirl your liquor round like blazes - / Soulds ot the devil! Dye think Im dead? Cad with a Pipe: An allusion to the cad with a pipe (from Joyces Finnegans Wake), in Becketts Watt was identified by David Hayman. Arsene recalls meeting Mr. Ash on Westminister Bridge on a day when it was blowing heavily Mr. Ash loosens layers of heavy-weather gear, consults his gunmetal half-hunter and offers without being asked the time of seventeen minutes past five exactly, as God is my witness [120]. Cf. Joyce: the wind billowing across the wide expanse and clad in layers of antiquated and vaguely military gear. (See Hayman, A Meeting in the Park, JJQ, 8, 1971; quoted in John Harrington, The Irish Beckett, 1991, p.117.) [ top ] the N word: Joyce used the word nigger in its pejorative sense as referring to blacks - African, African-American and so forth - in a letter to Stanislaus Joyce: I wonder when learning it [Danish] is it necessary to keep a good-sized potato in each cheek. You said it was like a nigger speaking German but it is more like Mr. OConnell (Bill) speaking Dutch. (Selected Letters, 1975, p.97.) Note also that John Stanislaus Joyce had a dog called Nigger in 1907. Irish Racing World: Among the horses featured as winners at long odds in the poster of The Pink Un [properly The Sporting News] which figures in the well-known photograph of Joyce at Shakespeare and Company is Killeen, a winner at 7-2. The other three horses listed under the caption MORE WINNERS LIKE are Sargon (5-1), Square Dance (9-2) and Kilvemnon (7-2). The photograph serves as a cover of the Penguin Annotated Students Edition of Ulysses, intro. Declan Kiberd (1992). Note that Killeen is the name of the home of the Dunsany family (Lord Fingall) in Co. Meath. [ top ] Portraits (of James Joyce): Seán OSullivan, drawing with water colour on paper, signed Paris 1935 [NGI]; also black ink, signed Wyndham Lewis, 1921; presented to NGI by Harriet Weaver, 1951; Patrick Tuohy, seated figure, in oil; Des MacNamara, papier maché bust, lent by Allen Figgis and chalk on grey rag paper by Sean OSullivan (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits, Ulster Museum 1965); steel head by Conor Fallon; images by Louis le Brocquy [RX]; port. on £20 banknote by Robert Ballagh; line dawing by Brancusi [pbk. cover Ellmann, James Joyce, 1959]; Brian Grimwood, cover ill. to Beja, James Joyce, a Literary Life (1992); Joyce during early Zurich period, 1917, phot. in Croessman Coll., S. Ill. Univ. Library, dustjacket Exiles (J. Cape 1952; rep. 1972, 1974); a bust of James Joyce by Jo Davidson is reproduced in Thomas Connolly, ed., Scribbledehobble. See also Three studies of Joyce by Louis le Brocquy, Studies Towards an Image of James Joyce, in The Crane Bag, 2, Nos. 1 & 2 (1977): Study 61, p.1; Study 63, p.8; Study 60, p.192. [ top ] Ulysses in Nighttown: Award winning adaptation of the Circe episode of Ulysses by Marjorie Barkentin with incidental music by Peter Link. The play opened Off-Broadway in 1958 with Zero Mostel who Mostel an Obie Award for it. It was revived in Philadelphia in 1974 and played 26 nights, afterwards transferring to the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway (15 Feb. 1974), where it ran for 69 nights, with Mostel, Fionnuala Flanagan, Gale Garnett, Tommy Lee Jones and David Ogden Stiers in the cast, earning 8 Tony Award nominations - including one for Flanagan - and one Tony winner for the lighting by Jules Fisher. [ top ] Epiphany Now! [1] - Jan Morris writes: Nevertheless, to an outsider, what has happened to Ireland seems a 21st century benediction. It is a spectacular display of materialism, yes, but it is also a rare kind of epiphany: the moment when an entire nation, for so long a victim of cruel circumstances, is seizing history for itself at last, and starting all over again. (Ireland: Shiny Brash and Confident, in The NY Times Magazine, 21 Nov. 2004, pp.72-79, 102; p.77.) Epiphany Now! [2]: Thomas Harrison describes the flash of intuition of his Italian police inspector who once experienced a moment of epiphany […] that made him famous and then ruined him (Hannibal, London: Arrow Books 2000, p.128.) Further, In that moment when the connection is made, in that synaptic spasm of completion when the thought drives through red fuses, is our keenest pleasure. (Ibid., p.134.) [ top ] Epiphany Now! [3]: At the unveilling of that threshold stone [of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast], fifteen months ago, Longley recalled his decades of plays, hundred of epiphanies, thousands of hours of fun and enlightenment at the Lyric. (See Jane Coyle, A Dramatic Crucible Takes Shape, in Irish Times, 8 Jan. 2011, Weekend, p.6; see further under Seamus Heaney, supra.) [ top ] Epiphany Now! [4]: Epiphany is defined as the realisation of a great truth in the Alaskan episode of The Simpsons when Homer is instructed by an Inuit Indian wise-woman to return home to save the people of Springfield (Ill.) from a government plot - viz., Homer: Okay, epiphany, epiphany... oh I know! Bananas are an excellent source of potassium! [Gets slapped.] (See Memorable Quotes from the Simpson Movie at IMDB.com [online; accessed 04.02.2009; 08.06.2011.]) [ top ] Epiphany Now! [5] - Paulo Coehlo: This week Mr. Coelho releases his latest novel, Aleph, a book that tells the story of his own epiphany while on a pilgrimage through Asia in 2006 on the Trans-Siberian Railway. (Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, with many mystical meanings.) While Mr. Coelho spent four years gathering material for the book, he wrote it in only three weeks. (See Julie Bosman, A Word With A Best-Selling Author Who Gives His Work Away, in New York Times (26 Sept. 2011) - online. [ top ]
[ top ] Molloys songs in Ulysses
[ top ] Gordon-Bennett: for information about the original event featured in After the Race - an event which Joyce covered for the newspapers - see Gordon-Bennett supplement to Blacks Guide to Ireland: with special information for visitors to Ireland in connection with the great automobile contest on July 2nd, compiled by R. T. Lang [Irish Automobile Fortnight; Blacks Guide to Ireland (London: Adam & Charles Black 1903), 3pp. [COPAC listed copy in Oxford). [ top ] Nighttown/Monto: The Monto, after Montgomery Street, was the common name for the area in North Central Dublin prostitution was permitted during the period of Ulysses. Frank McNally quotes the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1903 Edn.): Dublin furnishes an exception to the usual practice of the United Kingdom. In that city police permit open houses confined to one area, but carried on more publicly than even in the southof Europe or Algeria. He explains that a combination of economic hardship and militarisation of Dublin helped feed the growth of a sex industry, to which Monto became central, and adds erroneously: The area features famously in Ulysses, being the scene where, in a misunderstanding over a woman, Stephen Dedalus is assaulted by a British squaddie. (An Irishmans Diary [column], Irish Times, 7 May 2011). [ top ] The Catechism [RC] (1917) - Extracts: Q. What is sin? A. Sin is any wilful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God. Q. What is mortal sin? A. Mortal sin is so called, because it kills the soul be depriving it of its true life, which is sanctifying grace, and because it brings everlasting death and damnation to the soul. [Q. What is venial sin?] A. Venial sin is does not deprive the soul of sanctifying grace, or deserve everlasting punishment, but it hurst the soul by lessing its love of God, and disposing it to mortal sin. The Scripture says, He that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little. (Eccles. xix. i.) [...] Q. Is it a great misfortune to fall into mortal sin? A. To fall into mortal sin is the greatest of all misfortunes. [...] f we fall into mortal sin we ought to repent sincerely, and go to confession as soon as we can. If we cannot go to confession soon after falling into moratl sin we ought to excite ourselves to perfect contrition, with the intention of going to confession. [24] [...] They who die in mortal sin go to hell, for all eternity. [24] (For longer extracts, see attached.) [ top ]
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Portraits (family) received by James Joyce from his father incl. those of Charles OConnell and wife by John Comerford (1771-1832); one of James A. Joyce and his wife Ellen by William Roe (?1800-?1850); another of John Stanislaus Joyce in 1866 [aetat. 16; q. pinct], to which Joyce added another of his father by Patrick Tuohy, who also painted the writer; all now in Lockwood Memorial Library, Buffalo Univ.; John Stanislaus Joyce owned framed engraving of Galway Joycess motto [i.e., not his own family: an eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed.(See Ellmann, James Joyce, 1959 & edns.) Note, There is also a photo-port of May Joyce in early married life in the National Library of Ireland; a port. of Joyce in sailor outfit preparing to leave for Clongowes, aetat. six-and-a-half; as an infant, in S. Illinois Univ. Library. (See Peter Costello, The Years of Growth, 1992, ills.) The photograph of Joyce in yatching shoes is by Con Curran, taken at his fathers house, 211 Cumberland Place [now 211 N. Circular Rd]. [ top ] Portraits: A photograph purportedly of May Joyce, taken by M. Glover of Dublin and presented to the National Library of Ireland by Kathleen Murray as her aunt, was thought by Stanislaus to be that of an actress she resembled. In writing of it, Patricia Hutchins notes that a faded photography of Maud Branscombe, actress and professional beauty, mentioned in Ulysses. (Bodley Head Edn. p681) (See Patricia Hutchins, James Joyces World, 1957, p.155, n.2.
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