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10 Jun 07 - 06:24 PM (#2073178) Subject: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Stephen Daedalus somewhere remarks to the effect that while English is his first language (my wording), it remains a foreign language, not as comfortable on his tongue as Irish would have been. Anyone know whether this is from Portrait or from Ullysses? I don't have a copy of either on hand, but I can order one or the other or both from the local library ... I'm just hoping to get a hint of where to start looking. |
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10 Jun 07 - 06:50 PM (#2073195) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: bobad In Chapter V of Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, while speaking with one of his college deans, an English priest, thinks, "The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. . . . His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language." http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2000/c_n_c/c_10_20th_cent/european_modernist.htm |
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10 Jun 07 - 07:14 PM (#2073211) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Rapparee Is anyone else going to celebrate Bloomsday? |
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10 Jun 07 - 07:25 PM (#2073226) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Thank you, bobad; that is precisely the quotation I was looking for. I wasn't expecting to get it so quickly! Slainte! |
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10 Jun 07 - 07:53 PM (#2073241) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Gulliver Is anyone else going to celebrate Bloomsday? Yes, joining the usual gang in Dublin. |
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10 Jun 07 - 08:19 PM (#2073256) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself I suppose that would be Buck Mulligan, Blazes Boylan, et al? |
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10 Jun 07 - 11:58 PM (#2073325) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Rapparee Leopold Bloom and, especially, his wife. |
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11 Jun 07 - 01:07 AM (#2073339) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Stilly River Sage Since Tom Stoppard took home another Tony this evening, it seems appropriate to borrow a favorite little exchange from his play The Real Thing to add an aside to this discussion: The playwright Henry is going to be on a popular radio program in which he must name eight favorite music pieces and his favorite book. His wife queries him about his progress with his list: CHARLOTTE: Are you still doing your list? HENRY: Mmm. CHARLOTTE: Have you got a favourite book? HENRY: Finnegans Wake. CHARLOTTE: Have you read it? HENRY: Don't be silly. :-D SRS |
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11 Jun 07 - 01:32 AM (#2073346) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle As Bobad says, In Portrait of the Artist, Stephen has the interview towards the end with the 'hangman priest'. The priest is English, and for Stephen - part of him realising that the priesthood would be spiritual death for him comes when the the priest muses over the word 'tundish', the origin one of them which he doesn't recognise. Other words such as ale, Stephen muses will always be an alien tongue. However, Joyce's love for and committment to, writing in the English language is what his life was primarily about - one would have thought. |
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11 Jun 07 - 08:54 AM (#2073555) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself WLD: You've lost me - are you saying that the quotation in question really has nothing to do with language and everything to do with priesthood? And if so, what is your point in reference to "Other words such as ale" - that Stephen feels he will never be comfortable drinking? And your final comment - "one would have thought" - seems to imply that the previous comment - "However, Joyce's love for and committment to, writing in the English language is what his life was primarily about" - necessarily negates the interpretation I have given to (the character) Stephen Daedalus's thoughts, and further seems to imply that only a complete dunderhead would not see that. Well, I'm willing to claim the title of 'complete dunderhead', so would you care to expand? |
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11 Jun 07 - 09:12 AM (#2073577) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself By the way, the composers of the webpage from which bobad quoted seem to share my flawed understanding. The full of bobad's post is quoted from that page (excepting the 'blue clicky'!), and it is prefaced by the comment that "Joyce nevertheless remained committed to English as his literary language of choice. There is, however, evidence that at first he may have felt uncomfortable writing in the language of Ireland's conqueror. ... " And it is followed by: "Whether or not Joyce had the same reaction Stephen did ... " |
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11 Jun 07 - 12:07 PM (#2073726) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I'm not calling or abusing you. He was a complex and clever man and his attitudes are not to be encapsulated in simplistic statements so I won't try. You must read yourself and form your own opinions. If I gave you an opinion - it would only be an opinion, and I love and admire his work, but I am in no way an expert. He deserves better people than me to expound on him. I don't think he was very comfortable with strident anti-Englishness or Irish nationalism as such. At one point he went for lessons in the Irish language and Padraig Pearse was the teacher, and apprently they didn't hit it off too well. |
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11 Jun 07 - 12:15 PM (#2073734) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST Source of the Pearse story, weelittledrummer? |
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11 Jun 07 - 12:48 PM (#2073782) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Captain Ginger I think Joyce was able to transcend nationalism both British and Irish and send it up beautifully in his work - look at the way he has the term 'West Briton' hissed in The Dead, and his handling of the Cyclops episode of Ulysses. I would find it hard to believe that Joyce was unable to learn Irish as he seems to have had a natural ear. Both James and Nora seemed as comfortable conversing in French or Italian as in English during their sojourns in Trieste and Paris, while the Wake reveals an extraordanary love of language and a remarkable vocabulary. |
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11 Jun 07 - 01:14 PM (#2073807) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Of course he learned many languages - I feel sure he could have mastered one more. for the Pearse story I quote Richard Ellman(p61) - Joyce (and Wilde's) biographer. It starts of by talking of his friendship with a student called George Clancy and continues:- 'Clancy was to end as a victim of the Black and Tans, murdered while he was the Mayor or Limerick. His unfortunate death was appropriate in that, even as a young man, Clance subscribed to every aspect of the national movement. He helped form a branch of the Gaelic league at University College, and persuaded his friends, including even Joyce for a time, to take lessons in Irish. Joyce gave them up because Patrick Pearse, the instructor, found it necessary to to Exalt Irish by denigrating English, inparticular denounced the word 'Thunder' - a favourite of Joyce's - as an example of verbal inadequacy.' |
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11 Jun 07 - 01:34 PM (#2073824) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Joyce was very comfortable with drinking. He was musing on the etymology of the words and how some of them had different roots. 'ale' I think he saw as English. I think it had more to do with his sensual approach to language than marking out his turf. In some ways , his entire life's work was a lovesong to Dublin - altough that is to dimisnish it, because what he wrote was not just a picture postcard of the place - it was for all humanity. he was nothing if not ambitious in the scope of his work. And as he was possibly only just behind Shakespeare as the greatest literary genius to to use as his means of expression the English language - we can't really 'his Irish tongue' was at a disadvantage. |
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11 Jun 07 - 01:59 PM (#2073850) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Captain Ginger I don;t know how comfortable poor Sam Beckett was with Joyce's drinking though, as he often had to carry the old boy upstairs to his Paris flat after a night on the sauce! He did leave us "The Brown and The Yellow Ale," however. |
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11 Jun 07 - 02:17 PM (#2073865) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself WLD: "I'm not calling or abusing you." Okay - I tend to be a little touchy about my dunderheadedness ... "He was a complex and clever man" Very much so. "and his attitudes are not to be encapsulated in simplistic statements so I won't try." Okay. "You must read yourself and form your own opinions." Have done so. Always open to new input, though. "If I gave you an opinion - it would only be an opinion, and I love and admire his work, but I am in no way an expert." Nor I. "He deserves better people than me to expound on him." Hmmm ... it's your language too! "I don't think he was very comfortable with strident anti-Englishness or Irish nationalism as such." Yes, that's fairly clear in his writing. "Joyce was very comfortable with drinking." That's putting mildly, is it not? I'm not sure it's right, though, to equate Stephen D. with Joyce, even though he certainly seems to be based on Joyce. "He was musing on the etymology of the words and how some of them had different roots. 'ale' I think he saw as English." Yes - I was just trying to pursue the logic you had been using in relation to the previous couple of sentences. As I saw it. "I think it had more to do with his sensual approach to language than marking out his turf." That strikes me as an astute observation - who said he "deserves better people" than you, etc.? "... we can't really [say] 'his Irish tongue' was at a disadvantage." Agreed - but I was only giving my rough interpretation of what Stephen Daedalus was saying. I have not said anything about what the mature Joyce may or may not have thought about his own relationship with the English language, nor about what I may feel was Joyce's relationship with the English language. Thanks for the anecdotes, etc. Enjoy reading them; many years since I read the Ellman bio., and I see I've forgotten a bit. |
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11 Jun 07 - 03:59 PM (#2073965) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger "'I don't think he was very comfortable with strident anti-Englishness or Irish nationalism as such.'" It's hard to imagine how he could not have been. |
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11 Jun 07 - 04:08 PM (#2073972) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Care to elaborate, Riginslinger? |
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11 Jun 07 - 06:56 PM (#2074152) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle The trouble with lit. crit.s and Ibsen, Eliot and Joyce is that they get bundled together as the modernists. And people think Ikea furniture, Cubism and Sigmund Freud. Woolly thinking! If you look at those early collections of Joyce poems - I think its more possible to understand him as being just a few years after Lionel Johnson, Pater and Wilde and all those guys. Words as exotic jewels to be polished and set in poems. And in some ways - doesn't this attitude persist right to the end - think of all the hours Samuel Beckett and JJ spend agonising over the sequence of words in Finegans Wake, or those damn nearly unreadable passages of Ulysses, where we are told the words are eating each other. In short, he is a wordspinner of dazzling capability. And when it works - he can convey truths of great complexity. In a way - that is what real modernism is about in my opinion. You see it in the folkmusic world all the time. People blether on misguidedly about 'the tradition' and it looms very important in some peoples appreciation. But really writers like Leonard Cohen and Ewan MacColl are brother chip - they are both looking for the stunning sequence of words, the apposite metaphor or simile. Wordspinners. Think of MacColl's phrase about 'the trembling heart of a captive bird', or Leonard Cohen's 'you hair on the pillow like a sleepy golden storm'. They are writing to very similar literary patterns - they are both trying to achieve something similar. they are what Raymond Chandler calls 'playing false with the language' - they are trying to draw attention to the language - rather than meaning. In a way the true inheritors of the lean style of the Childe ballads are guys like Woody Guthrie, John Lennon and Jarvis Cocker - whose words bristle with an awkward desire to communicate. No doubt subsequent generations of folksingers will polish the works and take away the awkwardness! |
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11 Jun 07 - 08:08 PM (#2074212) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger "Care to elaborate, Riginslinger?" Only that he was using Ireland as a microcosm of the world, and the conflict was a large part of that. And he was Irish, so it's hard to imagine that he could divorce himself from the conflict. |
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11 Jun 07 - 08:20 PM (#2074225) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT I wonder is the Pearse story true? After all, the usual Irish word for thunder, tóirneach, isn't that different from 'thunder' in English. It sounds a bit of a makey-uppy. As for the supposed difficulty of Ulysses - it's written in achingly nostalgic detail about Joyce's hometown, Dublin; a lot of the dialogue is written in turn-of-the-(20th)century Dublin slang; and it is (it seems to me) an idealised portrait of Joyce's father and himself making their way around the city. Finnegans Wake is another matter - here, he got comically serious about playing with languages, and you'd need to know as many languages as Joyce, and to have the same love for wordplay as that wordsmith, to read it, understand it and enjoy it - apart from his occasional leaps into lucidity in the course of the story. |
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11 Jun 07 - 08:22 PM (#2074230) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Fergie A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Yeap! that the way I'll be going on Blooms Day, with a belly full of Geniusess is good for you and four quarks fur Muster Marks. Furges Now where did I leave my straw boater??????????????? Ahha now I remumber I paked id wid me strame of consciousness Ah! Molly MOlly MOLLy ate yur hart out |
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11 Jun 07 - 08:37 PM (#2074242) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Okay - although I don't see that as quite the same as being 'comfortable' with either the 'conflict' as a whole or, as WLD put it, "with strident anti-Englishness or Irish nationalism as such". Joyce seems to have been skeptical of political movements and organizations generally. Which isn't to say that he was necessarily content with the status quo, but that he didn't see it as his role to take stands and identify with causes. If you take 'comfortable' to mean that he would have had to negotiate some sort of stance in his own mind that he and those around him could live with, then I would agree. |
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11 Jun 07 - 08:43 PM (#2074247) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself (That last being a response to Riginslinger's last). |
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11 Jun 07 - 09:35 PM (#2074278) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself (Some interesting, thought-provoking stuff there, WLD - keep it coming!) |
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11 Jun 07 - 10:07 PM (#2074298) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: paddymac Here's a fun poem by JJ that we get a great audience response from. It takes a bit of work to capture the rhythm(?) of it, but well worth the effort. POST ULIXEM SCRIPTUM A Poem by James Joyce Man dear, did you never hear of buxom Molly Bloom at all, As plump an Irish Beauty, Sir, as any Levi-Blumenthal? If she sat in the viceregal box, Tim Healy'd have no room at all, But curl up in a corner at a glance from her eye. The tale of her ups and downs would aisy fill a handybook That would cover the two worlds at once from Gibralter 'cross to Sandy Hook. But now that tale is told, ochone, I've lost my daring dandy look: Since Molly Bloom has left me alone for to cry. Man dear, I remember when my roving time was troubling me We picnicked fine in storm or shine in France and Spain and Hungary And she said I'd be her first and last while the wine I poured went bubbling free Now every male you meet with has a finger in her pie. Man dear, I remember with all the heart and brain of me I arrayed her for the bridal but, O, she proved the bane of me. With more puppies sniffing round her than the wooers of Penelope. She's left me on her doorstep like a dog for to die. My left eye is wake and his neighbor full of water, Man. I cannot see the lass I limned as Ireland's gamest Daughter, man, When I hear her lovers tumbling in their thousands for to court her, man. If I was sure I'd not be seen I'd sit down and cry. May you live, may you love like this gaily spinning earth of ours, And every morn a gallant son awake you with new wealth of gold But if I cling like a child to the clouds that are your petticoats O Molly, handsome Molly, sure you won't let me die. |
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11 Jun 07 - 11:39 PM (#2074359) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself That sounds like old Leopold himself, if I'm not mistaken ... |
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11 Jun 07 - 11:53 PM (#2074368) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Rapparee James T. Farrell on James Joyce and nationalism, 1944. |
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11 Jun 07 - 11:55 PM (#2074369) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Hmmm ... "This page cannot be found." Do you want to try another way? |
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12 Jun 07 - 12:14 AM (#2074384) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I think you can see as much impatience and anger with the Irish (admittedly worked in with compassion) in his work as anything. Also he didn't go back there all that much, as I remember - though I am willing to stand corrected. Ulysses, I think, has plenty of difficult passages. My grandparents came from turn of the century Dublin and they sure as hell never sounded much like that. Their words never ate each other! This isn't to deny the work's greatness - after all you often find yourself in the theatre having listened to a passionately delivered piece of shakespearian dialogue, and you think to yourself - what the hell was that about now! You know that bit in the Martello tower where the mad English chap who sees panthers in his sleep, says that he thinks many of Ireland's problems are due to England. I always think that's one the great unwritten lines of dialogue. It doesn't require comment - you can just hear the Irishman thinking - dazzling insight there mate! |
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12 Jun 07 - 04:05 AM (#2074457) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT Joyce did go 'back there' to found the Volta cinema, for instance. But if I had Joyce's family I'd keep well away from where they were too! Travel was different then. Very expensive. Joyce mostly sat in Paris and wrote, and dined expensively. He'd escaped a nightmare of poverty and misery, and found a milieu in which he could be happy. Weelittledrummer, are you conflating the narrative and the dialogue? Your grandparents may not have sounded like the free-flowing narrative, but probably used some of the various varieties of Dublin language Joyce quotes in the dialogue of Ulysses. That article by James T Farrell is here: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/farrell-on-joyce.html Something funny happened to the clicky. |
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12 Jun 07 - 04:30 AM (#2074477) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT Hmm. Read the Farrell piece. It's interesting, but he's writing from a basis of... well, inadequate cultural information. He doesn't understand exactly what happened to Ireland in the 19th century - how the effect of the Act of Union was to demoralise and impoverish the country; he sees it all in a purely nationalist light, rather than an informed economic one. And he's talking about the Gaelic Revival writers going back to "the speech of the poorest, the most backward section of the Irish peasantry". In fact, while the 'peasantry' were certainly sought for their knowledge of ancient stories and poems handed down in the oral tradition or béaloideas, what the Gaelic Revival people were after was the resistance poetry of the 18th century, the pre-Christian stories and poems of the Red Branch Cycle and the Fiannaíocht, and so on. They weren't a centrally anti-English movement either - which is the impression Mr Farrel has. Look at Thomas MacDonagh's Literature in Ireland, and his Thomas Campion and the Art of English Poetry (both of which may or may not be available on Google Books). It's an interesting piece, all the same. |
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12 Jun 07 - 04:31 AM (#2074478) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I know what you're driving at and of course you're right - the Dublin slang is in there, but I don't think that is what makes it a difficult book. I think its still a pretty hard read for bears of very little brain like myself. It always seems to me the rollicking fun comes at a price! I am amazed at my persistence as a young man, in reading it alongside Stuart Gilbert's book of analysis - pretty sure I would do that now. I always think Joyce gets a surprisingly good press from the Irish. People like O'Casey and and Synge - their work seems to have inspired riots for saying much less offensive things about Ireland. And a few years ago, there were people like Richard Harris in The Irish Post saying there wasn't a word of truth in Angela's Ashes. Whereas Dubliners, which contains just as many scarifying stories of deprivation and cruelty is available as a coffee table book, with all the old locations where the action happened photographed. It seems to inspire affection. |
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12 Jun 07 - 05:25 AM (#2074499) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT Weelittledrummer, I think the difference is that Joyce is reporting, while O'Casey, Synge and (heavens) the man who wrote Angela's Ashes, whose name escapes me, were commenting. |
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12 Jun 07 - 05:45 AM (#2074511) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Frank McCourt. Im not sure I grasp the difference. However Eastwood is a couple of miles from where I live, and it is of course the birthplace of DH Lawrence. When I first came here thirty odd years ago, there wwas a thriving mining community - and a number of people remmebered DH Lawrence and his family. Amongst the miners there was a lot of bad feeling against him. they thought he had said unfair things about their community, and that he had slandered the memory of his father - who was remembered as a decent guy - quite unlike the monster of Sons and Lovers. Nowadays - no one remembers the family first hand, and very slowly Eastwood is beginning to realise that there are Lawrence festivals - everywhere from Tokyo to Texas. They have preserved his birthplace, but so far no festival you would notice. |
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12 Jun 07 - 07:59 AM (#2074612) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself I can hardly think of a writer whose work is clearly set in his 'hometown' who wasn't, at least for a time, villified for the picture he painted of that hometown. Sometimes, no doubt, the villification is at least as well-founded as the unflattering picture, but in many cases, the villification is hard to understand, from the outside anyway. Of course, Joyce may have gotten 'surprisingly good press', as WLD says (I don't know) - but don't forget that Ullysses was banned in Ireland till - when? the 'sixties? the 'seventies? |
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12 Jun 07 - 09:48 AM (#2074709) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Well put it this way - theres no statues to DHL in Eastwood. In contrast the Irish are civilised and cultured in the way that they celebrate and honour James Joyce. DHL's work is much more accessible - easier to understand. You would think just as worthy of celebration - local kid makes good! Mind you the English are like that. They don't see the value of very much. If you go Old Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire, and you see the castle ruins with a few sheep grazing, no visitors except yourself - you would hardly suspect it was the birthplace of a king that Shakespeare had written three plays about. |
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12 Jun 07 - 10:30 AM (#2074767) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger "but that he didn't see it as his role to take stands and identify with causes." I suppose he pretty much sums up his outlook on the whole thing in "Portrait of an Artist..." when the protagonist at the end gives up on the redhaired girl, gives up on the preisthood, doesn't look into the family business, and just simply--leaves. |
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12 Jun 07 - 02:18 PM (#2074967) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I think there's a bit more than that. See the conversation with Davin (perhaps given a name close to the patriot Davitt.....?)in Portrait of the Artist Joyce has great compassion for the poor and wretched, and abused. I think there is genuine anger for the intellectuals who 'make the next rebellion with hurley sticks' - leaving poor folk like the croppies to pick up the bill; also the men of simple religious faith who sold out Parnell. The fall of Parnell is a major theme in the book. I think Joyce saw him as a great man, who was betrayed for what Joyce saw as trivial reasons; and he wasn't going to let the Irish turn on him and dissipate his own bid for greatness because of some bloody silly obsession about morals, or because some section of a very orthodox society felt a degree of outrage - probably whipped up by a self serving 'patriot'. |
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12 Jun 07 - 03:52 PM (#2075034) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger I'll have to look into Parnell. The fact that he had that kind of forward vision as a very young man says a lot. |
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12 Jun 07 - 04:16 PM (#2075058) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Bit of a thread drift - but when you think of (warning: alliteration ahead) politically-prominent Protestant Irish nationalists, who else comes to mind? |
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12 Jun 07 - 04:22 PM (#2075067) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger Protestant Irish Nationalists don't get a lot of play in the states. Probably because most of the immigrants here came from the Catholic part of the Island. |
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12 Jun 07 - 07:48 PM (#2075297) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Casement |
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12 Jun 07 - 08:08 PM (#2075311) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger wld - The Wikipedia entries on Roger Casement are certainly interesting, but it would seem to me he fits the role of a Republican better than an Ulsterman. His early childhood reminds me of the song "The Orange and the Green." |
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12 Jun 07 - 08:17 PM (#2075317) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle he asked for protestants - he was the first that sprung to mind Louis MacNeice, the poet - he was quite prominent and very nationalistic. Great poet. what a man - sorry I'm pissed. |
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12 Jun 07 - 09:27 PM (#2075357) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: paddymac I don't think you can even begin to comprehed Joyce unles you understand him as the consumate rebel. He rebelled against every orthodoxy that dominated his childhood and boyhood. I think that's why he seemed to idolize Parnell. He no doubt saw in him parts of the rebel he himself became, The poem, my absolute favorite bit of Joyceanna, was a shot at his published (Maunsel and Company)who printed and then burned "The Dubliners." I suspect Maunsel simply saw a way to make money off a book that wasn't yet selling very well. Whether by insurancce fraud or being bought off I don't know. This poem was written in a single, and, IMHO,is a tour de force through the recent Irish history of his time. The line-breaks and "paragraphs" are not Joyce's. I put them in as performance markers for myself when I read this poem. It's always well received. GAS FROM A BURNER (James Joyce) Ladies and gents, you are here assembled To hear why earth and heaven trembled Because of the black and sinister arts Of an Irish writer in foreign parts. He sent me a book ten years ago: I read it a hundred times or so, Backwards and forwards, down and up, Through both ends of a telescope. I printed it all to the very last word But by the mercy of the Lord The darkness of my mind was rent And I saw the writer's foul intent. But I owe a duty to Ireland: I hold her honor in my hand, This lovely land that always sent Her writers and artists to banishment And in a spirit of Irish fun Betrayed her own leaders, one by one. 'Twas Irish humor, wet and dry, Flung quicklime into Parnell's eye; 'Tis Irish brains that save from doom The leakey barge of the Bishop of Rome For everyone knows the Pope can't belch Without the consent of Billy Walsh. O Ireland my first and only love Where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove ! O lovely land where the shamrock grows ! (Allow me, ladies, to blow my nose) To show you for strictures I don't care a button I printed the poems of Mountainy Mutton And a play he wrote (you've read it, I'm sure) Where they talk of "bastard", "bugger", and" whore," And a play on the word and holy Paul And some woman's legs that I can't recall, Written by Moore, a genuine gent That lives on his property's ten per cent: I printed mystical books in dozens: I printed the table Book of Cousins Though (asking your pardon) as for the verse 'Twould give you a heartburn on your arse: I printed folklore from North and South By Gregory of the Golden Mouth: I printed poets, sad, silly and solemn: I printed Patrick What-do-you-colm: I printed the great John Milicent Synge Who soars above on an angel's wing In the playboy shift that he pinched as swag From Maunsel's manager's travelling bag. But I draw the line at that bloody fellow That was over here dressed in Austrian yellow, Spouting Italian by the hour To O'Leary Curtis and John Wise Power And writing of Dublin, dirty and dear, In a manner no blackamoor printer could bear. Shite and onions ! Do you think I'll print The name of the Wellington Monument, Sydney Parade and Sandymount tram, Downe's cakeshop and William's jam ? I'm damned if I do - damned to blazes ! Talk about Irish Names of Places ! It's a wonder to me, upon my soul, He forgot to mention Curley's Hole. No, ladies, my press shall have no share in So gross a libel on Stepmother Erin. I pity the poor - that's why I took A red-headed Scotchman to keep my book. Poor sister Scotland ! Her doom is fell; She cannot find any more Stuarts to sell. My conscience is fine as Chinese silk: My heart is as soft as buttermilk. Colm can tell you I made a rebate Of one hundred pounds on the estimate I gave him for his Irish Review. I love my country - by herrings I do ! I wish you could see what tears I weep When I think of the emigrant train and ship. That's why I publish far and wide My quite illegible railway guide. In the porch of my printing institute The poor and deserving prostitute Plays every night at catch-as-catch-can With her tight-breeched British artilleryman And the foreigner learns the gift of gab From the drunken draggletail Dublin drab. Who was it said: Resist not evil ? I'll burn that book, so help me devil. I'll sing a psalm as I watch it burn And the ashes I'll keep in a one-handled urn. I'll pennance do with farts and groans Kneeling upon my marrow bones. This very next lent I will unbare My penitent buttocks to the air And sobbing beside my printing press My awful sin I will confess. My Irish foreman from Bannockburn Shall dip his right hand in the urn And sign crisscross with reverent thumb Memento homo upon my bum. |
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12 Jun 07 - 09:51 PM (#2075371) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Not the man you wanted to cross! (Joyce, I mean). (Cross as in get on the wrong side of - not as in perform the gesture proposed in the final stanza). Quite a piece of work, all right ... ...... Read up on Casement - complicated character. Am I imagining that one of the main players in the Easter Rebellion was a Protestant? |
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13 Jun 07 - 12:54 AM (#2075450) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Great addition to the thread paddymac. I think the sort of rebelliousness you talk about is the luxury that the artist awards himself, and maybe needs to achieve the isolation and distance. Theres a nice bit in The Road to Wigan Pier, where Orwell talks about how, as a young man, he saw himself superior to everyone else on the bus - but definitely a rebel, a jacobite prince in exile, a communist, or a socialist....... I think it must be Joyce's mention in the poem of the poor old Stuarts being sold out by the Scots that triggered off that memory. Anyway, although Joyce was rebellious; I cannot see him as embracing the necessities of torture, murder and maiming that go concommitant with the serious business of waging war. Just think for a moment of the revulsion that must have been at the seat of his heart when he wrote that passage in Portrait about his 'retreat' where the priests told him about the terrors awaiting the youngsters in the afterlife. There is real cold anger at the violence being done to young minds. The change of gear from the innocent prattle of young people to the manipulative intimidation of the trusted old priest is masterly. As someone said, Joyce would have been very aware of the situation, but surely this is too gentle a soul to be on the barricades dispensing out death and injury to his fellow man. |
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13 Jun 07 - 08:58 AM (#2075693) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself I've never thought of Joyce as a particularly 'gentle' soul - but you're right; it's unlikely he'd be participating in any kind of bloodshed and mayhem of that nature. Yes, he was rebellious, but his rebelliousness was inseparable from the independence of his mind. He could not go along with the crowd, because he was too keenly aware of hypocrisy within the crowd. I get the impression that in the Dublin of his day, to hold a rebellious attitude toward England was not to be particularly rebellious in the context of your social milieu. It was in effect going along with the crowd - the same crowd that, to Joyce, had destroyed Parnell. |
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14 Jun 07 - 02:34 AM (#2076492) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Was Ulysses banned in Ireland? I didn't know that. I heard the story that some copies that were bound for Ireland, were seized by the customs in another country and destroyed. I didn't know it was banned though. I wonder why. Its a tough read, I reckon. Not much chance of it depraving or corrupting anyone, you'd have thought. It wasn't till the late 1960's that Penguin did a cheap edition, and I got to own a copy. Though there had been the Essential James Joyce anthology available for a few years. |
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14 Jun 07 - 02:41 AM (#2076496) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle by the way - I take it you guys all know about this version of Ulysses http://www.bway.net/~hunger/ch1-ulys.html |
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14 Jun 07 - 07:35 AM (#2076643) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger The was a pretty strange take on Ulysses, wld. |
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14 Jun 07 - 07:38 AM (#2076647) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle easier to understand than Joyce's version! |
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14 Jun 07 - 09:42 AM (#2076778) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT Protestants have always played a huge part in Irish nationalism - assuming that 'protestant' means dissenter as well as Church of Ireland. Most of the 18th-century revolutionaries - people such as Theobald Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken, I think Robert Emmet, etc were all Protestant. I'm not certain of this, but think the Young Irelanders were primarily Protestant. In the lead-up to 1916, the Gaelic League was largely Protestant, leading to a distrust for the Irish language among the Catholic priests and bishops that has persisted to this day; the same people were nationalist, but tended to be in the branch of the Volunteers who followed Redmond into World War I to fight in the British Army (often to return to Ireland afterwards to fight for Ireland in the War of Independence). From the time of the Reformation, it became legally disadvantageous to be Catholic. Many families therefore educated the most promising farmer or manager as a Protestant, and the branch of the family that 'jumped' (converted to Protestantism) was the one that ended up with the land. The Catholic side drifted into poverty or emigrated, initially to the southwest of France, later to North and South America, finally to England, Canada and the east coast of North America. Once Ireland had won independence, the position was reversed in the first few years of the Irish nation, and Protestants sold up and flooded out of the country in the same way that the whites flooded out of Rhodesia in the first days of Zimbabwe. Now the Protestant churches are opening again with an influx of Protestants from Africa, and a welcome reopening of Protestant schools is happening. These people are not currently full of national feeling, but inevitably their children and grandchildren will be. |
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14 Jun 07 - 10:14 AM (#2076814) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger "easier to understand than Joyce's version!" Yeah, I'm not sure I ever did understand Joyce's version, really. Some vague ideas and maybe the overall concept(s). |
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14 Jun 07 - 12:03 PM (#2076947) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Thanks, JTT - very interesting! ("assuming that 'protestant' means dissenter as well as Church of Ireland" - that's always been my assumption - that is, if by 'dissenter' you mean member of one of the 'other' Protestant churches ... ). |
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14 Jun 07 - 07:39 PM (#2077343) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT Yes, Presbyterians especially faced the same kind of prejudice and legal problems as Catholics, though to a lesser degree, in the 18th century. |
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15 Jun 07 - 07:42 PM (#2078282) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger "Was Ulysses banned in Ireland?" wld - I found this in Wikipedia. "In 1920 after the magazine The Little Review serialized a passage of the book dealing with the main character masturbating, a group called the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who objected to the book's content, took action to attempt to keep the book out of the United States." I could find to reference to the book having been banned in Ireland. |
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15 Jun 07 - 10:06 PM (#2078359) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Remembered where I first got that notion about 'banning': back in the '70's, a friend recently emigrated from Ireland told me that Ullysses was banned there, or had been until not long before ... Now whether I ever heard that after from any other source, I can't say now. I guess it's one of those things that I heard, it sounded plausible, and I never thought to question it ... Could be that it was 'strongly discouraged' by church authorities, and this was loosely described as a 'ban' by university students and teenaged rebels ... where are all the Irish mudcatters when you need them? |
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15 Jun 07 - 10:15 PM (#2078360) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST Excerpt here from a BBC article about upcoming Bloomsday festivals: But Joyce was not always celebrated in Ireland. One reason he left the country was the difficulty he had in getting a publisher. And his book was rejected - but not banned - until the 1960s, principally because of its sexually explicit content, including an account of one of the principal characters masturbating. "The book was seen as pornographic, not of worthy quality," Ms Weldon said. [She's the co-ordinator of the festivals.] "But that was very much a function of Ireland as a narrow society. When the book was originally published in 1922, it was banned in the US and it was banned in the UK - but it was never banned in Ireland."
-Joe Offer- |
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15 Jun 07 - 10:16 PM (#2078363) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself That was me; I hit Submit by mistake. The rest of article is here. |
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16 Jun 07 - 03:41 AM (#2078459) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle It probably wasn't banned as such in England. But I can remember going to see a well-heeled schoolfriend, whose parents had a bookshop and they had loads of really old valuable editions of Ulysses. This was in 1967. And at that point I'd never seen a copy before. The year after, Penguin brought out their first edition for ten shillings - which was a lot for a penguin book. that edition literally dropped to bits from overuse last year - I haven't replaced it yet! I suppose the lady Chatterly case of the early 1960's freed things up a bit. One of the legal men at the Lady Chatterly trial - famously said, would you want your servants to be able to read this book?. Thank God, things have changed a bit since then. I HAD heard that it was a point of pride with the Irish that they had never actually banned Ulysses. However - given its long years in the wilderness - I don't think many of them could have actually been clamouring for it. |
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16 Jun 07 - 04:21 AM (#2078476) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT Heh - I don't think there are crowds of people clamouring for Ulysses today either, in any country! Reality TV, yes; Joyce, no. I suspect that if Joyce hadn't fallen in with Pound, Hemingway and their set, he'd never have got a publisher anywhere. As it was, the first publications of his books were essentially an amateur matter. |
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16 Jun 07 - 04:46 AM (#2078482) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I will argue with that later. I have to go out. I will develop my arguments, as I troop around North Lincolnshire throughout the day. Despite his poverty - he was definitely a star - even in his early days in Dublin - the coming man, as Molly might have said. They say Gogarty wanted to evict him out of the Martello tower - but he knew Joyce would be famous, and he didn't want to feature badly in the autobiographies that were bound to be writte about him. |
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16 Jun 07 - 10:52 AM (#2078635) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: paddymac I have a clipped quote attributed to Lord Who'sit Stuffedshirt (the director prosecutions in England at the time) in which he stated "I have not read the whole book, but pages xxx to yyy are unmitigated filth." I don't know where I hid it at the moment, but I'll find and post it ere long. |
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16 Jun 07 - 10:10 PM (#2078993) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST I can remember sitting in some kind of a graduate class and being told that Joyce is the third most researched writer, writing in English--behind Shakespeare and Chaucer. Looking at the Guest JTT comment, one has to wonder the outcome of his never having obtained publication. I suspect there were a number of things written that never saw the light of publication, while all kinds of tripe is published in huge volumes every day. |
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16 Jun 07 - 11:53 PM (#2079036) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Just came across an article in the New Yorker updating the saga of Stephen Joyce and the estate: haven't read it yet. Think I'll leave it till morning. |
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17 Jun 07 - 08:16 AM (#2079179) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself Ah - in the clear light of day, I see that that article is archived - it was published in June of last year, so you may already have read it. ........... "Joyce is the third most researched writer, writing in English" - Once heard an English prof commenting on the neglect of Burns in the academy. Said that while he considered Burns a great poet, Burns' style was so direct and accessible that there wasn't that much to say ABOUT his work - Joyce, on the other hand, was a 'godsend' to English professors. "I can get a year's course out of Ulysses", says he. |
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17 Jun 07 - 11:18 PM (#2079637) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger I posted the unidentified "guest" message above. I must have lost my cookie. Sorry. meself - That's an interesting concept. Write something and make it vague and hard to understand, and English professors will love you. I'm sure there's some merit to this arguement, but it seems like there must be more to Joyce. It does seem acedemically unfair, however, that if one writes something profound and culturally important, but its' to the point and easier to grasp, that writer doesn't get the proper recognition. |
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17 Jun 07 - 11:51 PM (#2079647) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself This prof was not saying that Joyce was a fake - rather that his writing is in a style that lends itself to study - dense with allusion, indirect, full of symbols, etc. However, Joyce, Eliot, Pound et al were establishing themselves in a time when, as I understand it, academics were taking over the field of literary criticism - they were becoming the king-makers (and breakers). A cynic might suggest that the aforementioned writers were merely feeding the academics what they wanted; a more charitable view might be that it was the zeitgeist - or the cultural vortex - of the time that was empowering the English profs and producing dense, 'academic', literature of remarkable quality ... |
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18 Jun 07 - 04:40 AM (#2079722) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,JTT I wouldn't think of Joyce as particularly difficult to understand - except for Finnegans Wake, of course. He just writes intensely, with a magnified sense of the reality of the everyday moment. |
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18 Jun 07 - 06:01 AM (#2079747) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I don't think it was anything like this. The English language was in crisis. The best writers of the day Stevenson (writing about pirates and highwaymen) Wilde, Lionel Johnson and later Brooke(writing poetry in a style that sounded a hundred years old or more) - it simply wasn't talking about contemporary life. Much in the same way that modern folksong writers can't tear themselves away from the subject of the first world war, and the past. Moreover when poets like Davidson (who famously wrote a poem about a a clerk making Thirty Bob a Week) tried to write embrace modern subjects - the results weren't inspiring. The modernists tried to write about their own world, whilst insisting that they had a place in the pantheon of English Lit. Thus all the references and cross references, classical and literary and multicultural. And I beg to differ - it does make for a bloody hard read quite often. It worked for a time, but it was odd and nothing odd lasts long without being challenged. Kingsley Amis famously described Ezra Pound's Cantos as the ravings of a maniac rampaging through a museum - and surely we can apply the same criticism to portions of Joyce and Eliot. Their lasting innovation has been the insistence of incorporating ones own experience into the literary creation and using ones own language. Lets hope it permeates one day to the writers of folksongs - well we can hope! |
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18 Jun 07 - 10:25 AM (#2079923) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger "Lets hope it permeates one day to the writers of folksongs..." Somebody ought to try putting Eliot to music... These are the hollow men... These are the stuffed men... It might work. "I wouldn't think of Joyce as particularly difficult to understand..." I don't know. I have to read it slowly and reread at times. But maybe it's just me. |
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18 Jun 07 - 10:52 AM (#2079944) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,meself "a magnified sense of the reality of the everyday moment": very eloquent! And accurate. How difficult Joyce - or Eliot or Pound - is to read is relative, of course. There are parts of Ulysses that are very straightforward - but the significance of which may be obscure - and parts that are very difficult to make head or tail (tale) of - as I recall; it being more than twenty-five years ago that I read the darn thing. The rejection of much established art, and the art establishment, of the later-Victorian/Ewardian era, entailed a kind of contemptuous dismissal of the bourgeoisie on the basis of its seeming shallow values, as manifested in its artistic tastes. It became a point of pride not to compromise one's art by trying to more effectively communicate with the philistines, one's erstwhile audience. Thus, the bourgeois audience was pushed further away, the artists became more indignant at being 'neglected', and you have a vicious circle: the art becomes increasingly inaccessible to non-specialists, so non-specialists become increasingly less interested in it, so more and more the artists concentrate on performing for each other and for the specialists, etc. So what began as a squabble within the family, led to a break-up of the family. In other words, a separation of the artists from the bourgeoisie. Something like that, anyway. |
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18 Jun 07 - 12:43 PM (#2080058) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle I loved the story about the Joyce inheritor. Thanks very much for finding that. You couldn't help feeling what a bloody twit. JJ was definitely in it for the immortality - i suspect when you die in a paupers grave theres not else to hope for al |
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18 Jun 07 - 02:50 PM (#2080171) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: GUEST,Lighter Allow me to recommend - highly - the cassette/CD version published by Recorded Books. Read by the thoroughly underappreciated Irish actor Donal Donnelly, who played the inebriated Freddy in the "The Dead" (1987). Joyce himself couldn't have read "Ulysses" better. The book meant something to me for the first time. Unabridged. 5 stars. |
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18 Jun 07 - 03:28 PM (#2080199) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle Anybody familiar with this version? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Ulysses-by-James-Joyce-Audio-Book-MP3-CD-32-Hours-Long_W0QQitemZ320128697488QQihZ011QQcategoryZ29792QQrdZ1 |
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18 Jun 07 - 04:48 PM (#2080277) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Riginslinger I had a "tape" version that was put out by the BBC. I don't recall how long ago it came out. It preceeded CD's though. |
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03 Nov 14 - 09:13 PM (#3674377) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle just thought i'd mention - you can get the complete works of Joyce on your kindle for about a quid. |
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04 Nov 14 - 01:16 AM (#3674413) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: meself Thanks for reviving this read - I'd forgotten all about it, and enjoyed re-reading it. Imagine - a thread of this length not degenerating into a series of adolescent insults. Reminds me of how it was that I got hooked on Mudcat lo those many years ago ..... |
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04 Nov 14 - 07:44 AM (#3674472) Subject: RE: BS: Any Joyceans out there? From: Big Al Whittle yes it was lovely exchanging thoughts and ideas. we were all coming from such different angles. what put it in mind was that i bought a dvd about Yeats last time Iwas in Dublin - about four years back at the museum shop at thenational library, that was closing down and more or less chucking stuff out. anyway i finally got round to watching it last night - lots of the usual suspects, Ulick O'Connor - Heaney -naturally, interviews with O'Casey about the early days of the Abbey Theatre. they were like us. they all disagreed, and saw things from different angles. yet it was all very civilised - why can't we talk like that about folk music? mind you Heaney said if he'd actually met Yeats he would have told him he was talking tripe. |