The Death of the Author
Lately Written by the Author for Three Voices:
Obituarist OB
Ulysses UL
Wakese FW
Collagist: Philip Harvey
Performed at La Notte Ristorante in Lygon Street as part of the Bloomsday in Melbourne celebrations on 16th of June 2011
[The MC will explain during the Introduction that in this reading questionable statements in the Obituary passages will be followed by a gong. Straight factual errors will be followed by the blowing of a paper whistle. Typos in the original text will be underscored by the soft playing of a music box. Patrons are asked to pay close attention for these occasions. A musician plays gong, paper whistle, and music box, as directed in the script.]
OB: The New York Times,
January 1941.
Zurich, Switzerland, Monday, Jan
13- James Joyce, Irish author whose "Ulysses" was the center of one
of the most bitter literary controversies of modern times, died in a hospital
here early today despite the efforts of doctors to save him by blood
transfusions. He would have been 59 years old Feb. 2.
Joyce underwent an intestinal
operation Saturday afternoon at the Schwesternhaus von Rotenkreuz Hospital. For
a time he appeared to be recovering. Only yesterday his son reported him to
have been cheerful and apparently out of danger.
During the afternoon,
however, the writer suffered a sudden relapse and sank rapidly. He died at 2:15
A.M. (8:15 P.M., American States Eastern Standard Time). His wife and son were
at the hospital when he died.
UL: A team of horses passed
from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging through the funereal silence
a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block. The waggoner marching at their
head saluted.
Coffin now. Got here before
us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his plume skeowways. Dull
eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or something. Do they
know what they cart out here every day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every
day. Then Mount Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world
everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick.
Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.
OB: The status of James Joyce
as a writer never could be determined in his lifetime.
[Gong]
OB: In the opinion of some
critics, notably Edmund Wilson, he deserved to rank with the great innovators
of literature as one whose influence upon other writers of his time was
incalculable.
UL: Are you bad in the eyes?
the sympathetic personage queried.
Why, answered the seafarer
with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own
small way, staring out of sea-green portholes as you might well describe them
as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could
read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian Nights’
Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She.
OB: On the other hand, there
were critics like Max Eastman who gave him a place with Gertrude Stein and T.S.
Eliot among the "Unintelligibles"
FW: Shem is as short for
Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. Shem’s
bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye,
the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown,
eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin, the wrong
shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural
curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf
heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, a manroot of all evil, a
salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes and a bladder tristended.
Shem was a sham and a low sham.
OB: And there was Professor
Irving Babbitt of Harvard who dismissed his most widely read novel,
"Ulysses," as one which only could have been written "in an
advanced stage of psychic disintegration."
UL: Enjoy a bath now: clean
trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream. This is my body.
He foresaw his pale body
reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting
soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained,
buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark
tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp
father of thousands, a languid floating flower.
OB: Originally published in
1922, "Ulysses" was not legally available in the United States until
eleven years later, when United States Judge John Monro Woolsey handed down his
famous decision to the effect that the book was not obscene. Hitherto the book
had been smuggled in and sold at high prices by "bookleggers" and a
violent critical battle had raged around it.
"'Ulysses' is not an
easy book to read or understand," Judge Woolsey wrote. "But there has
been much written about it, and in order properly to approach the consideration
of it it is advisable to read a number of other books which have now become its
satellites. The study of "Ulysses" is therefore a heavy task.
UL: Mr. Bloom turned over
idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle’s Masterpiece.
He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us
see. He read where his finger opened.
All the dollarbills her
husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest
frillies. For him! For Raoul!
Yes. Here. Take this.
You are late, he spoke
hoarsely, eyeing her with a suspicious glare. The beautiful woman threw off her
sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An
imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly.
OB: Judge Woolsey contined:
“The reputation of 'Ulysses' in the literary world, however, warranted my
taking such time as was necessary to enable me to satisfy myself as to the
intent with which the book was written, for, of course, in any case where a
book is claimed to be obscene it must first be determined whether the intent
with which it was written was what is called, according to the usual phrase,
pornographic, that is, written for the purpose of exploiting obscenity.
UL: Ask for that every ten
minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never prayed before. Here. Kiss that! Gee up!
A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I’ll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. The lady
goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a
gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
OB: "If the conclusion
is that the book is pornographic that is the end of the inquiry... But in
'Ulysses," in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the
leer of the sensualist. I hold, therefore, that it is not pornographic."
On the passages dealing with
sex, Judge Woolsey paused to remark that the reader must not forget that
"the characters are Celtic and the time is Spring." His decision was
hailed as one of the most civilized ever propounded by an American judge.
[Music box played during the
next paragraph.]
After he had admitted Ulysses
to the country, there was a rush to buy the almost immediately available
authorized and uncensored edition published by Random House. Since then the
book, unlike many another once banned by the censor and then forgotten, has
been read widely; less for the passages once objected to than for the book as a
whole.
Although Joyce appeared in
many of his writings as Stephen Dedalus, many details of his life are missing.
The writer was born Feb. 2,
1882, in Dublin, the son of John Stanislaus Joyce (The Simon Dedalus of
"Ulysses" whom Bloom hears singing in the Ormond bar) and Mary Murray
Joyce. His father supposedly had one of the finest tenor voices in Ireland.
James Joyce had an equally fine voice.
UL: Boomed crashing chords.
When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the
waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted. All is
lost now.
Horn. Hawhorn.
When first he saw. Alas!
Full tup. Full throb.
Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.
Martha! Come!
Clapclop. Clipclap.
Clappyclap.
OB: The Joyce family was not
prosperous and it was large. James stood out among his brothers and sisters
and, at the age of 9, is supposed to have written an attack on Tim Healy, the
anti-Parnellite, which was printed but of which no known copy exists. Since he
was literary it was decided to give him an education and he was sent first to
Clongowes Wood College, then to Belvedere College, also in Ireland, and later
he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Royal University in Dublin.
He was an amazing scholar,
and an independent and solitary figure. When he was 17 he read Ibsen's plays
and wrote an essay for the Fortnightly Review about the author of "The
Doll's House." Dissatisfied with the English translations, Joyce learned
Norwegian when he was 19 years old so that he might read his literary god in
the original. At the same time he was reading and studying Dante, all the
Elizabethan poets, St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle.
UL: What is your idea of
Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.
No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted
in pain. I’m not equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made
to prop it up.
He turned to Stephen, saying
as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat, “You couldn’t
manage it under three pints, could you?”
It has waited so long,
Stephen said, it can wait longer.
It’s quite simple, Buck
Mulligan said. He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s
grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.
What? Haines said, he
himself.
The sacred pint alone can
unbind the tongue of Dedalus, said Mulligan.
OB: In those days, according
to Padraic Colum, Joyce was a tall, slender young man with "a Dantesque
face and steely blue eyes," who sauntered along the street in a peaked
tennis cap, soiled tennis shoes, carrying an ashplant for a cane. Stephen
Dedalus carries a similar cane in "Ulysses" and frequently talks with
it! He loved to sing and recite poetry in his fine tenor voice, but he spoke
harshly and used "many of the unprintable words he got printed in
'Ulysses.'"
UL: Signatures of all things
I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot,
Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.
Stephen closed his eyes to
hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it
howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. Am I walking into eternity along
Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money.
He took the hilt of his
ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still.
OB: Conceit and arrogance
were his characteristics. When he first met Yeats he remarked: "We have
met too late; you are too old to be influenced by me." AE (George Russell)
recognized his "keen and cold intelligence," but told the young man,
"I'm afraid you have not enough chaos in you to make a world."
[Paper whistle]
FW: Can’t hear with the
waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk, talk! Ho!
Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all
thim liffey-ing waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old
as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughter-sons. Dark
hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head falls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun, the living sons or daughters
of? Night now! Tell me, tell, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem and
stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
[Music box played during this
paragraph.]
OB: Joyce was in continuous
rebellion against Ireland and its life and said: "When the soul of a man
is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from
flight." The words are Stephen Dedalus's in "A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man," but it was Joyce speaking, and, at the age of 20, he left
Ireland for Paris where he intended, and for a time pretended, to study
medicine.
UL: But do you know what a
nation means?
Yes, says Bloom. A nation is
the same people living in the same place.
By God then, says Ned,
laughing, if that’s so I’m a nation for I’m living in the same place for the
past five years.
What is your nation?, asks
the citizen.
Ireland, says Bloom. I was
born here. Ireland.
OB: At this time he started
the stories that were eventually published as "Dubliners" (this book
was later publicly burned in a Dublin public square) and started his first
novel. This, the "Portrait of the Artist," was ten years in the
writing. His first published work- except for the forgotten attack on Tim
Healy- was "Chamber Music," a collection of Elizabethan-like verse,
which were printed in 1907. It was at this time that he met Nora Barnacle,
"a sleek blond beauty" from Galway, the daughter of Thomas and Ann
Healy Barnacle.
UL: of course he’s mad on the
subject of drawers that’s plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced
things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels even when
Milly and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in the cream muslin
standing right against the sun so he could see every atom she had on when he
saw me from behind following in the rain I saw him before he saw me however
standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him
with the muffler in the Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the
brown hat looking slyboots as usual
OB: They soon went to the
continent to live (their marriage was not regularized until twenty-seven years
later, when they visited a London registry office to legalize the status of
their two children, George and Lucia). In Trieste, where they settled after
some wandering, Joyce taught English at the Berlitz School and the Commercial
Academy. He knew seventeen languages, ancient and modern, including Arabic,
Sanskrit and Greek.
FW: For if the lingo gasped
between kicksheets, however basically English, were to be preached from the
mouths of wicker-churchwardens and metaphysicians in the row and advokaattoes,
allvoyous, demivoyelles, languoaths, lesbiels, dentelles, gutterhowls and furtz
where would their practice be or where the human race itself? Over country
stiles, behind slated dwellinghouses, down blind lanes, or, when all fruit
fails, under some sacking left on a coarse cart?
OB: In 1914 Dubliners was
published in London. In the same year he also finished his novel "Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man."
When war was declared Joyce
and his wife, who were British citizens, were in Austria. He was forced out of
his job as a teacher, and the couple moved to Zurich.
While living in Zurich Joyce
began to suffer from severe ocular illness and eventually underwent at least
ten operations on his eyes. For years he was almost totally blind and much of
his later writing was done with red crayon on huge white sheets of paper.
[Paper whistle]
FW: Have you heard the one
about Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a
rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa
Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine
Wall
Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?
OB: "Ulysses" was
begun under this difficult situation. Much of it was published by Margaret
Anderson in The Little Review, the magazine which Otto Kahn, New York banker,
once subsidized for his Greenwich Village friends. Chapters appeared between
March, 1918, and August, 1920, when the Society for the Suppression of Vice had
The Review stopped by court order.
After the war the Joyces
returned to Trieste, where they lived with Stanislaus Joyce, the author's
brother. Then, in 1919, they went to Paris, where they made their home until
the next war sent them again to Zurich to occupy the house they had known in
1914.
UL: Could Bloom of 7 Eccles
street foresee Bloom of Flowerville?
In loose allwool garments
with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful garden boots with elastic gussets
and wateringcan, planting aligned young firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking,
sowing hayseed, trundling a weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at
sunset amid the scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying
wisdom, achieving longevity.
OB: In 1922 Joyce's greatest
book, "Ulysses," was published in Paris. Great Britain, Ireland and
the United States banned the book. For many years after "Ulysses" was
done Joyce worked on what he called "Work in Progress." Much of it
appeared in Transition, the magazine published in the Nineteen Twenties in
Paris by Eugene Jolas. [Gong] In May, 1939, it was published as
"Finnegan's Wake," a book "distinguished" by such
"words" as Goragorridgeorballyedpuhkalsom, to name one of the simpler
ones, and many puns. In it Mr. Joyce suggested the book was the work of "a
too pained whitelwit laden with the loot of learning."
FW: The proteiform graph
itself is a polyhedron of scripture. There was a time when naïf alphabetters
would have written it down the tracing of a purely deliquescent recidivist,
possibly ambidextrous, snubnosed probably and presenting a strangely profound
rainbowl in his (or her) occiput.
OB: During all his years as a
writer Joyce was carefully protected by his wife, who once said she cared for
him despite (quote) "his necessity to write those books no one can
understand." His conversation was clear, never anything like his writing,
and his wit as keen.
Joyce's son, George Joyce,
married the former Miss Helen Castor of Long Branch, N.J. They had one son,
Stephen James Joyce. James Joyce and his wife made their home with his son for
many years before the present war.
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