Well, next Thursday is Bloomsday, so I am doing my Homework:
Once in the dear dead days
beyond recall,
When on the world the mists
began to fall,
Out of the dreams that rose
in happy throng
Low to our hearts Love sang
an old sweet song;
And in the dusk where fell
the firelight gleam,
Softly it wove itself into
our dream.
Just a song a twilight,
when the lights are low,
And the flick'ring shadows
softly come and go,
Tho' the heart be weary,
sad the day and long,
Still to us at twilight
comes Love's old song,
Comes Love's old sweet
song.
Even today we hear Love's
song of yore,
Deep in our hearts it
dwells forevermore.
Footsteps may falter, weary
grow the way,
Still we can hear it at the
close of day.
So till the end, when
life's dim shadows fall,
Love will be found the
sweetest song of all.
Just a song a twilight,
when the lights are low,
And the flick'ring shadows
softly come and go,
Tho' the heart be weary,
sad the day and long,
Still to us at twilight
comes Love's old song,
Comes Love's old sweet
song.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is James Joyce.
I am very famous now, so I imagine you know the titles of all my books. What then is the title of my first published book?
Yes! … It is - Chamber Music - a slim book of poems.
When I was at school in Belvedere College, I wrote a collection of stories I called "silhouettes" and a collection of poems I called "Moods." They were rather immature, and, when I sent a copy of the poems to William Butler Yeats, a leading poet of the time, he more or less told me so, but encouraged me to keep writing. These poems, as you might imagine, were the basis of that first book of mine, "Chamber Music."
The poems have an arty feel to them. I thought they could all be set to Classical Music, and, by now, indeed, they have been, multiple times. I was initially pleased with my brother Stan's suggestion that the collection be called "Chamber Music." However, I soon began to regard these poems as embarrassingly childish, and I joked that "Chamber Music" is the sound of a stream of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot. Of course, ordinary people did not have flush toilets in those days, so that was a type of music we were all familiar with.
My full name is "James Augustine Aloysius Joyce." One of my schoolmates in Belvedere (a scut called Eddie Sheehy) changed this to "James Disgustin' Joyce."
While Jimmy Mangan added a fancy middle name, "Clarence," to make him "James Clarence Mangan" and W B Yeats used his full double-barrel monicker, "William Butler Yeats," I decided early on to leave out the Augustin part and simply go by "James Joyce."
How much money did Chamber Music earn for me? Not a penny! In fact it lost money for my publisher.
But it made me quite famous among the literary Avant Garde. You see, Yeats sent a copy of the book to Ezra Pound in America. Pound selected one of my poems and included it in his first ever collection of Imagist Poems. The Imagists were a new literary movement, who proclaimed that rhymes and rhythms are unimportant in poetry; that what is important is Images.
My poem "I hear an Army," is strong in images. In essence it describes a childhood nightmare. Because of this poem and its inclusion in the Imagist collection, I automatically became an acknowledged member, - some would say the leader, - of the English-speaking literary Avant Garde in exile in Paris between the wars.
I hear an army charging upon
the land,
And the thunder of horses
plunging, foam about their ears.
Arrogant in black armour
behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with
fluttering whips, the charioteers.
They cry unto the night their
battle names
I moan in sleep, when I hear (afar) their
swirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of
dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging, upon the
heart, as upon an anvil.
They come shaking in triumph
their long green hair
They come out of the sea and
run shouting along the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom
thus to despair?
My mother, my mother, why have
you left me alone?
My mother, my mother, why have
you left me alone?
When I published this poem, instead of "My mother," I said "My lover, my lover." This was pretentious. I was a young adult, sexually awake, but I did not have a lover. I thought it would sound childish in my poem for a grown man to call out for his mother.
Now, as I mature in years, I can visit these poems again, without embarrassment. They are the pretentious outpourings of a young adult, inexperienced in the ways of the world, striving to present himself as sophisticated and knowledgeable, like Finn McCool sucking his magic thumb.
So "Chamber Music" is a pretentious outpouring of the moods of the young James Joyce. "Dubliners" is a cryptic description, in story form, of the restrictive culture of the city of my youth. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is a novel showing the artist breaking away from this restrictiveness to engage in a free and heroic life.
In "Ulysses" the main character is domesticated into the humdrum existence of married life. Life is described by the stream of consciousness of multiple characters and in multiple styles, in one ordinary hum-drum day in Dublin.
"Finnegan's Wake" goes deeper. It penetrates into the subconscious. Its gate to the subconscious (partly opened for me by the strange outpourings of my poor schizophrenic daughter, Lucia) is provided by the famous Dublin character, Tim Finnegan. He, of course, only became famous when he rose from the dead. He was a brick-layer and fond of a tipple in the morning when setting out to work. One day he fell off a ladder and broke his skull. They wrapped him up in a sheet and took him home to wake him. In the middle of the wake, some whiskey spattered over Tim's face and he jumped up shouting, "Thundering Jasus, do you think I'm dead?
Finnegan
Wakes
Ah Tim Finnegan lived in
Watling Street,
A gentleman, Irish, mighty odd.
Well, he had a tongue both rich and sweet
And to rise in the world he carried a hod.
Ah but Tim had a sort of a tipplin' way;
With the love of the liquor he was born;
And to send him on his way each day,
He'd a drop of the craythur every morn.
Whack fol the dah, will you
dance your partner;
Round the floor your
trotters shake.
Wasn’t it the truth I told
ya:
Lots of fun at Finnegan’s
Wake.
One morning Tim was rather
full
His head felt heavy which made him shake
He fell off the ladder and he broke his skull
And they carried him home his corpse to wake
Well they rolled him up in a nice clean sheet
And they laid him out upon the bed
With a bottle of whiskey at his feet
And a barrel of porter at his head.
Whack fol the dah …
Well his friends assembled
at the wake
And Mrs Finnegan called for lunch
Well first they brought in tay and cake
Then pipes, tobacco and brandy punch.
Then the widow Malone began to cry
"Such a lovely corpse, did you ever see,
Arrah, Tim avourneen, why did you die?"
"Will ye hould your gob?" said Biddy McGee
Whack fol the dah …
Well Mary O'Connor took up
the job
"Biddy" says she "you're wrong, I'm sure"
Well Biddy gave her a belt in the gob
And left her sprawling on the floor.
Well civil war did then engage;
T'was woman to woman and man to man.
Shillelagh law was all the rage
And a row and a ruction soon began
Whack fol the dah …
Well Tim Maloney raised his
head
When a bottle of whiskey flew at him
He ducked, and, landing on the bed,
The whiskey scattered over Tim.
Bedad he revives, see how he rises
Tim Finnegan rising in the bed
Saying "Whittle your whiskey around like blazes
Thunderin' Jaysus, do ye think I'm dead?"
Whack fol the dah …
The point is, Finnegan was never right in the head after that. He thought he was Napoleon, or, again, Julius Caesar, or Charles Stewart Parnell, or whatever, and a stream of apparent nonsense flowed from his mouth. But that nonsense had its source. It had its source in the subconscious mind and was full of wonderful insights, if you had the patience to listen attentively.
So now, my novel, Finnegan's Wake, has a great stream of words flowing out of Finnegan's mouth. He is many characters. Sometimes he is a two-faced politician who may or may not have made an inappropriate approach to a young female while visiting Dublin Zoo; and, like all politicians, he had a mighty fall from his high perch.
Have you heard of one
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?
He was one time our King of
the Castle
Now he's kicked about like a rotten old
parsnip.
And from Green Street he'll be sent by
order of his worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
To the jail of Mountjoy / Jail him and joy.
He was fafa father of all
schemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives
for the populace,
Mare's milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays
a week,
Open-air love and religion's reform,
And religious reform / Hideous in form.
He ought to blush for
himself, the old hay-headed philosopher
For to go and shove himself that way on top
of her.
Begob, he's the crux of the catalogue
Of our antediluvial zoo
Messrs. Billing and Coo / Noah's larks,
good as noo.
He was joulting by
Wellinton's monument
Our rotorious hippo po potamuns
When some bugger let down the backtrap of
the omnibus
And he caught his death of fusiliers,
With his rent in his rears / Give him six
years.
‘Tis sore pity for his
innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won't there be earwigs on the green?
Big earwigs on the green / The largest ever you seen.
Then we'll have a free trade Gaels' band and
mass meeting
For to sod the brave son of Scandiknavery
And we'll bury him down in Oxmanstown
Along with the devil and Danes,
With the deaf and dumb Danes / And all
their remains.
And not all the king's men
nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus-sus
For there's no true spell in Connacht or
hell
That's able to raise a Cain.
That can raise a Cain / And it’s always the
same.
Finnegan also takes on the personality of Anna Livia, the spirit of the river Liffey, representing the Spirit of Life. It has a beginning in the mountains and an end at the sea, yet it does not end, but keeps forever flowing without end.
And now I will give you the last lines of Finegan's Wake. Anna Livia is speaking as she makes her way finally to the sea.
Auravoles, they says, never
heed of your name! But I’m loothing them that’s here and all I lothe. Loonely
in me loneness. For all their faults. I am passing out. O bitter ending! I’ll
slip away before they’re up. They’ll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it’s
old and old it’s sad and old it’s sad and weary I go back to you, my cold
father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of
the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me
seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. I see them rising! Save
me from those therrble prongs! Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Ave-laval.
My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I’ll bear it on me.
To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy,
like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under
white-spread wings like he’d come from Arkangels, I sink I’d die down over his
feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There’s where. First. We pass
through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far!
End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mem-memormee! Till
thousends-thee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the
…
Remember, these last few words are the first part of the opening sentence at the start of the book. which, like life, keeps flowing forever with only partial comprehension.
I’ve
been north and I’ve been south, I’ve been east and west
I’ve been just a rolling stone
Yet there’s one place on this earth I’ve always liked the best
Just a little town I call my own.
And a stroll in Stephen’s Green
There’s no need to hurry, there’s no need to worry
You’re a king and the lady’s a queen.
Grafton Street’s a wonderland, there’s magic in the air
There’s diamonds in the lady’s eyes and gold-dust in her hair
And if you don’t believe me, come and meet me there
In Dublin on a sunny Summer morning.
I’ve
been here and I’ve been there, I’ve sought the rainbow’s end
But no crock of gold I’ve found
Now I know that come what will, whatever fate may send
Here my roots are deep in friendly ground.
And a stroll in Stephen’s Green
There’s no need to hurry, there’s no need to worry
You’re a king and the lady’s a queen
Grafton Street’s a wonderland, there’s magic in the air
There’s diamonds in the lady’s eyes and gold-dust in her hair
And if you don’t believe me, come and meet me there
In Dublin on a sunny Summer morning