James Joyce

Author(s): FRANK O'CONNOR

Source: The American Scholar, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Summer, 1967), p. 466, 468, 470, 476, 478, 480, 482
, 486, 488, 490
Published by: Phi Beta Kappa Society
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 TheRevolving >>>
Bookstand ...
James
Joyce
FRANK O'CONNOR

An antithesiswas to develop in modern With a few drinksin, theysang sentimen-

Irish literaturebetween Yeats and Joyce, tally of "the valley near Slievenamon" or
the idealistand the realist,the countryman "the hills of Donegal," but next morning
and the townsman,the dead past and the saw them return cheerfullyto officeand
unbornfuture. shop. This is not the only thing that re-
One mightbe temptedto describeit as a minds us how similarwere the positionsof
Protestant-Catholicantithesis if it were Yeats and Joycein twentieth-century Dub-
not thatTrinityCollege,whichrepresented lin and those of Shakespeare and Jonson
the Protestantinterest,was scarcelymore in seventeenth-century London. Shake-
friendlyto the revival than was the Na- speare and Yeats were highlyunscholarly
tional (né Royal) University.At the same men of feeling,full of happy reminiscences
time the traditionthat Yeats, Synge and of a countrychildhood; Jonsonand Joyce
Lady Gregoryhad picked up fromPétrie, weremen of enormousreadingand curious
Ferguson and Standish O'Grady, was scholarship who were happiest in Bar-
largely a Protestantone. It was not only tholomew Fair and Nighttown. Shake-
that, of course, because if it had been it speare and Yeats appealed most to the
would have achieved nothing.It was also country-bred,Jonson and Joyce to the
the traditionof people who had spent a scholarsand townees:forthatreason alone
considerable part of their youth in the Joyce'sworksweptAmericansofftheirfeet.
country,whereasitsopponentsweremainly In Ireland, the towneeswho had managed
people who by circumstances or inclination to acquire some sort of education could
were townsmen.The thesisgained strength scarcelybe expected to hail with enthu-
from its connectionwith the country,as siasm "a commodious vicus of recircula-
Yeatsrealizedin lateryears. tion" that would put them back exactly
where their grandfathershad been in the
JohnSynge,I and AugustaGregory thought middle of the nineteenth
All thatwe did,all thatwe said or sung century.
Mustcomefromcontactwiththesoil,fromthat In fact, the antithesishad a consider-
wider scope than I can describe,nor
Contacteverything Antaeus-like grewstrong. ably
did it entirely neglect the countryside.
The oppositionon the otherhand were Edward Martyn's theater of ideas failed
people who had been driven from their miserably,but the practical work of the
little holdings by landlordismand finally cooperativesocietiesdid not fail altogether
managed to settlein the townsand cities. until the twenties,and one can still see in
ugly Catholic churches throughout the
О This essay*on JamesJoyceis fromA Short countrybeautiful glass, although no one
can any longer rememberthe names of
HistoryofIrishLiterature bythelate FRANK
O'CONNOR, and is with the the youngpriestswho were responsiblefor
printed permis-
sion of G. P. Putnam'sSons. commissioningit. That practical,forward-
# © 1967by HarrietR. O'Dono- looking excitementof the period with its
Copyright
van. subsequent disillusionment is recorded
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 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

very vividly by one of those enthusiastic tithesis,and in 1904, in the same year as
youngpriests,Gerald O'Donovan, in novels The Kings Threshold, On Baile's Strand
that are now almost forgotten. and Spreading the News, appeared the
But to most readersits principaljustifi- firstthree stories of the book we now
cation must be Joyce.In 1902 at the age know as Dubliners- "The Sisters,""Eve-
of twentyhe visitedYeats forthe firsttime, line" and "AfterThe Race." It is ironic
and Yeats was so astonishedand amused that a countrywith a dwindling peasant
at his audacitythat he recordedthe inter- population should have produced the
view. greatestfolk art of our time; it is much
more ironic that a countrywhose capital
Then, puttingdownhis book,he began to was a
explainall his objectionsto everything I had provincialhole like Dublin should
everdone. Whyhad I concernedmyselfwith have produced the masterpiecesof urban
politics,withfolklore, withthe historicalset- literature.
tingof events,and so on? Aboveall whyhad Not that Joycewas so staggeringly orig-
I written aboutideas,whyhad I condescended inal as he appears in books by studentsof
to makegeneralizations? These thingswereall Joyce.Afterall, it was only twelvemonths
thesignof thecoolingof theiron,of thefad- before that
George Moore had published
ingout of inspiration. I had been puzzled,but The Untilled
Field, and it takes a student
now I was confident again. He is fromthe of Joyceto
I thought,and he thinks ignore a simple fact like that.
Royal University, Moore was the
that everything has been settledby Thomas only Irish writer of his
time who was in touch with continental
Aquinas,so we need not troubleabout it. I
havemetso manylikehim.He wouldprobably fiction.He was the firstwriter in these
reviewmybookin thenewspapers if I sentit kingdoms who realized what it was all
there.But the next momenthe spoke of a about and introduced to English fiction
friendof mine[OscarWilde]who aftera wild the principlesof Frenchnaturalism.There
lifehad turnedCatholicon his deathbed.He is no doubt at all in
said that he hoped his conversionwas not was my mind that Joyce
deeply influencedbyhim.
sincere.He did not like to thinkthathe had But in The Untilled Field Moore was
been untrueto himselfat the end. No, I had
notunderstood himyet. workingwith several disadvantages.First
I had been doingsomelittleplaysforour of all he wrotein the main about country
Irish theatre,and had foundedthemall on people, as Yeats feltproper,and, being an
emotionsor storiesthatI had got out of folk- Irish country gentleman, Moore had a
lore. He objectedto these particularly and good idea of what countrypeople were
told me thatI was deteriorating. I had told like. Second, to complicate things still
himthatI had written theseplaysquite easily further,he was a Catholic by birth and
and he said thatmadeit quitecertain;hisown
littlebook owed nothingto anything writingfor an ecclesiasticalmagazine sim-
but his ple storiesin
own mindwhichwas muchnearerGod than then be simple English which could
folklore. translated into Irish to provide
... I said,". . . The folklife[andbackcomes models for young writers in that language.
the life,is nature with A writercan workunderone disadvantage;
Thesis], country her
abundance,but the art life,the townlife,is he cannot work under two, and Yeatsian-
thespiritwhichis sterilewhenit is notmarried ism and Catholicism are two extremely
to nature.The wholeuglinessof the modern rigorous codes. One can fit the Yeatsian
worldhas comefromthespreadof townsand theoriesintopoetryand drama- both prim-
their ways of thought,and to bring back itive arts; but
prose fictionis a modern,
beautywe mustmarrythe spiritand nature critical,urbanizedart; and Moore,withthe
again.When theidea whichcomesfromindi- best will in the world,cannot conceal that
viduallifemarries theimagethatis bornfrom
thepeople,one getsgreatart,theartofHomer, the countrysidedominated spirituallyby
and of Shakespeare, and of ChartresCathe- Yeats and practicallyby the Church, was
dral." merely a place or state of punishment
where some souls sufferfor a time before
There, in a nutshell,are thesisand an- theygo to America.As his storieswent on

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 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

they became wilder in both directions. Antaeuswas not one of them.Jewishliter-

Moore did not believe in Yeats or the ature is the literatureof townsmen,and
Catholic Church."They weretalkingabout the greatestJew of all was James Joyce.
revivingthe Gothic, but Rodney did not Never once in all his work, so far as I
believe in their resurrectionsor in their know it, do we get a hint of what life was
renaissance. 'The Gael has had his day. like in Ireland outside of Dublin.
The Gael is passing/" Within the limits of that extraordinary
In one beautifulstory,"Home Sickness," first decade of the twentiethcentury-
a Bowerybarman returnsto Ireland, falls roughly between the ages of twentyand
in love with a local girl and plans to settle thirty-Joyce had written an autobio-
down wherehe belongs,but at last, realiz- graphical novel and the group of short
ing that all his neighborsare terrorizedby storieshe publishedas Dubliners. It would
a stupid parish priest,he slips back to his seem from the portion of the novel that
New York saloon, leaving the girl and Ire- has been preserved under the name of
land behindhim. StephenHero that he wroteabout himself
There is an unchanging,silent life within very differently from the way he wrote
every man that none knows but himself,and about others. Stephen Hero is immature,
his unchanging,silent life was his memoryof imitative and hysterical;the early short
MargaretDirken. The bar-roomwas forgotten storiesare absurdlymature and clever.At
and all that concerned it and the things he the same time, the novel is
saw most clearlywere the green hill-side,and
deeply felt as
nothing in the short storiesis felt.I think
the bog lake and the rushesabout it, and the one can see this best in
the ChristmasDay
greaterlake in the distance,and behind it the scene in A Portrait
blue line of wanderinghills. of the Artist.This is
almost certainlya passage from Stephen
In Joyceas in Moore thereis the realiza- Hero which,
except for the slightdolling
tion of the prose writer,as opposed to the up to fitit into a new attitude to litera-
poet, that thereis a way out. As an adver- ture required in A Portrait,does not seem
tisementI once saw in my youthsaid, "If to have been submittedto much
rewriting.
they don't sell Suxo in your neighbour- It is a moving, angry,eloquent outburst
hood, leave the neighbourhood."The hero which suggestsprofound depths of feel-
of "Home Sickness" feels "He must go ing in the charactersdescribed. In Dub-
away from this place- he must get back liners, on the other hand, the death of
to the bar-room."Similarly,Joyce'sEveline Parnell is treated with an
icy, clinical
feels"If she went,tomorrowshe would be touch.As in mostof the otherstoriesthere
on the sea with Frank, steamingtowards is a deliberate tawdriness of material,
Buenos Ayres." But Joyce's heroine was which is underlinedby the symbolic
pop-
more trapped than Moore's hero because ping of corks from three stout bottles to
for her there was no "bog lake and the suggest the
volleys over the hero's grave
rushes about it," nothing but a number and a recitationof threadbaresentiment
on a terrace.Joyceis probably the most to suggestthefuneralmarch.
exclusivelyurban writerwho ever lived. How remarkable the contrast between
To him "country"was SandymountStrand the two
episodesis we can see if we imagine
two miles fromthe towncenter.The figure "Ivy Day in the CommitteeRoom" as a
that in Ulyssesechoes the artist,Stephen, chapter of A Portraitof the Artistor the
is Leopold Bloom, because, owing to his- Christmas
Day scene as a short storyin
torical circumstances,the Jews for close Dubliners. Nowhere is Joyce more ob-
on two thousand years have been towns- viouslyan urban writerthan in the brood-
men. Because of muchless drastic,although ing emotionwithwhichhe deals with him-
not less imperative, historical circum- self and his familyand the
contemptuous
stances,Irishmenof Joyce'sgenerationwere detachmentwithwhichhe deals withevery-
equally cut off from the country.What- one else. Intense subjectivityand intense
ever figurestherewere in theirmythology,
objectivityalternate in his work, and in
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his later work he makes a desperateeffort we approach language magicallywe realize

to fuse the two sides of his mind. that words like "crash" or "flash" derive
What he obviously believed would be in some peculiar way fromthe object it-
the key to this came to him some time self,althoughwe have no idea of why two
during the writingof Dubliners for,as I consonantsshould representthe effectof
have pointedout in The Lonely Voice,the sound and anothertwo the effectof vision.
firstparagraphof "Two Gallants" and the Poetryalways inclines toward this mag-
paragraph describing the harper in the ical approach to language, and we realize
same story - both apparently late addi- that although the words have a perfectly
- are in an entirelynew
tions to the story good logical context,the real meaning is
style.This is certainlyinfluencedby Flau- being supplied by unanalyzable colloca-
bert and Pater, but it is more deliberate tions of images and sounds. This was the
and self-consciousthan anythingthey at- quality that Flaubert and Pater tried to
tempted.There is a careful repetitionof add to prose, but in Joyce the desire for
key words,sometimeswith a slight varia- a magical approachto languagegoes deeper
tion of formand order,which is intended than any aesthetic.It is the passion of a
to affectthe reader subconsciously. man who had wished to be a Catholic
He plucked at the wires heedlessly,glancing priest, and who is tryingto transferto
his idea of the writereverything he valued
quickly fromtime to time at the face of each
new-comerand from time to time, wearily in his idea of the priest,fromthe forgive-
also, at the sky. His harp, too, heedless that nessof sins to the powerof changingbread
her coverings had fallen about her knees, and wine into the body and blood of
seemed wearyalike of the eyesof strangersand Jesus Christ. In Joyce the change in the
of her master'shands. One hand played in the idea of style from one of a relationship
bass the melodyof Silent, O Moyle, while the betweenwriterand readerto one of a rela-
other hand careered in the treble after each
tionshipbetweenwriterand object implies
group of notes. The notes of the air sounded the mysteryof transubstantiation. This is
deep and full. what V. S. Pritchettreallymeant when he
This is the beginningof an entirelynew called Joyce "a mad grammarian" and
attitudeto stylenot only in Joycehimself what I meant when I describedhis work
but in people like Hemingwayand Faulk- originallyas "a rhetorician'sdream."
ner who were influencedby him. Up to It was when he reached this point in
this, style had representeda relationship his developmentthat Joycethrewmost of
betweenwriterand reader concerningthe StephenHero into thefireand began again,
object,whichwas regardedas a thirdparty. with his new attitude to style and form.
In the new stylewhich Joycewas attempt- The rewritinginvolved a vast reconstruc-
ing to fashion,the relationshipis between tion, and although I thinkI was the first
the writerand the object, and it is now to point out the peculiaritiesof this, I
the reader who is the thirdparty,present cannot pretendthat I have ever identified
only by courtesy.This is the magical as more than a small number of them. One
opposed to the logical approach to lan- of the peculiarities was that the book
guage. When we approach language logi- seemsto be based on Aristotle'sDe Anima
cally,we are alwaysaware thatit is a crude and Aquinas' commentary, tracingthe de-
and clumsymethodof communication.We velopment of the individual from baby-
take somethingwe call a root,sticka prep- hood to maturityin terms of physical
osition by way of a head on it and a suffix differentiation and mental and spiritual
by way of a tail and by a sort of gentle- differentiation, but always in terms of
men's agreementagree that it expresses what I called "dissociated metaphor":
an idea common to all of us. Since the metaphorthatis neverapparentand some-
gentlemen'sagreementis necessarilyvague, times carefullydisguised.
the word itselfusuallychangesits meaning Thus, when Stephen wets the bed, and
within a couple of generations.But when firstit is hot and then cold, Joyceclearly

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 THE AMERICANSCHOLAR
differentiates the sense of touch which,ac- The softbeautyof the Latin wordtouched
cording to Aristotle is the primary sense with an enchantingtouch the dark of the
and distinguishesthe animal from the eveningwitha touchfainter and morepersuad-
ing than the touch of musicor of a woman's
vegetable. But the sentencehas a further hand. The strifeof theirminds
for it shows the child as ca- was quelled.
significance The figureof a womanas she appearsin the
pable of judgment. "The mean is capable of the churchpassed silentlythrough
of judgment,for it becomes in reference lituirgy the darkness:a white-robed small and
to each of the extremesanother extreme. slenderas a boy,and witha figure Her
fallinggirdle.
And as that which is to perceivewhite or voice,frailand highas a boy's,was heardin-
black must not itselfbe actually white or toningfroma distantchoirthefirst wordsof a
black, but both of these potentially. . . womanwhichpiercethe gloomand clamour
so also in the case of touch it mustnot be of thefirst chanting of thepassion.
eitherhot or cold in itself." Et tu cumJesuGalilaeoeras.
The sense of touch is that which pre- And all heartsweretouchedand turnedto
dominates throughoutthe book, and this her voice,shininglike a youngstar,shining
cleareras thevoiceintonedtheproparoxytone,
is emphasized by Joyce'suse of verbs. It and more
faintlyas thecadencedied.
is never sufficient for him merelyto indi-
cate which sense is being dealt with; the In the folds of this style,fire and ice,
significant verbis repeatedagain and again. subjectivity and objectivity, are being
Stephenfelthis own facered too,thinking merged. Joyceis the mostextremeexample
of all thebetsaboutwhowouldget first in literature of the power of insulation.
place
in elements, Jack Lawton or he. ... Then all Somewhere in his twenties,with a crude
his eagerness passedawayand he felthis face and powerfulnovel and half a dozen brii-
quite cool. He thought his facemustbe white liant short stories completed,he left for
becauseitfeltso cool. the continentand returnedto Ireland only
And again- for briefvisits.In exile he began to write
in an altogethernew way with a complete
And thoughhe trembledwith cold and and self-conscious masteryof his medium.
frightto thinkof the cruellong nails and of By the time he had finishedA Portraitof
thehighwhistling soundof thecaneand of the the Artist as a
chill you feltat the end of yourshirtwhen Young Man he was not
only better equipped than any writerof
you undressed yourself yethe felta feelingof his time. He was also the
queerquietpleasureinsidehimto thinkof the of rhetoricwho has ever lived. greatestmaster
white fattishhands, clean and strongand
gentle. There is no doubt that living abroad
made this possible, because not only did
I fancythat the metaphoricalconstruc- each year of exile carry furtherinto the
tion is representedin the text by a small background the anger and
grief of his
vocabulary in which certain key words youth,withits loathingof Catholicismand
are repeated with the intentionof creat- English rule, it kept the material itself
ing a magical aura around the text, par- from developing along with him. It re-
ticularlywords of sensorysignificancelike mained living but imprisonedin a great
"feel," "touch" and "hands" in the pas- block of ice. Yeats'smaterialkepton chang-
sages we have been considering,"eyes," ing as he changed, facing him with new
"gaze" and "smell" in others. No doubt challenges from decade to decade, and
thereare manywordsused in thisway that precisely at the
point when Joyce was
I have not identified,but one- the word to feel full confidencein himself
beginning
"pass"- is repeatedlyintroduced,I thinkto as a writer,Yeats was beginning to lose
suggestthe continuingmovementof the his.
individual throughtime and space. The Strange as it may seem, Joyce'sretreat
example of Joyce'smechanisticprose that to the continenthas much about it that
I gave twenty-five years ago is still the suggestsa saint's retreatto the monastery
mostilluminatingforme. of some enclosed order,and it fed in him

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that elementthat I have tried to isolate- and objectively,as you preferto put it
the elementof the would-bepriest.For the The book contains eighteen episodes;
later Joycerhetoricwas no longer merely the firstthree associated with Stephen in
a technicalexercise;it was a sacramentin particular, the rest centeringmainly on
which the living substance was to be Bloom. But now the technical develop-
changedinto somethingdifferent and new. ment has reached what I think we may
call a manic stage.Not onlyis each episode
Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, seems to related to a correspondingepisode in the
have begun life as a short storyfor Dub- Odyssey;it is also associatedwith an organ
linersentitled"Mr. Hunter's Day," and it of the body,an art, a color, a symboland
may even then have been remotelybased a literarytechnique. This is achieved by
on the storyof Ulyssesjust as "Grace" is what I have called "dissociatedmetaphor,"
supposed to be based on Dante's Divine metaphorthat is not supposed to be per-
Comedy. Dubliners was a completelyob- ceivedby thereaderand thatlies concealed
jective book as A Portraitof the Artistwas in the text in the formof analogies, par-
a completelysubjectiveone, so that Ulysses allels and puns- principallypuns.
would have carried on the characteristic The whole process was explained by
Joycean alternationof ice and fire,pas- Mr. Stuart Gilbertin his book on Ulysses.
sion and detachment.But somewherealong He had the advantageof Joyce'sassistance,
the way of composition,Joyce revolted but like other exhibitionists,Joyce not
against the idea of a large book in the only reveals but conceals,and Mr. Gilbert
manner of Dubliners even with all the does not seemto have been informedabout
new rhetoricaldevices he had discovered some of the most importantexamples of
to conceal his schizophrenia,so the charac- dissociatedmetaphor.For instance,in the
ter of StephenDedalus fromA Portraitof fourthepisode, when we firstmeet Bloom
the Artistwas added to the dramatisper- and his wife,Molly,theyrepresenta mod-
sonae, and at once the conflictin Joyce ern Ulyssesand Penelope, so we findthem
himselfbecame a conflictthat needed to discussingthe transmigration of souls. The
be resolved within the narrative. Joyce metaphorfor this is the transmutationof
skillfullyavoided it as long as possible and matter, and as matter is transmuted
Bloom and Dedalus meet and pass, meet throughthe intestinesof animals, the first
and pass until at last they are left alone line tells us that Bloom "ate with relish
in Nighttown.Then, as in "Ivy Day in the inner organsof beasts and fowls."Pur-
the CommitteeRoom" when Mr. Henchy, suing the metaphor further,Bloom goes
the worldly old trimmer,suddenly calls out to buy a kidney for his breakfast-
to the Parnellite, "Come in, Joe!" the the kidneybeing the organ symbolizedin
whole drama of Ulyssesconcentratesupon the chapter- receives a letter from his
the momentwhen the Jew forgetshimself daughter,Millie, who is improbablyem-
and calls Dedalus "Stephen." In real life ployed in a photographer'sshop in Mul-
the use of Christiannames was a point of lingar, which is the center of the Irish
etiquetteoverwhichJoycefussedendlessly, cattle industry,and so the place where
and to him it was clearlythe indicationof the greatest transmutationof matter oc-
a momentof abandonment.In Ulyssesas curs, and finally,instead of going to the
in the early storyit seems to be a matter upstairs water closet, which would have
that had no great consequences,because playedthedeuce withthemetaphor,Bloom
all that happens is that Bloom brings goes to an earth closet outside the house
Stephento his home; theyhave a chat over and returnsto earth the matterthat will
a cup of cocoa and then separate- so far come back as food for cattle and sustain
as the reader knows, forever.As I shall futuregenerationsof Ulyssesesand Penel-
endeavor to show, Stephen and Bloom opes. It is all almostincrediblyneat
are one and the same man, a man young In the sixth episode, "Hades," which
and old or a man consideredsubjectively describes the funeral to Glasnevin, the

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associationsare almostentirelywith death, thirteenth

withNausicaaon Sandymount
and veryremotesomeof themare. There Strand.
is, forinstance, theword"mortgage" with The techniqueof the "Sirens"is de-
itsechoof theFrenchwordfordeath,and scribedas "Fuga per canonem"("canon
the shop called Todďs, whichechoesthe fugue"to you),which,by the natureof
Germanword,Tod. The mostabstruseI canon fugues,it cannotpossiblybe. At a
have foundis thepassagein whichMolly performance of Die WalküreJoycemod-
looks out at the two dogs copulatingin estlyaskeda friend,"Don't you findthe
the streetand Bloom thinks,"And the musicaleffects of my Sirensbetterthan
sergeant grinning up. She had thatcream Wagner's?"and when the friendrudely
gownon withtherip she neverstitched." said "No," Joycestampedout of theopera
Shakespeare's"grim sergeantDeath" is house.So Mr. Gilbertis clearlygivingus
easilyidentified but it is not so easy to the Master'sviewwhenhe saysthat"the
understand thegownwiththeR.I.P. in it. devicesof suspensionand resolutionare
One of the most amusingepisodesis frequently employed,as in the passage:
the seventh,"Aeolus,"whichtakesplace 'Upholdingthelid he (who?)gazedin the
in a newspaperoffice.Its organ is the coffin at theobliquetriple(pianol)
(coffin?)
lungs,its artis rhetoric,and its technique wires/(Intellectionis suspendedtill the
is describedby Mr. Gilbertas "enthy- last wordresolvesthe
memic."The ShorterOxfordabjuresthe of the 'hollow fifth'(quinto mystery.)Examples
vuoto) are
word,but givesinstead"enthymematic," suchwordsas 'Blmstup',wherethe thirds,
whichprobablyleavesyou as wise as it the lettersoo and ood
('Bloomstood
leaves me. Not that it makesmuch dif- are omitted,and such sentencesas up')
*Why
ference,because the techniquehere as did sheme?'and 'Millyno taste',wherethe
elsewhere is based mainlyon puns about centralverb is omittedbetween
theword"wind,"fromthecorrespondenceand object.Thus thehearerof an subject
columnin whicha readersolemnlyasks, fifth'instinctively 'empty
fillsup the gap witha
"Dear Mr. Editor,whatis a good curefor majorthird."
flatulence?" to Bloom'smeditations on "in- The onlyintellection suspendedin this
fluence," "gale days"and "windfalls." passageseemsto me to be Mr. Gilbert's.
As entertainment for hospitalpatients If I am the "hearer"of one of Mr. Gil-
witha long,slow but not too distressingbert's"emptyfifths," I do notinstinctively
illness,Ulyssesis insurpassable. Joyceis a or otherwise fillup thegap witha major
wonderful man againstwhomto pit one's third.Here metaphorhas ceased to be a
wits,and not onlywill theyfail to notice servantand becomea master.Oo and ood
the days passing,but theywill returnto are not thirdsany more than
theyare
ordinary lifeas well-informed as theeditor kicks,runsor entrechats. Joyce the story-
ofan encyclopedia. telleris givingup the job and his place
But withtheeleventh, twelfth and thir- is being taken by Joycethe magician,
teenthepisodesJoycebeginsto run into tinklinghis little bell and puttingan-
serioustrouble,and with the fourteenthotherspoon of incensein the censer.
he is in it up to theneck.EzraPoundwas It is interesting
to watchthethickening
the firstpersonto noticethatsomethingand clottingof the technicalprocesses in
had gone wrong,and whenhe read the those threechaptersleading up to the
"Sirens" episode he commentedsourly, "Oxen of the Sun." "Cyclops"has the
"A new styleper chapternot required." marvelous runningcommentary in Dublin
"Not required"is polite,becausea new argot that I still reread with delight,
styleper chapterwas now becomingthe ignoringthe puns and analogies,but I
bane of thebook.In theeleventhchapter neverallow my eye to strayany longer
Bloom is withthe Sirensin the Ormond overthe gigantesque parodieswithwhich
Restaurant, in thetwelfth withtheCyclops it is brokenup. "Nausicaa"is in a style
in Davy Byrne'spublichouse,and in the thatJoycecalls"Tumescence and Detumes-
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 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

cence,"whichis largelya parodyof Home friendand mistress.It is not easy to dis-

Chat and The Irish Messenger of the entangle the complicated threads that
Sacred Heart, and I find it very difficult make up the obsession,and in all three
to get throughsomethingthat would be writersit takes a slightlydifferentform.
amusingenough in the humorouscolumn Of course,all of themhave a fundamental
ofa dailynewspaper. homosexualityand a fundamentalmaso-
But with "The Oxen of the Sun" my chism which is linked with voyeurism.
patience gives way altogether.Joyce de- Joyce'smasochisticfantasiesseem to indi-
scribes its style as "EmbryonicDevelop- cate that it was not enough forhim to be
ment" and this is symbolizedby an an- himselfcorrupt in order to free himself
thologyof parodies of English prose from fromthe ties of Christianmoralityrepre-
Angk>5axon to modernAmerican.To be- sentedby his dead mother;he had to prove
gin with, parody is an extremelylimited his own corruptionby depravingsomeone
form that appeals almost entirelyto the he loved. The notes to the second edition
intelligence. It is an aspect of literary of Exiles seem to describe a situation in
criticism,and done supremelywell as it is which he tried to maneuverhis wife into
in Housman's "O suitablyattiredin leather becomingthe mistressof an Italian friend
boots" or in a few pieces of Beerbohm's, and then, by feeding her word-tests,en-
it givesus a pleasuresimilarto that which deavored to discoverwhethershe had in
we get froman essayof MatthewArnold's. fact deceived him.
But Joyceis a mimic,not a parodist,and But as Dostoevsky'smasochismis per-
scarcelyever does he give me the feeling ceptibly altered by the fact that he was
thathe is commentingupon the authorhe mainly attracted by children, Joyce's is
is guying. altered by his messianism.It was not only
Anyhow,this is not my principal objec- thathe triedto maneuverhis wifeinto the
tion to the chapter,and here I must refer positionof a physicallink witha man who
you to Joyce'splay Exiles. The hero of this attractedhim; he also tried to maneuver
is an imaginaryand somewhatflattering the man into the position of Judas. He
self-portrait.It describesan Irish writer, found no difficulty in discoveringJudases;
Richard Rowan, who has had a tragicrela- he provided a characteristicparagraph to
tionshipwitha pious Catholicmotherfrom be added to Gorman's biographyof him,
which he is tryingto break free. At the which revealed his true identity to the
same time he is tryingto procurehis wife percipient reader. This paragraph is an
for his friend,Robert Hand, a journalist extraordinary production.
who seemsto have been modeledon Oliver Severaltimesin Joyce'scareerthisbrusque
Gogarty.He reveals this perverteddesire and unexplained attitude of certain admirers
to Hand himself. of his has taken place. There were at least two
instancesof it in Dublin- one before he left
Because in the verycore of my ignoble heart
I longed to be betrayedby you and by her- and one during his last visit there,another in
in the dark, in the night- secretly,meanly,Trieste afterhe had become famous,and it has
craftily.By you, my best friend,and by her.happened in Paris also. There is no single ex-
planation so far as thesedifferent
I longed for that passionatelyand ignobly,to admirersare
be dishonouredfor ever in love and lust concerned that will fitall these cases, but the
fact remainsthat all throughhis life he seems
As I have explained in The Mirror in to have had admiration, both in its spiritual
the Roadway, this is not a unique perver- and its material form,
spontaneouslyand sud-
sion because we also findit in the workof denly offeredhim and subsequentlyjust as
Dostoevskyand D. H. Lawrence. There I suddenly transformedinto passive or open
called it the Unnatural Triangle, the tri- hostility.
angle in whicha man attractedby another The conclusion is obvious. When in the
man uses the woman he loves for sexual Nighttown episode Lynch
goes out with
bait and then derivesan intensepleasure Kitty we have the
revealing phrase. "Exit
fromimaginingthe sexual intercourseof Judas. Et laquaeo se suspendit."When in
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 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

real life the characterdescribedunder the Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked
name of Lynchdid commitsuicide,Joyce's him up generallyin orthodox Samaritan
messianismwas clearly justified. fashion,whichhe verybadly needed." Our
Exiles shows us the true reason that student will, of course, note, along with
Stephen Dedalus appears in the book at the grammaticalerror,that "bulk" is not
all. Stephenis haunted by his dead mother a quality of shavingsand that Samaritans
as Richard Rowan was. Leopold Bloom by definitionare not orthodox.
is obsessed by the desire to be degraded The confusion becomes worse in the
in the degradation of his wife just as scientificcatechismof the "Ithaca" episode.
Richard Rowan was. Stephen and Bloom In the last great chapter,which most of
are the same person, fireand ice, subjec- us read carefullyat some time for porno-
tivityand objectivity;both representdif- graphic reasons, we finallydiscover that
ferentaspectsof the author,and the book Molly Bloom is not only the wife of Leo-
is a heroic attempt to reintegratethem. pold Bloom, and Penelope: she is also the
But in "The Oxen of the Sun," the very earth. Like the earth she needs sun, and
point where they are drawn together,a thisis providedby a characterwhose name
violent disturbanceis created in the tech- is Blazes Boylan. I can only hope that my
nical processes,and the focal point of the readers are more capable of detectingthe
narrativeis obliteratedin a stormof paro- obvious than Joyceanscholarsare, because
dies- mostof theminferiorones. so farnone of themseemsto have done so.
In criticizingany book, particularlya Nothing that I or anyone else can say
book of such enormous importance as will change the fact that Ulyssesis one of
Ulysses,one mustalwaysask oneselfifwhat the great monumentsof Irish literature.
one is complaining of was not actually What I would suggestto you is that it is
intended by the writer.It is just possible at its greatestnot in its construction,
which
that Joyceintended his styleto grow pro- is haphazard,nor in its rhetoricalexperi-
gressivelymore clotted from the brilliant mentswhich are frequentlyotiose, but in
opening chapters that describe morning its descriptionof the poetryof everyday
in Dublin. Apparently he told nobody, life in Dublin in the firstdecade of this
but if it was not intended,Joycehas be- century; and as that Dublin fades into
come a victimof his own mannerisms;if history,this aspect will seem more and
it was, it seems to me an artisticerrorof more important.That is to say, the first
thefirstmagnitude. ten- at most, the first twelve- episodes
The sixteenth chapter, which follows are what will endure. The streets,the
the two chapters in which Stephen and shops, the public houses recorded forever
Bloom are gettingthemselvestight,clearly by a man with an uncanny eye and a
representsan after-midnight hangover.To splendidear are unique in the literatureof
suggest this, the technique is described theworld.
as "Narrative(Old)" to distinguishit from Once, whenI was lecturingat a Hundred
the firstchapter of the book, "Narrative Best Books college in America, a bright
(Young)," and the "Calypso" chapter,"Nar- student asked serenely: "Mr. O'Connor,
rative(Mature)." This scarcelymeansmore you can hardly deny that faced with the
than that it includes everyknown formof choice between recoveringa lost dialogue
grammatical,syntacticaland verbal error of Plato's and a descriptionof daily life
as well as cliché. Old or young,mistakes in Athensat the time,any reasonableman
dragged out at such intolerable length would choose the Platonic dialogue." The
lower a reader's spirit, although our question took my breath away for a mo-
imaginaryhospitalized student will find ment, but at last I was able to reply,"I
plentyto workon. doubt if thereis a classical scholar in the
The firstsentenceruns: "Preparatoryto worldwho wouldn'tsacrificeeverylostwork
anythingelse Mr. Bloom brushed offthe of Plato's forone singleminuteby minute
greaterbulk of the shavingsand handed descriptionof daily life in Athens."Know-
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 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ing no Greek,I still do not know whether Not that I worriedthen whetherit was
I was right or wrong,but I know what or not. Later, it matteredmore, when I
myown choicewould be. realized how rare true sanitywas. Nowa-
This unique quality of Joyce'swork is» days Joyceremindsme of the characterin
I think,what makes it impossibleforany- one of V. S. Pritchett'sstorieswho
keeps
one except a native Irishman-or, as Joyce on saying,"Of course, I'm
- only putting
himselfseemed to think,a Jew to under- God's point of view."
Joyceis equally mod-
stand what underlies it. It is, as I have est. In A Portraithe only
puts God's point
said, the antithesisto Yeats's thesisof the of view about himself; in Ulysses God's
returnto the country,but it is an antithesis point of view about life; in
Finnegans
that is conceivable only in Ireland where Wake God's point of view about the uni-
the population has been forciblydrivenoff verse.
the land into the towns and cities with Twenty years ago, no one could have
no prospectof returnand with no desire dismissedFinnegans Wake like that with-
to return.Joyce'sDublin is a walled town out my rising to defend and it.
of the Middle Ages or, if you preferit, a Today, I can do neither- "I expound cannot pay
sentineledghetto.And this,it seemsto me, its tributeof wild tears."
is the supremeirony,the perfectexample
of the operationof a literarydialectic,for
it seemsthatthe greatmonumentof urban Relevantand Rational
life does not come fromany of the famous The Reforming of General Education.
cities of the world like Athens, Rome, By Daniel Bell. Columbia University
Paris, London or New York, but froma Press.$6.95.
glorifiedmarkettown wheredrovesof cat- ReviewedbyJohnR. Silber
tle can still be seen in the streetsand
which is populated by an imperfectly ur- Week afterweek in our more than two
banized peasantryof whomJoycewas one. thousand colleges and universities,profes-
This part of Joyce'swork,I think,will sors discussthe effectsof recentsocial and
never date. What will date, and has prob- intellectual changes on college programs.
ably begun to date already,is the spoiled They review the purposesof general edu-
priest, the magician, making passes and cation in their institutions,and recom-
mutteringspells. I met Joyce once only, mend curricularchanges that they hope
afterthe completionof Ulysses,and when will bettermeet contemporary educational
I came back to Ireland,Yeats asked,"What needs. If historyrepeats itself,nearly all
did you thinkof him?" Being young and this discussionwill be wasted: a few timid
rude, I replied,"I thoughthe was as mad recommendations will emergefromfaculty
as a hatter." Yeats grew angry and said, committees, and of thesefewonly the most
"You should be ashamed to say such a pointlessand innocuous will survivegen-
thingof a great Irish writer,"and then I eral facultymeetings,finallyto appear in
told him the storyof the pictureof Cork, that repositoryof badly writtenfiction
which has got me into troublewith every thecatalog.
admirer of Joyce since Desmond Mac- But thereis alwaysa chance thathistory
it
Carthypublished twenty-odd years ago. will not repeat itself,and that chance is
I had admiredan old printof Cork in the substantiallyimprovedby the publication
hallwayand wonderedwhat the framewas of The Reformingof General Education
made of. "That's cork,"said Joyce.I said,
"I know it's Cork, but what's the frame О JOHN R. SILBER, chairmanof the depart-
made of?" "That's cork," Joycerepeated, ment of philosophyat the Universityof Texas,
and it was. Yeats looked at me frowning has writtenextensivelyon Kant and ethics.In
he was given the MorrisErnstAward for
for quite a while and then tweaked his 1964
excellence in teaching and more recentlythe
nose irritably."You're right,of course," Danforth Foundation's E. Harris
Harbison
he muttered."That is insanity." Award for DistinguishedTeaching.

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