Complete Works of James Joyce (361 page)
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Authors: Unknown
Programme Notes for the English Player
s
1918-19
The Twelve Pound Look
By J. M. Barrie
One Sims is about to be knighted: possibly, as the name would suggest, for having patented a hairgrower. He is discovered rehearsing his part with his wife whose portrait we see on the wall, painted by a Royal Academician, also knighted, presumably for having painted the label for the hairgrower. A typist is announced. This typist is his runaway wife of some fourteen years before. From their conversation we learn that she left him not for another man but to work out her salvation by typewriting. She had saved twelve pounds and bought a typewriter. The twelve pound look,’ she says, is that look of independence in a wife’s eye which every husband should beware of. The new knight’s new wife, ‘noted for her wit’ — chary of it, too — seems likely to acquire the look if given time. Typewriters, however, are rather scarce at present.
Riders to the Sea
By John M. Synge
Synge’s first play, written in Paris in 1902 out of his memories of Aran. The play shows a mother and her dead son, her last, the
anagke
being the inexorable sea which claims all her sons, Seumas and Patch and Stephen and Shaun. Whether a brief tragedy be possible or not (a point on which Aristotle had some doubts) the ear and the heart mislead one gravely if this brief scene from ‘poor Aran’ be not the work of a tragic poet.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets By G. B. Shaw Mr. Shaw here presents three orthodox figures — a virgin queen, a Shakespeare sober at midnight and a free giver of gold and the dark-haired maid of honour, Mary Fitton, discovered in the eighties by Thomas Tyler and Mr. Harris. Shakespeare comes to Whitehall to meet her and learns from a well-languaged beefeater that Mr. W. H. has forestalled him. The poet vents his spleen on the first woman who passes. It is the queen and she seems not loth to be accosted. She orders the maid of honour out of the way. When Shakespeare, however, begs her to endow his theatre she refers him with fine cruelty to her lord treasurer and leaves him. The most regicide of playwrights prays God to save her and goes home weighing against a lightened purse, love’s treason, an old queen’s leer and the evil eye of a government official, a horror still to come.
The Heather Field
By Edward Martyn
Edward Martyn, the author of the ‘Heather Field’, has in company with W. B. Yeats inaugurated the Irish National Theatre. He is an accomplished musician and man of letters. As a dramatist he follows the school of Ibsen and therefore occupies a unique position in Ireland, as the dramatists writing for the National Theatre have chiefly devoted their energies to peasant drama. The plot of the ‘Heather Field’, the best known of Martyn’s plays, is as follows:
Carden Tyrrell has made an unhappy marriage early in his youth and is now living on bad terms with his wife, Grace. He is an idealist who has never cared for the ordinary routine of life. Forced to settle down on his estate and finding most of his neighbours uncongenial, he has idealized farming and is engaged at the opening of the play in trying to bring into cultivation a vast tract ‘of heather land. To carry on this work he has had to borrow large sums of money. His friend Barry Ussher and his brother Miles warn him of the danger he is running, but in vain. They urge that he is likely to get little profit from his work, for Ussher knows that it is very hard to reclaim lands on which heather grows, for the wild heather may break out upon them soon again. Grace learns that Carden intends borrowing further large sums of money and fears that he will ruin himself. Carden has admitted to his brother Miles that he hears mysterious voices in the air and that every day life is becoming more and more unreal to him. Convinced that he has lost his reason, Grace confides to her friend, Lady Shrule, that she has arranged for two doctors to come and see Carden; she hopes to have him certified as a lunatic and put under restraint. Lady Shrule sympathizes, but neither she nor her husband will do anything to help. The doctors come on an excuse of examining Kit, Carden’s son, but the plan is defeated by Barry Ussher who warns them of the danger they are running by falling in with Grace’s scheme. However matters go from bad to worse; Carden quarrels with his tenants, thus losing further money and having to have police protection. He is unable to pay the interest on the sums he has borrowed and is threatened with financial ruin. At this crisis Kit comes back from a ride and shows his father some wild heather buds which he has found in the heather field. Carden loses his reason and memory; his mind goes back to happy days before his marriage. As Grace tried to domesticate him, so he has tried to domesticate the heather field, and in each case the old wild nature avenges itself.
1925
8 Avenue Charles Picquet Paris, France March 13, 1925
Dear Mr. Walsh:
I am glad to hear that the first number of your review will shortly appear. It was a very good thought of yours in dedicating this number to Mr. Ezra Pound and I am very happy indeed that you allow me to add my acknowledgment of thanks to him to the others you are publishing. I owe a great deal to his friendly help, encouragement and generous interest in everything that I have written, as you know there are many others who are under a similar debt of gratitude to him. He helped me in every possible way in the face of very great difficulties for seven years before I met him, and since then he has always been ready to give me advice and appreciation which I esteem very highly as coming from a mind of such brilliance and discernment.
I hope that your review, setting out under so good a name, will have the success which it deserves Sincerely yours, James Joyce
1928
Cher Monsieur, La demande que vous venez de me faire au sujet d’une contribution éventuelle de ma part à votre numéro spécial dédié à la mémoire de Thomas Hardy me touche profondément. Je crains malheureusement de manquer des titres nécessaires pour donner une opinion qui ait une valeur quelconque sur l’oeuvre de Hardy, dont j’ai lu les romans il y a tant d’années que je préfère ne pas en faire le compte; et en ce qui concerne son oeuvre poétique, je dois vous avouer que je l’ignore complètement. Il y aurait donc de ma part une singulière audace à émettre le moindre jugement sur la figure vénérable qui vient de disparaître: il vaut mieux que je laisse ce soin aux critiques de son pays.
Mais quelque diversité de jugement qui pourrait exister sur cette oeuvre (s’il en existe), il paraît par contre évident à tous que Hardy offrait dans son attitude de poète vis-à-vis du public, un honorable exemple de probité et d’amour-propre dont nous autres clercs avons toujours un peu besoin, spécialement à une époque ou le lecteur semble se contenter de moins en moins de la pauvre parole écrite et où, par conséquent, l’écrivain tend à s’occuper de plus en plus des grandes questions qui, du reste, se règlent très bien sans son aide.
James Joyce Paris, 10 février 1928.
1929
Dear Colleague:
I thank you very much for the kindness of including me in Solano’s tribute to the memory of my old friend Italo Svevo.
And I willingly consent, although I believe that now his literary fate should be entrusted entirely to his books, and that passing judgment on them should be the concern especially of the critics of his own country.
The thought will always please me that chance gave me an opportunity to have a part, no matter how small, in the recognition that his own country and an international public accorded Svevo in the last years of his life. I retain the memory of a lovable person, and an admiration of long standing that matures, rather than weakens, with the years. Paris, 31-V-
1929
James Joyce
From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singe
r
1932
He strides, booted with anger, along the spurs of Monte Rossini, accompanied solely by Fidelion, his mastiff’s voice. They quarrel consonantly about the vocality of the wind, calling each and its other clamant names.
* * * *
Just out of kerryosity howlike is a Sullivan? It has the fortefaccia of a Markus Brutas, the wingthud of a spread-eagle, the body uniformed of a metropoliceman with the brass feet of a collared grand. It cresces up in Aquilone but diminuends austrowards. It was last seen and heard of by some macgillic- cuddies above a lonely valley of their reeks, duskening the grev- light as it flew, its cry echechohoing among the anfractuosities:
pour la dernière fois
,’ The blackbulled ones, stampeding, drew in their horns, all appailed and much upset, which explaints the guttermilk on their overcoats.
* * * *
A pugilant gang theirs, per Bantry! Don Philip, Jay Hell, Big O’Barry of the Bornstorms, Arthur, siruraganist who loosed that chor. Damnen.7 And tramp, tramp, tramp. And T. Deum sullivamus Faust of all, of curse, damnation. But given Parigofs Trocadéro for his drawingroom with Ballaclavier in charge at the pianone the voice becomes suburban, sweethearted and subdued. The heat today was really too much of a hot thing and even Impressario is glad to walk his garden in the cool of the
evening, fanning his furnaceface with his sweltertails.
Merci, doux crépuscule.’
* * *
*
Who is this that advances in maresblood caftan, like Hiesous in Finisterre, his eyeholes phyllistained, his jewbones of a cross- backed? A little child shall lead him. Why, it’s Strongman Simpson, Timothy Nathan, now of Simpson’s on the Grill! Say, Tim Nat, bald winepresser, hast not one air left? But yeth he hath. Regard! Auscult! He upbraces for supremacy to the potence of Mosthigh and calls upon his baiters and their templum: You daggones, be flat!
* * * *
What was in that long long note he just delivered? For the laib of me I cannot tell. More twopenny tosh and luxus languor about I singabob you? No such thing, O son of an envelope. Dr to J. S. Just a pennyplain loafletter from Braun and Brotmann and it will take no rebutter. You may bark Mrs Liebfraumich as long as you love but you must not burk the baker. Pay us disday our daily bread. And oblige.
* * * *
On his native heath. Speech! Speech! cry the godlets. We are in land of Dan. But their words of Muskerry are harsh after that song of Othello.
Orateur ne peut, charlatan ne daigne, Sullivan est.
*
* *
*
11.59 p.m
Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen
, Guillaume’s shot telled, sure enough. But will that labour member for Melckthal be able to bring off his coo for the odd and twentieth
supererogatory time?
Wartemal!
That stagesquall has passed over like water off a Helvetian’s back. And there they are, yodelling yokels, none the worse for their ducking and
gewittermassen
as free as you fancy to quit their homeseek
heimat
and leave the ritzprinz of their chyberschwitzerhoofs all over the worlds, cisalpic and transatlantine. And how confederate of gay old Gioacchino to have composed this finale so that Kamerad Wagner might be saved the annoyance of finding flauts for his
FeuerzauberP Pass auf!s
Only four bars more! He draws the breathbow: that arrownote’s coming. Aim well, Arnold, and mind puur blind Jemmy in the stalls! But, great Scott, whas is thas for a larm! Half a ton of brass in the band, ten thousand throats from Thalwyl: Libertay. libertay lauded over the land (Tay!) And pap goes the Calville!
* * * *
Saving is believing but can thus be? Is this our model vicar of Saint Wartburgh’s, the reverend Mr Townhouser, Mus.Bac., discovered flagrant in a
montagne de passed
She is obvious and is on her threelegged sofa in a half yard of casheselks, Madame de la Pierreuse. How duetonically she hands him his harp that once, bitting him, whom caught is willing: do blease to, fickar! She’s as only roman as any
puttana maddonna
but the trouble is that the reverend T is reformed. She,
simplicissima,
wants her little present from the reverend since she was wirk worklike never so nice with him. But he harps along about Salve Regina Terrace and Liza, mine Liza, and sweet Marie. Till she cries: bilk! And he calls: blak! O.u.t. spells out!
* * * *
Since we are bound for a change of supper, was that really in faith the reverend Townhouser for he seemed so verdamnably like?
Ecco trovoto!
Father Lucullus Ballytheacker, the parish priest of Tarbert. He was a songful soul at the keyboard and could achieve his Château Kirwan with cigar thuriferant, without ministrance from platform or pulpit, chase or church. Nor used he to deny his Mary neither.
Nullo modo.
Up to maughty London came a muftimummed P.P. Censored.
* * * *
Have you got your knife handy? asks the bellman Saint Andy. Here he is and brandnew, answers Bartholomew. Get ready, get ready, scream the bells of Our Lady. And make sure they’re quite killed, adds the gentle Clotilde. Your attention, sirs, please, bawls big Brother Supplice.
Pour la foi! Pour la foi!
booms the great Auxerrois.
* * * *
Grand spectacular exposition of gorge cutting, mortarfiring and general martyrification, bigleighted up with erst classed instrumental music.
Pardie
,’ There’s more sang in that Sceine than mayer’s beer at the Guildhall. Is he a beleaper in Irisk luck? Can he swhipstake his valentine off to Dublin and weave her a frock of true blue poplin to be neat for the time Hugenut Cromwell comes over, gentlest lovejesus as ever slit weasand? Their cause is well sainted and they are centain to won. Still I’ll pointe half my crown on Raoul de Nangis, doublet mauve and cuffs of buff. Attagirl!
Ah ah ah ah ah ah viens!
Piffpaff, but he’s done it, the bully mastiff again. And woops with him through the window tallyhoed by those friers pecheurs who are self- barked. Dominie’s canes. Can you beat that, you papish yelpers? To howl with the pups!
* * * *
Enrico, Giacomo and Giovanni, three dulcetest of our songsters, in liontamers overcoats, holy communion ties and cliqueclaquehats, are met them at a gaslamp. It is kaputt and throws no light at all on the trio’s tussletusculums. Rico is for carousel and Giaco for luring volupy but Nino, the sweetly dulcetest, tuningfork among tenors, for the best of all; after hunger and sex comes dear old
somnium,
brought on by prayer. Their lays, blent of feastings, June roses and ether, link languidly in the unlit air. Arrives a type in readymade, dicky and bowler hat, manufactured by Common Sense and Co. Ltd., carrying a bag of tools. Preludingly he conspews a portugaese into the gutter, recitativing: now then, gents, by your leave! And, to his job. Who is this hardworking guy? No one but Geoge, Geoge who shifts the garbage can, Geoge who stokes in the engine room, Geoge who has something to say to the gas (
tes gueules!)
and mills the wheel go right go round and makes the world grow lighter.
Lux!
The aforesung Henry. James and John stand mouthshut. Wot did I say? Hats off,
primi assoluti
,’ Send himmayer’s beer at the Guildhall. Is he a beleaper in Irisk luck? Can he swhipstake his valentine off to Dublin and weave her a frock of true blue poplin to be neat for the time Hugenut Cromwell comes over, gentlest lovejesus as ever slit weasand? Their cause is well sainted and they are centain to won. Still Til pointe half my crown on Raoul de Nangis, doublet mauve and cuffs of buff. Attagirl!
Ah ah ah ah ah ah viens!
Piffpaff, but he’s done it, the bully mastiff again. And woops with him through the window tallyhoed by those friers pecheurs who are self- barked. Dominie’s canes. Can you beat that, you papish yelpers? To howl with the pups!
* * * *
Enrico, Giacomo and Giovanni, three dulcetest of our songsters, in liontamers overcoats, holy communion ties and cliqueclaquehats, are met them at a gaslamp. It is kaputt and throws no light at all on the trio’s tussletusculums. Rico is for carousel and Giaco for luring volupy but Nino, the sweetly dulcetest, tuningfork among tenors, for the best of all; after hunger and sex comes dear old
somnium
, brought on by prayer. Their lays, blent of feastings, June roses and ether, link languidly in the unlit air. Arrives a type in readymade, dicky and bowler hat, manufactured by Common Sense and Co. Ltd., carrying a bag of tools. Preludingly he conspews a portugaese into the gutter, recitativing: now then, gents, by your leave! And, to his job. Who is this hardworking guy? No one but Geoge, Geoge who shifts the garbage can, Geoge who stokes in the engine room, Geoge who has something to say to the gas (
tes gueules!)
and mills the wheel go right go round and makes the world grow lighter.
Lux!
The aforesung Henry. James and John stand mouthshut. Wot did I say? Hats off,
primi assoluti!
Send him canorious, long to lung over us, high topseasoarious! Guard safe our Geoge!