Complete Works of James Joyce (363 page)

[a half page of the manuscript is missing]

greater difficulty for some to subjugate their reason, than their passions. For they pit the intellect and reason of men, with their vain theorisings, against the superhuman logic of belief. Indeed to a rightly constituted mind the bugbears of infidelity have no terrors and excite no feeling save contempt. Men have passions and reason, and the doctrine of licence is an exact counterpart of the doctrine of freethinking. Human reason has no part in wisdom, if it fulfils not the whole three attributes given by the inspired writer, if it is not ‘pudica, pacifica et desursum’ — chaste, peaceful and from above. How can it thrive if it comes not from the seat of Wisdom but has its source elsewhere? And how can earthly intellects, if they blind their eyes to wisdom’s epithets ‘pudica, pacifica et desursum’ hope to escape that which was the stumbling-block with Abelard and the cause of his fall.

The essence of subjugation lies in the conquest of the higher. Whatever is nobler and better, or reared upon foundations more solid, than the rest, in the appointed hour, comes to the appointed triumph. When right is perverted into might, or more properly speaking, when justice is changed to sheer strength, a subjugation ensues — but transient not lasting. When it is unlawful, as too frequently in the past it has been, the punishment invariably follows in strife through ages. Some things there are no subjugation can repress and if these preserve, as they do and will, the germs of nobility, in good men and saintly lives, they preserve also for those who follow and obey, the promise of after victory and the solace and comfort of active expectation. Subjugation is ‘almost of the essence of an empire and when it ceases to conquer, it ceases to be’. It is an innate part of human nature, responsible, in a great way, for man’s place. Politically it is a dominant factor and a potent power in the issues of nations. Among the faculties of men it is a great influence, and forms part of the world’s laws, unalterable and for ever — subjugation with the existence also of freedom, and even, within its sight, that there may be constant manifestation of power over all, bringing all things under sway, with fixed limits and laws and in equal regulation, permitting the prowl

[a half page of the manuscript is missing]

power for force and of persuasion for red conquest, has brought about the enduring rule foretold, of Kindness over all the good, for ever, in a new subjugation.

THE END

written by
Jas. A. Joyce 27/9/98

Note —

the insertions in pencil are chiefly omissions in writing out.

The Irish Literary Renaissanc
e

physical, either open or masked. Since the great rebellion in the last years of the eighteenth century, we find no less than three decisive clashes between the two nationalist tendencies. The first was in 1848 when the Young Ireland Party disdainfully detached itself from O’Connell’s ranks. The second came in 1867, when Fenianism reached its apogee, and the ‘Republic’ was proclaimed in Dublin. The third belongs to the present day, as the youth of Ireland, disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of parliamentary tactics after the moral assassination of Parnell, aligns itself increasingly with a nationalism that is broader and, at the same time, more severe; a nationalism that involves a daily economic battle, a moral and material boycott, the creation and development of independent industries, the propagation of the Irish language, a ban on English culture and a revival in another guise of the ancient civilization of the Celt. Each of these uncompromising political movements has been accompanied by a literary one: sometimes it is the oratory that prevails, sometimes

The Battle Between Bernard Shaw and the Censor: ‘The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet
’

Dublin, 31 August

There is a proud week in the Dublin calendar. In the last week of August the famous Horse Show attracts a multi-coloured and polyglot crowd to the Irish capital from the sister island, from the continent and even from as far away as Japan. For a few days the tired and cynical city dresses itself up like a newly wed bride and its senile sleep is broken by an unaccustomed uproar.

This year, however, an artistic event has almost eclipsed the importance of the show, and everywhere the only thing being spoken about is the dispute between Bernard Shaw and the Viceroy. As is already known, Shaw’s latest play,
The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet,
has been stamped with the mark of notoriety by the English Lord Chamberlain who has banned its performance in the United Kingdom. This decision probably did not surprise Shaw, as the same censor did as much for two other of his theatrical works,
Mrs Warren ‘s Profession
and the very recent
Press Cuttings.
If anything, he felt honoured by the arbitrary ban imposed upon his comedies as upon Ibsen’s
Ghosts
, Tolstoy’s
The Power of Darkness
and Wilde’s
Salome.

He did not admit defeat, however, and he found a way of avoiding the censor’s timid vigilance. For some strange reason, the city of Dublin is the only place in the United Kingdom where censorship does not apply, and indeed, the ancient law contains the following words: ‘except the city of Dublin’. So Shaw offered his work to the Irish national theatre company which accepted it, simply announcing its performance as if it were nothing extraordinary. The censor was seen to be reduced to helplessness and the Viceroy of Ireland then intervened to save the prestige of the Law. There was a lively exchange of letters between the king’s representative and the comic playwright: severe and threatening on one side, insolent and contemptuous on the other. Meanwhile Dubliners, who couldn’t care less for art but have an immoderate love of arguments, were rubbing their hands in glee. Shaw held out, insisting on his rights, and the theatre booking office was literally besieged to such an extent that the seats were sold out a full seven times over for the first performance.

A dense crowd thronged around the Abbey Theatre that evening and a platoon of hefty guards kept order, but it was evident from the start that there would be no hostile demonstration by the elect public that packed every corner of the small revolutionary theatre. In fact, the newspaper accounts of the evening reported not the slightest murmur of protest. When the curtain fell an uproarious applause called the performers back on stage for encore after encore.

The comedy, which Shaw describes as a sermon in a plain melodrama, is, as you know, only one act long. The action takes place in an uncouth and barbaric town in the Far West. The hero is a horse-thief, and the play deals only with his trial. He has stolen a horse that he thought belonged to his brother in order to retrieve what his brother had unjustly taken from him. While fleeing the town, however, he meets a woman and a sick child. She wants to reach the nearest large town to save her child’s life, and he, moved by her appeal, gives her the horse. He is captured and brought back to the town to be hanged. The trial is summary and violent. The sheriff acts as an aggressive judge, shouting at the accused man, thumping the table and threatening the witnesses with revolver in hand. Posnet, the thief, offers a bit of primitive theology. The moment of sentimental weakness when he gave in to the pleas of the unfortunate mother has been the crisis point of his life. The finger of God has touched his brain. He no longer has the strength to continue the cruel and bestial life which he had led before that meeting. He breaks out into long, disconnected speeches (and it is here that the pious English censor blocked his ears). The speeches were theological in that God was the subject, but not very ecclesiastic in their terminology. In the sincerity of his conviction, Posnet has recourse to miners’ slang; among other reflections, and in an attempt to explain how God works in mysterious ways in the hearts of men, he even calls God a horse-thief.

The drama ends happily. The child that Posnet wanted to save dies, and the mother is tracked down. She tells her story to the court, and Posnet is acquitted. Nothing imaginable is more innocuous than this and the audience wonders in amazement why on earth the work was intercepted by the censor.

Shaw is right: it is a sermon. Shaw is a born preacher. His loquacious and lively spirit cannot suffer the imposition of the noble, spare style that befits a modern playwright. By giving vent to his feelings in farraginous prefaces and in endless stage-directions, he creates a dramatic form for himself which has much of the dialogue-novel in it. He has a sense of situation rather than of drama logically and ethically brought to its conclusion. In this case he has exhumed the central event from his play
The Devil’s Disciple
, and he has transformed it into a sermon. It is a transformation too rapid to be convincing as a sermon, just as its art is too poor to make it convincing as a drama.

Does this play not perhaps coincide with a crisis in the mind of the writer? Already, at the end of
John Bull’s Other Island
, the crisis had announced its advent. Shaw, like his latest hero, has also had an irregular and irreverent past. Fabianism, vegetarianism, anti-alcoholism, music, painting, drama, all the progressive movements in both art and politics have had him as a champion. Now, perhaps some divine finger has touched his brain: and he, too, just like Blanco Posnet, is shewn up.

James Yoyce [sic]

A Curious Histor
y

To the Editor
17 August 1911
  
Via della Barriera Vecchia 32, III, Trieste (Austria)

Sir May I ask you to publish this letter which throws some light on the present conditions of authorship in England and Ireland?

Nearly six years ago Mr Grant Richards, publisher, of London signed a contract with me for the publication of a book of stories written by me, entitled
Dubliners.
Some ten months later he wrote asking me to omit one of the stories and passages in others which, as he said, his printer refused to set up. I declined to do either and a correspondence began between Mr Grant Richards and myself which lasted more than three months. I went to an international jurist in Rome (where I lived then) and was advised to omit. I declined to do so and the MS was returned to me, the publisher refusing to publish notwithstanding his pledged printed word, the contract remaining in my possession.

Six months afterwards a Mr Hone wrote to me from Marseilles to ask me to submit the MS to Messrs Maunsel, publishers, of Dublin. I did so: and after about a year, in July 1909, Messrs Maunsel signed a contract with me for the publication of the book on or before 1 September
1910. In
December 1909 Messrs Maunsel’s manager begged me to alter a passage in one of the stories, ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’, wherein some reference was made to Edward VII. I agreed to do so, much against my will, and altered one or two phrases. Messrs Maunsel continually postponed the date of publication and in the end wrote, asking me to omit the passage or to change it radically. I declined to do either, pointing out that Mr Grant Richards of London had raised no objection to the passage when Edward VII was alive and that I could not see why an Irish publisher should raise an objection to it when Edward VII had passed into history. I suggested arbitration or a deletion of the passage with a prefatory note of explanation by me but Messrs Maunsel would agree to neither. As Mr Hone (who had written to me in the first instance) disclaimed all responsibility in the matter and any connection with the firm I took the opinion of a solicitor in Dublin who advised me to omit the passage, informing me that as I had no domicile in the United Kingdom I could not sue Messrs Maunsel for breach of contract unless I paid £100 into court and that, even if I paid £100 into court and sued them, I should have no chance of getting a verdict in my favour from a Dublin jury if the passage in dispute could be taken as offensive in any way to the late king. I wrote then to the present king, George V, enclosing a printed proof of the story with the passage therein marked and begging him to inform me whether in his view the passage (certain allusions made by a person of the story in the idiom of his social class) should be withheld from publication as offensive to the memory of his father. His Majesty’s private secretary sent me this reply:

Buckingham Palace

The private secretary is commanded to acknowledge the receipt of Mr James Joyce’s letter of the 1 instant and to inform him that it is inconsistent with rule for His Majesty to express his opinion in such cases. The enclosures are returned herewith.

11 August 1911

Here is the passage in dispute:

 
— But look here, John, — said Mr O’Connor. — Why should we welcome the king of England? Didn’t Parnell himself...? —

 
— Parnell, — said Mr Henchy, — is dead. Now, here’s the way I look at it. Here’s this chap comes to the throne after his old mother keeping him out of it till the man was grey. He’s a jolly fine decent fellow, if you ask me, and no damn nonsense about him. He just says to himself —
The old one never went to see these wild Irish. By Christ, I’ll go myself and see what they’re like.
— And are we going to insult the man when he comes over here on a friendly visit? Eh? Isn’t that right, Crofton? —

Mr Crofton nodded his head.

 
— But after all now, — said Mr Lyons, argumentatively, — King Edward’s life, you know, is not the very... —

 
— Let bygones be bygones. — said Mr Henchy — I admire the man personally. He’s just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He’s fond of his glass of grog and he’s a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he’s a good sportsman. Damn it, can’t we Irish play fair? —

I wrote this book seven years ago and, as I cannot see in any quarter a chance that my rights will be protected, I hereby give Messrs Maunsel publicly permission to publish this story with what changes or deletions they may please to make and shall hope that what they may publish may resemble that to the writing of which I gave thought and time. Their attitude as an Irish publishing firm may be judged by Irish public opinion. I, as a writer, protest against the systems (legal, social and ceremonious) which have brought me to this pass. Thanking you for your courtesy, I am, Sir, Your obedient servant James Joyce