Contrasts

THE days between Christmas and the New Year are some of the best, when many people are in slow motion and not so desperate it seems- desperate to get to work on time, desperate to be in the shops, desperate to catch public transport and be home in time for dinner. The weather in this part of the world at least is warm and makes you dreamy and sleepy. It's a lovely time for slowing down enough to have a sleep in the middle of the day, have your house painted by someone else, catching up on who Phillip Adams has been talking to and watching cricket and reading new things. I have been doing all these things the past couple of days and don't really want it to end.


Phillip Adams

Phllip Adams spoke to the biographer of a new book about Shostakovich: 'Music For Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets' by Wendy Lesser (Yale Univ Press 2011). It was a lovely, revealing interview, covering all the turbulent times in Shostakovich's history, especially his precarious relationship with Stalin, and the threat of the Great Purges of the mid 1930's. Shostakovich, it seems, was not a dissident- some have been critical of his 'obedient' stance in relation to Stalin- but the author takes on a more sympathetic approach pointing out the futility involved in opposing someone like Stalin. Many of Shostakovich's friends were killed or tortured during this terrible time, and he had to publicly support Stalin in order to survive.



The interview programme included excerpts from the 5th symphony, which, along with the 4th, was written at the time of the murders, as well as excerpts from the sring quartets that Shostakovich began at this time- the excerpts from the 3rd sounded particularly beautiful. These were the more personal works in which the composer expressed his darker feelings that were not expressed in his more public and more scrutinised symphonies. It has inspired me to listen further to his music and possibly explore his life.

Then the next day I went to the MCG and sat in the sun all day to watch Australia defeat India in the Boxing Day Test. It was one of the more memorable days of attending the cricket for me, becuase I was able to witness some great fast bowling, twelve wickets, and Sachin Tendulkar's final innings in Melbourne. G and I sat in the Ponsford Stand from 10:00 until the end of the test at 5:00. The sun was quite hot, but crept slowly along the rows of seats behind us, until shade reached us by 4:00.

I came home to see that the painters had done a pretty good job and had just about finished their exhausting work.

Inspiration

TODAY, whilst walking around the neighbourhood with A (three years old), I was reminded of some beautiful passages from the Welsh short story, 'Snowdrops', by Leslie Norris. In this story, the writer cleverly evokes the wondrous and innocent world of a young boy who is observing the world around him with a sense of wonder. He bites on a bacon sandwich and marvels at the extraordinary, new taste he has discovered. He listens, fascinated, to his friend's corny jokes- 'which rope is the biggest in the world? Europe.' He stares at the snowdrops growing in the school garden, marvelling at their strength in the blustering wind. He takes an interest in his brother playing with his porridge. He feels a great sense of pride when Miss Webster sticks his picture of the proud robin on the classroom wall. He is fascinated with his mother's knitting as he watches the pullover magically grow behind her fingers. But it is the snowdrops above all else that excite him: "He had known all the time that Miss Webster would not forget, and at last she was taking him to see the miraculous flowers." There is tragedy in the story, too, a motorbike accident, and a grieving Miss Webster, which is beyond the boy's comprehension.

It was during the walk this morning to the post office with A that I was reminded of this story. We held hands all the way, and she swung her body away from me from time to time as she likes to do. She even wrapped herself around a pole for the fun of it. She let go of my hand and gambolled excitedly ahead when we got close to our home. I kept walking, pretending I didn't know we were home, and she found this thoroughly amusing. We looked for cats and dogs but didn't see any. We did see some birds above, on a wire, though. A noisy motorbike received her attention. She was thoroughly excited at the prospect of being lifted up so she could place the letters directly into the mailbox. In the post office she enjoyed looking at what was on display, and thought the Christmas stamps were lovely. But best of all she found a live snail on the footpath in our street. She bent down and watched it craning its neck helplessly. She speculated as to where it might, slowly, be going. And she peered intently at the intricate markings on its brown, fragile shell. And touched the shell lightly. I was fascinated by the shell too, but was taught this fascination, by her. There were letters in the letterbox- another great joy.





It brings so much pleasure. Then I heard someone say on the radio that we should be letting asylum seekers on boats in our waters drown, rather than rescuing them.

LAWRENCE AND JOYCE NEVER MET

SADLY, arguably the two greatest writers, and two greatest rivals, of their generation never actually met. It almost happened in 1929. Lawrence and Joyce had a mutual publishing friend named Harry Crosby, an American, who happened to produce spectacular-looking books. His press, The Black Sun press, published Lawrence’s short story ‘Sun’ in a beautiful deluxe edition. Of James Joyce, Crosby published fragments from ‘Finnegan’s Wake.’ Lawrence was in Paris to see Crosby and his wife and to meet up with Aldous Huxley. On April 3 Crosby and his wife left Huxley and Lawrence for a business meeting with Joyce. They invited Joyce to meet Lawrence when the meeting concluded, however Joyce apparently declined. Crosby offered Lawrence a neutral reason for Joyce’s decision. If we are to believe Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellmann, the real reason was along the lines that he didn’t think Lawrence was worth the effort- ‘This man really writes very badly.’

 HARRY CROSBY

I think what can be assumed is that both men were probably too headstrong and too proud to meet each other, knowing the other person was their greatest rival. Lawrence and Joyce simply mixed in different circles. Joyce had a lot of American support, from the likes of Fitzgerald, Hemngway, Eliot and Pound, not to mention his wealthy backer, Harriet Shaw. Lawrence, on the other hand, with the exception of Mabel Dodge and Amy Lowell, favoured the company of English people like Huxley, Murry and Katherine Mansfield, E M Forster, Richard Aldington and for a limited time Bertrand Russell. Lawrence never liked big cities, so didn’t frequent Paris very often. Joyce spent most of his time there. Moreover, Lawrence had reason to be suspicious of Joyce. He thought he was writing the modern novel with his limited experimentation with form in works like ‘Kangaroo’, but must have been dismayed when he first saw ‘Ulysses’ when it came on the market at about the same time. With Joyce, Modernism took on a whole new meaning.

So Lawrence and Joyce would spend their time attacking each other in letters to friends, even though they never met, and even though they probably didn’t know each other’s work as well as they should. Their temperaments certainly did not suit. Together, like two other artistic geniuses in Van Gogh and Gauguin, they would have had electric and probably destructive arguments.

The barbs include the following- of ‘Ulysses’, Lawrence would comment ‘Ulysses is much more disgusting than Casanova’; of ‘Work in Progress’, ‘too terribly would-be and done- on- purpose, utterly without spontaneity or real life’; and on hearing Joyce reading from ‘Ulysses’ on the gramophone, ‘…a Jesuit preacher who likes the cross upside down.’



Joyce, on his part, would be as equally forthcoming. At the suggestion of a friend that Lawrence should be asked to contribute to a journal they both knew, ‘That man really writes very badly’; another time his English is ‘sloppy’, and that Lawrence’s sex (presumably ‘Lady Chatterley’) was ‘imitation pornography.’



Whilst it is clear to me that Joyce and Lawrence would never have hit it off, I can’t help thinking that Frieda Lawrence and Nora Barnacle would have been a great match. Both were unique and radical thinkers in their day, Nora escaping the confines of a Catholic society and and life in a Dublin convent by eloping with Joyce to Europe, and Frieda, much more experienced, but choosing life with a poor, nomadic author over the stability of a middle-class life with three young loving children and a highly respected husband. They could have also, at the very least, compared notes about life with their respective eccentric genius writers as husbands.

ESCAPING WITH THEIR MUSE

 Joyce lived in exile from Dublin, in France, Italy and Switzerland, from 1904 until his death 36 years later, with very few return trips. Lawrence also lived much of his shorter life in exile. He left England in 1912. He did visit England again after some very bitter experiences during the war, but most of his life was spent, during his so-called ‘savage pilgrimage’, taking in long and short stays in countries like Australia, New Mexico, Italy and France. It’s interesting to compare the departure of the two great writers. Joyce eloped with Nora Barnacle, after meeting in Dublin in early 1904. They left on the 8th of October of that year in somewhat secret circumstances. Leaving for Europe, unmarried, from such a Catholic country, was highly controversial. To prevent Joyce’s father from finding out what they were doing, Nora boarded the ferry to London (and eventually Zurich, via Paris) separately. She sent her mother a postcard with her latest fairly substantial news. She was just 20 years old.

NORA

Frieda Weekley shared with Nora the fact that she also barely knew the man she was about to elope with, in equally controversial circumstances. Lawrence came to visit Ernest Weekley, his German languages tutor, in a well-heeled part of Nottingham to ask advice about finding work as a languages teacher in Germany. This is where he met Weekley’s 33 year old wife Frieda for the first time, and if we are to believe all accounts, there was an immediate mutual fascination. A clandestine affair began until Lawrence insisted that they elope and go to Germany together. Within two months of meeting, on the 3rd of May 1912, Lawrence and Frieda travelled to London separately (Frieda to drop off two of her children with relatives), met at Charing Cross Railway Station, and braved a boat train to Dover, and then on to Ostend, on to Metz. ‘Elopement’ may have been the word that was on Lawrence’s lips, however it is true to say that, despite the romantic alternative, this trip was considered more as a holiday for Frieda. She had every intention of returning home to her middle class existence with her professor husband and children. Lawrence must have been persuasive. It never happened, and as a consequence her life with her young children was seriously compromised.

FRIEDA
So here we have two remarkably unconventional women throwing their lot in with more or less penniless would be writers. A huge step into the unknown, and as in Frieda’s case in particular, much to potentially lose.

THE WRITER’S LIFE

Artistically, Lawrence and Joyce were very different. By the beginning of the 1920’s Lawrence was working on his posthumously published novel, ‘Mr Noon’, in which, apparently influenced by Henry Fielding, Lawrence experimented with the creation of a relationship between the author and the reader. There are innumerable examples of this comic interplay (later to be cultivated by Nabokov in ‘Lolita’), for example in ‘Ah, dear reader, you don’t need me to tell you how to sip love with a spoon…’, and ‘…such as you have taken, gentle reader, you who sit in your comfortable home with this book on your knee’, and even ‘And so, gentle reader-! But why the devil should I always gentle-reader you…’.

‘Kangaroo’ in some ways continued this experimentation with style. Written in NSW at breakneck speed in the middle of 1922 (the first manuscript version only took about 40 days), it included in chapter VIII a long factual article about earthquakes, in a chapter called ‘Bits’ a series of items culled from the Australian newspaper, ‘The Bulletin’, chapter XV begins ‘Chapter follows chapter, and nothing doing’, then a little summary of the action thus far follows.



Lawrence seems to have enjoyed his novel’s little eccentricities. In a letter to a close friend, the Russian émigré, Koteliansky, Lawrence says in regards to his new novel, ‘Kangaroo’, ‘…but such a novel! Even the Ulysseans will spit at it.’ ‘Ulysses’ had just been published, in Paris in 1922, and Lawrence had heard the rumours about how unconventional it was.

Joyce’s experiment was considerably ground breaking, and dwarfed Lawrence’s radicalism by a considerable margin. Joyce’s short stories ‘Dubliners’, which put Dublin on the literary map, was a personal response to his childhood and adolescence growing up in the big Irish capital city. And Dublin never escaped from Joyce’s consciousness, even if Joyce famously physically did. Likewise, ‘Sons and Lovers’ is an autobiographical account (of sorts) of Lawrence’s boyhood and adolescence, his time spent in the more semi-rural Eastwood near Nottingham. And as with Joyce and Dublin, Eastwood and its environs never left Lawrence either. As late as 1928 and 1929 Lawrence was still reminiscing about Nottingham in his novels ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy.’

However, ‘Ulysses’ was something else again. A clue as to how the two unconventional authors went about things differently can be found in the length of gestation of both novels. ‘Kangaroo’ was written in just six weeks. ‘Ulysses’ would be written over almost a ten year period.



Lawrence, on reading ‘Ulysses’, was in for a shock. ‘Ulysses’ is written in what has become known as a ‘stream-of-consciousness style’, full of experimental prose- puns, parodies, allusions, and symbols abound. Punctuation seems to have been throw out the window, and phrases from Latin, French, German and other languages appear seemingly at random. A number of new invented words appear just to make the text more difficult to read, and there is musical text and one chapter is in the form of a play, another section poetry. The following names appear for the members of a wedding, a precursor to the idea that Fitzgerald used a few years later when he named Gatsby’s party guests:

‘The fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence.’

‘Finnegans Wake’ would take up a lot of Joyce’s creative energy once ‘Ulysses’ was published- many people say too much. Faber published different chapters of ‘Finnegans Wake’ along the way (known then as ‘Work in Progress’), however from ‘Ulysses’ in 1922, until ‘Finnegans Wake’ in 1939, besides poetry, this is all that Joyce published. And he would be dead within a year.


This final novel seems to be based on a whole range of different languages, complete with words and phrases that often contain several layers of meaning. It seems that the melody and rhythm of the words mean more than the actual words themselves, which demands excessively patient reading. Many have found the novel impossible to read- I remember Colm Toibin telling me that apparently a good knowledge of Hungarian helps matters- regardless, there are those then, and since, who claim it to be a masterpiece and well worth the extensive and painstaking time Joyce took to write it. Evidently it helps if you read it aloud. Still, there are not too many readers who would understand all the allusions and literary references, and religious connotations, and various teasing wordplays.

Interestingly both men experienced significant hurdles when it came to publishing their most important work. In Joyce’s case, England or America wouldn’t touch seminal works like ‘Dubliners’ and ‘Ulysses’ for fear of offending. ‘Dubliners’ was first sent to a publisher in 1905. The publisher prevaricated on the grounds that the subject matter might offend, after initially agreeing to publish. Finally, by 1914 the publisher- Richards- finally agreed to risk libel action and publish, by which time Joyce must have had enough. Lawrence had difficulty with ‘The Rainbow’, although contrastingly, his book was initially published and then banned, and ‘Women in Love’, and infamously ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ have long, fascinating histories of banning and censorship. As a result pirated copies of some of these works flourished much to their author’s chagrin. Joyce had to go to Paris to get ‘Ulysses’ published, by Sylvia Beach (Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press declined). Lawrence tried Beach as well for ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, and ended up settling for a Florentine called Orioli.

The best way to represent Joyce’s unique style is to quote from it- here is the first page of ‘Ulysses':



STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
-- Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.
Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.
-- Back to barracks, he said sternly.
He added in a preacher's tone:
-- For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.
He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.
-- Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?


Then there is the first page of ‘Finnegans Wake':

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend


of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to

Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-

core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy

isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor

had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse

to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper

all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to

tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a

kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in

vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a

peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory

end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-

ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-

nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later

on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the

offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,

erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends

an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:

and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park

where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-

linsfirst loved livvy.

                                                     

Lawrence and Joyce: family life

Lawrence and Frieda didn’t have children together. They had very few children in their life on an ongoing basis. Frieda had her own children with her former husband, Ernest Weekly, whom she left for Lawrence. The complication for her was that there were only occasional moments when she would see her children until they were grown up. They were young when she ‘abandoned’ them for a new life. As they became older they featured more in the Lawrence’s life, particularly the eldest, Barby, who was portrayed in a significant role in The Virgin and the Gypsy. The only other constant for the Lawrence’s was the daughter of their Buddhist friends, the Brewster’s. Young Harwood even called Lawrence ‘Uncle David’, the use of his Christian name quite rare. Lawrence was apparently ‘abnormally close’ to his mother, but she died, aged 59, just after Lawrence placed his first published book, ‘The White Peacock’, in her hands in 1910. Lawrence called her ‘his first, great love.’ Lawrence’s father died in 1924. His relationship with his father was very poor to the point that a lot of his life Lawrence resented him. We see a lot of the young Paul Morel’s resentment of his father in ‘Sons and Lovers.’ Later on Lawrence would re-evaluate this period and come to the realisation that his negative attitude towards his father was imbalanced.

             



There were other Lawrence siblings. They weaved their way in and out of Lawrence’s life. There are accounts of Lawrence trying to shield one sister, Peggy, from his manuscript of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover.’ Ada, another sister, wrote a loving, very supportive biography called ‘Early Life of D H Lawrence’ (1932). The other sibling of some significance was older brother, William, who died when Lawrence was only sixteen, in 1901. William was just 23. His death is significant because of the transferral of love that was placed on Lawrence by his mother after William’s death, which led them to develop their so called ‘abnormally close’ relationship.

                         


The Joyce’s had two children, both playing a significant role in their history. The son, Giorgio, who, like his father, enjoyed singing, and had somewhat of a modest singing career, spent a lot of time in the USA when he got married. Unfortunately his substantially older wife, Helen, a Jewish American divorcee, was beset with mental health problems later in life. Their daughter, Lucia, who at one critical point in her life was in love with Samuel Beckett, also had considerable mental health issues. There were several major crises (Joyce’s latest biographer calls them ‘cris de nerfs’), and she spent a lot of time after 1930 exhibiting what the Joyce’s and their friends would have described as odd behaviour. There were reports of assignations with strangers and other accounts of reckless promiscuous behaviour, episodes of hysteria and prolonged weeping and possible schizophrenia. Lucia would spend much of her life from the mid 1930’s in the hands of doctors and inside asylums. A bit like her brother, Lucia also experienced bouts of artistic frustration, in her case wanting to become an acclaimed dancer. Joyce, it seems, was very close to her and worried about her a great deal. Her fragile health is even said to have caused him breakdowns. His affections do not seem to be have been reciprocated. There are a number of accounts of open hostility on her part. Some of Joyce’s friends thought the problem with Lucia was that she was spoilt and needed a good spanking. Remarkably, Lucia lived until 1982, aged 74, in a hospital called ‘St Andrews’ in England for the last 30 years of her life.



Giorgio, Lucia, Nora Joyce (Barnacle)


Just as in the case of Lawrence and his mother, Joyce was also very affected by the death of his mother, May. She had quite a lot of children and Joyce came to believe that this had a deleterious effect on her life. She died however quite violently of cirrhosis of the liver at the modest age of 44 in 1903, not long before Joyce began living in exile. Unlike in the case of Lawrence, Joyce’s father, John, had a reasonably significant role in his son’s life, albeit from a great distance, in Dublin. Being a raconteur, singer and generally profligate, it could be said that the two Joyce’s were in many ways quite alike. The sibling Joyce was closest to was Stanislaus, who supported Joyce emotionally and financially for the crucial years when he began embarking on his literary career in exile from his country, the rest of his family, and his friends.

                                                            
                                                                           Stanislaus Joyce



            

Joyce and Lawrence: two brief stories of living in exile

Both Lawrence and Joyce were very restless by nature, uprooting and travelling to new places, partly in the search for better health (especially Lawrence), but also beset by money problems, relying on others for their generosity. It has to be said, though, that Joyce was much better off in this regard, having an American woman called Harriet Weaver as a generous benefactress throughout the twenties and beyond. There are countless references to Weaver sending Joyce money as his chief benefactress. Joyce squandered a lot of it too. He had a much more profligate life than Lawrence. A lot of socialising, a lot of drinking, expensive rents. It wasn’t until the emergence of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ that Lawrence became financially reasonably secure, and this was quite late in his life. He had many generous friends whose houses he often borrowed, but not much ongoing financial assistance from any particular quarter.


Joyce left his native Ireland in October 1904. There is no doubt he found the clerical life of Dublin suffocating. Joyce wanted artistic freedom, a journey of self-discovery. For Joyce, the prospect of staying in Dublin was a wasted life. It would not play a direct role toward his great writing adventure. He alludes to this continually in his writing. Ironically, it would be Dublin life that was the main source for inspiration for all the books that were to follow.


Joyce’s life in exile began in Trieste where he found the atmosphere conducive to writing. Here he developed the stories that would comprise ‘Dubliners’, and with his partner, Nora, began a family with the arrival of first born, Giorgio. Here, with Joyce’s brother, Stanislaus, the family would stay until 1915, by which time ‘Ulysses’ was well underway. Joyce would make only sporadic returns to Dublin during the rest of his life, spending much of his life in Paris in an atmosphere of the likes of Picasso, Beckett, Ezra Pound, et al.


Lawrence was living in Cornwall at the start of the First World War, having already lived in Italy where he finished ‘Sons and Lovers’, and working on ‘The Rainbow.’ It was such a bitter experience for him that he was forced to leave by the authorities because he was deemed a suspicious person- living close to the water, walking in fields with torches at night, singing German songs with his German wife, and in October 1917, therefore being ordered out of Cornwall. After the Armistice, the Lawrence’s lived in various places in England and Italy, and by 1922, were living in their preferred home in New Mexico, arriving via Sri Lanka and Australia. Lawrence would return to Europe later in life, but Italy and France were his preferred destinations. He would never feel comfortable in England again. And yet, like Joyce, he still wrote about England, in exile. ‘Lady Chatterley’ would be his final great novel, and is set in Derbyshire. However, Lawrence’s fondest memories of England would always be his years growing up in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. This is the story of ‘Sons and Lover’s, and falling for ‘Miriam’ and going to her family’s farm called ‘the Haggs.’ As late as November 14 1928, Lawrence wrote, from France, to the brother of his childhood sweetheart, Jessie Chambers (Miriam), ‘’Whatever I forget, I shall never forget the Haggs- I loved it so…whatever else I am, I am somewhere still the same Bert who rushed with such joy to the Haggs.’


It is moving to read such lovely sentiment and it informs us that great writers living in exile never really forget the places that gave them their inspirations and their start.

                                                    
                                                the Haggs, near Eastwood, Nottinghamshire

James Joyce's DUBLINERS: The final 7 stories

                                                 


COUNTERPARTS-


Farrington works in a legal office and is constantly hectored by his boss, Mr Alleyne, for his scrappy work and poor attention to detail. Farrington is a bit unhinged and hates his job and is desperate to get out at the end of the day, and even during the day, down to the public-house to meet his fellow alcoholics. Mr Alleyne gets really angry at one point after Farrington is late back from an unscheduled break and the required work isn’t done:

‘Tell me…do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?’

Farrington gives an amusing answer- ‘I don’t think, sir…that that’s a fair question to put to me.’ (!)

Farrington’s job in ‘Counterparts’ is very depressing, and he is living a directionless, pointless existence, like a number of other characters in Dubliners. Things get worse when Farrington is humiliated amongst friends at the pub after work, because he loses in an arm wrestle to ‘a stripling’ called Weathers. This causes ‘smouldering anger and revengefulness.’ In despair and full of loathing he returns home to his unsatisfactory marriage with his ‘little sharp-faced’ wife and five children. Except Ada isn’t home and the fire has gone out. Farrington takes revenge on his little boy by hitting him viciously with a walking-stick, his son helpless and whimpering telling his father he will say a ‘Hail Mary’ for him if he stops.

I didn’t find the violence at the end particularly interesting- just grim. The best part of the whole story for me were the pub scenes- full of life and very Irish and great fun. Farrington (sadly) has to pawn his watch for liquor money and he ends up in Davy Byrne’s (some of these pubs still exist nowadays!), and Farrington receives kudos from his earlier work related quip. Joyce offers details about the various types of drinks, and the comings and goings of the people and the atmosphere is all wonderfully described:

‘After a while O’Halloran and Paddy Leonard came in…just as they were naming their poisons who should come in but Higgins!’

The men next go to the ‘Scotch House’ and Farrington has continually told his little story as if there is nothing else in his miserable life of any substance. This is where Weathers comes into it, and we hear of various other drinks tried- something called ‘Apollinaris’ and ‘small Irish’ and ‘tailors of malt.’ Next is Mulligan’s for ‘small hot specials’, and pretty soon Farrington is staring at women, and the sad little arm wrestle takes place and Farrington gets all angry and worked up.

In some ways it’s a thoroughly depressing story, however Joyce seems to have really enjoyed writing the middle section of the drinking amongst ‘the boys’, leering at women, work jokes- it shows how little times have changed! I think it was around this time, after living in exile for a few years, that Joyce was going through a stage of being under Maupassant’s spell- which really shows in this story. One can’t help, too, wondering if this sordid kind of existence (also apparent in A Little Cloud), was possibly going to be Joyce’s fate if he became stuck in Dublin, as a failed writer. He would certainly come to know a lot about drinking. Farrington is one of a number of bitter, directionless men that inhabit Dubliners, festering in their sorrowful lives of despair.



CLAY-

Maria works in a laundry, run by some sort of charitable organisation for drunks or ‘fallen women.’ She works long shifts there and she is a sad sort of character, but not in a tragic sense in terms of pathos, more in the sense that Joyce ridicules her and makes her look ugly and stupid, and I didn’t enjoy this story all that much because of this. The very first page grasped my attention, though, with its reference to ‘big barmbracks’ on the table, apparently something like fruit loaves in English. The only other reference I have seen or heard of ‘barmbracks’ is in a beautiful Van Morrison song called ‘A Sense of Wonder’- and I have sometimes wondered about it.

Poor old Maria- she is a ‘very, very small person’ with a ‘very long nose and a very long chin’ (like the dwarf in ‘Don’t Look Now’?). she talks through her nose; she is very fond of a tacky little purse with ‘A Present from Belfast’ printed on it; when she laughs ‘the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin’ (this happens several times); when dressing in front of the mirror she looks with ‘quaint affection at (her) diminutive body’; she blushes when the serving lady in the cake shop asks her if it is a wedding-cake she would like to buy; the young men on the Drumcondra tram don’t notice her, only an ‘elderly gentleman’ with a ‘square red face’ does; she is impressed with this old man, thanking him for the seat and even bowing to him, even though, unbeknownst to her, he probably steals the cake from her; she eventually arrives at her destination which is a home lived in by friends who have silly conversations and are just as imbecilic as she is; the tip of her nose nearly reaches ‘tip of her chin’ again; finally Maria sings verses of ‘I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls’, but she makes some of ‘mistake’ that is unclear to me, and Joe’s eyes fill up with tears, and it is difficult to know whether he is genuinely moved (unlikely), or whether or not he finds the whole thing hilarious, which he would if it were me that was singing.

So on this particular ‘Hallow Eve’ poor Maria has a hard time of it and I don’t really feel all that enriched by having been introduced to her.



A PAINFUL CASE-

This is a much more complex and interesting story and another that Joyce would have had a good deal of fun writing with its sad but interesting protagonists. Dublin, for Joyce, is full of these people who are unhappy and aimless, who struggle to find meaning and just try and get by, and seem to allow fate to deliver them its unkind hand.

Mr James Duffy, lives in the Dublin suburb ‘Chapelizod’, and curiously lives ‘at a little distance from his body’ (whatever that means). He seems to be a creature of habit whom lives in an ‘old sombre house’ full of furniture he has bought. He was a bank cashier and he would have the same lunch in the same pub every day, and would have tea in the same eating house at the same time every day. He is a lonely, solitary man whose life is described as ‘an adventureless tale’, until……

Mr Duffy finds himself talking to a woman of similar age with an oval, intelligent face. Duffy meets this woman, who turns out to be a Mrs Sinico many times, and eventually he gets to know her husband, Captain Sinico, as well. They have a series of regular walks together and Duffy begins lending her books and music. Later their relationship becomes more complicated and intense when the two of them start going to her little cottage and begin spending evenings alone. Mrs Sinico is fully enamoured of Duffy and deliberately refrains from ‘lighting the lamp’ so darkness falls upon them. Duffy, himself, feels the same encroaching passion, and he in turn feels exalted by her, the music and isolation and darkness taking him toward a new, pleasurable plane.

But Mrs Sinico suddenly presses Duffy’s hand to her cheek, and he doesn’t visit her for a week. The locale changes from the intimate darkness of a cottage to a cold, wintry park in which they agree (although clearly his impetus), to break off for good.

Four years pass. Duffy has written the following troubling words on pieces of paper on his desk: ‘Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.’

Life has gone on for Duffy in the same awful, routine way as before, and then one day he sees something in the paper that tortures and astounds him, a paragraph he finds himself reading over and over again. Mrs Sinico has suddenly died, tragically, at the age of forty-three, hit (in a manner reminiscent of Anna Karenina), by the ‘ten o’clock slow train from Kingstown.’ Much of the newspaper report deals with the facts of Mrs Sinico’s death, establishing that the train’s likely soft impact alone would probably not have killed her, rather that she may have died ‘due to shock.’ More importantly, it seems, that Mrs Sinico of late had become somewhat of a drinker, ‘going out at night to buy spirits.’

Mr Duffy’s response to the news article is extraordinary. Whilst we may expect him to be horrified and shocked and saddened by the news, potentially even a bit guilty, he is in fact ‘revolted’, the death seems to him ‘commonplace vulgar’, and he feels she has ‘degraded him.’ Duffy is disgusted by the fact as he sees it that she has been ‘unfit to live’ and has sunken ‘so low’, and he feels relieved that he took the action he did take four years ago. But time passes, and Duffy begins to mull over everything. It becomes clear that Duffy cannot dismiss Mrs Sinico as easily as he might wish. He retraces their steps together and can almost feel her touch, hear her voice. He begins to think that he may have even ‘sentenced her to death.’

In a passage that is typical of ‘Dubliners’ in the sense that it is moving and epiphanous, a strange new awareness overcomes Mr Duffy that is sad and overwhelming. Young lovers are lying together in the park, and Duffy comes to the bitter realisation that he has denied Mrs Sinico ‘her love and happiness’ sentencing her (somewhat dramatically) to ‘ignominy, a death of shame.’ In a great summing up phrase, Joyce describes him as feeling as though he is an ‘outcast from life’s feast.’ The River Liffey is described as ‘grey gleaming’, the emerging goods train is ‘like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness’, and the ‘laborious drone of the engine (is) reiterating the syllables of her name.’ The final paragraph of ‘A Painful Case’ tells us that Duffy can no longer feel Mrs Sinico’s touch or hear her voice in his ear. He can, in fact, ‘hear nothing’- all is ‘perfectly silent’- tragically, he ‘felt that he was alone.’

This is some of the best writing in ‘Dubliners’. The mean, nasty and cynical portrayal of Maria in ‘Clay’, the previous story, has given way to the moving tragedy of both Mr Duffy and Mrs Sinico- as Joyce warns us about how important it is to value the presence of those around us and to reiterate the important fact that, as Van Gogh said, we are not made of stone or wood, but rather flesh and blood. We have all had the experience of feeling alone when we witness a party belonging to someone else for which we aren’t invited- but to actually feel like an ‘outcast from life’s feast’ is unimaginable.

IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM-


This is by far the most political of Joyce’s stories in this collection, and demands a reasonable knowledge of early twentieth century Irish history. Joyce, and his father John Joyce, had great respect for the famous Irish nationalist, Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell, however, fell out of favour with the Irish republican cause when his relationship with Kitty O’Shea was unearthed. O’Shea’s husband took divorce action, subsequently ending Parnell’s leadership ambitions. Ivy is what the mourners at Parnell’s funeral wore in their lapels, picked from ivy plants in the graveyard. The ‘committee room’ is the room in London’s Palace of Westminster in which it was decided to no longer support Parnell as leader of the Irish Party.

There are various characters floating in and out of this story, beginning with ‘Old Jack’, who is old and gaunt, and Mr O’Connor, who is supposed to be out and about canvassing support in the Municipal Elections for a Mr Tierney, but would rather be indoors because of the inclement weather. Not a lot of political will, perhaps. Mr Hynes then enters, wearing the ivy leaf to show his support for the recently deceased Parnell. Hynes doesn’t favour Tierney because he doesn’t think he is much of a Nationalist- he claims Tierney plans to greet King Edward, the ‘German Monarch’ when he visits Dublin. They then lament the loss of Parnell.

Then a Mr Henchy enters the room, apparently not a fan of ‘Tricky Dicky Tierney’, nor Hynes for that matter- he accuses him behind his back as being ‘a man from the other camp.’ Next is Father Keon who the others think is a bit dodgy in some way, and after small talk a man called Crofton and a younger man called Lyons, both of whom don’t seem to get along with Henchy. Arguments begin about the merits or otherwise of the King and Parnell (Henchy at odds with the others in supporting the King over Parnell), and the story finishes with Hynes reciting a sad, supportive poem about the death of Parnell.

The discussions in this (for me) occasionally tedious story are occasionally tedious, and I guess this is the point. It seems to me that Joyce, in his own fun, ironic way, is suggesting that the death of Parnell has left a gaping hole in the Irish Republican cause. Here was a great, inspiring leader (who abused the Church), who is dead and defeated, and in his place are a bunch of hacks who drink a lot and can’t agree on anything. The new leadership is uninspired and uninspiring, with no real political will, worrying about keeping warm on a cold, wet day and mouthing platitudes. It was probably a story that Joyce had to write (some similar themes in ‘Portrait of the Artist’ as well), and it probably amused him and offered him great comfort whilst he missed home living in exile (in 1905).



A MOTHER-

This is a musical story. It is no surprise that music is a subject of one of these stories, given that Joyce grew up with music- his father apparently had a great tenor voice and Dublin, when Joyce’s father was young, was filled with opera. James Joyce himself sang a great deal throughout his life, with apparently a light tenor voice, and championed other singers, in particular an Irish singer whom Joyce claimed was the greatest tenor of his generation, John Sullivan. And Joyce’s own son, Giorgio, dedicated much of his life career to singing on the American circuit trying to establish a career, and eventually singing twice on the CBS.

‘A Mother’ is about an ambitious mother named Mrs Kearney who has a daughter called Kathleen, who is offered a singing job as an accompanist in ‘four grand concerts’ in the ‘Antient Concert Rooms’ (where Joyce himself sang). The offer is made by a certain Mr Holohan is secretary of some society that is financing the concerts. All seems well when a contract is drawn up for eight guineas and Mr Holohan and Mrs Kearney are establishing a good working relationship. And then on the opening night the ambitious Mrs Kearney is none too impressed by the men’s dress, nor the ‘artistes’ themselves, and especially the underwhelming crowd figures.

The next night things get worse for ambitious Mrs Kearney. The behaviour of the audience is poor, and the third concert is to be cancelled without informing her, in the expectation there will be ‘a bumper house on Saturday night.’ She demands her daughter’s pay remains at eight guineas as agreed, even though there will only be four concerts, but she is uneasy because she can’t get a straight answer.

On the big, final night, the ambitious Mrs Kearney brings up the payment again with Mr Holohan, and is again brushed aside. It is clear that it is not going to go well. When it is time for Kathleen to go on stage Mrs Kearney prevents her by forcing the money issue saying she won’t go on stage without it. Meanwhile the audience is ‘clapping and stamping’ and soon enough ‘whistling’ as well. Half of it is duly paid- she is told she will get ‘the other half at the interval.’ When she eventually gets on, Kathleen’s ‘selection of Iris airs’ is ‘generously applauded.’

The ambitious Mrs Kearney is still none too pleased with the whole affair, saying she has been treated ‘scandalously.’ Certain people on the board wish to pay her nothing for her treatment of them and the other ‘artistes.’ Then she is promised the other four guineas next Tuesday, but only if she appears again after the interval, or she would get paid ‘nothing.’

The ambitious Mrs Kearney refuses to abide by these new set of rules, and demands immediate payment of the second half of the money or ‘a foot she won’t put on that platform.’ For those people still interested in how this little melodrama plays itself out, Mrs Kearney and her husband and daughter leave, without payment, in a rage and in a cab, and Kathleen’s place is filled by another accompanist. All a case of ‘much ado about nothing’ it seems to me. It seems to me that Mrs Kearney may technically have been ill treated, but she is after all quite an annoying character, and she has probably scuppered her daughter’s chances for singing in Dublin again.

GRACE-

The second last story in ‘Dubliners’ reminds me of the previous story in that it too has a great deal of dialogue and wry humour, and is also vey localised, this time substituting politics with the Church.

It begins with the very drunk Mr Kernan who creates a public spectacle when he falls to the bottom of some stairs (apparently inspired by a real life incident that occurred with Joyce’s father). Mr Kernan (Tom) is rescued by his constabulary friend, Mr Power, who strikes a match and looks inside his mouth to see the damage done:

‘The lower teeth and gums were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been bitten off.’

At home we meet Tom’s frustrated wife. Characteristically, Joyce tells us in their courtship days Tom was ‘to her a not ungallant figure’, and after only three weeks ‘she had found a wife’s life irksome and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had become a mother.’ ‘Dubliners’ is full of these tales of dissatisfied wives. Of course, if they lived in England, they would probably have divorced. Her ‘two eldest sons’ we are told, ‘were launched.’ Such a curious name for the idea of starting to have a career, and now quite archaic. Lawrence uses it, too, in ‘Sons and Lovers’ in the chapter ‘Paul Launches Into life.’

We soon discover that Kernan was originally a Protestant but was converted to Catholicism when he married, but that it is a token sort of Catholicism- he doesn’t really believe, as he enjoys ‘giving side-thrusts at Catholicism.’ This, then, is the germ of the idea, as several other friends- Mr Cunningham, Mr McCoy and Mr Power, all come to visit Tom to talk him into attending a retreat to see if they can make a religious man out of him.

I am lost in much of the second half of this story with its theological philosophy, but again get the sense of Joyce living in exile, remembering fondly the people and the subject matter that must have invaded his space growing up in Catholic Dublin. I think I know enough about Joyce’s life and his writing by now to very much doubt that this is simply a story about a man who has lost his way in a religious sense and his friends band together to take him to Church and suddenly he is transformed with a new found sense of piety. Joyce’s view of the Church was at the least vey ambivalent anyway. His children were scandalously illegitimate for a start. When first born Giorgio was one years old Joyce registered his son’s birth, but refused to have him baptised. One of the benefits of leaving Ireland was to escape, as he saw it, the stifling confines of Catholicism. Joyce saw the worst of it in his poor mother whom he loved dearly with her life of relentless childbearing. By his late teens, perhaps sooner, Joyce had rejected the Church and become atheist.

So ‘Grace’ therefore reads as satire. I gather from reading between the lines that the evangelical discussions of Kernan’s friends are full of inconsistencies and hypocrisy. The men are going to renew their vows which is supposed to enforce a radical change in the mindset of all those present. It is clear that Mr Kernan’s life has turned for the worst, and he is in desperate need for some kind of help, but this is not really the kind of help that Joyce is recommending. The end of the story, as it is in church with a sermon aimed at businessmen by Father Purdon, verifies Joyce’s mocking of Catholicism with its reference to Father Purdon as their ‘spiritual accountant.’

THE DEAD-


So now we get to Joyce’s most famous short story of all. It could have been titled ‘The Sisters’, the title of the first story, which could have been titled in turn ‘The Dead.’ The Miss Morkan’s, Kate and Julia, are having their annual holiday dance, and many guests will arrive. In the fashion of people arriving in the most recent stories in the collection, they dwindle in here as well, starting with Gabriel Conroy and his wife. Gabriel, who is the Morkan’s favourite nephew, flirts lightly with Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, who is burdened with any number of tasks, including answering the door bell. Gabriel notices Lily is a ‘slim, growing girl’, and is keen to give her a coin because it is Christmas-time. We find out more about Gabriel and his wife Gretta who seem a happy pair, Gabriel somewhat cultured in his tastes as he contemplates quoting Browning in his speech and shows an interest in what is going on, on the continent. His Aunt Kate tells him that Lily is ‘not the girl she was at all.’

Next Freddy Malins arrives. Earlier the aunts were worried he might turn up drunk. Gabriel is asked to check on his condition. Then more people suddenly sweep into the story- a Miss Furlong, Miss Daly, Miss Power and the colourful, elderly Mr Browne who drinks copious amount s of whisky for medicinal purposes of course! Joyce continues with the ever present theme of drinking as we see Freddy Malins, true to his word, looking the worst for wear: ‘His face was fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes of his ears…(he had) coarse features, a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips.’ Joyce doesn’t spare much expense here. His ability to capture personality is extraordinary: ‘He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had been telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.’

Mary Jane plays her ‘Academy piece’ and shortly after Gabriel falls in conversation with Miss Ivors and it’s one of the highlights of the story. She accuses Gabriel of being a ‘West Briton’ for writing for ‘The Daily Express’- West Briton it seems is a derogatory term for an Irish person who is a Unionist or perhaps a British person living in Ireland. She says it to him twice- and I guess ‘The Daily Star’ is a problem for Miss Ivors because it is a newspaper with Unionist sympathies. Gabriel wants to say that he thinks ‘literature was above politics.’ Then the conversation becomes tense because Miss Ivors wants Gabriel to go with a group to the Aran Islands in the summer, but Gabriel is already organising a cycling trip to France or Belgium. Her retort is to say that ‘why do you go to France or Belgium…instead of visiting your own land.’ Gabriel can’t win. It’s not good enough that he wants to go to the Continent to practise other languages. He is reminded by Miss Ivors that he has ‘your own language’ to explore (meaning Irish), and ‘your own people, and your own country’ to explore. Gabriel, who very clearly is Joyce’s mouthpiece, then tells her in no uncertain terms ‘..I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!’ Of course this startles Miss Ivor, and we come to see her parochialism as foolish. Gabriel is being attacked for daring to imagine, and Joyce is satirising nationalistic types like Miss Ivors for being stuck in a groove and being left behind. It’s a suffocating attitude that puzzles and dismays Gabriel.

Aunt Kate, Mary Jane and Mr Browne have an interesting conversation in another part of the house in which religion creeps in- two of Joyce’s biggest interests one after the other - politics and religion- Miss Ivors suddenly leaves, a fascinating long paragraph about the food about to be eaten takes place- it’s not just the food that is interesting : ‘a fat brown goose’, blancmange, purple raisins, grated nutmeg, peeled almonds, Smyrna figs, American apples…- but the way the food is presented as well: a shallow dish, a bed of creased paper, ‘a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle’, a companion dish, a small bowl, glass vase, fruit-stand, old-fashioned decanters, huge yellow dish, etc, etc- so Joyce can be sumptuous as well as squalid in ‘Dubliners.’

Next, Gabriel begins his annual speech. One of the first things he talks about is the famous Irish hospitality- he refers to it as a tradition that does Ireland ‘so much honour and which it should guard so jealously’, and ‘a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes..’ it may sound cliché’, and I don’t know if it is unique, but I can vouch that it certainly exists, even in the 21st Century. I have been to Ireland a few times, and have experienced this great tradition of hospitality every time. The one that stands out the most was in a place called ‘An Ring’, near Co. Waterford. A little enclave of Republicanism as I found out. Hospitality, yes. But only because my partner and I weren’t British. This was immediately established. “Australian? Then welcome. Ken, they are Australian’s.’ we sang into the early hours and almost every person in ‘Mooney’s Bar’ wanted to meet us.

Gabriel then talks of a growing movement in Ireland of ‘new ideas’, and we he refers to ominously as ‘a thought-tormented age.’ I think what Gabriel is referring to is the fact that the new generation may lack the warmth and humour and hospitality of days gone by. Surely this is what everyone dreads as they watch on as a new generation begins to form. Gabriel is determined, however, to not ‘linger on the past’, ironic in a way because that is exactly what he is forced to do as the epiphany at the end of the story begins to take shape.

This is the serious part of the story, and Joyce creates the atmosphere for it beautifully, and mysteriously: ‘Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terracotta and salmonpink panels of her skirt which the shadow made black and white. It was his wife.’

Gretta is transfixed. She can hear the notes of Bartell D’Arcy singing ‘The Lass of Aughrim’, and it has a profound effect on her, and as a consequence him- ‘..Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart.’

They walk part of the journey home, Gretta slightly ahead with D’Arcy, Gabriel just a little behind. He suddenly has the most wondrous, unexpected feelings for his wife- he wants to ‘run after her noiselessly’ and ‘say something foolish and affectionate into her ear.’ Beautiful thoughts of the past flood his consciousness- ‘Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.’ Then, from Gabriel’s point of view, ‘more tender joy’, he longs to be alone with her in the hotel room, his thoughts take on an erotic feel, and he ‘longs to forget the years of their dull existence.’

Entering their hotel now, ‘a keen pang of lust’ enters Gabriel’s body. Going up the stairs, ‘he could have flung his arms about her hips and held her still for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his hands held the wild impulse of his body in check.’ Yet Gretta seems preoccupied, a little distant. She still seems to be transfixed. She amost absent-mindedly kisses Gabriel, and this causes him to tremble, smoothing her hair with his hands, but she suddenly breaks from him, bursting into tears, thinking of ‘The Lass of Aughrim.’

Gretta tells Gabriel the whole sorrowful story of Michael Furey, a former lover of long ago, a delicate boy who used to sing this song. Michael Furey died when he was seventeen, when they were both in Galway. He came to see Gretta after she left him a note to say she was leaving and would see him next summer. Although he was already ill, he came to Gretta’s house against all advice in the harsh winter. Gretta has a bitterly sad memory of him standing in the rain in her garden. Then he died a week later.

It is a story that reminds me very much of the Allan boy who shoots himself, Blanche DuBois’ former lover in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ And it’s a story that also seems to have come straight out of Joyce’s wife history, when she was living in Galway herself. Joyce wrote ‘The Dead’ a few years after the other stories in ‘Dubliners’ (in 1907), and some three years after he first met Nora in Nassau Street (June 1904). No doubt he was moved by her story of the two Michaels, Michael Bodkin and Michael Feeney (it is Michael Furey in ‘The Dead.’ Nora told Joyce that when she was 13 she was re-housed at Presentation Convent in Dublin apparently to escape her drunken father, and that the night before she left Michael Feeney waited all night, (as Furey does) , by her garden gate in the pouring rain. A few months later (a week in the story), Nora heard he had contracted pneumonia and was dead. She always felt, like Gretta, that he died because of his love for her. This is all according to Gordon Bowker in his Joyce biography, but interestingly, Terence Brown, in his notes for ‘Dubliners’ in the 1992 Penguin edition, says that the inspiration for Furey is the other Michael, Michael Bodkin, whose gravestone Joyce visited near Galway in 1912.

Gretta’s telling of the story causes her to be overcome with sobbing. Gabriel’s thirst for lust must for the moment be left unquenched. Gabriel says of Gretta, lying there on the bed, ‘he did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.’ One wonders if Joyce himself felt that way about Nora, and what Nora must have felt about that little bit of interesting detail.

And now Gabriel’s thoughts wander on to death, haunted as he is by his wife’s story. He imagines seeing Michael Furey standing in the garden wet with rain and he begins to cry. The solid world is crumbling. He is questioning his own worth, his own existence and his own mortality. He looks out the window and watches the snowflakes. And the story ends, enigmatically, with ‘His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.’

So this is where we come to in ‘Dubliners’, as Gabriel has his epiphany where he questions his existence, his worth to his wife and his worth to the world. Some critics find Gabriel irritating, but I find him endearing in his self-deprecation and uncertainty. And what a great read ‘Dubliners’ was, and how amazing for its time. And to think about how troubled its publishing history was. I have read, and loved, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, and perhaps now will be brave enough to confront ‘Ulysees.’

JAMES JOYCE'S DUBLINERS- THE FIRST 8 STORIES

I AM really enjoying James Joyce's DUBLINERS at present. One story per bus ride, then re-reading at night at home. Various examples of living life in Dublin just after the turn of the century. Great insight into working class life. The first few stories deal with life as a young person, or adolescent, the others more about working life, and complications on love or marriage. All with something fascinating inside them, and usually daring and full of meaning, and lovely prose, and people trying to survive.




DUBLINERS



SISTERS-


A story of how the death of a priest- Father Flynn- takes hold of the imagination of a young boy. When he looks up at the window of the house he died in, the word PARALYSIS continually comes to his mind. The rest of the story takes place in the boy’s house where a small group gather to talk about the priest and his life. The boy is young and therefore silent, unassuming. It is a cloying, claustrophobic attitude. The word PARALYSIS comes to mind, and it reminds us that 1) Joyce found Dublin suffocating and not conducive to the development of a literary career, and 2) Joyce was wildly influenced in the early stages of his development as a writer by Ibsen- paralysis, suffocation, repression all important themes in Ibsen’s writing about Norwegian society.

AN ENCOUNTER-

Another childhood story, fairly unremarkable. The narrator and his imaginative friend wag school and cross the Liffey in a ferryboat in a planned sojourn to the Pigeon House. The ‘encounter’ referred to in the title occurs between the young narrator and an old man who is unthreatening but enthusiastic on the topic of whipping boys. The most interesting bits for me were the parts that foreshadowed Joyce’s need for exile- ‘But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.’ Moreover, the young boy is keen to see if the sailors aboard a Norwegian vessel at the Dublin docks have green eyes. Norway was to become the source of a developing interest (Ibsen), and again it is interesting this thing about thinking abroad.

ARABY-

‘Araby’ apparently was the name of a bazaar that took place in Joyce’s time in Dublin to raise money for charity. The young male narrator of the story is extremely keen to go to the bazaar, but must wait for money from his father, which takes an interminably long time to arrive. It’s a fairly charming story that captures well the awkward adolescent sexual fascination of an older woman. The streets of Dublin are alive with passion: ‘We walked through the flaring streets , jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amidst the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys…’. There is also a strange interior passion inside the boy:

‘Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom…my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.’ What a great description of something that is so alien and troubling and intoxicating for a boy! Thus ends the trio of stories written from the point of view of boyhood.

EVELINE-

Another superior story, the first from an adult point of view (a woman) and probably more sophisticated than the preceding ones. It has one of the loveliest opening lines in Dubliners: ‘She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.’ Even though this story is told from the point of view of ‘Eveline’, I was captured in the end by the pain felt by the male character, Frank, a sailor. He seems to love her deeply. It is doubtful Eveline loves Frank. She seems to simply want to escape her suffocating environment (suffocating Dublin again), especially her dependent father who disapproves of his daughter’s union. Nineteen year old Eveline thinks she is ready for a new life, for modernity, for a new place overseas. It’s only the idea of marriage that troubles her. In her naïve and inexperienced mind she thinks she needs saving, and romantically she thinks it is Frank who should be the one to ‘save her.’ But when it comes to the crunch, in the station at the ‘North Wall’, she can’t take the leap into the darkness. And poor Frank, who is sold on his ‘Evvy’, shouts out desperately to her as she passes beyond the barrier, but she doesn’t budge: ‘Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.’ Joyce will be in this position with Nora in a time not too far in the distance- this boat sojourn together into the unknown. I wonder if he contemplated Nora doing the same thing? Every man’s nightmare.


AFTER THE RACE-


It appears that this story may have originated as an exercise by Joyce after witnessing a real motor race through the streets of Dublin in 1903. There is probably some really interesting sub-text occurring here, nevertheless the story left me cold and I thought it was one of the weakest in the collection. There is some good, lively writing- ‘The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove…’. However, I didn’t find myself becoming terribly interested in the French drivers and their celebrations. I thought the great car race that begins in Clockwork Car Town in ‘You Funny Little Noddy’ (Enid Blyton) was much more interesting.

TWO GALLANTS-

This is a daring, absorbing story that sounds like it is straight out of Joyce’s adolescent days. Not surprisingly it ran into trouble with the censors in conservative Ireland. It is a completely charming story about two roguish youths named Lenehan and Corley, who attempt to have their way with a young housewife. There is plenty of slang, some of it risqué in nature- ‘I spotted a fine tart under Waterhouse’s clock’, and ‘she’s up to the dodge’, and ‘she’s on the turf now.’ It is the lively language and the great fun the two friends have in trying to dupe the woman that makes it a fun story to read. It also has an enigmatic ending involving the stealing of a ‘small gold coin.’ But the thing I like best about this story is the way it is so regional, so Dublin. It is something that the contemporary Dubliner, Colm Toibin, sometimes adopts, and that is the liberal use of place names and street names. In this story we have references to Rutland Square, Dorset Street, Pim’s (retail outlet), Dame Street, Waterhouse’s Clock, Baggot Street, Donnybrook, the South Circular, Earl Street, Trinity College, Nassau Street, Kildare Street, Stephen’s Green, Hume street, Merrion Street, Shelbourne Hotel, Duke’s Lawn, Grafton Street, Capel Street, City Hall, George’s street, Westmoreland Street, Egan’s (pub), Ely Street…’, the list goes on! And all in only a dozen pages! First of it all it tells us what a great walker Joyce was in his day. It tells us how well he knew his home city. How even in exile how much he thought about his home city (it never left him). And it makes you wonder if he was the first writer of Dublin to put these places on the map. He creates a great historic atmosphere, and makes you long to go there (again).


THE BOARDING HOUSE-

A story that has some basis in truth (as many of the stories do), loosely based on a Joyce family scandal. Mrs Mooney runs the boarding house, and as with many institutions like this, interesting things go on within its walls. See Roald Dahhl’s ‘The Landlady’, or M J Hyland’s chilling ‘This Is Now’ as good examples.

We aren’t talking murder here though, just good old fashioned pre-marital sex- in Ireland of all places, near the turn of the century.

Polly, we are told, is a ‘slim girl of nineteen.’ And she attracts lots of male attention. Her first job was as an office typist, but a ‘disreputable sheriff’s man’ notices her, and that puts paid to that. So Polly finds herself working in the boarding house with mum, doing housework. But that becomes problematic- you see, Polly is a ‘lively’ girl- she flirts with the young male boarders, and is probably lucky she doesn’t end up in one of the Magdalene Laundries.

Mrs Mooney knows the truth, but when she decides to intervene it comforts her to hold the line that (Mr Doran) has ‘taken advantage of Polly’s youth and inexperience.’ But there is a dead giveaway as Joyce tells us in lovely prose:

‘He remembered well, with the curious patient memory of the celibate, the first casual caresses her dress, her breath, her fingers, had given him. Then late one night as he was undressing for bed she had tapped at his door, timidly. She wanted to relight her candle at his for hers had been blown out by a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open combing-jacket of printed flannel. Her white instep shone in the opening of her furry slippers and the blood glowed warmly behind her perfumed skin. From her hands and wrists too as she lit and steadied her candle a faint perfume arose.’

So she is a temptress! What would our feminists say of all this? Polly has seduced Mr Doran, now she is without honour, and teary, and Mrs Mooney has secured Mr Doran’s unhappy promise. Joyce ends his story in typical enigmatic style: ‘Then she remembered what she had been waiting for.’

A LITTLE CLOUD-

Quite interesting and quite charming, this story seems to take its life from Joyce’s friendship with a character (in every sense of the word) that he grew up with in Dublin called Gogarty, a man who it is said modelled his life on Oscar Wilde (in this story he is ‘Ignatius Gallaher’). Ignatius tells his unworldly friend, Little Chandler, about all the exotic delights of life abroad, in particular Paris. Under Gallaher’s influence, Little Chandler starts to see the restrictions of living in Dublin. Capel Street he describes as having ‘dull inelegance.’ According to Little Chandler, as the young Joyce always felt, ‘if you wanted to succeed you had to go away’ (which is the story of the literary life of Dublin, as Wilde, Beckett, et al would testify).

Gallaher is full of himself and is an awful snob. Dublin has become ‘dear dirty Dublin’ to him. Joyce has great fun at his expense- ‘I’ve been to the Moulin Rouge…I’ve been to all the bohemian cafes. Hot stuff!’ Even though Gallaher is back slumming it in Dublin, he calls out to the bar waiter ‘Here garcon, bring us to halves of malt whiskey, like a good fellow.’ (What French!). Of course it is inevitable that Gallaher knows about the ‘cocottes’, and that there’s ‘no woman like the Parisienne.’ Little Chandler, by contrast, on the topic of places visited, can only confess ‘I’ve been to the Isle of Man’(!). What’s more, Gallaher professes to be an expert on vices- Berlin wins the prize for being the most immoral city in Europe. At this stage he is starting to sound a bit like old Carl Luce from ‘Catcher in the Rye’, who impresses Holden with his knowledge of ‘flits.’

After his heightened experience with Gallaher, Little Chandler goes home to his depressing domesticity. His wife Annie is cross, and he is having doubts about his feelings for her, and there is a certain squalor that envelops him as he sits unhappily in the house. Even worse, the child starts crying then screaming when Little Chandler screams at him, and his wife becomes accusatory and snatches the child from him, leaving Little Chandler feeling helpless and morose, and useless all at the same time- ‘tears of remorse started to his eyes.’

It’s a depressing ending, but an excellent snapshot of a tawdry domestic existence, contrasted really well with Gallaher’s seemingly free and glamorous lifestyle. It irks Little Chandler, because he feels that Gallaher is his ‘inferior in birth and education’, yet he is the one who is ‘trapped for life.’

I have consulted D H Lawrence’s published CUP letters- all 8 volumes of them- and I can’t find any reference to Lawrence having read ‘Dubliners’, although he probably did. There is a passage that strikes me as very Lawrentian in its passion and grimness. It could easily fit into ‘Sons and Lovers’- you can just hear Mr and Mrs Morel:

‘The door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.

“What is it? What is it?” she cried.

The child, hearing its mother’s voice, broke out into a paroxysm of sobbing.

“It’s nothing, Annie…it’s nothing…” He began to cry…

She flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.

“What have you done to him?” she cried, glaring into his face.’

                             

                                                       

PREMATURE DEATHS

JAMES JOYCE AND D H LAWRENCE: A SERIES OF COMPARISONS


1. THE SEARCH FOR HEALTH

I FIND myself becoming intrigued by the life of James Joyce, burrowing deeply into a new book- JAMES JOYCE A BIOGRAPHY, by Gordon Bowker (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). I was at the local library the other day, intending to look, not borrow, as a new thick book from ‘Book Depository’ had just arrived in the mail. But here I was picking up the Joyce and re-discovering that he wrote puzzling novels, found fame in his lifetime, was married to Nora Barnacle and lived in exile. Without knowing too much more, I couldn’t resist taking it home, and here I am nearly finished just a few days later, enthralled with what I am reading.



D H Lawrence has lived with me inside my head for about twenty years now. Lawrence and Joyce never met- but I can’t help thinking of Lawrence the whole time I am reading this book. They were born roughly the same time, although Joyce lived a whole decade more. And there are interesting parallels.

Lawrence suffered a major affliction his whole working life that made writing difficult, especially for the last six or seven years until his death in 1930. This was tuberculosis and the constant search for an improvement to his health. As a result, towards the end, novels and stories were few and far between. A short walk would tire him out. He would spend most days sitting up in bed. Lawrence was always outwardly in denial about his tuberculosis. He often referred to ‘trouble with his bronchials’, or his ‘miserable bronchials, as if it were a passing thing. When he began spitting blood, and after one or two haemorrhages, the writing must have been on the wall. We know from reports that this was happening by 1924 when Lawrence and his wife were living in New Mexico, just after their Australian adventure. The following year, in Mexico City, Lawrence was formally diagnosed with tuberculosis, in one lung. When he returned to Europe he would keep other guests from hotels he stayed in awake with his nocturnal coughing.


The first time he nearly died was in 1901 with pneumonia, then again when he was a teacher when a young man in Croydon in 1911. Lawrence’s health would always be precarious, especially after the age 21. He is thought to have been born with a weak chest.

Joyce, similarly, struggled with a major impediment in the same period, beginning mainly it seems during the long gestation of Ulysees. It was his numerous eye afflictions with his left eye in particular, and sometimes his right. I lost count of the number of eye operations Joyce had, as well as the amount of references to eye troubles there were referenced in Bowker’s book. Words like atrophied retina, abnormal optic nerve, glaucoma, capsulotomy, episcleritis, scopolamine poisoning, conjunctivitis, calcified cataracts and traumatic iritis abound throughout. By the mid to late thirties Joyce was often using a magnifying glass to read his own work. This was coupled with serious stomach ulcers, and in the end badly damaged intestines which eventually killed him.

Lawrence lived for 45 years. He was very weak towards the end and was mostly writing shorter pieces of work, like poetry and reviews. Joyce lived considerably longer- until the age of 58- yet wrote very little of significance in the 10 years he outlasted Lawrence. He had started what would become Finnegan’s Wake by 1924, and this is what primarily absorbed him until his death in 1940. Some people believe Finnegan’s Wake was ultimately unreadable and a waste of time. If this is true, then in literary terms he may as well have ended his life the same time as Lawrence, or even before. But of course it would depend on who you talk to.

                                  

A true third person account of teaching in Nottinghamshire, mildly censored

George had been at the hellish school for three days now. The only pleasant thing about each school day was the lovely drive. Every morning he would depart from his Nottingham home at 8 o’clock and slip the Nick Cave cassette on in his car. The music was buoyant, with bold, pulsating rhythms: The music not only woke him up; it also seemed to instil in him some confidence, some Dutch courage he needed to just simply arrive at his destination. The drive was thirty minutes and the pretty roads wended their way through tiny villages, some with friendly post offices and proud little community churches. It was winter and the fields were green and usually wet with rain. Every day so far on the same bend he would see black birds all in a row alight from a wire fence. Relaxed and nodding with the music he would greet cows and sheep with a toot from his horn. School children from various district schools were always waiting by the side of one of the narrow roads, holding an umbrella and text messaging at the same time. He didn’t quite have the courage to toot them as well, although he always wanted to.



The lovely uplifting drive ended each day at the black, sombre school gates. The English co-ordinator this particular day smiled at him, grateful it seemed that he was back for the third day now. A silent understanding between them as if to say ‘we appreciate the fact that that you’re hanging in’. She was diminutive and  looked, George had told his wife, just like the malevolent dwarf in the Julie Christie film ‘Don’t Look Now’. As was the pattern so far there was very little chatter in the staff room. Tired mouths sipping coffee. Looks of resignation. Foot weary soldiers who know they are about to lose yet another battle.

George crept away to his form room and saw several students in the corridor leaning against furniture, talking loudly. Unlike other schools he’d taught in, he couldn’t find any art work or posters on the cream- coloured walls. A couple of empty glass display cabinets and a student’s yearly planner on the floor. As he arrived at Room 41 to place his key in the lock he noticed that for the second day running somebody had forced pencil shavings and bits of paper in the lock. It took several minutes to dig it all out. He wondered who had done this and why. What was the point? At least this time there wasn’t saliva on the door handle as well.
Time stretched inexorably towards 9 o’clock. The form meeting with the year 11’s passed without too much trouble. George even had some banter with a girl he called ‘Polly Page’ because she looked like Polly Page. ‘The calm before the storm’ he prophesied to himself. Soon, outside the door, the day’s first class announced itself with a loud thud against the wall, someone rummaging for last place with some obnoxious shouting and swearing.

This was a Year 10 English class that George spent some of the night worrying about. He hadn’t done any photocopying, yet he knew some of the students wouldn’t have their anthologies. They ‘filed in’ in an ugly mass. After setting some comprehension work that only about half the class had bothered listening to, George left them to it, interjecting now and then with an unassertive ‘Get back to your work!’ and ‘A bit quieter so we can all think!’

George knew this had little effect, and he now spent several minutes tuning into some conversations. He couldn’t believe his ears. Courtney and her friends were compiling a list of boys’ names and drawing bar graphs. Noise he could tolerate, however obscenity offended something deep in his consciousness. He lurched forward and yelled at the group and told them to continue with the set work. His voice, louder and more urgent this time, drew a few furtive glances in the first rows, and only amusement at the back.

Nevertheless this surprisingly settled things down somewhat. In a one- hour lesson, only half an hour remained. George contemplated asking for quiet to see, as a class together, whether or not they could co-operate enough to discuss the first answers. Then, suddenly, the mood of the classroom changed.
Courtney decided to yell a question at one of the girls she disliked near the back of the room. It was loud, insistent, and received a huge reaction. ‘Charlotte, is it true you….’ His temperament inflamed, George dealt with it quickly. ‘Ok, get out! I’m sick of your disgusting conversations. Your behaviour isn’t good enough for my room. Out now and shut the door after you!’

Courtney did go, arching her spine and walking haughtily towards the door. As she passed George she looked at him steadfastly and repeated a further obscenity. George simply uttered ‘charming’ and to his surprise there was no more than a snigger floating across the floor. It was clear that some sort of mutual moral code had been broken, and over twenty people at that moment agreed that Courtney had to go.
Only a few days here, and already George knew that things were done by telephone at this school. He rang the Deputy Head, Mr P, who had shown him around at the beginning of the week. ‘Yes, yes, I know Courtney, I’ll speak to her myself’.

In the ‘palatial’ surrounds of the staffroom George was delivered the sobering news from seasoned staff members: ‘Forget it. The girls at this school, and especially the pretty ones like Courtney, have Mr P wrapped around their little finger. She’ll say ‘now would I speak like that Mr P?’ and he’ll say ‘Well I hope not, Courtney, that doesn’t sound like you’, and she’ll say ‘Now Mr P you know I’m always a good little girl’ and he’ll say ‘Well I hope I don’t hear any more stories about you upsetting your teachers..’
In the circumstances George felt it might be better approaching the Head of Year 10. He didn’t want the little vixen in his class again without an apology. He told Mr P that this was his preferred option, and it was all sorted out, albeit rather haphazardly. “Oh, alright, I’ll take your class then, but I can only give you fifteen minutes!”

George met the Year 10 Head in rather unfortunate circumstances in the corridor near her office some twenty minutes later. “Are you the teacher that I’ve been told I’m having a meeting with period five? Well thanks very much, that’s my only spare for the entire day.”

Her office was, to put it simply, a mess. The school had in place a system in which teachers would make a report about student misconduct on either blue or pink forms: blue was for the more mild transgressions, and pink was used for more serious classroom breaches of discipline. George had filled in a pink form for the incident with Courtney earlier. There were a few blue forms scattered on top of the Head’s filing cabinet. For the pink forms, there was a large pile. George estimated about forty or fifty. Books about accounting and legal studies were lying on the dirty shagpile floor, and a spectacular poster advertising Cumbria was wrinkled and coming away from the wall. A cheap desktop calendar displayed ‘June 30’ which was a Friday about three months ago.

The Head, herself, was hardly a sight to inspire. Greasy hair. Tired, bulging eyes. A grimace as she got up to stand beside her desk. And a large mass of fat circling her waist making a wobbling ring. George would feel several emotions whilst he was inside the Head’s office. The first of these was pity.
“Take a look at me. What do you see?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m fat, aren’t I? Look at me. Do you think I’m happy in this job? Do you know how much work I’ve got to do? I won’t even get to have my lunch today. This job’s driving me crazy. Can you tell I’ve let everything go?”

George began to tell the Head she should resign, that it isn’t worth it, when Courtney knocked on the door.
The interview wasn’t going very well- Courtney had her back to George much of the time as the Head asked for assurances of better behaviour. These assurances were so pathetic that George decided he must be firm. He wanted Courtney to sign a statement stipulating that she would only talk in George’s room if she was asked to- by George. After all George ‘couldn’t be confident about what might come out of Courtney’s mouth’. Furthermore, if she broke this necessary rule, George would have no choice but to tell her she must leave.

It seemed that both The Head and Courtney were so anxious for this meeting to end that within a minute or two the form was signed and the meeting was over. As unsatisfactory as the meeting was, Courtney didn’t come to George’s class again after this. So in a sense there was a positive outcome. Not long after George received a blunt letter from Courtney’s mother telling him he was ‘spineless’, or words to that effect. For four more weeks George and Nick Cave made the trip every weekday morning and evening. Then it all came to an end when another window opened in Gloucestershire, which offered a much sunnier and all ‘round more pleasant vista.