This essay and guide is the first part of several longer and more
complete studies that I currently have underway.[1]
It opens with a General Survey of Joyce's Ulysses Manuscripts, which is a non-technical, summary overview
of the various ways in which Joyce used different kinds of manuscripts to write
Ulysses.[2]
The general survey is a preamble to the eleven sections that follow; these are
more specialised, partial introductions to about half of the NLI's 'Joyce Papers 2002'.[3]
Finally, I have compiled a Census of the Extant Ulysses
Holograph Manuscripts that appears here as an
appendix.
This opening foray
into the NLI's collection of Joyce
manuscripts includes his juvenilia, but the principal focus here is on the Ulysses draft manuscripts that Joyce wrote from 1917 to 1919, as
well as on all of the newly discovered Ulysses
notebooks that he compiled in 1917 and then in 1921. This initial critical examination of the documents is part of my
continuing effort to catalogue as well as establish digital and print editions
in accordance with copyright. This kind of analysis is fundamental to
subsequent interpretive work on the genesis of Ulysses. The following manuscripts are dealt with here in varying
degrees of comprehensiveness and detail:
Manuscript Name: |
NLI MS Number: |
MS 36,639/01 |
|
MS 36,639/02/A |
|
MS 36,639/03 |
|
MS 36,639/04 |
|
MS 36,639/05/A |
|
MS 36,639/05/B |
|
MS 36,639/06 |
|
Earlier Partial Drafts of
'Proteus' and 'Sirens' and Notes: 1917 |
MSS 36,639/07/A–B |
MSS 36,639/08/A–C |
|
MS 36,639/09 |
|
MS 36,639/10 |
This first piece
ends with Joyce's work on the
NLI's proto-draft of 'Cyclops' in 1919 because it is one of several pivotal
junctures in the development of Ulysses. This transitional period remains a significant turning
point in the transformation of the novel, even though we now know that what
Michael Groden designated as the 'middle stage' is actually composed of a
series of much more complex and nuanced incremental phases.[4]
Similarly, the later phases of Ulysses in process
are also better understood as a series of gradated innovations rather than
distinct breaks with what Joyce
had already accomplished.
Therefore, other studies will take up what
follows: the two draft levels of the 'Oxen of the Sun' manuscripts (NLI MSS
36,639/11/A–F); the two new NLI 'Circe' manuscripts (MS 36,639/12 and the
so-called 'Quinn draft' of 'Circe' [MS 35,958]);
the earlier proto-draft of 'Ithaca' (MS 36,639/13);
the complete, earlier draft of 'Penelope' (MS 36,639/14); as well as the
NLI's relatively disparate Finnegans
Wake manuscripts (MSS
36,639/15–19 and the 'Joyce Papers 2006' [MS 41,818], among others). Each of
these groupings of manuscripts require an individual in-depth analysis, in part
due to their complex inter-relationships with other manuscripts in the Poetry
Collection, University at Buffalo, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, the
British Library, and elsewhere. I have already catalogued all the related
Buffalo manuscripts, and I will treat these other, later NLI Joyce manuscripts
in forthcoming publications.[5]
The focus on each of the manuscripts I
discuss below is purposefully diverse and eclectic; there are many other topics
that need to be analysed and so this first foray is meant to encourage further
study and discussion. These particular analyses are concerned with a range of
specific (historical-material-textual) genetic issues that have a bearing on
our current understanding of Joyce's compositional practices, specifically regarding his work on Ulysses from 1917 to mid
1921–about which we know so much more from these new manuscripts. For now the
goal is to determine what this kind of information can tell us about the state
of Ulysses in 1917–19. The scholarly perspective here is
necessarily more bibliographical than my current (critical-interpretive) genetic work: Becoming the Blooms: Joyce's
Art of Storytelling in 'Ulysses'.
The various distinct instantiations of Ulysses
are indeed fixed and at least temporarily 'finalised' at each particular
juncture in manuscript and in print. This is most obviously the case when Ulysses
appeared as a published work from March 1918 first in parts and then as
editions as well as further printings. Nonetheless,
for at least some of Joyce's readers, the book as a product is intrinsically
embedded in the creative process; in fact, publication is only a momentarily
distinguishable event in the process of genetic readings.[6]
Therefore, to better understand what the text has come to mean as published,
the genetic critical endeavour involves disentangling the text's many distinct
versions along the way.
The descriptions and analyses below try to isolate
the text of Ulysses at particular
points in time during the work's seven-year evolution; this type of study
permits readers to discriminate between those features of the work that Joyce
had already set in place and those that were yet to come, without privileging
the earlier ideas and texts over later ones. In general, by focusing on the
creative process of a text's genesis, readers and critics can avoid
essentialising characterisations of what Ulysses
is and thereby avoid succumbing to the fallacy that the work we have in its
published forms was something both timeless and necessary.
Although the approach is variously defined
and practiced,[7]
I maintain that a methodical understanding of the historical, material, and
textual aspects of Joyce's manuscripts is
a necessary foundation for genetic criticism to be an effective tool in the
critical interpretation of his
works. Genetic criticism is indeed founded on an assemblage of the verifiable
information that happens to be documented in the necessarily partial material
traces of a work's evolution. Some literary critics still persist in
marginalising the 'scientific' aspect of genetic criticism at a time when
historical and material textual approaches have assumed once again a central
position in Joyce studies and more generally in modernist studies. Nonetheless,
it is precisely these grounded approaches that are the basis of the interpretive
insights and hypotheses that a genetic-historicist critic is able to put
forward. Furthermore, while generally rigorous in terms of the evidence it
marshals, genetic criticism encourages rather than hinders a multiplicity of
perspectives and a broad range of readings and interpretations. In fact, one of
its strengths as a form of critical interpretation lies in its ability to
destabilise seemingly categorical statements based solely on the evidence of a
singular, unitary, published text and the monolithic critical conclusions it
encourages.
An example here is the best way to
illustrate these more abstract points. It was as early as July 1918 that the
first readers of Ulysses
in The Little Review discovered some
details about Leopold Bloom's father, Rudolph Virag, who changed his surname in
Ireland. The information is given in an oblique way in 'Lotus Eaters'. Shortly
after collecting Martha Clifford's letter at the Westland Row post office and a
meandering conversation with C.P. McCoy, Bloom sees an advert for Leah with Mrs Bandmann Palmer and
thinks:
Leah
tonight: Mrs. Bandmann
Palmer. Like to see her in that again. Poor papa! How he used to talk about
Kate Bateman in that! Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to
get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What
is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking about where the
old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.
Nathan's voice! His son's
voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father to die of grief and
misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and left the God of his
father.
Every word is so deep,
Leopold.
Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad
I didn't go into the room to look at his face. That day! O dear! O dear! Ffoo!
Well, perhaps it was the best for him.
This is how the scene read in The
Little Review (see U 5.194–209).
As far as the fictional biography of Leopold Bloom is concerned, the most
important fact readers will glean from this scene is the year of Bloom's birth:
1866. As so often happens in Ulysses, Bloom tends to date the events in his
own life by correlating them with other personal and historical events, though
in this case the associations are partially erroneous. On the one hand, the
popular American actress Millicent Bandmann-Palmer did in fact play in Leah the Forsaken at the Gaiety in
Dublin the week of 16 June 1904. On the other hand, Bloom recalls his father
waiting to see Kate Bateman, another famous actress, in Leah in the Adelphi theatre in London in 1865, the year before
Bloom was born. Actually, Bateman appeared in Leah at the Adelphi in October 1863, a fact that Joyce was most
likely aware of given all the other accurate historical details that structure
this passage and Ulysses
more generally. This is just one instance when Joyce was willing to alter
historical details for the sake of the fictional histories of his characters.
Furthermore, once readers are able to piece together
the story of Bloom's father, the play, which is based on Salomon Hermann Mosenthal's Deborah, has obvious resonances for the
story of Rudolph Virag and Ulysses.
Simply put: the play is about Leah, the leader of a band of wandering Jews, who
have fled from religious persecution in Hungary. Along the way, they stop in an
Austrian town where she falls in love with a Catholic boy named Rudolf, but
Rudolf's father, Nathan, a converted Jew, eventually breaks off the romance
between the two lovers. It seems that the important facts readers are to gather
from this passage in 'Lotus Eaters' are: 1) this is the first time we are told
the year of Leopold Bloom's birth; 2) the fact that Rudolph Virag was not yet
in Dublin in 1865, the year before Bloom was born; and 3) the thematic link between
Rudolph Virag Bloom's life and the play, Leah.
But, as usual, when Joyce revised and amplified this
passage, he did so more than once. The first time was about three years later (in
early 1921) when he added the following bit of historical detail on the
typescript for the publication of Ulysses:
Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to see
her again in that. ^Hamlet she played
last night. Male impersonator.^ Poor papa! [...] (see U 5.194–7)
As well as having the leading role in Leah, Bandmann-Palmer did in fact also play Hamlet at the Gaiety
during the week of 16 June 1904, and so she was indeed a male impersonator. It
seems that here, at least initially, Joyce was primarily concerned with adding
further realistic historical details. But, then at the end of June 1921 (on the
second setting of this text in proofs), he made yet another addition to this
scene. Among other things, this subsequent addition further strengthens the
work's structural parallels to Shakespeare's works, but it also more overtly introduces
the sombre issue of 'death by misadventure' as it is called in the next episode
(U 6.634):
Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to see
her again in that. Hamlet she played
last night. Male impersonator. ^Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed
suicide.^ Poor papa! [...] (U 5.194–7)
Following only the logic of the associations in the published text,
readers of Ulysses
would be correct to presume that it was Bloom's thoughts about Ophelia's
suicide that prompted him to think of his own father's death, but reading the
work genetically (that is, as it evolved in a piecemeal manner over an extended
period of time on several different manuscripts), we see that Joyce actually
worked the other way round: it was the more basic description of Bloom's
thoughts about Leah and Virag's
suicide that prompted Joyce three years later to reinforce an already complex
inter-textual parallel to Shakespeare's plays.
The overlaid network of Shakespearian allusions in
the published text seems to encourage the view that they prompted Bloom's
sombre thoughts about his father's suicide, a view that has been held by
generations of readers and critics; however, by disentangling the creative
prompts that generated these additional texts, this singular critical approach
to the scene is destabilised and multiple other avenues of interpretation are
thereby opened up. It is worth noting that all of the information about the
Shakespearean additions to this scene was fully documented in Gabler's Ulysses:
A Critical and Synoptic Edition since
1984 and was therefore available to any reader who wanted to examine the later
evolution of the work.[8]
This is a relatively late example of Joyce's more general tendency to continue to move away from
'character psychology' towards various forms of inter-textual subjectivity; which is one of the issues I will be investigating
in Becoming the Blooms.
We can all agree that, if we let them, the
various published
versions of Joyce's works are more than enough to keep us busy for the rest of
our lives. But, as the works make abundantly clear, Joyce incorporated issues about textual
production and reception into the very fabric of his writing. Therefore, by concentrating the critical reading of
the text on how it is documented in the material traces of its different
manuscripts and printed states, we see what Ulysses
actually was in process at various
stages. This form of genetic criticism also explores what the work could have been and therefore
historically re-contextualises the published work we all read. By following this evolution we simply have more versions of
Ulysses to study and read; we inherit
a wider, even more complex textual canvas for our critical interpretations as
well as for our enjoyment as readers.
The
text of the first edition of Ulysses
in 1922 was notoriously flawed, and from then on there have been various
efforts by Joyce, his printers, publishers, editors, collaborators, friends,
and others to 'fix' or otherwise 'correct' the text. More recently, earlier
manuscript evidence has come to play an increasingly decisive role in the
textual debates surrounding Ulysses.
Until 2000, only twenty-two of Joyce's Ulysses
early (pre-faircopy) holograph manuscripts were known to survive, all but two of which
were at the University at Buffalo.[10]
That year the NLI acquired a new draft of 'Circe'.[11]
Less than a year later another manuscript, this one for 'Eumaeus', came to
light and was acquired by an anonymous private collector.[12]
In 2002, the NLI acquired fifteen further new manuscripts for eight of the
eighteen episodes of Ulysses, along
with other manuscripts; these are the 'Joyce Papers 2002'. Assimilating all of
this new evidence is an ongoing collaborative endeavour.
?? Joyce was not the kind of writer who paid
much attention to the quality of his tools; his notebooks, paper, pencils,
pens, and crayons were almost always of the most ordinary and inexpensive
types. Like his notebooks, most of the copybooks in which he wrote the various
drafts of Ulysses were also simple
jotters and children's exercise books that he could easily acquire at any local
stationer's shop in Trieste, Zurich, or Paris. He also used loose sheets of
paper. For Ulysses, there are five
broad categories of manuscript kinds: Notes, Drafts, Faircopies, Typescripts, and Proofs.
Roughly speaking, today there are over a hundred
pages of notes for Ulysses (in the
BL, the NLI, and in Buffalo); there are about thirty-nine holograph drafts
(twenty in Buffalo, two at Cornell University, sixteen in the NLI, and at least
one in a private collection); there are over eight hundred pages of the
Rosenbach 'faircopy' manuscript in Philadelphia; and there are also over one
thousand four hundred pages of typescript (almost all of the surviving typescript pages are at Buffalo), of which over
one thousand pages are for the 'Circe' and 'Ithaca' episodes alone; as well as
over five thousand pages of galley and page proofs for the first edition of Ulysses that are housed in the Houghton
Library (Harvard University), Buffalo, the Firestone Library (Princeton
University, New Jersey), and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
(University of Texas, Austin). There are further Ulysses manuscripts elsewhere.
Although the physical documents are spread out in
Europe and across the United States, the Rosenbach manuscript was reproduced in
colour facsimile in 1975 and subsequently all of the other then known Ulysses manuscripts were reproduced in
black and white photo-facsimile in the JJA
in 1977–8. This publishing and scholarly effort culminated in the production of
the three-volume Ulysses:
A Critical and Synoptic Edition of Ulysses, prepared by Hans Walter Gabler, Wolfhard Steppe and Claus
Melchior in 1984. This monumental achievement has made the study of the
evolution of Ulysses from the
Rosenbach manuscript to Ulysses accessible to scholars who do not have
access to the actual manuscripts or the published facsimiles.
Joyce
built all of his works from words, phrases, and fragments that he culled from a
myriad of printed sources and then slowly and carefully made his own.[13] As
far we know, it seems that he first compiled his notes on slips of paper or
simple pocket notebooks, usually in pencil; throughout his writing career Joyce
rarely recorded his sources. Although there must have been many such documents,
only one such notebook survives. Joyce compiled this Ulysses notebook in Zurich in early 1918. His English friend there
at the time, the painter Frank Budgen, vividly captured the writer's methods:
In
one of the richest pages of Ulysses
Stephen, on the sea shore [in 'Proteus'], communing with himself and
tentatively building with words, calls for his tablets. These should have been
library slips, acquired by the impecunious and ingenious poet from the library
counter [at the NLI]. On that occasion he had forgotten to provide himself with
this convenient writing material, and was forced to use the fag-end of Mr.
Deasy's letter. As far as concerns the need for tablets, the self-portrait was
still like, only in Z?rich Joyce was never without and they were not library
slips, but little writing blocks specially made for the waistcoat pocket. At
intervals, alone or in conversation, seated or walking, one of these tablets
was produced, and a word or two scribbled on it at lightning speed as ear or
memory served his turn.[14]
The
surviving notebooks document the artisan-like way in which Joyce gathered
material and then assembled Ulysses.
Joyce wrote these notes hastily and only for himself, which accounts for the
appearance of his handwriting in the notebooks (as opposed to the meticulous
way in which he wrote his manuscripts for his typists and other readers). Then
he habitually crossed through the words he had incorporated into his writings
with variously coloured crayons. He did not use one particular crayon colour
for different episodes as some scholars had thought previously. Instead,
whether working on Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, Joyce systematically
would use one colour crayon to cross through the notes he used on a particular
draft level (that is, during the same period of composition or revision of the
text). Budgen's account of Joyce's
note-taking practices continues:
No
one knew how all this material was given place in the completed pattern of his
work, but from time to time in Joyce's flat one caught glimpses of a few of
those big orange-coloured envelopes that are one of the glories of Switzerland,
and these I always took to be store-houses of building material. The method of
making a multitude of criss-cross notes in pencil was a strange one for a man
whose sight was never good. A necessary adjunct to the method was a huge oblong
magnifying glass.[15]
As
Joyce's work on Ulysses progressed,
he copied in ink his earlier notes from various notebooks into new ones or on
to large sheets of paper; these are what I call 'second order'
note-repositories. He generally organized his notes under headings; usually
these were the names of the episodes, but in at least one early instance he
used character names or thematic subject headings. This 'subject' notebook is
the earliest surviving compilation notebook. Some of the headings are obviously
relevant, while others play more subtle roles in Ulysses. On the last page of the notebook, Joyce simply resorted to
a catchall category he would use again in his notebooks: 'Words'. He
incorporated these words in every
episode of Ulysses in different
drafts, typescript, and proofs from 1918 through 1921. He used at least a dozen
of these notes word-for-word in 'Cyclops' and at least three each ins 'Telemachus' and 'Scylla and Charybdis'.
As far as
we know based on the later note-repositories that survive, Joyce seems to have
found that sorting his notes by episode headings was a more effective procedure
for writing and revising Ulysses. In
general, he was quite methodical in the way he organized these later 'episode'
notebooks and notesheets. Joyce would write all of the headings first,
underline them in crayon, and then fill the pages as he came across words and
phrases elsewhere that he thought were appropriate to one or another episode,
although it was not uncommon for him to ultimately use a note in a different
episode. Joyce sorted his older notes in the main body of the page and left
himself an ever-expanding left-hand margin because (just as with his drafts) he
knew he would use that space to add yet more words and phrases. Joyce filled
the margins of these note-repositories these words and phrases in any open
space, and often in several different directions. There are many examples of
incredibly cluttered and wonderfully colourful pages in Joyce's Ulysses notebooks and notesheets.
Joyce
did not write Ulysses from its first
to its last word consecutively, rather at least initially he wrote the episodes
in a non-sequential order as the contours of the work evolved and expanded over
many years.[16]
Then, with the prospect of having his work published, he wrote and then rewrote
the individual episodes of Ulysses
successively from late 1917 through mid 1921, elaborating the text at each
stage. It is unlikely that any of the Ulysses
manuscripts that are known to survive are complete first drafts, although there
are quite a few first draft sections in many of these manuscripts. Predictably
enough, the earlier versions of an episode's manuscripts are the most chaotic because
Joyce would often fill whatever open space he found on the page with more and
more text. These earlier drafts are usually the messiest and most difficult to
decipher, and seem also to have been so even for Joyce. He wanted to make sure
he had incorporated all of the material he had written, including the marginal
and left-hand page additions, so he would cross through methodically the text
in coloured crayons as he re-wrote it in later versions. In fact, this practice
is just an extension of Joyce's method when he used word and phrases from
his notebooks and, unsurprisingly, it is a common procedure with other writers
as well. In general, Joyce's cluttered earlier drafts were stages toward more
legible drafts.
?? Hampered by poor eyesight, but prompted by
his creative impulses, every stage of re-writing was an occasion to develop the
text. As far as we know Joyce recopied all of the Ulysses manuscripts by hand more than once before they were given
to a typist. From his earliest works onwards, from Stephen Hero to Finnegans
Wake, Joyce developed certain writing habits that he used throughout his
writing career. An example of this is that he usually filled the right-hand
page of a copybook first, leaving himself a wide and expanding left margin. He
then filled the margins as well as the left-hand page with further revisions
and additions, returning to the same manuscript again and again to add a word
or two in pencil, as well as many phrases and sentences and even paragraphs in
ink, between the lines, in the margins, and then in any available space.
?? His first compulsion was to transfer all of
the text he had already written on an earlier draft to the next version, but as
the author he was not constrained to act simply as a scribe when he copied out
the older versions of the text. In fact, Joyce regularly revised the text as
part of the process of rewriting the earlier version; this makes attempts to
'fix' the text particularly problematic for editors. These later drafts are
more uniform: the margins are more fixed; and the additions are generally less
numerous, but even these 'later' drafts are just the next stage in the creative
process. At every occasion, Joyce added further words, sentences, paragraphs,
whole sections, and even episodes to Ulysses.
For example, Joyce only conceived the pivotal episode, 'Wandering Rocks' (at
least as we know it) at the start of 1919. Quite ill at the time but with
pressing publication deadlines, he dictated (probably from previously written
but as yet unused fragments) the first complete draft of the episode to Frank
Budgen. Unlike other writers (Beckett, for example), Joyce rarely deleted
anything that he had already written.
From
September 1917 to March 1921, Joyce quite systematically re-wrote his drafts
yet again, sequentially episode by episode, but now he was doing so in his most
legible hand. The majority of these 'faircopy' (Rosenbach) manuscripts were
intended to provide a more readable copy of the text for the typists, although
Joyce still made further alterations to these 'clean' copies. It is important
to note that (due to various exigencies) the extant faircopy manuscript of Ulysses is a mixed document. For some of
the episodes, the faircopies were certainly used to produce the extant typescripts,[17] and
these in turn were used to set up The
Little Review instalments of Ulysses.[18]
On the other hand, for other episodes the Rosenbach manuscript versions were clearly
not used to produce the typescript.[19]
Finally, only some individual pages (or sections) of the Rosenbach manuscript
were used to produce the typescripts of 'Nausicaa' and 'Oxen of the Sun': Joyce
presumably recopied the other pages because they had become too messy with
additions and changes to be suitable for sale. Therefore, the Rosenbach
manuscript has been central to the debates concerning the 'critically edited'
texts of Ulysses since 1984.
??????????? Joyce's
'faircopy manuscript' of Ulysses comprises
over eight hundred leaves. Almost seven hundred are loose sheets, the rest are
in two notebooks (for 'Ithaca' and 'Penelope') that are similar to Joyce's
draft manuscripts. The two new NLI manuscripts for those episodes reveal that
the 'faircopy' versions of these final episodes are much more complicated and
problematic than was previously thought, although the Rosenbach manuscript
versions of these episodes were also used to produce the typescripts.
?? Another reason Joyce re-copied his manuscript
in a clear and legible hand, in this case on relatively expensive paper, was
because he was selling it piecemeal to John Quinn. Modern manuscript collectors
had always prized these relatively uniform and more traditional 'holograph
manuscripts' (that is, manuscripts that are 'hand-written' by the author).
Quinn, the New York, Irish-American lawyer who had unsuccessfully defended the
editors of The Little Review in court, was also a well known patron and collector
of the arts, specifically of modernist literature and painting. He had also
bought Joyce's holograph manuscript of Exiles
in March 1917, and then he wrote a laudatory review of A Portrait for Vanity Fair.
In 1923–4 Quinn put his vast collection of rare books, manuscripts, and art for
sale at auction. A.S.W. Rosenbach, one of the most influential manuscript and
book dealers of his era, acquired Quinn's Ulysses manuscript, and it is now at the
Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
At
the end of 1917, the prospect that Ulysses
would begin to appear serially in The
Little Review in the US and The Egoist
in the UK prompted Joyce to have his manuscripts typed. He gave the typists
precise instructions to leave a wide left-hand (and almost no right-hand)
margin on the page because he knew he would use that space for corrections and
further additions, just as he usually did when he wrote by hand. Most of the
typescripts of the first fourteen episodes that appeared serially in magazines were typed in at least three copies.
Joyce similarly corrected and revised at least two of these copies at the same
time, but he only cursorily revised a third, and we think this was usually the
copy he retained. He would then send at least one copy to Ezra Pound, who
passed it on to The Little Review for serial publication.
Joyce expected to be able to further revise the published The Little Review text for the printing of Ulysses, but this sensible plan
became untenable for various reasons.
Only five
instalments of Ulysses appeared in The Egoist from January-February through
December 1919: 'Nestor', 'Proteus', 'Hades', and a portion of 'Wandering
Rocks'. On the other hand, Ulysses
appeared in twenty-three issues of The
Little Review from March 1918 to September-December 1920, but its editorial
policy of 'Making No Compromise with Public Taste' caused the magazine and Ulysses to be censored and then banned
in the United States. The Little Review did manage to publish
'Telemachus' to the first section of 'Oxen of the Sun', although four issues
were seized by the US authorities: the January 1919 issue, with
'Lestrygonians'; the April-May issue, with the second instalment of 'Scylla
& Charybdis'; the January 1920 issue, with the middle portion of 'Cyclops';
and, finally, the July-August issue, with the concluding portion of 'Nausicaa'.
In December 1920, The Little Review was suspended. For some
reason only a few pages of the typescripts for the first three episodes
are known to have survived, even though they too were used to set up the proofs for Ulysses, just like the typescripts for all
the later episodes.
Joyce
wrote all of his works by hand. His friend, Frank Budgen, recounts the
following scene:
In
leaving the caf? I asked Joyce how long he had been working on Ulysses.
'About
five years,' he said. 'But in a sense all my life.'
'Some
of your contemporaries,' I said, 'think two books a year an average output.'
'Yes,'
said Joyce. 'But how do they do it? They talk them into a typewriter. I feel
quite capable of doing that if I wanted to do it. But what's the use? It isn't
worth doing.'[20]
Although
later in life Joyce (reluctantly and unsuccessfully) tried to learn to use a
typewriter, this technique of writing did not suit his creative methods.
Therefore, he relied on an odd assortment of typists, often friends, as well as
friends of friends, only some of whom even owned their own typewriters. Beginning
in late 1917, the typescripts for the earlier episodes were prepared by one of
Joyce's friends, the 'English Players' actor, Claud Sykes. Since Joyce was
staying in Locarno, as Sykes prepared the typescript in Zurich, Joyce's
obsessive inclination to revise and alter the text prompted him to write
several postcards to Sykes (see,
for example, LI 108–9)
with instructions for changes to the text as it was being typed.
Many
factors contributed to the problem of getting Ulysses into print accurately as Joyce wrote it (or wanted it
written). Not only was his handwriting often difficult to read even on the
faircopy (especially for amateur typists), but Joyce also continued to make
numerous and substantial changes to the text on the typescripts as they were
returned to him. He kept at least one copy of the early typescripts, and he
further revised these same 1917–19 typescript copies in 1921 in final
preparation for the book's publication.
It
was only during the final stages of preparing Ulysses to appear in book form that Sylvia Beach and Joyce began
using secretaries or other professional typists. For different reasons, the
process of preparing each of the typescripts for the last episodes of Ulysses was unique. Getting 'Circe'
typed presented even more problems than Joyce had faced while writing the
episode. Four typists refused to undertake the work, some because they were
unwilling to grapple with the task and others because they objected to the
episode's content; in fact, in one instance, a typist's husband read Joyce's
manuscript and threw a portion of it in the fire. At this point, a troupe of
typists was finally recruited to get this typescript ready.
?? The typescript of the 'Eumaeus' episode was
odd because, while the professional typist did a relatively accurate job of reading
Joyce's manuscript, he or she tried to 'clarify' the episode's convoluted
grammar by adding around six hundred commas, which Joyce had to methodically
remove. This typist was also prudish to the point of leaving blank spaces where
s/he disapproved of certain words. Not only did Joyce make his usual rounds of
corrections and additions to this typescript, but he was also compelled to fill
in such words as 'shite' and 'bloody' on the typescript to prepare it for the
prospective printer of Ulysses.
Another of
Joyce's friends, the American author and publisher, Robert McAlmon, typed
'Penelope' in Paris in mid August 1921. According to an anecdote Richard
Ellmann recounts in his biography, the 'manuscript was so complicated and
Joyce's insertions so numerous that occasionally McAlmon got some of Molly's
thoughts out of place; he told himself it didn't much matter in what order her
unsystematic mind took them up' (JJII 514). Actually, the few changes McAlmon
made were minor and the care with which Joyce constructed the episode is well
documented in the manuscripts.
On 30
October 1921, Joyce announced that he had finished writing 'Ithaca' and so the
composition of Ulysses was complete
(see LIII 51). Now, with everyone anxious to get the book published on
2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday, Beach and Joyce used two different
typists, each with their own typewriters, to prepare the episode for the
printer. Not only were parts 'Ithaca' re-typed four separate times, but Joyce
also revised each version, adding sixteen percent more text from notes to the
typescript, before he sent it to the printer a full month later. With the later
'Ithaca' typescripts, Joyce would sometimes use the back of a preceding page
for yet more additions to a particular typescript page. He then tagged the
additions and drew lines to indicate where they belonged, just as he would with
his own hand-written manuscripts. Joyce then had some of the earlier, heavily
revised typescripts re-typed, often several times.
A
publisher usually supplies the printer with a complete, final working document
(either an author's handwritten manuscript or preferably a clean,
professionally prepared typescript) from which the process of setting the work
in print begins.[21] Joyce's manual artistry
was matched by his printers' artisanry preparing the book: Ulysses was all set, gathered, and
bound by hand. The process of getting a book printed is usually comprised of two
basic stages, the first of which is setting the text in 'galleys' (these are
long metal trays of typeset text from which proof sheets are pulled). With Ulysses
this initial phase of proofs is more accurately understood as a setting of text
as 'galleys in page' because, although the text is set continuously down the
sheet, it is already separated in page-length blocks. The proof sheets pulled from this
setting are known in French as 'placards' and for Ulysses they usually comprise
eight pages of text, set in four vertical columns of two pages each, that are
only printed on one side of the sheet, on inexpensive, often pulp paper. These
galley proofs are returned to the author, who is supposed to correct any
typesetting errors and make what relatively few changes are considered necessary.
On the other hand, Joyce made many significant alterations to the text on the
placards of Ulysses from how it had
appeared in print in the Little Review and on the typescripts Joyce submitted to the printer;
the most obvious examples are the 'crossheads' to 'Aeolus' that Joyce only
added as he revised the first setting of proofs.
Usually
the author returns several sets of corrected galleys to the printer, who then
sets up the 'gatherings' of page proofs for the final printing of the book. For
Ulysses,
these gatherings were printed as sixteen non-consecutive pages; that is, these
sheets were printed with eight pages on each side that could be folded in such
a way that the pages become sequential in the published book. Then, the author
checks these proof sheets again. Finally, the author indicates what corrections
still need to be made, or else the author and the publisher sign the page
proofs as ready to be printed as the published book. Based on the contract
between the publisher, the printer, and sometimes the author, a certain number
of further proofs are provided until the proofs are all 'signed off'. Then, in
general, the printed gatherings are assembled, the covers are attached, and so
the book is ready.
Very
little about the production of Ulysses
was straightforward. No established English-language publisher was willing to
take the risk of publishing Ulysses
in book form after the problems The Egoist had faced finding a printer
willing to set the work in the UK and after the editors of The Little Review had
been fined for publishing obscenity in the US. With little prospect of seeing Ulysses appear, Joyce arrived in Paris from
Trieste on 8 July 1920. Soon thereafter, Joyce met Sylvia Beach in her lending
library and bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Beach's own account of the
events is quite colourful:
All
hope of publication in the English-speaking countries, at least for a long time
to come, was gone. And here in my little bookshop sat James Joyce, sighing
deeply.
It occurred to me that something might be done, and I asked:
'Would you let Shakespeare and Company have the honor of bringing out your Ulysses?'
He accepted my offer immediately and joyfully. I thought it
rash of him to entrust his great Ulysses
to such a funny little publisher. But he seemed delighted, and so was I.[22]
?
In
mid April 1921, Beach and Maurice Darantiere, Master Printer, Dijon, signed a
contract to print and publish Ulysses,
but the book was far from done. Joyce still had to finish writing the last two
episodes and these would then have to be typed as well. Furthermore, Joyce
would continue to make corrections, revisions, and additions to the earlier
episodes on the typescripts that had already been made starting in 1917.
Joyce was
supposed to make all of his changes on the typescripts before the printer began
the process of typesetting. Nonetheless, the printer began setting the galley
proofs of the first five episodes of Ulysses,
'Telemachus' through 'Lotus Eaters', between 11 and 17 June 1921. Darantiere
assumed that the second set of corrected and revised galley proofs Joyce had returned
would suffice, so the printers moved on to the next stage of setting the text
in page proofs as gatherings, which they sent to Joyce and Beach for their
approval. When Darantiere realised the amount and kinds of changes Joyce had
requested again on these proofs, the printers took the unexpected and costly
step of reverting back to galley proofs in late August 1921.
Although
the contract stipulated that the printer would prepare up to five sets of
proofs for the author to correct any typesetting errors, Joyce needed from five
to eleven sets of proofs to accommodate his changes and additions. No one,
including Joyce, anticipated the amount of revisions as well as substantial
additions he would make on the proofs. In all, Ulysses grew approximately one-third longer on the proofs and,
shockingly for Beach,[23]
all of these changes
on proofs accounted for almost a quarter of
the entire printing costs of the first edition.
Obviously, without the active cooperation of Joyce's publisher and printer, we would not have Ulysses.
(MS 36,639/01)
Joyce compiled these notes in his last year at Belvedere College. They
are transcriptions from and related commentary and annotations on 'The Inferno'
of Dante's Divina Commedia, as well
as seemingly unrelated notes on Italian vocabulary in Italian and English.
These pages are the earliest extant record of Joyce's student reading notes
and, as far as we know, he did not use them directly in his writings. His
earliest literary endeavour is 'Trust Not Appearances' (probably written in 1896;
Cornell MS 1).[24]
Unlike his later practice, here Joyce also
noted the author's name, 'Dante' on p. [1r], possibly after he had already
started taking the notes on some of the later pages. In 2004, Dirk Van Hulle
was the first scholar to ascertain that the text and notes are from Eugenio
Camerini's La Divina Commedia di Dante
Alighieri: con note tratte dai migliori commenti (Milano: Edoardo Sonzogno,
1884).[25]
(MS 36,639/02/A)
I prepared a more comprehensive commentary on this manuscript that was
published in GJS Issue
9 (Spring 2009).[26]
Then, at the start of 2010, Frank Callanan discovered the precise sources of
the two lists of books Joyce transcribed on pp. [16], [17], and then p. [30]
here; see his 'James Joyce and the United
Irishman: Paris 1902–3' in the Dublin
James Joyce Journal 3 (2010), edited by Luca Crispi and Anne Fogarty (UCD
James Joyce Research Centre in association with the National Library of
Ireland), pp. 51–103.
(MS 36,639/03)
This
manuscript is the earliest extant notebook Joyce prepared specifically to write
Ulysses.
The printed label on the front cover is virtually identical to the label on
Buffalo MS V.A.3 (in which Joyce wrote the later 'Proteus' draft),[27]
but notably the label on the Buffalo draft lists the stationer that produced
both these copybooks: 'Eredi fu D. Pellanda – Locarno'. Joyce was in Locarno,
Switzerland, from 12 October 1917 to January 1918. This external evidence and
the source material for these notes that Wim Van Mierlo has identified make it
clear that Joyce began compiling this notebook no earlier than mid October
1917.[28]
But, as was his usual practice with this kind of notebook, Joyce almost
certainly had already gathered some or most of the individual notes here
beforehand.
It
seems that throughout his career Joyce most often began making use of the notes
just after he had started compiling the notebook and this is clearly the case
here as well. He started to use some of these notes to write early drafts of Ulysses in mid October 1917. On the
other hand, he also regularly returned to a notebook (even many years later),
sometimes for further entries for drafts but also to transfer them to other
note-repositories; therefore, many of the notes here definitely entered the
text of Ulysses
via other note-repositories (possibly various kinds of notebooks and
notesheets), only some of which are known to be extant.
Although
there are texts and notes that Joyce used to write Ulysses that predate this notebook, this manuscript is the earliest
extant document solely devoted to his work on Ulysses. For example, the so-called 'Alphabetical Notebook'
(Cornell MS 25) is an even earlier notebook, which Joyce compiled in 1910 in
Trieste to write A Portrait, but he
then used other notes from it to write several early drafts of Ulysses as well.[29]
There is also another comparatively early notebook that Joyce used to write Ulysses, Buffalo MS V.A.2.a,[30]
which he compiled in 1918 in Zurich.[31]
This notebook is unlike all the other extant Ulysses notebooks in that it is a 'first-order' notebook; that is,
Joyce compiled it directly from the various sources he was reading.[32]
As such, this early notebook is different in kind from all the other extant Ulysses notebooks that are compilations
of diverse notes, which Joyce re-sorted in new constellations in these extant
notebooks.[33]
Joyce then began compiling the first part of a further grouping of notes, the
so-called BL Ulysses Notesheets (ADD
MSS 49975, fs. 6–29). He began compiling some of these sheets in June 1919, but
continued to compile further BL notesheets into 1921.[34]
Furthermore, there are three later Ulysses
notebooks at the NLI (MSS 36,639/04, 5A, and 5B, see below) that Joyce compiled
from January to May 1921. Finally, there is one other later Ulysses notebook at Buffalo (MS V.A.2.b
[V.A.2]); it is possibly the last extant Ulysses notebook and it too was compiled in
1921.[35]
Joyce used virtually all of these later note-repositories in the final stages
of writing and revising Ulysses in manuscript, typescript, and proofs
throughout 1921.
Joyce had written drafts of some episodes of Ulysses (certainly parts of
'Telemachus', 'Nestor', 'Hades', 'Scylla and Charybdis', and probably some parts
of other episodes as well) prior to 1917, but no early manuscripts for any of
those episodes are known to be extant.[36]
At that stage in 1917, these drafts may simply have been various arrangements
of fragmentary texts that may have been quite different from the versions of
the episodes as they evolved in the extant drafts.[37]
Here Joyce compiled the notes under nineteen subject
headings that range from the names of some of the principal characters (such as
'Simon', 'Stephen', and 'Leopold') and themes of the work ('Blind', 'Art',
'Jesus', and 'Homer') to more abstract headings ('? ? ?', 'Choses vues', and
'Names and Places'). The notes were compiled from a variety of printed sources,
some of which have been analyzed in detail by Van Mierlo, though others still
need to be determined. The physical appearance of the notes here resemble what
we find in most of the later Ulysses
notebooks: the handwriting is relatively small, the notes are in series,
usually separated by punctuation, and virtually all are in black ink. Along
with their material disposition, the wide range of sources for these notes
indicates that Joyce compiled the individual notes elsewhere (this is what is
known as a 'second-order' notebook), presumably in 'first-order' notebooks
and/or loose sheets, before he organized them under the headings here.
It is the only known example of Joyce using what I
have called 'subject' headings for Ulysses (as opposed to the Homeric episode titles
that head the BL Notesheets and almost all of the pages of the later notebooks,
all of which are tellingly second-order note-repositories). It is almost
certain that there were also other contemporaneous Ulysses notebooks that Joyce
relied on to write and revise drafts during this period. Since they have not
survived, we have no information about whether they were organized under
headings at all and if so what kind they may have been. This notebook is also
unusual because it contains relatively few notes, which I would argue indicates
that Joyce did not find this method of organizing notes under this kind of
headings particularly useful.
Joyce
compiled this 'Subject' notebook at a crucial juncture in the development of Ulysses, when Leopold Bloom's character
and the plot of Ulysses
were still at a relatively early stage of development;[38]
this may explain the expedient of using topical headings rather than episode
names, some of which Joyce had not yet even conceived. He probably wrote out
most of the subject headings before he began organizing the notes. Not only the
kind but also the arrangement of the headings in this notebook differs from
those in the later Ulysses notebooks.
Since the headings appear on both the recto pages (on pp. [2]–[4], [6], and
[10]–[13]) as well as on some of the versos, this indicates that Joyce was not
following a regular method of organising this notebook, which is unusual among
the extant notebooks.[39]
The
most notable instance where the headings appear on both the recto and the verso
are on pp. [8v]–[9r]; they are headed 'Irish' and 'Jews'. This particular
juxtaposition of notes is not coincidental since the headings occupy the
central pages of the notebook and the topics are obviously thematically linked
in Ulysses.
Joyce also wrote distinct headings on both the recto and verso pages on pp. [4v]–[5r]
and [13v]–[15r].[40]
Another oddity with these subject headings is that although both pp. [14v] and
[15r] are blank, the final page (a verso) is headed 'Words'. This seeming
exception is easily explained by the fact that (like 'Eventuali') it is a typical
catchall heading Joyce regularly used; therefore, he simply put this grouping
in a very convenient place.[41]
As he used entries from a notebook, Joyce almost
always crossed them through in a coloured crayon. Only some of the
crossed-through notes that he used directly from this notebook have been
located in the extant contemporaneous drafts as far as we know; these are the
first notes Joyce used from this notebook. On the other hand, many other
entries have been located in the BL Notesheets and the later Ulysses notebooks (under a variety of
Homeric episode headings, which is not unusual), though some notes may have
been transferred to those BL Notesheets from yet another intermediary
note-repository (or repositories) that is now missing.
It
seems likely that Joyce compiled the entries in the notebook over a relatively
short period of time and then began using some of them to write and revise
drafts almost immediately. Furthermore, over several years Joyce used entries
from this notebook to write or revise every episode of Ulysses. The first confirmable Joyce's use of the notebook was to write some of
the fragments of the 'Proteus' proto-draft (NLI MS 36,639/07/A, see below).
Joyce wrote that manuscript from early to mid 1917 and it is the earliest
surviving Ulysses draft, although it
is likely that actually he used the notes to write those fragmentary texts on a
preceding, now missing document (or documents). The notes can be found on pp.
[1r], [3r], [5r] (in this order in the 'Proteus' manuscript) from pp. [15r] ('Weininger'), [8v] ('Irish'), as well
as the final page of the notebook, [15v] ('Words'), which indicates that the
entire notebook had been compiled before Joyce wrote that draft.
Several
notes from this notebook then appear in the next surviving draft of 'Proteus'
(Buffalo MS V.A.3) that Joyce completed in the fall of 1917. The earliest
surviving 'Sirens' draft (NLI MS 36,639/07/B; notably, this draft is also part
of the same copybook as the earliest 'Proteus' manuscript, see below) is the
next extant manuscript in which notes from this notebook have been located. These notes can be
found on pp. [7r], [10r] and [13r], [6r] and [5r], as well as [7v] and [7r] of
that manuscript and are from pp. [1r] ('Simon'), [2r] ('Leopold'), [4r] ('Recipes') and [15v]
('Words') in this notebook, although again Joyce may have used the notes from
this notebook in a document that preceded that 'Sirens' manuscript.
Entries
from this notebook are also found in all the episodes for which the Rosenbach
faircopy manuscripts are the earliest surviving drafts (that is, 'Telemachus',
'Nestor', and 'Calypso' through 'Lestrygonians') as well as the earliest
surviving draft of 'Scylla and Charybdis' (NLI MS 36,639/08/A, see below), all
of which Joyce had written by mid 1918. Entries from this notebook are also
found on the Rosenbach manuscript of 'Wandering Rocks', the earlier 'Cyclops'
manuscript (Buffalo MS V.A.8), and the later 'Sirens' manuscript (NLI MS
36,639/09, see below); all of which were written by August 1919. It is possible
that Joyce used these notes directly from this notebook as their source to
write these drafts as well as earlier versions of the extant drafts.
It
seems that thereafter Joyce returned to the notebook primarily to disperse some
of its entries into other note-repositories; specifically, they can be found on
BL Notesheets 'Cyclops' 8 and 10, particularly the latter. Interestingly, Joyce
also transferred notes from Buffalo MS V.A.2.a (as well as from the early Ulysses
notebook that only survives as transcribed by an amanuensis in Buffalo Finnegans Wake MS V.C.16) to many of the BL 'Cyclops'
Notesheets as well. Since those notesheets were all used to write and revise
both levels of the extant 'Cyclops' drafts (see below), the transfer of notes
in these cases must have occurred before June 1919 while Joyce was in Zurich.
Further notes, though only possibly taken directly from this notebook, were
also transferred from here to BL 'Oxen' Notesheet 6 by the start of 1920 in
Trieste. Later, further notes were transferred to BL 'Ithaca' 12 and 'Circe' 3
Notesheets, as well as NLI MS 36,639/05/B, p. [6r], but presumably these notes
passed through one or more intermediary note-repositories before ending up in
that notebook.
Finally, in a further unusual turn in the afterlife
of this early Ulysses notebook, in
early 1935 while he was writing 'Work in Progress'/Finnegans Wake, Joyce passed it on (along with NLI MSS 36,639/04,
5A, and 5B) to his amanuensis, Mme France Raphael, who transcribed it (as
Buffalo MS VI.C.7.255–69).[42]
For Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs (MS 36,639/04)[43]
Joyce compiled the notes in this manuscript at the start of 1921
(sometime between February and May, probably earlier rather than later) and
used it continuously in tandem with his other, then current note-repositories
until January 1922, just before Ulysses was finally published. He first used this
notebook to continue writing the last episodes of Ulysses, then to revise the typescripts of the earlier episodes for
the printer, and subsequently to revise the various settings of proofs of
virtually all the episodes. It is one of the later 'second-order' Ulysses notebooks (that is, Joyce
compiled and sorted it from previously gathered notes), along with the extant
BL Notesheets (for 'Cyclops' through 'Penelope' only), the NLI MSS 36,639/05/A
and 5/B, and the Buffalo MS V.A.2.b.
For now this is still a preliminary
assessment of Joyce's uses of the notebook; a more comprehensive analysis will
be part of proper digital editions of all the NLI Ulysses notebooks that will set out the sources of the notes, the
complete draft usage, as well as the notebooks' relationships to one another
and to the other Ulysses
note-repositories and manuscripts. So far I have begun to source the notes;
like most of Joyce's notes, they are based on a variety of printed sources.
Given the impetus that research tools like Google books and online database
have given to notebook source-studies, this work will be much less difficult
than it was in the past.[44]
Therefore, I have concentrated for now on determining the earliest draft usages
of the individual notebook pages in order to establish the terminus a quo of the notebook's compilation. I have ascertained
most of the draft usage on the extant manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs (the
remaining draft usage can be ascertained by collating the extant manuscripts),
and I am investigating the inter-textual connections between the notebooks and
manuscripts as Joyce continued to
write and revise Ulysses.[45]
Aside from the extant manuscripts themselves, we have
only minimal further information about Joyce's notes from his correspondence.
For example, three days after first arriving in Paris, Joyce wrote to Harriet
Shaw Weaver on 12 July 1920:
My intention is to remain here three months in order
to write the last adventure Circe in
peace (?) and also the first episode of the close. For this purpose I brought
with me a recast of my notes and MS and also an extract of insertions for the
first half of the book in case it be set up during my stay here. The book
contains (unfortunately) one episode more than you suppose in your last letter.
I am very tired of it and so is everyone else. (SL 265–6)[46]
Ulysses actually appeared a full year and a half later and
Joyce in fact stayed in Paris for about twenty more years. The BL Notesheets
for 'Cyclops' to 'Oxen' (and probably some of the other sheets as well) are
presumably remnants of the 'recast of my notes'. But Joyce probably did not revise
the earlier episodes from the 'extract of insertions for the first half of the
book' at this time; he was simply too busy with 'Circe' and then 'Eumaeus' to
do any other work. Four months later, Joyce referred to his notes again in a
letter to John Quinn:
I began Ulysses
in 1914 and shall finish it, I suppose, in 1921. [...] The complete notes fill a
small valise, but in the course of continual changings very often it was not
possible to sort them for the final time before the publication of certain instalments.
The insertions (chiefly verbal or phrases, rarely passages) must be put in for
the book publication. Before leaving Trieste I did this sorting for all
episodes up to and including Circe.
The episodes which have the heaviest burden of addenda are Lotus-eaters, Lestrygonians,
Nausikaa and Cyclops. (24 November 1920; LIII
30–1)
The extant Ulysses notebooks
do not constitute what Joyce referred to here as the 'complete notes' because
they were all compiled in Paris in 1921 (some of the later BL Notesheets were
also compiled in Paris in 1920–1), but what survives in these notebooks for the
earlier episodes were almost certainly based on that bulky assortment. Besides
the NLI and Buffalo notebooks, no other notes for the 'Telemachus' through
'Sirens' episodes survive. A collation of the additions and revisions to the
typescripts for those episodes (and, when they are missing, to the first
settings of proofs) to determine how many of them cannot be traced to the
extant notesheets and notebooks gives a clear indication of the relatively
large quantity of note-repositories that are not known to have survived.
On 5 January 1921, after having finished
'Circe' (or so he had hoped), Joyce wrote to his Triestine friend Ettore
Schmitz (Italo Svevo):
The Eumeus episode, which is almost finished, will
also be ready around the end of the month. [...] Now for the important matter: I
cannot leave here (as I had hoped to) before May. As a matter of fact, for
months I have not gone to bed before 2 or 3 in the morning, working without
respite. I shall soon have used up the notes I brought with me here so as to
write these two episodes ['Circe' and 'Eumaeus']. [...] Having urgent need of
these notes [further notes that Joyce had left in Trieste] [...], I address this
petition to you, most honourable colleague, begging you to let me know if any
member of your family intends to come to Paris in the near future, in which
case I should be most grateful if the above-mentioned person would have the
kindness to bring me the briefcase ['mappa'] specified on the back of this
sheet.[47]
There is a great deal of play and exaggeration in Joyce's letter to his friend Schmitz, presumably
this is also the case with the description of his 'briefcase' of notes, but we
have no other, more precise information about what Joyce refers to as his
'mappa' of Triestine notes. Presumably this bulky and mysterious consignment
was delivered to Paris (when or how is also not known), but I suspect that the
extant notebooks (along with others) are a distillation of precisely that
earlier hoard of notes.[48]
Generally, there are relatively few notes for most of the early episodes,
especially for the first three (in any of the notebooks that survive). Since
even those episodes were more than just lightly revised in typescript and
proofs, there obviously must also have been other note-repositories that are
presently not known to be extant.
As I have already discussed above,
throughout his career Joyce typically used his notebooks shortly after he had
finished compiling them. If this pattern holds here as well, then I suggest
that this notebook was compiled from February to May 1921, since its first
draft usage was writing and revising the earliest extant 'Penelope' manuscript
(NLI MS 36,639/14), which so far I have not been able to date any more
precisely than early summer 1921. Nonetheless, Joyce had certainly completely
finished compiling this notebook by early June 1921, since he relied on it to
revise the first placards of the initial five episodes ('Telemachus' to 'Lotus
Eaters'), which Darantiere set from 11–17 June. Those revisions were
incorporated in the second setting of the placards by the end of the month.
Joyce continuously returned to this notebook as he further revised the early
episodes and began revising the later ones. Again based on the immediacy of
draft usage, I do not believe this notebook is the earliest or likely the last
of the extant Ulysses
note-repositories Joyce compiled in 1921: presumably Joyce compiled both MSS
36,639/05/A and 5/B before this notebook, and Buffalo MS V.A.2.b is either
contemporaneous with it or an even later compilation.
The arrangement of the episode headings in
each of the extant notebooks is different. Here they proceed from recto to
verso to recto sequentially (as a codex-copybook is usually used) covering the
entire work from the first to last episodes (with the notable exception of
'Sirens' which is not represented in this notebook), and the usual 'Eventuali'
heading at the end of the run of episodes. Joyce continued filling five further
pages with 'Penelope' notes, often directly in mid phrase; writing this episode
was clearly the major focus of Joyce's attention as he compiled this notebook.[49]
Joyce did not bother to head these last 'Penelope' pages as he proceeded (again
unusually) still from recto to verso on subsequent pages. At a later stage,
Joyce used some of the open spaces on the versos towards the front of the
copybook primarily for further 'Circe' notes (including the last page, [12v])
and once for further 'Cyclops' notes (p. [6v]).[50]
For Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs (MS 36,639/05/A)
Joyce also compiled this notebook sometime between February and May
1921. In the same letter to John Quinn quoted above, Joyce continued:
Therefore, I must stipulate to have three sendings of
proofs (preferably a widemargined one must be pulled), namely:
(1) A galley-page proof of all
the book up to and including Circe.
(2) A similar proof of the
three chapters of the Nostos.
(3) A complete proof of the
book in page form. (24 November 1920; LIII
30–1)
Joyce's first use of this notebook was to revise a printers' typescript of
'Hades' in late July 1921. Even though other extant notebooks were also used
for that level of revision, this provides further evidence that this notebook
was not the earliest notebook Joyce compiled or used in 1921. Its compilation
falls in the middle of this extremely busy period in the composition and
transformation of Ulysses.
Joyce's usual procedure in the later Ulysses notebooks that survive was to
write the headings at the top of just the recto page and underline them first
all the way through the notebook. Then, when he had filled that page, he would
use the facing verso page for other notes for that episode (usually not
bothering to repeat the heading).[51]
For Drafts, Typescripts, and Proofs (MS 36,639/05/B)
This is most likely the earliest of the extant later 'second-order' Ulysses
notebooks.[52]
As I have already argued, throughout his career Joyce typically used his
notebooks shortly after he had finished compiling them. If this pattern holds
here as well, then he compiled the notebook just before mid February 1921,
presumably in January or early February (but certainly no later), since its
first draft usage was the earliest extant 'Eumaeus' manuscripts, which Joyce was
certainly also writing in February. He next used this notebook to write and
revise the 'Ithaca' and 'Penelope' episodes.[53]
The 'Eumaeus' notes here are of particular
interest because they help to understand and date that episode's various drafts
(and thereby some of the relevant notesheets and notebook pages as well). The
episode's earliest extant draft is the so-called 'Eumeo' manuscript, which is
now in private hands.[54]
Based on a preliminary analysis of the available reproductions of the 'Eumeo'
manuscript, it appears to be the direct antecedent of the only other
pre-faircopy manuscript, the partial Buffalo MS V.A.21.[55]
Similarly, the Buffalo manuscript–plus a now missing complementary manuscript
(or manuscripts)–was the immediate antecedent of the Rosenbach (faircopy)
manuscript of the episode. Again based on a preliminary analysis, it is clear
that Joyce used some of the BL 'Eumaeus' Notesheets to both write and revise
the 'Eumeo' manuscript, presumably in Trieste in 1920.
Furthermore, it is now also clear that
Joyce used two of the NLI later Ulysses
notebooks (MSS 36,639/05/A and 5/B) to further revise the 'Eumeo' manuscript in
Paris in February 1921 as well. A more comprehensive analysis of Buffalo MS
V.A.21 confirms this scenario: BL 'Eumaeus' Notesheet as well as NLI notebook
entries appear throughout the draft as part of the main text and as additions
and revisions.[56]
Subsequently, Joyce used the notesheets and notebooks to continue to write and
revise every level of the episode's text.
Another interesting feature here is the
transfer of notes (at times sequentially and hence directly) from the BL 'Eumaeus' Notesheets to this
notebook. The transferred notes are sporadic on p. [6v] but quite consistent on
p. [9r] and this page comprises the most concentrated transfer of notes from
the BL Notesheets to any of the extant notebooks. If that page can be taken as
paradigmatic of Joyce's methods of compiling subsequent note-repositories (in
this case it is an at least 'third order' notebook page), then a clear (and not
unexpected) pattern emerges. Joyce must have relied on several different prior
note-repositories to compile this page, only some of which are known to be
extant. Although there is a relatively long series of notes that come from a
(broken) sequence of notes on BL 'Eumaeus' 1.87–137, they are preceded by other
notes from BL 'Eumaeus' 5, and immediately followed by notes from BL 'Eumaeus'
1.10, 11, 17 and 111 (in that order), and then several further notes from BL
'Eumaeus' 4. None of these transferred entries are completely sequential, there
are always intervening notes that have not been located on any BL 'Eumaeus'
notesheet, which supports the contention that Joyce used further
note-repositories to compile this page. Presumably, this is the case with all
of the later Ulysses notebooks.
The notes look as though they were taken
hurriedly and the headings are often abbreviated (for example, 'Cycl' (three
times), 'Naus', 'Lotus', 'Scy & Caryb' and 'Eol'). No clear pattern of
organizing the headings is apparent throughout the notebook, although some
pages are related to one another.[57]
The Harriet Shaw Weaver-Paul L?on
Typescript Copy
(MS 36,639/06)
I have prepared a complete analysis of the
various earlier and later 1921 Ulysses typescript schemata as part of my
catalogue description of the 'Beach Schema' (Buffalo MS V.A.1.b.i
[V.A.1.b]); see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va1bi.htm.
(MS
36,639/07/A–B)
This
copybook contains partial drafts and further texts for two distinct episodes:
'Proteus' (36,639/07/A) and 'Sirens'
(7/B/1) as well as a loose sheet with fragments that are part of the 'Sirens' texts
at this earlier draft level (7/B/2). For a later, complete draft of 'Proteus'
see Buffalo MS V.A.3;[58] for a later draft of 'Sirens' see MS
36,639/09 below and its continuation in Buffalo MS V.A.5.[59]
This document is unique among the extant Ulysses manuscripts for several reasons. Firstly,
it is the only known instance in which Joyce wrote texts, fragments, and drafts
for two different episodes in the same copybook. Furthermore, the 'Proteus'
fragments (pp. [1r]–[5r]) are the earliest extant texts Joyce wrote
specifically for any episode of
Ulysses. Also, the 'Sirens' portion of the
copybook is composed of two distinct parts: 1) a continuous early draft (pp.
[5v]–[10r]) of most of the first half of the episode (see U 11.98–540) at this stage of its
draft development; and 2) a disparate collection of fragments (pp. [10r]–[14r]
and the loose sheet) that Joyce variously incorporated into the next extant
draft of 'Sirens' and elsewhere.
This 'Sirens' manuscript is the earliest
extant draft to feature Leopold Bloom and include references to Molly Bloom
(but only in the second part of the draft).[60] Presumably, before beginning the 'Sirens'
portion of the manuscript, Joyce also compiled a list of notes based on an as
yet undetermined Homeric source on its final page (p. [14v]).
An Earlier Proto-Draft of 'Proteus': (MS 36,639/07/A)
The manuscript is composed of seventeen discrete textual fragments (on
nine pages) that are almost all separated from
one another by horizontal lines of Xs
or asterisks.[61]
Joyce probably compiled these fragments (or composed this draft) after mid
October 1917 in Locarno, Switzerland, and subsequently wrote the next surviving
draft of the episode (Buffalo MS V.A.3) from late October to December 1917. The
only known note-source for this text is the Early Ulysses 'Subject' Notebook (NLI MS
36,639/03; see above), but there were almost certainly also other note-sources
that Joyce relied on to write and revise these texts. As the entries from the
'Subject' notebook are part of the main text of the draft throughout (rather
than just marginal or interlineal additions), it is likey that Joyce actually
used these notes on some missing preceding versions of these discrete
fragmentary texts, which he must have written (or more likely revised) just
before writing this version.
Furthermore, although the texts are
revised currente calamo,
interlineally, as well as in the margins, the appearance of the basic
text-fragments in this manuscript suggests that Joyce copied each fragment as
such from another written source (or more likely several other sources), rather
than writing them directly from word- or phrase-based notes for the first time.
Joyce probably had some other assortment
of texts along with this manuscript that together comprised the episode as it then
was in early October 1917, but whether these texts resembled this kind of
manuscript, or whether there was another, more cohesive narrative draft into
which these fragments were to be incorporated is not known, though I believe
that the later possibility is less likely. Also, another draft (or drafts)
probably intervened between this manuscript and the next surviving draft of
this episode, although no other early manuscript is known to be extant.
Based on the various ways these fragments were
incorporated in the subsequent extant draft, it can be argued that Joyce
generally used these fragments in three kinds of ways: 1) as integral,
epiphany-like set-pieces that remained quite similar on the subsequent extant
manuscript;[62]
2) as isolated fragments that were substantially altered and expanded from this
manuscript to Buffalo MS V.A.3;[63]
and 3) as individual fragments that were combined to form a longer narrative
scene on the later manuscript.[64]
In general, it seems almost certain that Joyce must
have written all these integrated texts out together somewhere else before they
appeared on the next extant draft because (although most of the corresponding
texts are basically similar between the two manuscripts) there are several
more texts that Joyce probably would not have written in such a relatively
unrevised manner on MS V.A.3 for the first time. These are significant blocks
of text that first appear on the later manuscript, including the opening (U 3.1–29) and a long early section (U 3.120–208), which among many other
scenes includes Stephen's description of his epiphanies, both of which have the
distinct appearance in MS V.A.3 of having been written before (possibly more
than once) and copied there.
This manuscript has been controversial
since it was first discovered in 2002 and Daniel Ferrer's pioneering essay in
the JJQhas been central to the debate.[65]
Ferrer rightly claims that it 'is quite unlike anything in the published text
or elsewhere in the archive' (p. 54). Although my understanding of the status
of the 'Proteus' section in this manuscript differs from Ferrer's, there is not
enough (internal or external) evidence to resolve the debate at present. Ferrer
presents the crux of the debate about the nature of this manuscript as follows:
The fragmentary nature of these short segments is
surprising and raises an important question. Is it simply the accidental
appearance of a composition in process, a succession of passages that Joyce
wrote in this copybook? Or is it a stylistic device reflecting a deliberate aesthetic
choice, a mode of presentation that was later discarded in favor of a different
option? (p. 55)
Ferrer suggests that it is the latter, while I believe it is the former.
I would argue that this manuscript is a transitory collection of blocks of text,
based on previously written material (possibly in more than one manuscript or
on disparate sheets of paper) that Joyce merely consolidated in this document.
I maintain that this manuscript served as a temporary repository for these
discrete textual fragments on their way towards a more fully elaborated draft
(presumably some form of narrative draft that preceded MS V.A.3), along with
other texts in some form.[66]
These other 'Proteus' texts could either have been another collection of
textual fragments like these (on loose sheets or in a copybook) or possibly a
(partial though more fully-elaborated narrative) draft into which these texts
were meant to fit.
Ferrer argues that, '[a]esthetically, the
episode makes perfect sense in this fragmented form. The poetic prose of
Stephen's musings is, in a way, even better set off than in the final version.
The underlying narrative is at least as easy to follow, starting as it does
with Stephen's decision not to go back to the tower and alternating
observations of what he sees around him on the strand, reminiscences,
fantasies, and speculations.' (pp. 55–6). Such an 'aesthetic' argument is
subjective and certainly founded more on Ferrer's thorough and nuanced
understanding of Joyce's later stylistic innovations in Ulysses (as well as more obviously in Finnegans Wake),[67]
than on the historical, material, and textual evidence provided by this
manuscript. Then, Ferrer continues, 'The episode does seem truncated: it is
certainly odd that it would end with the waking of Paris' (p. 56).
It seems unwarranted to look for a
narrative in these discrete textual fragments since either by the time Joyce
had assembled these fragments here or quite shortly thereafter in the next
extant manuscript, he had determined the bare narrative of 'Proteus'.[68]
As we know, it is simple enough: Stephen walks along Sandymount Strand, writes
a short poem, considers stopping by his Uncle's home in Strasburg Terrace but
decides not to, and everything else
happens in Stephen's imagination. The associative elements and transitions that
bind the episode's narrative in the next draft version (and then in the
published texts) are completely absent here, and it is primarily through our
understanding of their relationship in the subsequent versions that some cohesive
sense can be ascribed to the fragments. Rather, it seems more likely (although,
admittedly, the internal evidence does not support this claim any more than it
does Ferrer's) that in this manuscript Joyce was simply gathering textual
elements that he knew would be components of a draft, with the typical
self-assurance that he could arrange and fill in the transitional material as
needed when he set about composing the narrative form of the draft.
Famously, Joyce would later claim that he
worked both as a 'scissors and paste' man and 'engineer' and here we have an
early example of the artist and technician's tools. This manuscript may simply
seem unique because it is the earliest and most extreme example of this kind of
Ulysses manuscript that has come to
light. Besides the early 'Sirens', 'Cyclops', and 'Ithaca' manuscripts, the
more complete textual history of the earliest drafts of chapters of Finnegans Wake suggest that it was a
common practice for Joyce to gather fragments and then assemble (or re-assemble)
them when the time came to produce a narrative. I would argue that this
manuscript is a natural component of the continuum of Joyce's writing methods
from notes to fragments and then on towards a narrative draft. They function
like Joyce's 'epiphanies' that he mined for virtually all of his works.[69]
Therefore, these 'Proteus' fragments, though much further developed, written in
a clearer hand, and more textually stable, are also generically similar to the
'Sirens' fragments at the end of this manuscript and its loose sheet (see
below).
A further interesting issue is the
relationship of this manuscript to the next extant draft. It seems unlikely
that this NLI 'Proteus' manuscript was the direct precedent of the Buffalo
manuscript, even in conjunction with other manuscripts of this kind or else a
more comprehensive draft of the episode of which this manuscript was a
supplement. The text in this manuscript begins with Stephen's vision of the
scene in the Martello Tower in Sandycove after he had left and his final
decision not to sleep there that night. On the later manuscript, this fragment
is rearranged, expanded, and embedded in a longer and more developed narrative
that precedes it, suggesting that it was based on a draft version Joyce wrote
in between this NLI manuscript and MS V.A.3. Interestingly, on the later
manuscript, Joyce reverted to earlier readings that he had revised here. On the
later manuscript, this scene is followed by a transitional intermediary
paragraph (U 3.282–5), which is a
mixture of first and third person narration that is completely absent on this
earlier manuscript. Then, after some revision on the later manuscript, the text
is virtually identical to its appearance in the published versions in The Little Review and Ulysses.
The section below this in the manuscript
follows next in MS V.A.3 as well (and this may not be coincidental). The scene
describes the appearance of the dog's carcass by the edge of the sea and
Stephen's musings on language. Although some of the passage is already present
in this manuscript, it is both changed and further developed to a point that
suggest that another draft may have intervened between the two extant versions.
Another fairly substantial section is missing from this draft but is present in
large measure on MS V.A.3 (U 3.291–303).
What follows marks the first instance where a fragment from a later page is
integrated into the text of MS V.A.3 (or whatever may have intervened between
the two extant drafts). The next section (U
3.303–6) comes from p. [4r] in this manuscript. Although it is in a fairly
rudimentary state here, the way in which Joyce elaborated it on the later
manuscript is remarkably similar to its published form. On the other hand, U 3.48–52 is significantly altered and
embedded in the text in MS V.A.3.
Finally, if (as is most likely) Joyce had
written other texts destined for 'Proteus' by the time he compiled the texts in
this manuscript, it is not clear why he did not fill the remaining pages of
this manuscript with those texts.
?An Early
Partial Draft of 'Sirens'
The first
part of MS 36,639/07/B/1 is a partial early draft of the 'Sirens' episode (pp.
[5v]–[10r]). It is followed directly by discrete fragments of text (not all of
which were used for this episode; on pp. [10r]–[14r]), and there is also a
related loose leaf of paper with further fragments that is part of this draft
stage (NLI MS 36,639/07/B/2). Finally, the last page of the copybook (p. [14v])
contains notes headed 'Lacedemon' that may or may not be specifically related
to either draft in the copybook. As we saw with the notebooks, Joyce may have
simply used the last page of this copybook as a convenient place to record
general notes, some of which he crossed through in blue crayon, though it is
difficult to ascertain how he used them in Ulysses.
Like the preceding 'Proteus' draft in this
copybook, this portion of the manuscript is astounding in its own fashion. Quite
surprisingly, this draft confirms that 'Sirens' was one of the earliest
episodes of Ulysses Joyce wrote.[70]
This portion of the copybook contains the earliest extant draft of most of the
first half of the published episode (U 11.98–540),
though the text is in a considerably different state than the next extant
version of this part of episode (and therefore is also quite different from how
it appears in Ulysses). Joyce wrote
this draft in a clear and continuous manner and in a particularly neat hand
that is well laid out on the page; the text is not crowded and there is ample
space between the lines of text. This suggests that Joyce was copying from a
fairly well developed, earlier draft. Besides the arrangement of the text on
the pages, the fact that he was using versos and rectos sequentially also
suggests that this section was not a first draft of this material.[71]
The narrative of the first part of the
episode is a fairly straightforward description of the scene at the Ormond Bar,
with dialogue, and some musical elements, but little of the psychological depth
readers expect from 'Sirens'. The 'fugal' (or varied contrapuntal) narrative
style of the episode as it is known from later versions of the episode–where
events occurring in different places and the various thoughts of the characters
are rendered simultaneously–is not
evident at this draft stage. On the other hand, the latter portion of the
manuscript, which is comprised of a variety of fragments (of descriptive
scenes, dialogue, and interior monologue) marks the multi-faceted beginnings of
the episode's stylistic breakthrough.
This draft exhibits Joyce's usual,
subsequent revisions and marginal additions. He substantially and significantly
revised almost all of the text in this portion of the manuscript both in ink
and in pencil, which indicates several rounds of revision and expansion.
Joyce's revisions of the opening of 'Sirens' are particularly illuminating and
are exemplary of the stylistic transformation of the episode in general. He
wrote at least several sentences, some dialogue (and probably more of this page
and possibly still more), but then revised it, only slowly establishing the
opening as it appears in Ulysses.
Joyce described both barmaids' heads as 'bronze' at first, but then changed
Miss Douse's (she is not yet 'Miss Douce' as we know her in Ulysses) hair colour to 'gold'. He then
rewrote the entire opening to start with the well-known 'Bronze by gold',
switched the order of the barmaids' names to coincide with the newer
description, and specifically reinforced the aural sense over the visual (presumably
for stylistic reasons).
The story at the Ormond Hotel here begins
with the banter between the barmaids as they watch the viceregal cavalcade go
by the blinds of the barroom down the quays. The young women's overt sexuality
seems to be the most basic point of the scene so far. Then, quite early on in
this version of the events, Simon Dedalus makes his first appearance on the
stage of Ulysses as he walks into the
Ormond bar preening his 'rocky thumbnails'. Lenehan enters next and asks
whether Boylan has been in looking for him; this is the first mention of Blazes
Boylan in any surviving document for Ulysses,
but obviously Joyce had already established his role as Molly's suitor,
presumably several years before.
Blazes enters the Ormond and all the
attention turns to him as he tells them of Bantam Lyon's tip for the Ascot Gold
Cup race. He is overly concerned about the time, not just because of the race
results, but because he has an 'appointment he can't miss'. Lenehan presses
Miss Douce to snap her garter, which she does reluctantly but with the purpose
of attracting Boylan's attention. Boylan throws back his drink and sets off
with Lenehan trailing close behind. So far this follows the action of the
published versions of 'Sirens', though much is also missing.
Ben Dollard and Bob Cowley then enter the Ormond
discussing the rent Cowley owes his landlord and then Simon convinces Dollard
to sing. The song 'Love and War' brings up memories of the past and
specifically a particular night when the song was played. At first Joyce wrote
that Father Cowley was the pianist but almost immediately he changed this to
'poor old Goodwin' and Simon comments 'a nice hash he made of it'. As far as we
know, Joyce had not yet written the other references to Goodwin's concert in
the earlier episodes so this may be a new idea for Ulysses.
Next, Father Cowley recalls the night as
well and asks about a certain 'Marie Fallon'. Unknown to readers of Ulysses, Joyce quickly changed her name
to 'Marie Powell'. Now the name Powell immediately connects this Dublin prima
donna to the stories of Ulysses
because 'Major' Malachy Powell was one of the sources for Major Brian Tweedy,
Molly's father. So now with just a change of name a very significant storyline
begins to emerge.
At this point Joyce made several pivotal
changes: he added a reference to the song lyric 'My Irish Molly O' that he
connected with another bit of information about 'a soldier's daughter ^from
rock of Gibraltar^'. Only now does Molly, who is also described as 'a buxom
piece', become the main subject of the men's conversation. It is interesting to
note how much of Molly's background was already fixed in place at this
relatively early stage. Of course, some of it has to do with the real life
prototypes of Molly Tweedy, but what is notable is the way in which the various
threads are grouped together and are only slowly disentangled as Joyce kept writing
'Sirens'.
It was not the case that Joyce was simply
conflating Josie Powell and Molly because Joyce had fixed on Molly (or
'Mollie') as a main character in Ulysses
by at least 1917 when the notebook that served as source for this draft was
compiled. Molly is distinctly mentioned in another addition on this page, when
Bloom notes that she 'has a devil of a quick eye to notice if anyone is looking
at her'. Then Cowley asks: 'what became of her Simon? I never see her name is
she still alive'. Simon replies that she is indeed 'alive and kicking' but that
she has married.
What is most interesting here is that
these additions mark the end of the continuous draft of 'Sirens'. Joyce simply
ran out of background information just as Dollard is about to start his song. The
continuous draft state of this manuscript just stops in the middle of p. [10r].
It is likely that this rupture coincides with the extent of the earlier draft.
Later, Joyce cancelled the phrase 'a moment', and replaced it with 'Half time'
(obviously intended as a musical term, but it could also have served as a tag
pointing to the second half of the episode as it was then structured, though he
did not follow through with that plan). He drew a line separating everything
that came before, and only then introduced Bloom, already seated alone at the
Ormond Hotel.
As Daniel Ferrer was the first to note,
the most striking difference between this draft and all other versions of
'Sirens' is that Bloom is completely absent from the first half of the
narrative scene. It might be that at this juncture Joyce planned that 'Sirens'
would function with two perspectives–much like 'Nausicaa' in fact does, though,
as far as we know, Joyce only wrote that episode about a year later–with a Dubliners-like bar scene with dialogue
first, counter-balanced by Bloom's interior monologue in the second half of the
episode. It is even possible that Joyce could have intended that the second
half of the episode would take place at exactly the same time as the first
half, more like some of the interpolations in 'Wandering Rocks' rather than the
more traditional sequential timeframe of the episode in 'Nausicaa'.
The disjunction between the parties at the
Ormond is particularly conspicuous in this version of the scene: there is a
convivial crowd at the bar on one side and then there is Bloom, the outsider,
who observes the others 'in silence'. The manuscript suggests that the
transition to Bloom may have been initiated by Joyce's addition, 'My Irish
Molly O'. This is the earliest version of Bloom's interior monologue we have in
any manuscript. Then, piece-by-piece, phrase-by-phrase, Joyce began to develop
the point of view and thought patterns that are so characteristic of what is
commonly (and reductively) described as Bloom's perspective: as the
open-minded, intellectually curious, 'modern hero'. Joyce continued Bloom's
sexualised reverie about the barmaids at the beerpull here for a few lines and
then stopped once again (this scene is all on pp. [10r]–[10v]). The rest of the
manuscript is composed of further, non-consecutive, and even less cohesive
fragments that in general are certainly more similar to the 'Proteus' material
than the preceding narrative-portion of this 'Sirens' draft.
The physical disposition of the texts in
the 'Sirens' sections of the manuscript allows us to refine the date of its
composition. Firstly, since both parts follow the 'Proteus' fragments in the
copybook, they must obviously have been written after Joyce had written them,
so after mid October 1917. As with the 'Proteus' portion of the manuscript,
notebook usage in these drafts corroborates the end of 1917 as the earliest
date for the composition of both parts of the 'Sirens' portion of the copybook.
Joyce used several clusters of notes from the Early Ulysses Subject Notebook (NLI MS
36,639/03) to write the first part of the draft. This indicates that whatever form
the draft may have had prior to this manuscript, Joyce wrote or revised it with
entries from that notebook; therefore, we have further proof that he did so
after mid October 1917 when that notebook was compiled. He also returned to it
for further entries for the second part of the 'Sirens' portion of the
copybook.
Joyce was busy writing the Rosenbach faircopy
drafts of 'Telemachus' and 'Nestor' from October through November 1917 and he had
certainly finished writing the next surviving 'Proteus' draft (Buffalo MS
V.A.3) by mid December that year. Given all of his work on the 'Telemachiad'
(although we do not have sufficient evidence one way or the other), it is
unlikely that Joyce was also able to write a completely non-Stephen related
episode at this time as well. It is not known how much more time elapsed
between the writing of the 'Proteus' fragments on the previous page ([5r]) and
Joyce's work on 'Sirens', but the evidence suggests Joyce began writing this
earliest version of 'Sirens' at the start of 1918 at the earliest.
In his James
Joyce and the Beginnings of 'Ulysses', Rodney Wilson Owen presciently wrote
'that the first third of 'Sirens' was earlier and more complete than the rest'
(JJBU 67). Furthermore, Owen states
that although he is
not trying to argue that the first section of
'Sirens' was actually drafted before Joyce left Trieste in 1915; one would
suppose, though, that the notebook [Buffalo MS V.A.2.a] correspondence and
relative lack of later additions to the first section indicate that Simon's
flirtation with the barmaids, his piano playing, and the presence of both Bloom
and Blazes Boylan, were part of the original nucleus of the episode, and as
such might have existed in Trieste in a short sketch, an outline, or a
compilation of notes. (JJBU 67)
This manuscript provides clear evidence that Owen's intuition was
astoundingly accurate: Joyce must have written a very early version of most of
the first half of the episode between 1915 and 1917 and it (and possibly other
drafts) preceded this manuscript.[72]
Joyce used the Early Ulysses Subject Notebook (NLI MS
36,639/03) to develop key descriptions of Simon Dedalus, Lydia Douse, Mina
Kennedy, and Leopold Bloom. Joyce first integrated an entry from the 'Subject'
notebook into a relatively well-elaborated exchange about Miss Douse's sunburn
and Miss Kennedy's remedy (on p. [6r]; tellingly, it appears under the heading
'Recipes' on p. [4r] of the notebook). The text also clearly appears to have
been drafted previously elsewhere. Joyce then used entries from the very start
of the 'Subject' notebook (taken from notes under the heading 'Simon' on p.
[1r]) to describe the elder Dedalus' telltale gesture as he enters the Ormond
Bar (see U 11.192–3). This scene
occurs on p. [7r] of the manuscript. Joyce then used another entry to describe
the manner with which Miss Douse serves Simon Dedalus: 'With the greatest
alacrity' (U 11.213). The entire
phrase as such is on the last page of the 'Subject' notebook (under the heading
'Words' on p. [15v]).[73]
Another entry from the 'Subject' notebook describes Miss Kennedy's concentrated
efforts to continue reading and so ignore Lenehan. It too was under the heading
'Words' and Joyce even tagged it with Lenehan's name. Again, the fact that so
little of the text can be traced to extant notebooks suggests that there were
other contemporaneous notebooks that Joyce relied on to write this (and
earlier) drafts.
?Fragmentary
Texts for 'Sirens'
Unlike the punctilious way Joyce segregated the previous 'Proteus' texts
from one another with asterisks, the 'Sirens' fragments that comprise the final
part of this copybook here are only sometimes separated from one another, and
then only with short, hastily-drawn horizontal lines. This suggests that these
later fragments were much less developed; in fact, their physical appearance
indicates that Joyce was writing some of these texts here for the first time.
Later, Joyce (as usual) crossed out with Xs
in different coloured crayons the text-blocks he was incorporating in the next
draft of 'Sirens' or was transferring elsewhere. Interestingly, although Joyce
used some of the blue-crossed-through texts in 'Sirens', others appear in
'Lestrygonians', in 'Cyclops', and even later in 'Circe' (the latter two uses
at least came about via intermediary texts). It is likely that after Joyce had
written the next draft of 'Sirens' (NLI MS 36,639/09 and Buffalo MS V.A.5
together), he returned to this manuscript and transferred the unused fragments
to other repositories and from there they ended up in those other episodes of Ulysses.
For example, the first full fragment on p.
[10v] is just one of several snatches of malicious (specifically male Dublin
pub) gossip about Bloom and Molly that appears in this manuscript, but Joyce
actually ended up using it as a scene in 'Cyclops' (see U 12.1566–9). Based on the state of the 'Cyclops' drafts that
survive and other interpretive considerations, I would suggest that Joyce had
not yet envisioned what became episode twelve at this stage (at least as we
know it from Ulysses)
and that it both materially and conceptually grew out of Joyce's continuing
elaboration of 'Sirens'. It could be that Joyce came to feel that any sort of
altercation between Bloom and the other Dubliners at the Ormond Bar might be
psychologically too traumatic an event for Bloom at this crucial and difficult
part of his day. Joyce may also have come to realise that it was structurally
too complex and demanding from a narrative perspective to have Bloom confront
his repressed feelings as well as confront other men (who somehow seem to know
about Blazes's impending rendezvous with Molly) all in just one episode. So, as
he elaborated his ever-expanding novel, he shunted off the more aggressive and
confrontational aspects of 'Sirens' (focusing instead on its musical and
stylistic aspects). Although they were previously intended as part of just one
barroom scene, at some later stage Joyce decided that the various external
disputes would happen later in the day in another episode and elsewhere.[74]
The next fragment (also on p. [10v])
describes the coincidence of Simon Dedalus singing an aria from Martha as Bloom is about to write to his
own 'Martha Clifford'. Joyce incorporated the textual fragments on p. [11r]
both to fill in what he had already written as well as continue the narrative
in the next version. The first fragment describes the Blooms in Holles Street,
when he had lost his job at Hely's and 'Mrs Marion Bloom' sold used clothes. It
ends with Simon's witty comment that Molly has 'left off clothes of all
descriptions'. Another fragment describes Bloom's sympathetic, though ironic,
attention to Richie Goulding's poor health and finances. The first mentions of
the Blooms coming to Ben Dollard's rescue by getting him a dress suit for his
concert occur as marginal additions.
The next short fragment Joyce squeezed in
the middle of p. [11v] is also exemplary of the stylistic innovations the
episode underwent in this draft on its way to Ulysses. Joyce had tagged this fragment with the overt stage
direction '(He thought)', but by simply though determinedly crossing it out,
Joyce's text plunges the reader into Bloom's thought processes as he ponders
his life. He wonders: 'If she then I would be different then. But she has? Or
has she?' That is, Bloom asks himself how would their lives be different if
Molly did not keep her rendezvous
with Boylan? Tellingly, afterwards, Joyce dispersed and dissimulated this
crucial scene in various other episodes of Ulysses,
presumably because it could not be part of 'Sirens' for the same sort of
psychological and structural reasons I alluded to above. I would argue that
given the importance of this question for Bloom that day, such a direct,
unqualified statement of his fears as a husband, father, and as a man, would
simply have been out of place in 'Sirens' once Joyce had written more of the
Bloom-oriented episodes in the first half of Ulysses. On the other hand, such a
complex and conflicted scenario does make sense from the perspective of
'Circe', but Joyce only started elaborating the later episode over a year later
in mid 1920 (as far as we know).
Several of the fragments here are
explicitly from a narrator's, third-person perspective on Bloom in the Ormond,
describing Bloom's observations and thoughts. But, in the additional text in
the margins, Joyce slowly but surely developed and refined Bloom's interior
monologue; he began to explore the workings of Bloom's mind and to present them
directly to the reader, thereby giving 'Sirens' the immediacy that is a
hallmark of Ulysses.
More fundamentally, this part of the
'Sirens' manuscript demonstrates that Joyce initiated some of the other
experimental aspects of Ulysses much
earlier than scholars of the genesis of Ulysses had presumed; that is, in 1917 rather
than in 1919. For example, the central fragment on p. [12r] presents Bloom's
disjointed, half-articulated, but coherent thoughts as he recognizes a pun on
chamber music, tries to formulate his own 'science' of acoustics, thinks of
Listz's Hungarian Rhapsodies, and
then composes a musical arrangement for urine tinkling into a chamber pot: 'Diddleiddle
addleaddle ooddleooddle'.
Joyce wrote most of the fragments for the
ending of 'Sirens' on p. [12v], but not in a sequential order. They alternate
between scenes after Bloom has left the Ormond and Ben Dollard has sung The Croppy Boy. At the bottom of the
page Joyce explored Bloom's thoughts about the man who first discovered drums.
This prompts him to think about the asses' 'point of view': they are beasts of
burden in life and then their skins are used for the drums. Bloom then tries to
recall the Arabic word 'Kismet' ('Fate') but he confuses it with 'backsheesh'
('gratuity'), rather than the word 'yashmak' (the veil worn by Muslim women in
public) that readers know from Ulysses.
Joyce wrote the first known version of the
finale of 'Sirens' on the top half of p. [13r], even though two more pages of
fragments follow. The first fragment begins with the 'frowsy whore' Bloom wants
to avoid (which Joyce also took from entries in the 'Subject' notebook, under
the heading 'Leopold'), then Joyce wove together the closing words of Robert
Emmet's speech and, in the margins, Bloom's analysis of the causes of his gas:
'must be the cider or the Burgan.' and, finally, 'Let my epitaph be written. I
have. Bfffffff Done.'
The various fragmentary texts that began
on the lower half of p. [10r] and follow in this part of the manuscript are
difficult to separate from one another at this draft stage and even harder to
place as such in the much more developed next draft stage and so in Ulysses. Joyce himself did not always
separate the texts with horizontal lines, and even those texts that he wrote as
units here he broke up and dispersed at the next extant draft level. It is
likely that in this part of the manuscript Joyce was simply collecting some
previously written, isolated texts, as well as writing new texts, all without a
clear sense of where they would fit into the episode. Obviously, Joyce's sense
of the episode as a whole changed radically from this stage to the next.
The transition from this draft stage to the
next (see below) is a crucial moment in the evolution of Ulysses. As this episode developed, Joyce presumably realized two
major points that altered the course of Ulysses. On the one hand (at a later stage after
writing the first part of this draft), Joyce realised that the one-sided
approach to 'Sirens' was too simplistic for such a pivotal episode in the work,
possibly because it isolated Bloom too obviously at this delicate juncture of
the day. Also, Joyce must have realized that it was precisely the musical style
of the episode that would allow Bloom to be both on the margins (both
structurally and socially) of what was happening in the Ormond and yet not
completely cut-off from human camaraderie.
(MSS 36,639/08/A–C)
This draft consists of three separate copybooks; they
contain a continuous text, which together comprise the earliest extant complete
draft of the episode. Joyce wrote this draft in early to mid 1918 and had finished
the next extant version of the episode (the Rosenbach manuscript) on 'New
Year's Eve | 1918'.[75]
Along with
'Proteus' (NLI MS 36,639/07/A and then Buffalo MS V.A.3) and 'Sirens' (MS
36,639/07/B), 'Scylla and Charybdis' was one of the earliest episodes for Ulysses Joyce conceived and presumably
wrote.[76]
He had gathered some of the elements he would subsequently use for the start of
this episode as early as 1903–4 in the Early Commonplace Book: 1903–12
(NLI MS 36,639/02/A), although it is unlikely that he needed to consult that
manuscript for those precise phrases when he actually wrote this episode.[77]
It is
probable that Joyce considered including a scene that takes place at the
National Library in A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, but there are no relevant documents that would
confirm this hypothesis.[78]
On 9 April 1917, Joyce wrote
to Ezra Pound, '[a]s regards excerpts from Ulysses,
the only thing I could send is the Hamlet chapter, or part of it––which,
however, would suffer by excision' (LI
101). What form the episode may have had at this stage is not known, but it was
almost certainly an earlier draft or proto-draft of the episode that is now
lost (see below).
As is often the case, Joyce's notebook usage helps
date this draft. The earliest notes Joyce compiled and then used in this draft
are from the so-called 'Alphabetical Notebook' (Cornell MS 25).[79]
It dates from 1910 and Joyce first used it to write A Portrait, but then he used other notes from it to write several
early drafts of Ulysses, including
'Scylla and Charybdis'. Entries from that notebook–from under the heading
'Stephen', obviously enough–appear both as part of the main text and as
additions on this manuscript.[80] Joyce also used entries from the
'Subject' notebook (NLI MS 36,639/03)–from both the headings 'Theosophy' and
'Words'–to write the main text and make additions on various pages of this
draft.[81]
Joyce also compiled several sets of notes for the episode at the end of this
draft (see MS 36,639/08/C, p. [12r]) and used them here, but notably only for
additions to the text, which suggests that he compiled the list after he had
finished at least a first round of writing this draft.[82]
What we presume was an earlier manuscript of this
episode was part of the La Hune 'James Joyce' Exhibition and auction in Paris
in 1948. It was part of the collection acquired by the University at Buffalo
(as it is now called), but it did not arrive in Buffalo with the other La Hune
Joyce material in 1950.[83]
What became of that manuscript is not known and it has never reappeared. The La
Hune catalogue describes it as:
CHARYBDE ET SCYLLA. / (Neuvi?me
episode) 10 grandes feuilles de papier blanc uni, manuscrit ? l'encre
uniquement recto. Fragments de conversations qui r?apparaissent, sous une forme
tr?s diff?rente, dans la sc?ne de la Biblioth?que. Nombreuses marques au crayon rouge.[84]
[Scylla et
Charybdis. / (Ninth episode) 10 large white unlined sheets of paper,
holograph in ink only on the rectos. Fragments of conversations that reappear,
in a very different form, in the Library episode. Numerous red crayon
markings.]
Interestingly, this description
suggests that it was similar to the fragmentary texts in the newly discovered
'Proteus' and 'Sirens' manuscript (NLI MS 36,639/07/A–B), which is further
evidence that some of the early drafts were composed from disconnected,
fragmentary textual blocks. Like other writers, Joyce regularly crossed out
(usually in coloured crayons) the text of a draft when he had copied it into
another, later document. This manuscript is unusual because none of the
main text on any page is crossed out in this way. On the other hand, most but not all of the
additional texts in the left margins of the rectos as well as the versos are
crossed out in red and sometimes in blue crayon.[85]
A possible explanation for this is that this manuscript did not represent the
most advanced textual state of the episode when Joyce was recopying it. If that
was the case, then here he was primarily concerned with incorporating the
additions from this manuscript on some (now missing) subsequent or collateral
draft. In general, this suggests that Joyce worked with several drafts of this
episode at different stages of its development simultaneously (and this may
also account for the different ways in which Joyce wrote out some of the
collateral Rosenbach manuscripts, including the one for this episode).
The next
extant version of the episode is the Rosenbach manuscript. It is a demonstrably
more advanced (and therefore later) draft stage than this manuscript; that is,
there are many emendations and additions that appear as parts of the main text
of the Rosenbach manuscript that are not present in any recognisable form on
this draft. Most notably, there are several lines as well as blocks of text
that are completely absent from the text of this manuscript but which appear as
part of the Rosenbach version of the episode.[86]
Therefore, we can postulate at least one (now missing) draft stage between this
manuscript and the Rosenbach version of the episode.
A preliminary collation of the texts on this
manuscript and the Rosenbach version demonstrates (when it is possible to
adjudicate between variant readings) that this manuscript is closer to the text
on the Rosenbach manuscript than to the so-called '(Lost) Final Working Draft'
of the episode that produced the extant typescript, particularly for the first
third of the episode.[87]
The most obvious example is: 'Do you know what you are
talking about? Love, yes. ^Word known to all men.^ Amor vero aliquid alicui
bonum vult undea et ea quae concupiscumus' (U 9.429–31). It appears in the main text (revised as indicated) on
MS 36,639/08/B, p. [2r] and so is identical to the reading on the Rosenbach
manuscript rather than the typescript (and so in most versions of Ulysses).
The precise relationship of this manuscript to the
Rosenbach manuscript version of 'Scylla and Charybdis' is complicated by the
fact that the extant typescript, which in turn produced both The Little
Review text (published in April and May 1919) and the episode as published
in Ulysses, was definitely not
produced directly from the Rosenbach manuscript. The Rosenbach manuscript of
this episode is therefore a mixed document, which is relatively unusual amongst
Joyce's extant manuscripts.[88] Furthermore, the textual evidence suggests
that Joyce produced another now missing draft of the episode, after the
Rosenbach manuscript,[89]
which was then used as the copy text for the extant typescript. This other
(missing) document contained both additional sentences and blocks of text as well
as variant readings that are not present on
this manuscript or on the Rosenbach.
(MS 36,639/09)
This manuscript is a copybook containing the text of about the first
sixty percent of the 'Sirens' episode as published in Ulysses (11.01–785). This draft stage is continued directly on
Buffalo MS V.A.5 and concluded there.[90]
As Michael Groden and Daniel Ferrer have already noted, the discovery of this
portion of what we now know is a later 'Sirens' draft did not come as much of a
surprise to scholars of the episode for the simple reason that p. [1r] of the
continuation of this draft stage tellingly starts in mid sentence on p. '21'.
So it was logical to presume that Joyce had already written twenty pages before
starting the Buffalo manuscript. Although Joyce continued to refine the text at
every subsequent juncture, by this stage the episode had already achieved the
formal structure and thematic characteristics that closely resemble its
published instantiations, except for the extant version of overture at the
start, which Joyce probably only wrote after finishing the rest of the
Rosenbach faircopy manuscript.
On the other hand, what is surprising is the radical
conceptual and stylistic overhaul the episode underwent between the newly
discovered earlier extant 'Sirens' manuscript (NLI MS 36,639/07/B; see above)
and this draft stage. The internal textual evidence is inconclusive about when
and how Joyce refashioned the episode's (by now) characteristic style: 1) Joyce
could have written this draft directly from the earlier version (along with
further fragments like the ones at the end of NLI MS 36,639/07/B) and reworked
and elaborated them directly here as he wrote this draft; or else 2) Joyce
consolidated his earlier work and refashioned the episode's style in a
piecemeal manner in one or more intermediary drafts (now missing), and then
simply continued that process here. The latter possibility is much more likely
but not certain.
Here the fixed, continuous narrative from the earlier
manuscript version ends on p. [7v], but is significantly expanded and revised.
It is difficult to suppose that Joyce was able to fluidly recast the entire
episode, both in terms of its style and content–from its quite different and
more primitive state in the earlier draft to this later and well-established
version–without positing at least one (but possibly more) intermediate draft
stage(s). While Joyce's experience of writing the first ten episodes at least
to their 'faircopy' states may account for the first possibility, I consider
that scenario quite unlikely.
On the one hand, the fluid progress of the narrative
in the last five pages of the copybook clearly suggests that some missing
intermediary draft of the whole episode extended beyond what Joyce had written
in 1918, especially since so little of the text can be traced to the earlier
version. On the other hand, the various ways in which Joyce incorporated the
extant fragments from the latter half of the earlier version are ambiguous.
Most of the earlier, distinct fragments are consolidated on p. [8v] in this
draft. Joyce moulded them together mostly as part of the main text from MS
36,639/07/B, pp. [11v]–[11r]–[11v] (in that order) but, significantly, he also
added yet another fragment from p. [11r] in the left margin of p. [8v]. All of
these various fragments were crossed through in red crayon on the earlier draft
and so one would expect that if Joyce had transferred them all to an
intermediary draft, they would all be part of the main text in this later
version.[91]
Based on the manuscripts that survive, it
appears to have been a regular practice for Joyce to fill the pages of a
copybook from recto to verso on later, more stable drafts, but only on rectos
on earlier, more fluid drafts (so that he would have ample room to add further
text on the facing versos). Though there may be other explanations for his
choice here, a notable difference between the ways Joyce used the two copybooks
that constitute this same draft stage is that he wrote on the rectos and versos
consecutively on the NLI manuscript (the start of the episode), but wrote
directly from recto to recto (leaving himself plenty of blank space) on the
Buffalo manuscript, reserving the versos for further additions and revisions.
Joyce had in fact written the first third of the episode at least twice before
and presumably he believed it had reached a fixed (though certainly not final)
state. On the other hand, all that survives for the latter portion of the episode
before this draft stage are unconnected fragmentary texts. Still, as we have
seen in the earlier version of 'Sirens', Joyce's confidence in the constancy of
his work was sometimes misplaced.[92]
Although most of the narrative and
language of the earlier draft remained, as usual Joyce expanded and reworked
much of it. The radical alteration of the conceptual framework of the episode
by this draft stage is immediately evident because Bloom's meandering journey
along the southside bank of the Liffey to the Ormond has already been woven
into the opening dialogue between the two barmaids. Joyce must have decided to
include the account of Bloom's arrival at the bar as part of the opening of the
episode before he started writing this draft, though it is interesting to see how
rudimentary Bloom's itinerary is at this stage (see p. [1r]).[93]
For example, at first Joyce simply wrote: 'Mr Bloom went by –– bearing in his
breast pocket the sweets of sin', but it was only when he added 'by Moulang's
pipes' beside it in the left margin that the blank become a real Dublin locale.[94]
Joyce's other preoccupation here (as it
was on the earlier draft and it continued at every subsequent stage) was the
ordering of the phrases he had already decided upon.[95]
Again from the same paragraph that introduces Bloom in 'Sirens' on p. [1r],
Joyce first wrote 'bearing in his breast pocket the sweets of sin, bearing in
his memory sweet sinful words. For Raoul.' Unusually, Joyce simply circled the
word 'pocket' and it does not appear again; perhaps this is because he began
shifting the emphasis here from the physical to the psychological dimension of
the scene; this shift in emphasis is also evident in the ways Joyce rearranged
the order of the phrases. At a later stage, Joyce also added in the left margin
the names of the shop fronts that interrupt Bloom's sensual reverie.[96]
Furthermore, the aquatic ambience of the
Ormond is established, for example, with descriptions that liken the counter of
the bar to a 'reef' (p. [1v]) and the 'eau de Nil' motif Joyce added on p.
[1r]. There are also many musical allusions that appear here already in the
text that were not present in the earlier draft and Joyce continued to add even
more. He also reassigned some of the dialogue between the barmaids and Dedalus,
Lenehan and Boylan, but the same kind of character instability was already evident on the earlier
draft; this issue requires further examination in 'Sirens' and in Ulysses
more generally.
This manuscript also documents another
transformation of the episode that is as momentous as it is problematic: the
imposition of the so-called 'fugal' structure on the episode and the
development of the episode's overture.[97]
Although the conceptual note on p. [1r]: 'Repeat | episodes | phrases' signals
the origin of the overture, its first extant version is as part of the
Rosenbach manuscript.
(MS 36,639/10)
This manuscript contains at least four relatively lengthy, isolated
scenes (mostly parodies), the episode's new opening, several unconnected
fragmentary texts, as well as, unusually, an exchange of comic notes between
James and Nora Joyce. Michael Groden postulated the existence of this copybook
in his pivotal 1977 study of the evolution of the episode in 'Ulysses' in Progress.[98]
Its discovery confirms many of Groden's insights and conclusions.[99]
Naturally, it will also prompt further research and discussion of Joyce's
creative methods and the several transformations Ulysses underwent in what Groden has designated as the 'middle
stage' of the genesis of the work; this brief analysis is just one step in that
direction.
As in the earlier 'Sirens' manuscript (NLI
36,639/07/B), presumably here too Joyce was compiling previously written
distinct and fragmentary scenes and writing new fragmentary texts without a
clear sense of how he would integrate this material into a continuous narrative
of the episode.[100]
In his discussion of Buffalo MS V.A.8–the sibling copybook of this manuscript
stage of 'Cyclops'–Groden describes Joyce's 'habit of composing his material in
blocks with only arbitrary attempts at transition or connection. This practice
is basic to the entire copybook: the eight scenes constitute large blocks, and
Joyce gives no indication of how he planned to connect them, even if he knew at
the time'.[101]
Groden's description applies to the various text blocks on this manuscript as
well, and I would argue that this practice is a basic and fundamental aspect of
Joyce's compositional method throughout his
career. If Joyce had a plan for a continuous narrative for 'Cyclops' at this
stage (and this seems unlikely), it was certainly different from the episode's
later form. Therefore, this manuscript stage cannot be called an early 'draft'
or even a 'proto-draft' without significant qualifications to what those terms
usually denote. In these 'Cyclops' manuscripts we have important examples of
the storehouse of material that allowed Joyce to work like an assemblagist
before he wrote continuous narrative drafts of episodes.
Even with the discovery of this manuscript, much of
the documentation of the evolution of 'Cyclops' is still missing. There were
most likely other documents at this draft stage (like MS V.A.8 and this
manuscript that were either other copybooks or loose pages). The next extant
draft stage is Buffalo MS V.A.6,[102]
which is also composed of non-sequential fragments, only some of which were
copied from MS V.A.8 and this manuscript. Since the texts in MSS V.A.8 and
V.A.6 are often significantly revised (at times based on BL Notesheet entries),
at least one intermediary draft stage between these two extant stages must have
intervened. Furthermore, there were probably ancillary documents of a similar
kind as the later manuscript (MS V.A.6), though they too are now missing. Furthermore,
since MS V.A.6 covers only a small portion of the episode, at least one draft
stage intervened between it and the next extant draft stage, the Rosenbach
faircopy manuscript.[103]
The discovery of whatever draft stage Joyce wrote to produce the faircopy
manuscript would shed a great deal of light on the evolution of this episode.
The Rosenbach manuscript in turn was used to prepare the typescript for
'Cyclops' from which both The Little
Review and Ulysses were set.
This copybook begins in mid sentence with the
continuation of the 'eighth' fragmentary scene,[104]
from Buffalo MS V.A.8, p. [24r], and both sections are in pencil.[105]
In fact, Joyce numbered the conclusion of the scene '8' in blue crayon on p.
[1r] here, just as he had the last-written page of the Buffalo manuscript. The
main body text is heavily revised and there is much additional text in the
margins. Neither the layout of the text on the page nor the BL Notesheet draft
usage makes it possible to determine whether Joyce was copying the scene from
an earlier version or whether it is a first draft, though Joyce's handwriting
and the fact that he wrote in pencil suggest that the latter is more likely.[106]
This scene ends about two-thirds of the way down the page with blank space
below it.
Joyce then wrote a new scene at the top of p. [1v],
again in pencil, that he intended to follow another fragmentary scene in
Buffalo MS V.A.8, p. [22v], which he correspondingly tagged here '7) | b)'. He
relied heavily on BL 'Cyclops' Notesheet entries to construct this short scene
(to an even greater degree than he did for the rest of the scene on MS V.A.8),
including the poem.[107]
Joyce transcribed the entire scene from MS V.A.8, with its continuation here,
on a missing intermediary document, which accounts for Joyce having crossed
through the text in red crayon. He then transcribed it in the later draft of
the episode (Buffalo MS V.A.6), but he did not include it in any subsequent
extant draft or in Ulysses.
The next fragment on the page is even shorter, also
in pencil, and in the form of a statement of dialogue attributed to an
anonymous speaker, simply tagged '–',[108]
about syphilis in the British Army. Joyce did not use this material as such
again, though the theme persists (see U
12.1197), and it was incorporated with other material from this copybook in a
later draft.
At the bottom of p. [1v] is the first bit of exchange
between Joyce and Nora and the dialogue is continued that same day on p. [4v].
He playfully demands that she loan him '10 ^(or 5 frs)^ francs' to pay for the
whiskey he has 'just stood' her: 'If not, be damned!' Joyce's note is imbued
with the style of 'Cyclops' and the draft-like nature of the banter is evident
in the way he revised the details as he normally would his creative work. His
handwriting is noticeably different from the one he used to write either the
pencil or ink drafts in this manuscript and in other Ulysses draft manuscripts. It resembles Joyce's note-taking hand,
particularly as we know it from the many extant Buffalo Finnegans Wake notebooks.
On p. [2r], Joyce began a new, integral, and
well-developed scene that is continued directly on pp. [3r] and then [4r] (see U 12.1675–735). I have been unable to
locate any BL Notesheet entries or prior textual state of this elaborate parody
of a church scene, but as Joyce wrote it in ink and only on the recto pages,
this suggests that he may have written an earlier draft of this fragmentary
scene elsewhere and transcribed and then further revised it here. Though this
is the first unnumbered fragment in these early 'Cyclops' copybooks, it is
crossed out in red crayon and so it seems most likely that Joyce transferred it
to at least one missing document before the scene next appears in the Rosenbach
manuscript version of the episode.
Joyce had left pp. [2v] and [3v] blank and then he wrote
the uppermost block of text on p. [3v] first. Like the text block on p. [1v],
it is in pencil and Joyce tagged it as an additional text for the 'sixth'
fragment on MS V.A.8, p. [22r]. In fact, Joyce had marked the end of the scene
there with instructions to himself: '(v. p. 28)'; that is, see p. [3v] here,
which is yet another clue before 2002 that there must have been this companion
manuscript. This is a scene about Molly, 'the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy',
which Joyce recopied on Buffalo MS V.A.6, pp. [4r]–[5r], with the rest of the
'sixth' scene (see U 12.1003–7).
Below it (and therefore almost certainly later),
Joyce wrote another new scene, this time in ink, and continued it on the
previous verso, p. [2v] (see U
12.1593–620). It is yet another parody scene: the arrival of Martin Cunningham,
Jack Powers, and the variously-named Orangeman is told in a nineteenth-century
style of the 'travellers' arriving at the 'rustic hostelry'.[109]
Though both pages are again crossed out with red crayon, this scene does not
appear in MS V.A.6. Nonetheless, it is virtually identical to the Rosenbach
version and Ulysses, except for the
adjective Joyce used to portray Bloom's countenance. It is twice described as
'olive' here but appears both times as 'pleasant' in subsequent versions.[110]
On p. [4v], the dialogue between Joyce and Nora is
continued with her initial response to his demand for a loan on p. [1v]. Her
reply begins 'In answer to yours of todays [sic]
date' and raises an interesting question: how much of the texts on the
intervening pages had Joyce written between his note and hers? It is impossible
to know for certain, but a likely scenario is that Nora read Joyce's note on p.
[1v] and replied on the first blank page she found. If this were the case, it
would mean that Joyce had written at
least two new, significant scenes as well as some other fragments all on
the same day between their first exchange of notes. For whatever reason, she
too adopts a parodic, business-like tone that suits 'Cyclops' and states that
she 'regret[s]' being unable to 'advance' him 'the maximum sum' but is willing
to provide the lesser amount he had suggested (that is, 5 rather than 10
Francs).
In one of the strangest cases of intertextual
transference in the Joyce archive anywhere, he then replies to her with a line
directly from his notes for Ulysses
that begins 'The curse of a lopsided God light sideways [...]' and he continued
the note, jokingly insulting her, but then signed himself 'yours affectionately
| J J'.[111]
At some stage, Joyce added the entire Ulysses text, with yet another line, in the left
margin of MS V.A.8, p. [10r] in pencil. It is impossible to determine the exact
priority of the Notesheet entries, the notes to Nora, and the addition to the
draft, but this text next appears in the context of the 'syphilisation' theme
from p. [1v] here in the Rosenbach manuscript and then in Ulysses at 12.1197–9. Nora has the last word in the matter when she
echoes something Joyce had in fact written to Sir Horace Rumbold a year
earlier. In Rumbold's name, she presents her 'compliments' to Mr Joyce and
'suggests that he shall go to Hell'.[112]
Finally, two years later (in the summer of 1921 as an
addition to the printers' typescript), consciously or not, Joyce has the
citizen in turn echo Nora's curse in this precise context:
–Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. ^To
hell with them!^ The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways [...] (U 12.1197–8).
Finally, complaining of his ongoing work on 'Ithaca' in late June 1921,
Joyce quoted this curse again to Frank Budgen: 'In the words of the Cyclops
narrator the curse of my deaf and dumb arse light sideways on Bloom and all his
blooms and blossoms. I'll break the back of Ithaca
tomorrow so 'elp me fucking Chroist' (LIII
46).
Returning to this manuscript, Joyce wrote another
parody on pp. [5r] and [6r], leaving p. [5v] blank. This is a mock Irish
revivalist heroic epic about a 'sinewyarmed hero' and his 'savage animal of the
dog tribe' that became Ulysses
12.151–205. The draft here is very similar to the text on the Rosenbach
manuscript (though Joyce continued to amplify his description of the giant's
appearance, especially on the proofs).
Without access to this manuscript, Groden wrote that,
'Joyce created the parodies first, the barroom scene soon after, and the
narrative voice developed last'.[113]
In fact, now we know that Joyce discovered both the first-person narrator's
voice and developed the method of integrating it with the expansive parodic
commentaries that define the episode's style when he wrote a new opening for
the episode on pp. [7r]–[10r] of this manuscript. Although the entire scene has
most of the elements that readers know from the published texts, this is very
much a draft-in-process. Joyce revised it fluidly and heavily, at various times
in ink and pencil, with his usual further additions in the left margin. As in Ulysses, the scene here begins with the
unnamed 'I' meeting Joe Hynes and recounting the story about the near miss
between the street sweeper's gear and his 'eye'. The episode's Homeric parallel
with Polyphemus is now clearly established. In this draft, Joyce seamlessly
combined the opening's anti-Semitic dialogue and what became the episode's
first parody.[114]
Naturally enough, Joyce had also already determined that Hynes and the narrator
would visit Barney Kiernan's pub to see 'the citizen' and tell him about the
meeting in the City Arms Hotel. Notably, this portion of the draft is only
lightly revised.
The new opening of the episode is continuous in this
draft up to Ulysses 12.67 at the top
of p. [10r],[115]
but then jumps directly to the scene where the pair enter Barney Kiernan's and
meet the citizen and Garryowen already in situ (this scene begins at U 12.118). In the Rosenbach manuscript
and Ulysses these narrative actions
are interrupted by the 'land of holy Michan' digression. Joyce had already
written this scene on Buffalo MS V.A.8, pp. [1r]–[2r] and probably intended it
as the original opening of the episode.[116]
There the mythic and parodic description of the area around Barney Kiernan's
also served to introduce 'O'Bloom' ('the noble hero, ^the son of Rudolph^' [...])
as he walked on his errand to the pub. Joyce's solution in integrating the
older and newer texts was simple enough: in a typically utilitarian fashion, he
just broke up the older scene. He merely combined the first and third
descriptive paragraphs (and they appear basically the same, though much
expanded, on the Rosenbach version and then as U 12.68–99 and 12.102–17). On the other hand, he also reserved what
he had already written about Bloom and later inserted it in what would be lines
12.215–7, about a hundred lines later in Ulysses.
For now, Joyce continued the narrative on pp.
[10r]–[11r] in this manuscript. Here the 'Stand and deliver' exchange between
the citizen and Hynes is virtually identical to the published versions,
including the way the citizen rubs 'his hand in his eye'. Joyce also fluidly
wrote Hynes's dialogue about his 'opinion of the times' with the citizen, and
it is already remarkably similar to its appearance in Ulysses.[117]
Joyce had also by now already determined the narrator's catchword, 'begob'; it
appears for the first time on p. [11r]. Similarly, the dialogue as the men
order drinks (some of it based on BL 'Cyclops' notes) and the reason Hynes has
the money to pay for them is already established. So far, the narrative as we
know it in Ulysses has proceeded in
these pages uninterruptedly from U 12.118
to 12.147. Then, as noted above, by the time Joyce wrote the Rosenbach version
of the episode, he had seamlessly integrated the mock-heroic description of the
citizen and his faithful companion that he had written on pp. [5r]–[6r] in this
copybook into this scene, with just some additional transitional material
before and after the parody (see U
12.151–205).
The placement of the various elements of the text in
these pages sheds light on Joyce's later deliberations about how to introduce
Bloom in 'Cyclops'. On p. [11r] he wrote:
And begob he [Hynes] ^<outs> lands out^ with
golden sovereign.
― Were you robbing a poorbox, Joe? says I.
― Sweat of my brow, says Joe. (U 12.206–11)
Then, as an addition on the facing page ([10v]), referring to an earlier
scene in 'Aeolus', Joyce has Hynes say:
'Twas the prudent member gave me
the wheeze.[118]
(Description
of LB)
Presumably, the second line was Joyce's note to himself to add the
unused material from the older description of Bloom in Buffalo MS V.A.8, p.
[1r]. Most likely, Joyce first returned to the earlier text and revised it in
pencil, but this did not suit him either. So he also rewrote Bloom's entrance
in full (just as it appears in Ulysses)
right below the note and also added the narrator's insulting account of his
first sighting of Bloom (see U
12.213–14) right above, all on p. [11v]. Joyce pieced all the elements together
by the time he wrote the Rosenbach manuscript and it remained virtually
unchanged from then on.
Hynes's revelation that he had been paid by 'the old
woman of Prince's street' sets the citizen off on his rant about the Irish Independent on pp. [11r] and [12r]
(see U 12.218–43). The entire scene
is quite similar to the subsequent versions, including the list of names read
aloud. Although Joyce did not use any of the extant BL Notesheet entries for
this list, it is based on the Irish Daily Independent for 16 June 1904.
The episode's new opening ends towards the bottom of
p. [12r]. Joyce later drew a short centred horizontal line separating it from
yet another parodic text, the execution scene (see U 12.525–678). The sketch continues directly on pp. [13r]–[15r],
with additions in the margins and on pp. [13v] and [14v].[119]
This relatively long scene here is followed by two unrelated further fragments
and the rest of the copybook is blank, except for yet another list of incidents
on its final page that accounts for the arrival of some of the characters at
Barney Kiernan's.
To be
continued.
Abbreviations:
|
|
Manuscript
Collections: |
|
|
|
BL |
British Library, London |
Buffalo |
Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo, State
University of New York |
NLI |
National Library of Ireland, Dublin |
Rosenbach |
Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania |
|
|
Works
by Joyce: |
|
JJA |
James Joyce Archive, edited by Michael
Groden et al. 63 volumes (New York: Garland, 1977–8); cited by volume and
page number. |
LI, LII,
LIII |
Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I, edited by
Stuart Gilbert (New York: Viking, 1957; reissued with corrections 1966).
Vols. II and III, edited by Richard Ellmann (New York: Viking, 1966). |
SL |
Selected Letters of James Joyce, edited by Richard
Ellmann (New York: Viking, 1975; London: Faber, 1975). |
U |
Ulysses, edited by Hans Walter Gabler et al. (New
York and London: Garland, 1984, 1986), also published by Random House, Bodley
Head, and Penguin; cited by episode and line number. |
|
|
Secondary
Sources: |
|
GJS |
Genetic Joyce Studies |
JNEDU |
Joyce's Notes and Early
Drafts for 'Ulysses': Selections from the Buffalo Collection, edited by Phillip F. Herring,
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977). |
JJII |
Richard Ellmann, James
Joyce, revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). |
JJBU |
Rodney Wilson Owen, James Joyce and the Beginnings of 'Ulysses' (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1983). |
JJQ |
James Joyce Quarterly |
UNBM |
Joyce's 'Ulysses
Notesheets in the British Museum, edited by Phillip F. Herring, (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1972). |
WD |
The Workshop of Daedalus, edited by Robert Scholes and Richard
M. Kain, (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1965 (see http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?id=JoyceColl.ScholesWorkshop) |
Appendix:
Manuscript: |
Dates & Place of Composition: |
Document(s): |
'Telemachus' (1): |
||
Faircopy for
Typescript |
September–October
1917: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Nestor' (2): |
||
Faircopy for
Typescript |
October–early
December 1917: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Proteus' (3): |
||
Earlier
Proto-draft |
Fall 1917: Zurich |
NLI 36,639/07/A |
Later Draft |
Fall 1917: Zurich |
Buffalo V.A.3 |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
December 1917:
Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Calypso' (4): |
||
Faircopy for
Typescript |
February 1918:
Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Lotus Eaters' (5): |
||
Collateral
Faircopy |
January–May 1918:
Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Hades' (6): |
||
Collateral
Faircopy |
January–July
1918: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Aeolus' (7): |
||
Collateral
Faircopy |
January–August
1918: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Lestrygonians' (8): |
||
Collateral
Faircopy |
1918: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Scylla and Charybdis' (9): |
||
Earliest Draft |
Early to mid
1918: Zurich |
NLI 36,639/08/A
& |
Earliest Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/08/B
& |
Earliest Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/08/C |
Collateral
Faircopy |
Late 1918: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Wandering Rocks' (10): |
||
Faircopy for
Typescript |
January–February
1919: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Sirens' (11): |
||
Partial Early
Draft & Fragments |
Late 1917–early
1918: Zurich |
NLI 36,639/07/B |
Later Draft |
January–May 1919:
Zurich |
NLI 36,639/09
& |
Later Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.5 |
Collateral
Faircopy |
June 1919: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
'Cyclops' (12): |
||
Earlier
Fragmentary Texts |
June 1919: Zurich |
Buffalo V.A.8
& |
Earlier
Fragmentary Texts |
|
NLI 36,639/10 |
Later Draft of
Texts |
June–July
1919: Zurich??????????????????? |
Buffalo V.A.6 |
Additional Text |
|
Buffalo V.A.7 |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
August–September
1919: Zurich |
Rosenbach |
Additional
Manuscript for Proofs |
October 1921 |
Buffalo V.A.9 |
'Nausicaa' (13): |
||
Early Draft |
November
1919–January 1920: Trieste |
Buffalo V.A.10
& |
Early Draft |
|
Cornell 56A & |
Early Draft |
|
Cornell 56B |
Mixed Faircopy
for Typescript |
January–February
1920: Trieste |
Rosenbach |
'Oxen of the Sun' (14): |
||
Earlier Draft |
February–March
1920: Trieste |
Buffalo V.A.11
& |
Earlier Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.12
& |
Earlier Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/11/A
& |
Earlier Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/11/B |
Later Draft |
February–March
1920: Trieste |
Buffalo V.A.13
& |
Later Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.14
& |
Later Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/11/C
& |
Later Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.15
& |
Later Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/11/D
& |
Later Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.16
& |
Later Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.17
& |
Later Draft |
|
Buffalo V.A.18 & |
Later Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/11/E
& |
Later Draft |
|
NLI 36,639/11/F |
Pre-faircopy
Fragment |
March–April 1920:
Trieste |
Cornell
(Uncatalogued) |
Mixed Faircopy
for Typescript |
May 1920: Trieste |
Rosenbach |
'Circe' (15): |
||
Earlier Draft |
January–July
1920: Trieste |
Buffalo V.A.19 |
Intermediary
'Quinn' Draft |
July–December
1920: Paris |
NLI 35,958 |
Later Draft |
July–December
1920: Paris: Paris |
NLI 36,639/12 |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
December
1920–January 1921: Paris |
Rosenbach |
Additional
Manuscript for Proofs |
September 1921: Paris |
Buffalo V.A.20 |
'Eumaeus' (16): |
||
'Eumeo'
Manuscript: Earlier Draft |
January–February
1921: Paris |
Private
Collection |
Later Draft |
Mid February
1921: Paris |
Buffalo V.A.21 |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
Mid to Late
February 1921: Paris |
Rosenbach |
'Ithaca' (17): |
||
Early Proto-draft |
March–August
1921: Paris |
NLI 36,639/13 |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
November 1921:
Paris |
Rosenbach |
'Penelope' (18): |
||
Early Draft |
Early summer
1921: Paris |
NLI 36,639/14 |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
July–September
1921 |
Rosenbach & |
Faircopy for
Typescript |
|
Buffalo V.A.21 |
[1] I would like to thank Dirk Van Hulle,
Geert Lernout, Hans Walter Gabler, Ronan Crowley, Terence Killeen, and Daniel
Ferrer for their insightful comments and suggestions.
[2] I wrote a previous version of this survey
to accompany the 'Ulysses in Process' installation in the 'James Joyce and Ulysses
at the National Library of Ireland' exhibition (Dublin, June 2004–March 2006),
which I curated with Catherine Fahy and Katherine McSharry.
[3] The 'Joyce Papers 2002' are NLI MSS
36,639/01–19 and this study covers MSS 36,639/01–10. Peter Kenny prepared an
initial catalogue of all the 'Joyce Papers 2002' and it is available online at www.nli.ie. I am preparing a revised, complete
catalogue of the Joyce manuscripts at the NLI.
[4] See Michael Groden, 'Ulysses' in
Progress, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 115–65.
[5] I completed the catalogue of the Buffalo
Joyce Collection in September 2010 and it is available online at http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/.
[6] See Jean-Michel's Rabat?'s discussion of
the 'genreader' in James Joyce and the
Politics of Egoism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
[7] See Daniel Ferrer's recently-published rich and
provocative analysis of the potential of genetic criticism: Logiques du brouillon: model?s pour une
critique g?n?tique (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil, 2011).
[8] Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard Steppe
and Claus Melchior, Ulysses: A
Critical and Synoptic Edition (New York and London: Garland Publishing
Inc., 1948, 1986), vol. 1, p. 152.
[9] This complex topic requires a
monograph-length study, so this section is only meant as a simplified pr?cis;
hence the descriptions here are deliberately generic and the number of
citations have been kept to a minimum.
[10] See the appendix, a Census of extant Ulysses
holograph manuscripts for further details about all the extant manuscripts. I
have catalogued all of the Ulysses manuscripts at Buffalo; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/v.htm.
[11] See Christie's [Chris Coover et al.], 'James Joyce's Ulysses: The John Quinn Draft Manuscript of the
?Circe? episode.' Christie's, New York, Thursday, 14 December 2000: this is now
NLI MS 35,958.
[12] See Sotheby's [Peter Selley et al.], 'The
Lost 'Eumaeus' Notebook: James Joyce, Autograph Manuscript of the 'Eumaeus'
Episode of Ulysses.' Sotheby's London, July 10, 2001.
[13] The Early Commonplace Book (NLI MS
36,639/02; see pp. [19r]–[21v], for example) is a very early example of Joyce's method of working from prior notes. At
the other end of Joyce's career we have
the fifty-odd 'Work in Progress'/Finnegans
Wake Notebooks, virtually
all of which are at Buffalo; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vi.htm.
[14] Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of 'Ulysses'
and Other Writings, with an introduction by Clive Hart (London: Oxford
University Press, 1972), p. 176.
[15] Budgen, Making of 'Ulysses', pp. 176–7.
[16] With the notable exception of 'Proteus',
before the discovery of the new NLI manuscripts, all of the then known
manuscripts cluster around the middle of the book from 'Sirens' to
'Eumaeus'. Given the fact that Joyce had been working on Ulysses since at least 16 June 1915 (about five and half years
before Ulysses was published), the
manuscripts that were then known to survive are all relatively late, dating
from 1917 to early 1921. In 1999, there was no documentary evidence of the
early genesis of episodes 4 to 9, 'Calypso' through 'Scylla and Charybdis'.
Since Joyce began to hold on to his working
drafts relatively late Joyce began to hold on to his working drafts relatively late,
most likely what has survived for these episodes is just based on chance. More often than not he simply disposed
of the manuscripts once they had been recopied because he no longer needed
them.
[17] Various typists used the Rosenbach
faircopy manuscripts for only ten episodes: 'Telemachus' through 'Calypso',
'Wandering Rocks', 'Cyclops', and 'Circe' through 'Penelope'.
[18] Harriet Shaw Weaver marked up her own
copies of The Little Review for the
printers to set up the few sections of Ulysses that appeared in The Egoist.
[19] There are numerous and sometimes
substantial variations in the text between the Rosenbach manuscripts and the
typescripts for certain episodes, but there is not enough textual or contextual
information to determine the precise relationships between the extant individual
'faircopy' manuscripts and the typescripts. It is possible that certain now
lost manuscripts produced both the Rosenbach manuscript versions as well as the
typescripts at different times; or else, one or more subsequent documents
intervened between the Rosenbach manuscripts and typescripts, but the situation
may be different with different episodes.
[20] Budgen, Making of 'Ulysses', p. 22.
[21] Ronan Crowley and I prepared a census of
all the Ulysses
proofs that was published in GJS
(Issue 8), 2008, as 'The Ulysses Proof^finder'; see Proofs
by Episode. Also, see Crowley's introduction to the Placards
for further, specific information on these important documents in the genesis
of Ulysses.
[22] Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare and Company (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 47.
[23] Almost six months after Ulysses was published, Beach recorded that the printing of Ulysses had cost 42,492 Francs (twice as much as Darantiere had originally
estimated) and the postage for shipping this bulky tome had cost 3,200 Francs
so far. By then 39,505 Francs had been paid to Joyce, which is almost
thirty percent of the net receipts of the book's
sales from 19 May 1921 to 27 July 1922, whereas Beach had only received
13,978.80, or just about ten percent. (See Beach's 'ULYSSES | Account
Rendered' memorandum: Buffalo
MS XVIII: Miscellaneous Material Related to Joyce's Works, E.1, folder 21.)
[24] See WD
3; The Critical Writings, edited by Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann (New York:
Viking, 1968), pp. 15–16.
[25] Dirk Van Hulle, 'Joyce and Beckett
Discovering Dante', Joyce Studies 2004,
Number 7, edited by Luca Crispi and Catherine Fahy (Dublin: The National
Library of Ireland, 2004). It is not known which printing of this Divina Commedia Joyce used but the
pagination between them remained consistent.
[26] See Luca Crispi, A Commentary on
James Joyce's National Library of Ireland 'Early Commonplace Book': 1903–1912
(MS 36,639/02/A).
[28] Wim Van Mierlo's The Subject
Notebook: A Nexus in the Composition History of Ulysses-A Preliminary Analysis is a pivotal essay on this
manuscript. It was published in GJS
Issue 7 (Spring 2007) and the reader is referred there for information on the
sources of these notes.
[29] The manuscript has been reproduced in
colour photo-facsimile on JJA 7.109–56.
It has been transcribed and annotated in WD
92–105.
[30] This manuscript was previously catalogued
as Buffalo MS VIII.A.5.
[31] See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va2a.htm.
The manuscript has been reproduced in colour photo-facsimile on JJA 12.129–66. It was transcribed and
annotated in JNEDU, pp. 3–33.
[32] The vast majority of the Buffalo Finnegans Wake notebooks are 'first-order' compilations;
see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vi.htm.
[33] There was at least one further early Ulysses notebook (that was also compiled
in 1918 and in tandem with Buffalo MS V.A.2.a), but it survives only in the
form of a partial amanuensis's transcription in Buffalo Finnegans Wake MS VI.C.16, pp. [232]–[274]. It is also catalogued
as a so-called 'Missing Notebook', Buffalo MS VI.D.7; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic16.htm;
and JJA 42.348–59. Danis Rose and
John O'Hanlon prepared an edited version of Buffalo MS VI.C.16 as The Lost
Notebook: New Evidence on the Genesis of 'Ulysses' (Edinburgh: Split Pea
Press, 1989).
[34] These manuscripts have been reproduced in
colour photo-facsimile on JJA
12.02–95. The manuscripts were transcribed and annotated in UNBM, see p. 526.
[35] See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va2b.htm.
The manuscript has been reproduced in colour photo-facsimile on JJA 12.97–125. It was transcribed and
annotated by Phillip Herring in JNEDU,
pp. 37–118
[36] For an invaluable discussion of this
little-known period of Joyce's writing, see Rodney Owen's JJBU.
[37] For example, the text-blocks that
constitute the proto-draft of 'Proteus' (NLI MS 36,639/07/A, pp. [1r]–[5r]) as well as the fragments at the end of the earlier 'Sirens' draft (NLI
MS 36,639/07/B, pp. [10r]–[14r]) may be indicative of the earlier
state of these transitional texts.
[38] Significantly, although Joyce had already
settled on the character of Molly Bloom (or 'Mollie' as she is named here on p.
[2r] under the heading 'Leopold'), she is virtually absent from these notes.
[39] Joyce's most consistent method of heading
a notebook can be seen in NLI MS 36,639/05/B. There he usually headed only the
recto page and then used the facing verso pages for further notes when the
recto pages were full.
[40] Also, the notes under the heading
'Theosophy' on p. [7r] are, again unusually, continued on p. [7v] rather than
the blank p. [6v].
[41] There are similar catchall heading at the
end of Buffalo Finnegans Wake
Notebook VI.A (the so-called 'Scribbledehobble' Finnegans Wake notebook): 'Books' (twice), 'Words' and 'Names'. See
http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/via.htm.
The inscribed pages of this manuscript have been reproduced in black and white
photo-facsimile in JJA 28.01–253 and some pages were also reproduced
in colour on 28.255–86. An edited preliminary version of the manuscript has
been published as James Joyce's Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for
'Finnegans Wake' by Thomas Connolly (Northwestern University Press: 1961).
[42] See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm;
JJA 41.436–40.
[43] The NLI's manuscript numeration (as '04',
'05/A', and '05/B') was assigned by Peter Kenny, but was based on earlier and
only partial analyses by Michael Groden and others. (See Michael Groden's 'The
National Library of Ireland's New Joyce Manuscripts: A Statement and
Document Descriptions', JJQ Vol. 39, Number 1 (Fall 2001 [February 2003]), pp. 29–51, as
well as 'The Archive in Transition: The National Library of Ireland's
New Joyce Manuscripts' in Michael Groden, 'Ulysses' in
Focus: Genetic, Textual, and Personal Views (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2010), pp. 14–31.) These designations are misleading
in several respects, but cannot be altered at this stage, though my catalogue
will address this issue in a more comprehensive manner. Most importantly,
obviously, these are three distinct manuscripts and so they should have been
listed as MSS '04', '05', and '06' (with all subsequent manuscripts being
assigned a +1 number). Based on my current research, I would tentatively order
the manuscripts in the following order: MS 36,639/05/B first, probably 5/A
second, and therefore 4 last.
[44] See Geert Lernout's recently published essay on the
use of search engines to track down note sources as well as inter-textual
references in Joyce's
writings: 'Joyce World-Wide Intertext', JJQ
Vol. 47, Number 2 (Winter 2010), pp. 247–53.
[45] I am indebted to Ronan Crowley for
sharing his original work on 'Circe', most of which is still unpublished. He
was the first to determine the complex relationship between the NLI notebooks
and the BL 'Circe' Notesheets. See "His Dark
Materials": Joyce's "Scribblings" and the Notes for 'Circe' in
the National Library of Ireland' in
GJS Issue 6 (Spring 2006).
[46] This particularly important letter should
be read in its entirety to appreciate Joyce's state of mind as he set about the
arduous task of finishing Ulysses.
[47] This is Ellmann's translation; see SL 275–7.
[48] Further work on the printed sources of
these notes may indicate how many of them are based on Joyce's reading in Paris in 1920–1.
[49] In fact, there are only five other pages
of notes for 'Penelope' all together in the other two NLI notebooks, though, of
course, there are seven BL Notesheets for the episode (according to Herring's
numbering; see UNBM 490–517), as well
at least seven-and-a-half pages in Buffalo MS V.A.2.b, pp. [1r]–[3v], [4v], and
[19v] (see JNEDU 55–73, 77–9, and
116), which further reinforces the connection between these two late notebooks.
[50] Along with all the other NLI Ulysses notebooks, Joyce passed this
notebook on to his amanuensis, Mme France Raphael, who transcribed it (as
Buffalo MS VI.C.7, pp. [235]–[254]) in early 1935 while he was writing 'Work in
Progress'/Finnegans Wake. See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm;
JJA 41.431–6. It is odd that the
Buffalo notebook (MS V.A.2.b) was not similarly transcribed with these other Ulysses
notebooks. On the other hand, the fact that this notebook was transcribed after
the earlier Ulysses notebook (NLI MS
36,639/03) and before the other late notebooks (NLI MSS 36,639/05A and 5/B)
seems simply to have been a coincidence.
[51] Along with all the other NLI Ulysses notebooks, fourteen years after
he had compiled it, Joyce also passed on this notebook to his amanuensis, Mme
France Raphael, who transcribed it (as Buffalo MS VI.C.7, pp. [136]–[198]) in
early 1935 as he worked towards finishing 'Work in Progress'/Finnegans Wake. See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm;
JJA 41.406–22.
[52] That is, Joyce compiled and sorted it
from previous notes as well, along with the BL Notesheets (for 'Cyclops'
through 'Penelope' only), the NLI MSS 36,639/04 and 5/A, and the even later
Buffalo MS V.A.2.b.
[53] Since only some of the manuscripts for
those episodes survive, Joyce's various uses of these notebooks can also be
inferred by collation.
[54] See Sotheby's [Peter Selley et al.], 'The
Lost 'Eumaeus' Notebook: James Joyce, Autograph Manuscript of the 'Eumaeus'
Episode of Ulysses.' Sotheby's London, July 10, 2001.
[55] See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va21.htm;
JJA 15.321–68.
[56] The same pattern holds for those parts of
the Rosenbach manuscript of the episode that are not covered by Buffalo MS
V.A.21.
[57] Along with all the other NLI Ulysses notebooks, Joyce also passed on
this notebook to his amanuensis, Mme France Raphael, who transcribed it (as
Buffalo MS VI.C.7, pp. [202]–[234]) in early 1935 while Joyce was writing 'Work
in Progress'/Finnegans Wake. See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/vic7.htm;
JJA 41.423–31.
[58] See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va3.htm;
JJA 12.238–58.
[59] See http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va5.htm;
JJA 13.32–56.
[60] The discovery of this manuscript was the
impetus for my current project, Becoming
the Blooms.
[61] Fragments 6 and 7 are not separated by Xs, presumably because there was no room
at the bottom of p. [2r], but clearly they are distinct textual fragments. The
number of Xs Joyce used varies but
that does not seem to be significant.
[62] For example, see the visit with Uncle
Richie (U 3.70–103 on p. [2v]) as
well as the midwives scene (U 3.29–44
on [3v]).
[63] See U
3.271–81 and 3.286–9 (on p. [1r]), 3.107–24 and 3.48–52 (on p. [2r]),
3.303–9 (on p. [4r]), 3.313 & 316–30 (on p. [4v]) and 3.406–18 on (pp.
[4v–5r]).
[64] For example, see Stephen's recollections
of Paris waking and of ^<Joe> Kevin^ Egan (U 3.209–57) that is composed of two
distinct fragments (on pp. [5r], [3r] and [3v] that are separated by two pages,
the latter fragment preceding the first text in this manuscript).
[65] 'What Song the Sirens Sang ... Is No Longer
Beyond All Conjecture: A Preliminary Description of the New 'Proteus' and
'Sirens' Manuscripts', JJQ Vol. 39,
No. 1 (Fall 2001), pp. 53–67. See also Sam Slote's essay in GJS Issue 5 (Spring 2005), Epiphanic 'Proteus'.
[66] In this respect they resemble all of the
extant 'Cyclops' manuscripts (Buffalo MS V.A.8 and NLI 36,639/10), the later portion
of the early 'Sirens' draft (MS 36,639/07/B), as well as the early 'Ithaca'
manuscript (NLI MS 36,639/13), for example.
[67] Such as the fragmentary narrative style
and typographical layout of the 'Wandering Rocks' episode. Joyce claimed he
composed the Rosenbach draft of this episode from 'notes' that may even have
resembled these fragments. But Joyce wrote that episode at least one year later
and after Ulysses had undergone
significant elaboration.
[68] David Hayman's description of Joyce's 'piecemeal or mosaic' method of
composition on 'Work in Progress'/Finnegans
Wake seems particularly
applicable to this draft of 'Proteus'. He writes that this method 'was useful
when the passage depended more heavily upon ornament and logic than upon plot
development. Working from some sort of rough plan or at least from a coherent
concept, Joyce wrote a series of unintegrated passages which, when their number
was significant, he organized into a unit'. David Hayman, A First Draft Version of 'Finnegans Wake', (Austin: University of Texas, 1963), p. 13.
[69] Buffalo MSS I.A; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/ia.htm.
The rectos and versos of this manuscript have been reproduced in black and
white photo-facsimile on JJA 7.01–44.The manuscripts were published
first in Epiphanies, edited by Oscar A. Silverman, with introduction
and notes (Buffalo, New York: University of Buffalo, 1956; and reprinted in
1979 [Snyder, New York: Richard West]).
[70] Although this manuscript is composed of
at least two distinct parts, Joyce nonetheless numbered the entire 'Sirens'
section of the copybook continuously as pp. '1'–'18'; the final page (with the
Homeric notes) is unnumbered; and the loose leaf is foliated as p. '20'. These
facts indicate that Joyce had probably already compiled the last page of notes
before he started this draft, and that another page of the draft (what must
have been p. '19') is still missing. It is also possible that further loose
pages of this draft stage followed p. '20'.
[71] Based on the way in which Joyce used the
pages in other, later copybooks, he usually started by only using the rectos
when writing the main text of first or earlier drafts, reserving the versos for
additional texts. Generally, it is only when he thought a text had reached a
relatively stable state that he would use the recto-verso-recto pages
sequentially, like here. Of course, this manuscript proves that Joyce can be
quite mistaken about the relative stability of his work.
[72] Owen also wrote that, 'Because the 'Alphabetical
Notebook' and Giacomo Joyce were used
in Ulysses prior to Joyce's return to
Trieste in 1919, and because they evidently remained in Trieste since 1915,
episodes which used them were likely sketched before 1915' (JJBU 65). This evidence is less
convincing than the developed nature of the text in this manuscript for the
presumption that at least one version of 'Sirens' pre-dates this draft (and so
was written before 1917). In fact, only one note from the so-called
'Alphabetical Notebook' (Cornell MS 25) appears in this manuscript (on p.
[8r]): 'Mooney sur mer' (Joyce had noted it under the heading 'Devin'; see WD, p. 96), but Joyce could easily have
transferred that note to an intermediary notebook or notesheet (or simply
recalled the colloquial name of the pub) and so did not need direct access to
that notebook.
[73] As part of the stylistic overhaul the
episode had undergone, on the next draft Joyce echoed the phrase (see MS 36,639/09,
p. [3r]) just as it appears in Ulysses
(11.214) and then on the Rosenbach manuscript Joyce repeated it a third time
(now as a noun: U 11.217).
Interestingly, none of these repetitions are indicated as additions in either
of the extant drafts.
[74] A more detailed and expanded version of
this argument is forthcoming.
[75] See the colour reproduction of the
Rosenbach 'Scylla and Charybdis' manuscript, f. '37' in Ulysses: A
Facsimile of the Manuscript, volume I (New York: Octagon Books, 1975).
[76] Although all of their early drafts are
missing, Joyce certainly had written parts of 'Telemachus', 'Nestor', and
'Hades' by 1917.
[77] The 'Monsieur de la Palice' and the '[...]
brave medicals [...]' entries appear on pp. [18v] and [24v].
[78] See Hans Walter Gabler, 'The Rocky Road
to Ulysses',
Joyce Studies 2004, Number 15, edited
by Luca Crispi and Catherine Fahy (Dublin: The National Library of Ireland,
2005), particularly pp. 26–9.
[79] Sometime between 1916 and 1918, Joyce
compiled a notebook (Buffalo MS V.A.4; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va4.htm),
which he labelled 'Shakespeare | Dates'. As the title
indicates, it is composed of notes on the life of William Shakespeare from 1593
to 1616; each of the twenty four pages covers one year (except for 1612) and
was compiled from Sidney Lee's works on Shakespeare. This notebook is not
textually related to this draft. The manuscript has been reproduced in black and white
photo-facsimile on JJA 12.323–348 and Richard M. Kain transcribed it in
'James Joyce's Shakespeare Chronology',"Massachusetts Review Vol.
5, No. 2 (1964), pp. 342–55. Also,
see Rodney Wilson Owen's incisive treatment of this manuscript and its relation
to A Portrait and the 'Scylla and
Charybdis' episode in JJBU 91–2.
[80] It is possible that by 1917 Joyce had
already transferred it to another note-repository and its draft usage here does
not come directly from Cornell MS 25; see WD
95.
[81] The notes come from pp. [7r], [7v], and
p. [15v], the final page in the notebook.
[82] In 2009 Ronan Crowley discovered that these notes came
from Alexander Schmidt, Shakespeare-Lexicon: A Complete Dictionary of
All the English Words, Phrases and Constructions in the Works of the Poet.
3rd. ed. rev. and enl. by Gregor Sarrazin. Vol. II. M-Z (Berlin: Reimer, 1902).
[83] See also Peter Spielberg (compiler), James Joyce's Manuscripts and Letters at
the University at Buffalo
(Buffalo: University at Buffalo, 1962), p. vii.
[84] Bernard Gheerbrant, James Joyce: Sa Vie, Son ?uvre, Son Rayonnement (Paris: Librairie
La Hune, 1949), n.p., item 254. See also John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, A Bibliography of James Joyce 1882-1941
(1953; rpt. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1971), Item 5.b.iii, p. 140. Slocum and
Cahoon's description is based on 'hasty notes made by one of the compilers
during a private examination of the library in the spring of 1949'.
[85] The use of two differently coloured
crayons usually indicates that Joyce returned to the manuscript at various
times.
[86] The missing texts include the following: U 9.96–9, 9.137–8, 9.158, 9.163, 9.183,
9.221–4, 9.308–13, 9.381–5, 9.506, 9.515, 9.517–21, 9.651–4, 9.674–80,
9.729–30, 9.754–7, 9.889–91, 9.999–1006, and 9.1072–80.
[87] See Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard
Steppe and Claus Melchior, Ulysses: A
Critical and Synoptic Edition (New York and London: Garland Publishing
Inc., 1948, 1986), 3 volumes; especially vol. 3, pp. 1876–82.
[88] It is likely that the Rosenbach
manuscript of the 'Nausicaa' and of 'Oxen of the Sun' episodes are also a mixed
manuscripts, which makes them analogous to the textual states of this 'Scylla and
Charybdis' draft and its Rosenbach version.
[89] There may have been more than one draft
and these may have been manuscripts or typescripts or both.
[91] The episode's textual history is further
complicated by the fact that this draft level (NLI MSS 36,639/09 and Buffalo MS
V.A.5) is not the direct source of the next extant draft, the Rosenbach
manuscript, and that the Rosenbach manuscript was not the source text for the
typescript, which in turn was used for The
Little Review, and then after further revisions for Ulysses as well.
[92] Another difference between the draft
stages is that, for whatever reason, Joyce named one of the barmaids both Miss
'Douse' and 'Douce' on the earlier version but in this draft she is
consistently 'Miss Douce'.
[93] Although Joyce knew the circuit of
Bloom's itinerary and errands, he added some of his contrapuntal thoughts in
the margins. Similarly, Boylan's journey to the Ormond and then on towards
Eccles Street is also well developed in this draft. Joyce had also determined
that Bloom would follow Boylan to the Ormond before this draft. Here it reads:
'[...] Can't see me there. [...] Still be near and hear: At four.' (p. [5r]).
[94] Presumably, this happened after Joyce had
found the factual detail he needed among his notes or elsewhere: the shop was
actually located at 31 Wellington Quay.
[95] The following are typical examples of
Joyce's method: '^<That fellow is most aggravating> Most aggravating that
fellow is^.' and '^<His dark eyes went by by Bassi's blessed virgins,> by
Bassi's blessed virgins, his dark eyes went by^' (both on p. [2r]). Joyce's rearrangement of the same phrases in
different orders was already conspicuous on the earlier draft, but became more
intense here and continued at every subsequent level.
[96] Interestingly, whether purposefully or
not, the order in which Bloom would have passed the shop fronts is inverted
here and remains so in each subsequent version and in Ulysses. See Thom's 1904,
pp. 1615–6; as well Ian Gunn and Clive Hart with Harald Beck, James Joyce's Dublin: A Topographical
Guide to the Dublin of 'Ulysses' (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), p.
120.
[97] For further information on these notes,
see Susan Brown's essay in GJS Issue
7 (Spring 2007), The Mystery of
the Fuga per Canonem Solved and Michelle Witten's further contribution to
the debate in GJS Issue 10 (Spring
2010), The
Mystery of the Fuga per Canonem Reopened?.
[98] Michael Groden, 'Ulysses' in Progress,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 119, n. 6. The reader is
referred to Groden's works for a comprehensive analysis of the entire evolution
of the episode and of Joyce's activities in 1919, see 'Ulysses' in Progress, pp. 115–65.
[99] See also Michael Groden, 'Cyclops in
Progress, 1919', JJQ Vol.12
Nos. 1/2 (Fall 1974/Winter 1975), pp. 123–68 and 'Joyce at Work on 'Cyclops':
Toward a Biography of Ulysses',
JJQ Vol. 44, No. 2
(Winter 2007), pp. 217–45.
[100] According to Groden, Joyce 'began the
episode [in Buffalo MS V.A.8] without a clear idea of the technique he would
use; he even planned briefly to continue the monologue method' ('Ulysses'
in Progress, p. [115]).
[101] Groden, 'Ulysses' in Progress, p. 131. Buffalo MS V.A.8 has been
reproduced in black and white photo-facsimile on JJA 13.83–132; for
further information about this draft stage of 'Cyclops'; see the catalogue
description of this manuscript: http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va8.htm.
[102] See the catalogue description of this
manuscript for further information about this later draft stage of 'Cyclops': http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va6.htm.
[103] Also, Buffalo MS V.A.7 contains an
addition to the text on V.A.6; see http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/jamesjoyce/catalog/va7.htm.
[104] This scene is the courtroom parody; see Ulysses 12.1111–40.
[105] The first four scenes in MS V.A.8 are in
ink and the later four are in pencil, but in this NLI copybook ink and pencil
fragments alternate in a more random manner.
[106] Like the rest of the scene, Joyce relied
heavily on the BL 'Cyclops' Notesheets to write this fragmentary scene; here
specifically Notesheets 1, 3–5, and 10.
[107] See BL 'Cyclops' Notesheet 3.36–9.
[108] See Groden's discussion of Joyce's use of
symbols to tag dialogue that he only later assigned to characters: 'Ulysses'
in Progress, p. 117.
[109] This scene must be the one Joyce refers
to in his list of incidents (Buffalo MS V.A.7) simply as 'Arrival Martin'.
[110] Like so much of the evolution of
'Cyclops', this change happened on one or more missing documents.
[111] Joyce noted the curse twice: 'lopsided
God' appears on BL 'Cyclops' Notesheet 1.43, and the fuller text quoted above
(that is continued 'light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whore's
gets') is found on BL 'Cyclops' Notesheet 7.47–8.
[112] Rumbold was the British Minister to Bern,
Switzerland, and Joyce and he had several unpleasant encounters; see JJII 447, 459, and elsewhere for Ellmann's
version of the account.
[113] Groden, 'Ulysses' in Progress, p. 124.
[114] Although Joyce relied on a few BL
Notesheet entries for the narrator's part of the dialogue, no notes have been
located for the pseudo-legalistic parody that he wrote directly as part of the
opening (see U 12.32–51).
Nonetheless, he must have relied on Thom's
to write it since Joyce noted both correct addresses for Herzog and Geraghty.
[115] It is also remarkably similar, as
subsequently revised here, to the published version.
[116] Joyce tagged it with a '1)' in blue
crayon and he noted it as number '1' in the other list of incidents at the end
of this copybook (p. [22v]).
[117] This exchange is based on BL 'Cyclops'
1.73–9. In 1966, Hugh Staples identified the source of dialogue here as
Alexander M. Sullivan's New Ireland:
Political Sketches. Also see UNBM
19–20.
[118] See U
12.211–2.
[119] In early October 1921, Joyce wrote the
'Dublin Metropolitan police' addition (Buffalo MSS V.A.2 and then V.A.9) that
the printers added to the first setting of 'Cyclops' in proofs (that is, the
first placards).