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The great Irish writer, James Joyce (1882-1941), gave us the most remarkable novel of the Modernist Period. Entitled “Ulysses,” it was a reworking of Homer’s “Odyssey;” only it was set in modern Dublin with all the action taking place on one day in June. (If you’re available this June 16th you can help celebrate Bloomsday.)
Joyce also wrote “Finnegans Wake,” ”Dubliners” and “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and any college literature course worth its salt devotes substantial time and study to all of these. Joyce also wrote poetry which is not nearly well-enough known.
Joyce was famous for his experimental use of language and virtuosity of wordplay. The final sentence in “Ulysses” contains 4,391 words. And here is a colorful passage from “Finnegans Wake.”
Good marrams, sagd he, freshwatties and boasterdes all, as he put into bierhiven, nogeysokey first, caboodle segund, jilling to windwards, as he made straks for that oerasound the snarsty weg for Publin, so was his horenpipe lug in the lee off their mouths organs, with his tilt too taut for his tammy all a slaunter and his wigger on a wagger with its tag tucked.
Pretty spectacular. One might well ask how this wildness of writing relates to his poetry, and the answer is: really not at all. His poems are traditional, artful, well-rhymed and simply but beautifully constructed. Lovely and lyrical.
Strings in the earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
There’s music along the river
For Love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.
And here is another.
At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
The pale gates of sunrise?
When all things repose, do you alone
Awake to hear the sweet harps play
To Love before him on his way,
And the night wind answering in antiphon
Till night is overgone?
Play on, invisible harps, unto Love,
Whose way in heaven is aglow
At that hour when soft lights come and go,
Soft sweet music in the air above
And in the earth below.
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You’ll note the musical references in these stanzas, and they are well-come-by. Joyce was a more than competent pianist, and his tenor voice was remarkably fine. He once sang competitively, and his first collection of poems was called “Chamber Music.”
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Some people may think that Irish poetry is primarily about politics and patriotism, but the lyric voice is ever-present. Here are two lyric poems that rank high in the Irish tradition. First, one by Thomas Moore that is featured in “Ulysses.”
‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flow’r of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them;
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie senseless and dead.
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And this next lyric is by William Butler Yeats, who introduced Joyce to influential literary figures and in turn is mentioned prominently in “Ulysses.” Yeats and Joyce enjoyed great mutual respect.
Down by the Salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the Salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
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Returning to Joyce, there is one unique piece among his ballads that is distinctly dramatic, a heartbreak dream poem inspired by a relationship that had fallen apart.
I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.
They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.
They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?
William Butler Yeats called this poem a “technical and emotional masterpiece.”
So many of Joyce’s works merit that accolade.
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VIDEO. Our video is a little different this week because it largely concerns Joyce’s best friend in Paris, a young American lady named Sylvia Beach. In the period from 1919 to 1941 she ran a bookstore in Paris called Shakespeare and Company. It was a home-away-from-home for some of the greatest 20th Century writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce. In World War II when Paris was liberated from Nazi Germany, another member of her circle personally liberated Sylvia and her bookstore (See Video).
She finds a place in this column because when all the regular publishers didn’t dare deal with Joyce’s novel “Ulysses,” Sylvia undertook to publish it herself. Years later, she sat for an interview and had some choice memories of Joyce, from which we are privileged to excerpt.
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: THE LYRIC VOICE OF JAMES JOYCE
