James Joyce Interviews and Recollections in the Same Series Morton N
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James Joyce Interviews and Recollections In the same series Morton N. Cohen LEWIS CARROLL: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS Philip Collins (editor) DICKENS: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) THACKERAY: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) J. R. Hammond (editor) H. G. WELLS: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS David McLellan (editor) KARL MARX: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS E. H. Mikhail (editor) BRENDAN BEHAN: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) LADY GREGORY: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS OSCAR WILDE: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) W. B. YEATS: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) Harold Ore! (editor) KIPLING: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) Norman Page (editor) BYRON: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS HENRY JAMES: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS D. H. LAWRENCE: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS (2 volumes) TENNYSON: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS DRJOHNSON: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS Martin Ray JOSEPH CONRAD: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS R. C. Terry (editor) TROLLOPE: INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS Series Standins Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the UK we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ud, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG 21 2XS, England. JAMES JOYCE Interviews and Recollections Edited by E. H. MIKHAIL Professor of English University of Lethbridge Foreword by FRANK DELANEY Selection and editorial matter © E. H. Mikhail 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-43870-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WClE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1990 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world 1098765432 06 05 04 03 02 01 99 98 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data James Joyce: interviews and recollections. I. Fiction in English. Joyce, James, 1882-1941-Personal observations Collections I. Mikhail, E. H. (Edward Halim), 19~ 823'.912 ISBN 978-1-349-09424-0 ISBN 978-1-349-09422-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09422-6 Contents Foreword by Frank Delaney vn Acknowledgements x1 Introduction xv A Note on the Text x1x Chronological Table xx INTERVIEWS AND RECOLLECTIONS A Sister Recalls Joyce in Dublin May joyce Monaghan 1 James Joyce at Belvedere College john Francis Byrne 2 Reuben Didn't Admire James Joyce! Francis Aylmer 4 'The White Bishop' John Francis Byrne 5 'Diseases of the Ox' John Francis Byrne 6 My School Friend, James Joyce judge Eugene Sheehy 9 'An Extremely Clever Boy' George Russell 15 'The Younger Generation is Knocking at My Door' W. B. Yeats 16 'Joyce has Grit' Lady Gregory 19 'Jim's Character is Unsettled' Stanislaus joyce 20 James Joyce: a Portrait of the Artist Oliver Stjohn Gogarry 21 The Beginnings ofJoyce William K. Magee ljohn Eglinton] 32 James Joyce as a Young Man Padraic Colum 37 Joyce Among theJournalists Piaras Biaslai 41 A Recollection ofJamesJoyce joseph Hone 43 James Joyce in Trieste Italo Svevo 45 James Joyce: Two Reminiscences Antonio Fonda Savio and Letizia Fonda Savio 48 Recollections ofJoyce Alessandro Francini Bruni 51 My First English Teacher Mario Nordio 57 James Joyce: an Occasion of Remembrance Nora Franca Poliaghi 59 Pappy Never Spoke ofJim's Books Eileenjoyce Schaurek 60 Recollections ofJamesJoyce Frank Budgen 69 How I Published Ulysses Sylvia Beach 79 The Joyce I Knew Arthur Power 81 First Meeting withJamesJoyce Wyndham Lewis 84 v VI CONTENTS Visits with James Joyce P. Beaumont Wadsworth 89 James Joyce in the Twenties Morrill Cody 91 Joyce's Way of Life Sylvia Beach 93 Afternoon with James Joyce Fanny Butcher 96 I MetJamesJoyce Nina Hamnelt 98 Joyce's Birthday Parties Sisley Huddleston 99 At Lloyd Morris's Party Glenway Wescott 100 A Drink with Joyce Ernest Hemingway 102 WithJamesJoyce Robert McAlmon 103 The James Joyce I Knew James Stephens 108 I Meet, in Time and Space,JamesJoyce Robert Reid Ill At a Party with James Joyce Caresse Crosby 114 James Joyce in Paris Aldous Huxley 118 We Established No Intimacy Richard Aldington 119 James Joyce George Antheil 120 A Study ofJames Joyce Elliot Paul 125 Visits fromJamesJoyce Nancy Cunard 127 James Joyce: a Sketch Desmond Harmsworth 129 James Joyce in Paris Margaret Anderson 133 I Saw Joyce Only Once Katherine Anne Porter 136 Homage toJamesJoyce Eugenejolas 138 Homage to James Joyce Philippe Soupault 141 Homage to James Joyce Thomas McGreevy 142 An Encounter with Joyce Arthur Bliss 143 Joyce's Fiftieth Birthday Rollo H. Myers 145 Joyce Virgil Thomson 14 7 James Joyce in Paris Harold Nicolson 148 James Joyce Gerald Griffin 149 James Joyce: a First Impression James Stern 153 TheJoyces Giorgiojoyce 157 Worth Half-a-Dozen Legations Kenneth Reddin 159 James Joyce in Paris Mary Colum 160 Some Recollections ofJames Joyce: in London Sylvia Lynd 164 The Living Joyce Louis Gillet 166 James Joyce as Man and Artist C. P. Curran 168 Sisters ofJamesJoyce Mourn for Two Brothers 170 Memoir of the Man Arthur Power 172 Joyce's Burial Hans Gasser 175 I Met James Joyce's Wife Kees Van Hoek 176 James Joyce's 'Nurse' Remembers Peter Lennon 179 Sister May Joyce Monaghan 182 Ecce Puer Stephen joyce 184 Additional Bibliography 187 Index 198 Foreword FRANK DELANEY 'A man of small virtue, inclined to alcoholism', said James Joyce to his doctor, a self-portrait which offered no more than a thumbnail's glimpse. He put half a truth in it, or, rather, half of the truth: alcohol did play a part in his life, a merry and pain-provoking part, but to say he possessed only 'small virtue' either makes him disingenuous, or begs definition. Virtue, in Joyce's Ireland (and ever since) took the form of domestic good behaviour while obeying the Ten Commandments and the Six Precepts of the Church, which ranged from 'To hear Mass on Sundays and all Holydays of Obligation' through to 'To contribute to the Support of our Pastors'. According to these lights, then yes, James Aloysius Joyce, 'JaysusJames', possessed less than small virtue. See him, though, against standards. Any writer who spends a thousand hours on one chapter, as Joyce did with the Oxen of the Sun segment of Ulysses, any writer who considers two completed sentences a pleasing reward for a whole day's work, as he told a friend in Zurich, cannot be allowed to accuse himself oflacking virtue. In his description of himself, alcoholism excepted, he has to be considered an unreliable witness. Of course, he would never allow his persona to be perceived easily or clearly. To begin with, he did not wish to be observed in his writings; part of his intention - not entirely mischievous - would keep the professors busy, he declared, 'for centuries'. As a further branching of these gardens paths, he chose to write, as he insisted, about 'the hundred-headed rabble of the cathedral close', and said 'nobody in any of my books is worth more than a hundred pounds'. The disingenuousness clicks on - he himself stood apart, aloof, withdrawn, a stork of an observer, and did not, in going about his daily life, associate himself with his proletarian raw material. The descriptions of Joyce's physical appearance seem to confirm this statuesque distance from his subject-matter. In the impressions gathered throughout this book he stands as 'a tall blind beautiful gentleman' (James Stephens), 'a tall cathedral-spire of a man' (Nancy Cunard), 'And the blond face, the neat moustache and the air of personal aloofness were a little chilling' (Kenneth Reddin). Joyce seems deliberately to have beggared description when it came vii Vlll FOREWORD to himself; after all, his writing famously eschewed direct portrayal. Nowhere in multitudinous Ulysses, and never under any circumstances in Finnegans Wake, did he write a conventional descriptive passage; reality, he saw, did not need to be reported, it entered the mind, especially the unconscious, effortlessly. In any case, since the small, ordinary, recurrent and bubbling realities of life provided the fodder of his art, any sort of traditional faithful description - especially of himself, the artist - would have defeated his purpose, made it superfluous. His biographer, Richard EHmann, put it well: 'The life of an artist, but particularly that of Joyce, differs from the lives of other persons in that its events are becoming artistic sources even as they command his present attention. Instead of allowing each day, pushed back by the next, to lapse into imprecise memory, he shapes again the experiences which have shaped him.' Joyce, accordingly, wrote no autobiography. Facts can only be inaccurate. Art, for the artist, can be the only record. Life can only be seen in all truth if taken in, swilled about, filtered and released through the imagination of the artist. Invention, or re-invention, constitute valid reportage, since all observation is subjective. So, an anthology of interviews and recollections collected from friends, acquaintances, chance encounters, would, presumably, have had an anti-value to Joyce.