Extracts from Joyce's Letters (published and unpublished)
related to and/or concerning the writing of Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses
JJ = James Joyce
LR = Little Review
Letters I, II, III = Letters of James Joyce, vols. I, II, III (Viking Press, 1966),
Selected Letters = Selected Letters of James Joyce (Faber, 1975)
BL = British Library (Harriet Shaw Weaver materials)
JML = Journal of Modern Literature I, 3 (March 1971): 393-398
NL = National Library of Ireland (Paul Léon materials)
1903
8 February 1903, Letters II (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Grand Hotel Corneille, Paris.
Dear Stannie […] I am feeling very intellectual these times and up to my eyes in Aristotle's Psychology. […] Words cannot measure my contempt for AE at present (I believe he didn't write to Lady Gregory) and his spiritual friends. I did well however to leave my MSS with him for I had a motive. However I shall take them back as my latest additions to ‘Epiphany’ might not be to his liking.
9 March 1903, Letters II (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Grand Hotel Corneille, Paris.
Dear Stannie […] I have written fifteen epiphanies—of which twelve are insertions and three additions.
[…] thanks be to God Synge isn't an Aristotelian. I told him part of my esthetic: he says I have a mind like Spinosa.
20 March 1903, Letters II (JJ to Mrs John Stanislaus Joyce): Grand Hotel Corneille, Paris.
Dear Mother I read every day in the Bibliothèque Nationale and every night in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. I often go to vespers at Notre Dame or at Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. I never go to the theatre—as I have no money. I have no money either to buy books. Synge was over here selling out and gave me his play to read—a play which is to be produced by the Irish Literary Theatre. I criticized it. Synge says I have a mind like Spinoza! (Spinoza was great Hebrew philosopher): I am at present up to the neck in Aristotle’s
Metaphysics and read only him and Ben Jonson (a writer of songs and
plays).
1904
23 June 1904, Selected Letters 22 (JJ to C.P. Curran): Dublin.
Here is the marvellous novel [possibly Chapters I-X] delivered upon you by my twenty-third sister. […] If you are too busy to read the novel now, no harm. But as soon as you have read it send me word to meet you on some altitude where we can utter our souls unmolested. […] Yours heroically. Stephen Daedalus
The Rain, Friday [?15 July 1904], Selected Letters 22 (JJ to C.P. Curran): Dublin.
I have finished the awful chapter—102 pages— [possibly Chapter XI) and Russell (A.E.) has the book now. I shall send you the chapter in a week. I am writing a series of epiclets—ten—for a paper. I have written one. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city. [—] S.D.
29 August 1904, Letters II (JJ to Nora Barnacle): 60 Shelbourne Road, Dublin.
My dear Nora […] While I stood there I thought of a few sentences I wrote some years ago when I lived in Paris—these sentences which follow—‘They pass in twos and threes amid the life of the boulevard, walking like people who have leisure in a place lit up for them. They are in the pastry cook's, chattering, crushing little fabrics of pastry, or seated silently at tables by the café door, or descending from carriages with a busy stir of garments soft as the voice of the adulterer. They pass in an air of perfumes: under the perfumes their bodies have a warm humid smell’—
15 September 1904, Selected Letters 29 (JJ to James S. Starkey): 7 S. Peter's Terrace, Cabra, Dublin.
Dear Starkey My trunk will be called for at the Tower tomorrow (Saturday) between 9 and 12. Kindly put into it—a pair of black boots, a pair of brown boots, a blue peaked cap, a black cloth cap, a black felt hat, a raincoat and the MS of my verses [Chamber Music] which are in a roll on the shelf to the right as you enter. Also see that your host [Oliver St. John Gogarty, the model for Buck Mulligan] has not abstracted the twelfth chapter [Chapter XII] of my novel [Stephen Hero] from my trunk. May I ask you to see that any letters coming to the Tower for me are redirected to my address at once? Please rope the trunk as it has no lock.
20 October 1904, Letters II 67 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Berlitz School of Langauages, Via S Nicola 32, Trieste.
[…] also no [copy] of Irish Homestead containing my ‘After the Race’. I am writing another ‘Xmas Eve’. Have finished Chap. XII [of Stephen Hero].
31 October 1904, Letters II 68-9 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Giulia 2, s. piano, Pola, Austria.
I have finished (in Zürich) chap. XII [of Stephen Hero] and have written part of a new story ‘Christmas Eve’ [JJ never completed this story]].
19 November 1904, Letters II 71 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Giulia 2, Pola, Austria.
I have not written much of my novel—only the end of the 11th [12th] chapter in Zürich. I have written about half of ‘Xmas Eve’ and about five long pages of ‘Esthetic Philosophy’. […] I am afraid I cannot finish my novel for a long time. I am discontented with a great deal of it and yet how is Stephen’s nature to be expressed otherwise. Eh?
3 December 1904, Selected Letters 45-7 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Giulia 2, Pola, Austria.
I am half way through Chapter XIII and if you like will send you Chaps XII and XIII before Xmas for your opinion. […]Do you ever see Dana and did they print my obscene song ‘Bid Adieu’? I read Nora Chap XI which she thought remarkable but she cares nothing for my art. Ask hairy Jaysus [Francis Sheehy-Skeffington] what am I to do? He ought to know.
Postmark 12 December 1904, Letters II 74 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Giulia 2, Pola, Austria.
Best wishes for 17th [SJ's 20th birthday]. Have finished Chap XIII [of Stephen Hero.
28 December 1904, Letters II 74-5 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Giulia 2, Pola, Austria.
Please send the ‘Irish Homestead’ containg my story and the Xmas no. At the end of the week I send you Chaps XII. XIII. XIV. I am now at Chap XV [of Stephen Hero. […] I wish you to write at once about these chapters. You may lend them to Cosgrave or to Curran as you please but to no-one else. You may read them to Aunt Josephine. Say I write to her tomorrow.
31 December 1904, Selected Letters 49 (JJ to Mrs William Murray [Aunt Josephine]): Via Giulia 2, Pola, Austria.
Have you read ‘After the Race’. I send Chaps XII, XII, XIV tonight or tomorrow.
1905
19 January 1905, Selected Letters 50-1 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): 7 Via Medolino, 1°. Pola, Austria.
I send you the fourth story of ‘Dubliners’—‘Hallow Eve’—which I want you to offer at once to the Editor of Irish Homestead.[…] You know I have no-one to talk to. Nora, of course, doesn't give a rambling damn about art […] when she saw me copy Epiphanies into my novel [Stephen Hero] she asked would all that paper be wasted—which made me think of Heine. She wants me to hurry up the novel and get rich and go to live in Paris. Paris and Zurich she likes very much but Pola is a queer old place.
7 February 1905, Selected Letters 52-4 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): 7 Via Medolino, 1°. Pola, Austria.
Your criticism of my novel is always interesting. The sentence ‘to sustain in person &c’ is not legitimate if the phrase, ‘and to protect thereby’ is between commas but is legitimate if the phrase is in brackets [neither phrase is in the surviving manuscript of Stephen Hero]. I shall change the verb however. Mrs Riordan who has left the house in Bray returns you have forgotten, to the Xmas dinner-table in Dublin. The immateriality of Isabel is intended. The effect of the prose piece [partly at begining of extant manuscript: Chapter XIV] ‘The spell of arms’ is to mark the precise point between boyhood (pueritia) and adolescence (adulescentia)—17 years. Is it possible you remark no change? Again, no old toothless Irishman would say ‘Divil an elephant’: he would say ‘divil elephant’ [page 488 of extant manuscript]. Nora says ‘Divil up I’ll get till you come back’. Naif sequence! Your criticism of two aposopeias [aposiopesis: a figure in which the speaker suddenly halts in his utterance] is quite just but I think full dress is not always necessary. Stephen’s change of mind is not effected by that sight as you seem to think, but it is that small event so regarded which expresses the change. His first skin falls. Fulham [page 479 of extant manuscript] is not old Sheehy—he comes in later.
[…] I intend to dedicate ‘Dubliners’ to you—do you mind?—because you seem to find the stories to your taste. […] I am ‘working in’ Hairy Jaysus [Skeffington: ‘McCann’ in Chapter XVI] at present. Do you think the search for heroics damn vulgar—and yet how are we to describe Ibsen? I have written some fine critical sentences lately [in Chapters XV and XVI]. […] I have finished Chap XV and Chap XVI and am now at Chap XVII. […] I am sure however that the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned lie and that there cannot be any substitute for of all I the individual passion as the motive power of everything—art anf =d philosophy included. For this reason Hairy Jaysusseems to be the bloodiest imposter of all I have met.
28 February 1905, Selected Letters 56 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): 7 Via Medolino, 1°. Pola, Austria.
It seems to me that what astonishes most people in the length of the novel is the extraordinary energy in the writer and his extraordinary patience. It would be easy for me to do short novels if I chose but what I want to wear away in this novel cannot be worn away except by constant dropping. Gogarty used to pipe ‘63’ in treble when I told him the number of the chapters. I am not quite satisfied with the title ‘Stephen Hero’ and am thinking of restoring the original title of the article ‘A Portrait of the Artist’ or perhaps better ‘Chapters in the Life of a Young Man’. […] I have come to accept my present situation as a voluntary exile—is it not so? This seems to me important both because I am likely to generate out of it a sufficiently personal future to satisfy Curran’s heart and also because it supplies me with the note on which I propose to bring my novel to a close.
15 March 1905, Selected Letters 58-9 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Piazza Ponterossa 3, III, Trieste, Austria.
I have finished Chapters XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII and will send them if you like. The U. College episode will take about ten chapters and I thought of keeping all till it was ended. On the other hand that is a hell of a time for you to wait. I have received your letter which interested me very much but if you knew what the feuilletons and short sketches in French papers [are] you would understand my embarrassment. [SJ perhaps wrote suggesting JJ translate some of the Dubliners stories for the French press.] Is Starkey's book any good? I think Gogarty muse use a typewriter: I do not thnk he could write consecutively enough for an article without some mechanical aid.
4 April 1905, Selected Letters 59 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Piazza Ponterossa 3, III, Trieste, Austria.
I have now finished another chapter and am at Chapter XX. This is a terrible opus: I wonder how I have the patience to write it. Do you think other people will have the patience to read it? […]
I have now finished Chaps XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX and am now at Chapter XXI. Why don’t you send me back my chapters?
[…]
Read the end of Chapter XVII: I think it is well written.
2 or 3 May 1905, Selected Letters 60-1 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
I want my verses to be published in the autumn. I have finished Chaps XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX and XXI. I am now at Chap XXII. I would write another ‘Dubliner’ if I knew definitely the result of ‘Hallow Eve’. I do not think I can write any more verse. […]
My entering for this [prize puzzle] competition has kept me a very long time on Chap XXII but you may expect to receive the chapters of the University College episode in a few weeks. I have written to Grant Richards asking for my manuscript [of verses] and if he is done for I shall send a copy of the verses to John Lane as I want them published by the end of the year.
27 May 1905, Letters II 90 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
Please send me my chapters back at once. In a few days you will receive fifty copies of The Holy Office and in a fortnight the University college episode of eleven chapters. I have offered my book of verse to John Lane. […]
You know the martyrdom my life is here and its dullness. I think the title of the novel is justified. […]
I have changed the scope of the novel very much and intend to rewrite some of the beginning which, I think is not well written.
Postmark 7 June 1905, Letters II 91 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
I posted you 50 copies of ‘Holy Office’ on Saturday to your old address. Get them at once. I send instructions on Saturday. Do as you say with ‘Hallow Eve’. Send back my other chapters. Have now finished Chapter XXIV. Will send the episode in about a week. Do not let such a long time pass again without writing.
12 July 1905, Selected Letters 63-4 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
I send you tomorrow the fifth story of ‘Dubliners’ that is ‘The Boarding House’. […] I have also written the sixth story ‘Counterparts’ and shall send it to you on Saturday if I have made a copy by then. It is my intention to complete ‘Dubliners’ by the end of the year and to follow it by a book ‘Provincials’. I am uncommonly well pleased with these stories.
[…] You will remember the circumstances in which I left Dublin nine months ago. Like everything else that I have done in my life it was an experiment. I can hardly say with truth that it was an experiment which has failed seeing that in those nine months I have begotten a child, written 500 pages of my novel, written 3 of my stories, learned German and Danish fairly well, besides discharging the intolerable (to me) duties of my position and swindling two tailors. I believe, besides, that I write much better now than when I was in Dublin and the incident in Chap. XXIII(?) [XXIV] where Stephen makes ‘love’ to Emma Clery I consider a remarkable piece of writing.
15 July 1905, Letters II 98 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
Before this you will have got my letter and my story ‘The Boarding-House’. I am awaiting your reply as well as your criticism on my novel and story. I send you tomorrow the 6th story ‘‘Counterparts’. You are to make a copy of it at once and return it to me on the same day if possible, recommending it in the post.
c. 24 September 1905,
Selected Letters 76-7 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
Please send me the information I ask you for as follows:
The Sisters: Can a priest be buried in a caul?
Ivy Day in the Commitee Room—Are Aungier St and Wicklow in the Royal Exchange Ward? Can a muniicipal election be held in October?
A Painful Case—Are the police at Sydney Parade of the D division? Would the cty ambulance be called out to Sydney Parade for an accident? Would an accident at Sydney Parade be treated at Vincent's Hospital?
After the Race—Are the police supplied with provisians by government or by privste contrsctd?
Kindly answer these questions as quickly as possible. I sent mmy story The Clay (which I had slightky rewritten) to The LITERARY World
[Hellip;] I wrote to Heinemann telling him about Dubliners and asking him would he read it and consider it. I shall send you on Wednesday or Thursday the tenth story A Mother and the book will be finished by the first of November. You might let me know what you think of it as I intend to dedicate it to you. You are a long time sitting on my novel. I wish you’d say what you think of it. The only book I know like it is Lermontoff’s Hero of Our Days. Of course mine is much longer and Lermontoff’s hero is an aristocrat and a tired man and a brave animal. But there is a likeness in the aim and title and at times in the acid treatment.
Postmark 3 October 1905, Letters II 113-4 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via S. Nicolo 30, II°, Trieste, Austria.
Where is the MS of my novel? It is most thoughtless of Curran to give it to anyone without my permission. I did not send it to Dublin to have it circulated from hand to hand. I added Curran’s name to yours and Cosgrave’s because he treated me very kindly. I must pass a week of torture until I know whether it is safe or not. You must get it from Kettle at once and send it to me safely registered. Kettle, of course, is a decent kind of a fellow but some of these impostors might wheedle it from him. He is too polite to suspect treachery. Have you any idea what I suffer from all this incertitude? Send me A Mother back.
10 October 1905,
Letters II 114-20 (Stanislaus Joyce to JJ): 7 Whitworth Place, Drumcondra, Dublin.
I'm afraid you're becoming irascible, but here's some answers to your questions:
A priesr is buried in a habit if he belongs to an order which wears a habit. Otherwise so far as I can find out he is buried in his vestments: I cannot find out for certain if there is any canonical law on the point. Fr O'Malley, who had his parish taken from him was buried in his vestments.
A Municipal Election
might take place in October but it is highly improbable. It would be a bye-electioj (for instance if a councillor or alderman died or resigned) and according to the general rule if it occurred so late would be held over till January. Aungier St is in Royal Exchange Ward.
The City Ambulance would be called out to Sydney Parade at the time id supposed to have occurred *The Pembrojke Ambulance from Ballsbridge would go now) but in all proability the body would have been sent in on the tram. I know a man who was injured at Raheny Junction was sent in to Jervis St on the tram.
It seems to me that your book ‘Dubliners’ is becoming almost as important as your novel. [Follows with extended commentary on the stories.] […] I have read Renan's monogram [sic] on Jesus Christ. […]
Your postcard received. I have been all day copying out your story to send it back. I thought I told you that as soon as Charlie told me Curran had lent your MS. I dressed and went down to Kettle’s office. I called four times there and once at Curran’s house. I got your MS. back next morning at ten. I said to Curran and to Kettle precisely what is in your postcard. Kettle said I was quite right but that your MS. would be safe in his hands. Curran said he was very sorry but I think he thought I needn’t have made a fuss about it.
c. 29 October 1905, Letters II 125-6 (Vincent Cosgrave to JJ): Dublin.
I am unable to say anything about your novel as I have lost the continuity. Please send some more soon to Charlie and I will do my best to help you with criticism. Meanwhile why in the name of J.—Lynch. Anything but that. Gogarty has his M.B. at last and is now up for the Fellowship of Surgeons.
1906
13 March 1906,
Letters II 131-2 (JJ to Grant Richards): Via Giovanni Boccaccio 1, II°, Trieste, Austria.
I am obliged to you for your letter and copy of the contract. If
Dubliners cannot be published in May I should prefer September. I shall send you in a week or so the last story which is to be inserted between
The Boarding House and
Counterparts so that you may proceed with the printing of the book. […]
You suggest that I should write a novel in some sense autobiographical. I have already written nearly a thousand pages of such a novel, as I think I told you, 914 pages to be accurate. I calculate that these twenty-five chapters, about half of the book, run to 150,000 words. But it is quite impossible for me in present circumstances to think the rest of the book, much less to write it. This novel also has the defect of being about Ireland.
I shall be glad to hear from you again when you have decided in what form you will bring out Dubliners.
6 June 1906, Letters II 139 (Mrs Willaim Murray to Stanislaus Joyce): 4 Northbrook Villas [Dublin].
I am sorry to hear there is nothing definite about Jim’s stories. Has he not written any of ‘Stephen Daedalus’ lately if he could only finish it but of course in the disturbed [drunken] state he is it must be impossible.
10 June 1906, Letters II 140 (JJ to Grant Richards): Via Giovanni Boccaccio 1, II°, Trieste, Austria.
As regards me, I leave this delightful city at the end of next month and go to Rome where I have obtained a position as correspondent in a bank. […]
I hope to find time to finish my novel in Rome within a year, or, at most, a year and a half.
13 October 1906, Letters II 179 (JJ to Grant Richards): Via Frattina 52, II°, Rome.
Finally, one word as to my novel I am not in a fit state of mind to complete it. For two years I have been living in hope and now that I see that these two years of waiting and hoping have availed me nothing it is really too much to expect that I should put my two completed books on one side and continue to write the third: and then to wait and hope again. For I am sure we should have the same objections and the same letters. It is true that I stand in need of a publisher, but the publisher I need must at least be prepared to risk something for what he esteems highly and in the meantime I am glad that my position, modest though it be, enables me to save my work from mutilation and my talent from corruption.
6 November 1906, Selected Letters 125 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Frattina 52, II°, Rome.
As for O.G. I am waiting for the S.F. [Sinn Fein] policy to make headway in the hope that he will join it, for no doubt whatever exists in my mind but that, if he gets the chance and the moment comes, he will play the part of [betrayers] MacNally and Reynolds. I do not say this out of spleen. It is my final view of his character: a very native Irish growth, and if I begin to write my novel again it is in this way I shall treat them. It is not far-fetched to say that my action, and that of men like Ibsen &c, is a virtual intellectual strike. I would call such people as Gogarty and Yeats and Colm the blacklegs of literature. Because they have tried to substitute us, to serve the old idols at a lower rate when we refused to do so for a higher.
1907
postmark 10 January 1907, Selected Letters 143 (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Via Monte Brianzo, IV°, Rome.
The other day I was thinking about my novel. How long am I at it now? Is there any use continuing it?
1915
16 June 1915, Selected Letters (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce):
[in German] We are still here and in good health. I hope you are the same. If we leave I will write you. Don't worry about us. Up to now we have been well treated. I have written something. The first episode of my new novel Ulysses is written. The first part, the Telemachiad, consists of four episodes: The second of fifteen, that is, Ulysses' wanderings: and the third, Ulysses' return home, of three more episodes.
24 July 1915, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): [re Portrait] My MSS are in Trieste but I remember the text and
am sending the correct version of these passages to my agent
27 August 1915, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): I put your name down in a prominent place
among the probable contributors. Do send whatever you have, to me direct,
and then if the scheme falls through I can pass 'em on to Pinker.
6 December 1915, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I am writing a book Ulysses and want the other [A Portrait] published
and out of the way once and for all.
1916
12 January 1916, BLHW (Ezra Pound to Harriet Weaver): I have just had a desperate letter from
Joyce. He has “answered 60 newspaper ads.” etc. etc. NO WORK. If you haven't
already written to him, can you send him £5. at once, as a loan, as advance
payment, as anything?
12 January 1916, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): I dont know whether they would let me have
some money in the spring to make advance purchases with. I dont even know
what you have that I could use. I should want, I think, some of some prose
you once wrote of, and the continuation of the “Artist” when it is ready.
5 February 1916, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have received your second remittance of £25 … Received
from The Egoist Limited the sum of £50 (fifty pounds sterling), payment
for serial rights (2 February 1914 — 1 September 1915) of my novel A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man.
4 June 1916, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I enclose corrections for the third chapter of my novel
[A Portrait] so
that it may be sent on at once to be set up. Tomorrow I shall send those for
the fourth chapter and also the revised cuttings of first and second if
they arrive tonight.
1/7 August 1916, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): Result is that he “would consider” publishing
the Portrait with the Sequel, if the sequel could be inspected “within
reasonable time”. He dont think the Portrait would pay by itself … Of
course I am not waiting for *****, but if he could be started at the same time
as Huebsch in New York, it would be a help. How much of Ulysses is done?
1 September 1916, Letters II 383 (May Joyce to JJ): I am delighted to hear that your novel is being published, the stir Dubliners made will be nothing to this. You have rewritten it since we lived in St. Peter's Terrace when we were all put out of the room when you reading each new chapter foro Mother. I used hide under the sofa to hear it, until you said I might stay. I am looking forward to readig it now.
14 September 1916, Selected Letters (JJ to W.B. Yeats): Besides this I am writing a book Ulysses which
however will not be finished for some years … Ezra Pound who is indeed a
wonder worker
10 October 1916, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I thank you also for your kind enquiry about the book I am
writing. I am working at it as well as I can. It is called Ulysses and
the action takes place in Dublin in 1904. I have almost finished the first
part and have written out part of the middle and end. I hope to finish it in
1918.
8 November 1916, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Ulysses: I began this in Rome six years (or seven) and
am writing it now. I hope to finish it in 1918.
16 November 1916, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have had no more attacks and am feeling better
1917
26 January 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): I don't know how much Joyce would send
in. He is working on another novel.
29 January 1917, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I confirm my telegram. I am glad to hear that the sheets
have arrived safely — will you please note my new address.
9 February 1917, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): [Asks for] rough drafts of parts of Ulysses, if
they wouldn't interfere with later serial publication of the whole
27 February 1917, Letters II (Messrs Slack, Monro, Saw to JJ): We are instructed to write to you
on behalf of an admirer of your writing, who desires to be anonymous, to say
that we are to forward you a cheque for £50 on the 1st May, August, November
and February next, making a total of £200, which we hope you will accept
without any enquiry as to the source of the gift.
6 March 1917, Selected Letters (JJ to ANONYMOUS): Messrs Black [sic], Monro,
Saw and Co wrote to me on 22
February that they had been instructed by you to forward me on 1 May, August,
September and February cheques for £50, making a total of £200 … rheumatic
iritis … As soon as I am cured I shall continue to write a novel at which
I am working Ulysses.
15 March 1917, Letters II (JJ to C.P. Curran): I am writing Ulysses which I began six or
seven years ago in Rome and I hope I shall be able to finish it in 1918
22 March 1917, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I am much better now but must remain for a fortnight under
doctor's care. I am writing Ulysses but as usual very slowly.
26 March 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Joyce is laid up with his eyes again,
but the worst of the attack is over.
28 March 1917, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): I want SOMETHING from you, even if it is only
500 words … I dont want, at any price, to interfere with the progress of
“Odysseus”, but you must have some stray leaves of paper, with some sort of
arabesques on them … I'd like to start the May number with all of us in it.
9 April 1917, Selected Letters (JJ to Ezra Pound): I have nothing ready … As regards excerpts from
Ulysses, the only thing I could send would be the Hamlet chapter, or
part of it — which, however, would suffer by excision … I have been
thinking all day what I could do or write. Perhaps there is something if
only I could think of it. Unfortunately I have very little imagination. I am
also a very bad critic … I wonder if you will like the book I am writing?
I am doing it, as Aristotle would say, by different means in different parts.
Strange to say, in spite of my illness I have written enough lately.
22 April 1917, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I can read and write however and am continuing my book
at the usual snail's pace.
22 April 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): I have sent on Joyce's letter to Quinn,
a short formal letter and a long gay one. Perhaps you had better announce
simply “James Joyce has written to say that he will be among the early
contributors to the magazine” …I should like room for more prose from
Yeats, AND for Joyce's next novel, when finished.
7 May 1917, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to Nora Joyce): I hope we'll be
able to print “Ulysses” when
finished. It could appear both in the “Egoist” and in the “Little Review” and
J.J. would get double fees … I hope James will get through the beastly
operation with all possible luck.
7 May 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Joyce is in hospital with small chance
of doing much. I want however to be able to enlarge format WHEN his
next novel is ready, and also to pay him at least £50 for it.
13 May 1917, Letters I (JJ to John Quinn): I cannot dictate to a stenographer or type. I
write all with my own hand. When the fair copy is ready I send it to a
typist.
29 May 1917, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): [Mentions receiving a letter
the previous day from an agent in New York named L. Bloom at 274 W. 19th
Street] Do you know him? I confess I am rather superstitious about it for
it is the name of the chief character in the book I am writing Ulysses.
11 June 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Quinn … is buying Joyce's mss. And
any how Joyce is not in need at the moment … is in hospital.
13 June 1917, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I am better but still in cure. I can also read and write
more easily … In these circumstances I have not been able to do very much
with my book Ulysses: but I have done what I could.
8 July 1917, Letters II (JJ to James B. Pinker): I am engaged in writing a book (Ulysses) and I
want to have Exiles published this autumn so that I may be able to
continue to write it. I foresee for it more difficulties … a grave and
dangerous illness extending over five months
10 July 1917, Letters I (JJ to John Quinn): I brought the MS [Exiles] with me here from
Austria in July 1915 and finished the play here in September 1915
18 July 1917, BLHW (JJ to Messrs Monro Saw):
… beg leave to thank … for 1080 francs.
24 July 1917,
Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound):
As soon as Mr Quinn's remittance [for
Exiles
MS] or my next instalment of money arrives in a few days I shall send my
wife and family for the holidays to Lago Maggiore. I did not hear from Mr
Quinn. Has he now all the acts of the play? If not, please send him acts two
and three. If they are lost I shall recopy them for him … As regards
Ulysses I write and think and write and think all day and part of the
night. It goes on as it has been going these five or six years. But the
ingredients will not fuse until they have reached a certain temperature
…
Now let awhile my messmates be
My ponderous Penelope
And sly Ulysses born anew
In Dublin as an Irish jew.
With them I'll sit, with them I'll drink
Nor heed what press and pressmen think
Nor leave their rockbound house of joy
For Helen or for windy Troy
1 August 1917, Letters II (Nora Joyce to JJ): I suppose now that you are alone you ought to be
able to write as you havent me always to bother you
8 August 1917, Letters II (JJ to Grant Richards): … oblige me by wiring … whether you agree to
15 November as date of publication of Exiles … it will allow me to get
on more quickly with my novel Ulysses which, if all goes well, I hope to
have ready for publication next year.
10 August 1917, JML (JJ to Margaret Anderson):
I … hope very soon to be able to arrange through Mr
Pound the transportation of some chapters of Ulysses for your
consideration.
10 August 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): We may as well take Joyce's name off
the announcement list. Heaven knows when he'll get anything done.
11 August 1917, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): If you are short of copies [of A Portrait]
perhaps the printer could do you
a hundred for next month before I correct the proofs. I suppose there are
not many mistakes, my corrections could then be used for the rest of the
edition. It would be pity to lose orders.
12 August 1917, Letters II (Nora Joyce to JJ):
I hope you are writing Ulisses dont stay up too
late at night
12 August 1917, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Monroe):
I have not been able to do much this year.
20 August 1917, Selected Letters (JJ to Ezra Pound): … and if there is a prospect that your suggestion
of some months ago will become a fact; I mean about Ulysses. You
suggested that it could appear serially in Egoist and Little Review
and thus bring me double fees. I am prepared to consign it serially from 1
January next, instalments of about 6000 words
21 August 1917, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): [Informs Quinn that he is to enter the
Augenklinic at 3 o'clock to be operated on.] The doctors there tell me that
I should not remain here and I am trying to arrange to go to Locarno.
23 August 1917, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I was brought here two days ago and am to be operated this
morning. [Thursday: iridectomy on right eye]
28 August 1917, Letters II (Nora Joyce to Ezra Pound): Jim was operated on Thursday … after it
Jim fell into a nervous collapse which lasted three days … he is getting
better slowly
6 September 1917, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): Mr. Pound told me you had written that your book
Ulysses was likely to be finished in January and that you suggested its
appearance as a serial in the Egoist and Little Review
simultaneously. We should be very glad indeed to have it and the Egoist
could pay you fifty pounds — half of it now and half of it in six months
time if that suits you.
8 September 1917, Letters II (Nora Joyce to Harriet Weaver): My husband is better.
10 September 1917, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to Nora Joyce): The Egoist is going to serialize Ulysses,
that much you can tell James. So long as he gets paid fairly soon I don't
suppose it matters what month the actual printing of the story begins. The
Little Review is ready to hold down the American copyright for him, and
print to synchronize with Egoist … Still I think the chances of James
getting £100 altogether for serial rights to “Ulysses” (or as much as
printers will print) are fairly good.
13 September 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): We must do the thing in Feb in case the
Egoist wants to begin Joyce in March, for I have promised to publish it
simultaneously with them
15 September 1917, BLHW (Nora Joyce to Harriet Weaver): My husband is now at home again but will
be convalescent for two or three weeks still. The operation was satisfactory
… He was very glad indeed to hear the good news in your letter and thanks
you for your kind and generous patronage of his Ulysses.
25 September 1917, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to Nora Joyce): I didn't make out from James' last
letter whether Ulysses was so far finished that it would be ready with the
New Year in spite of his operation, or whether the operation will have put
it off for another three months
19 October 1917, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Received from The Egoist Ltd £25.0.0 payment
in advance of serial rights for Ulysses.
22 October 1917, Selected Letters (JJ to Ezra Pound): I came here a few days ago … I am glad Ulysses
is to appear in both reviews from March on and now that I can read and write
again I shall get to work. I hope you will both like it.
27 October 1917, Letters II (JJ to James B. Pinker): I corrected yesterday proofs of Exiles
5 November 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Joyce seems pretty sure his novel will
be ready to begin in our March number.
PM 5 November 1917, Unpublished (JJ to Claud Sykes): This is a new address. I send you back Irish
Blather which I have read. Many thanks. If possible I should like to see
other numbers, old or new. I suppose the Fortnightly has not yet arrived.
Weather good here. Two dull days since we came. For the rest, sun …
Am getting on with my book.
10 November 1917, Letters II (JJ to Édouard Dujardin): [Asks for copy of Les Lauriers; had one in
Trieste]
16 November 1917, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have changed my address again as you see. I am much
better now and will send on some of the typescript of Ulysses as soon as
I can get it done. I can find nobody to do it here and fear I must send it
to Zurich … I am glad to hear the second edition of my novel is nearly
ready. Will you please make the following corrections:
p.253 l.4 for
royal Irish academy read Kildare house
16 November 1917, Letters II (JJ to James B. Pinker): I hope to be able to resume work on my book
Ulysses next week.
22 November 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): I have just written J.Q. that I
have a guarantor for £10 for three years … Mary Sinclair … It will enable
me to pay Joyce the proper £50 for the American rights on his novel. Which
is a comfort.
re ca. 23 November 1917 (Attributed to Claud Sykes; 1931): In November 1917, Joyce asked me to type the
opening chapters of Ulysses, which Miss Weaver had arranged to publish in
serial form. I tackled the M.S. as he sent it to me and remember that I
found his handwriting very difficult to read; I fear I made many mistakes,
which he subsequently corrected with much patience. I continued this work
till the spring of 1918, though I cannot remember how much I did
altogether
24 November 1917, Letters I (JJ to Claud Sykes): Saturday.
The first episode of the Telemachia has to be typed as
quickly as possible so that the printers can get to work. I am sending it
and you will get it Tuesday morning. Please let me hear from you then.
On Monday will you please arrange with Mr Goldschmidt about beginning the
typing on Tuesday …
I remit M.O. 20 francs in advance as per our agreement. I believe I
told you that in present circumstances I should like to have it in
duplicate.
25 November 1917, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): I expect your book Ulysses has been delayed
and that it will not be finished as soon as you had expected.
27 November 1917, Letters I (JJ to Claud Sykes): Just got your card. Show MS at once to Mr G and
explain to him it can be typed quickly … For the other two episodes
(which are not so long) it will depend on whether he disposes of his place
or not. I take it you could do what I sent quickly. There is no use losing
time.
Errors: for ‘old shrunken breasts’ in description of old milkwoman
read ‘old shrunken paps’.
For
‘plunged’ in description of Buck Mulligan searching trunk for handkerchief
read ‘plunged and rummaged’
6 December 1917, Letters I (JJ to Claud Sykes): At the beginning of the MS
(page 9 of rough copy,
probably 6 or 5 of yours) is the phrase ‘He folded his razor and with the
feeling polpastrelli of the fingers of his right hand touched his jaws
and chin’. In the version you have I changed the phrase but please tell me
what is there now as I want to change it slightly again. Sorry to trouble
you but it means only the addition of one or two words. You may remember I
found some difficulty there. Glad to hear from Mr K that you have the
machine … Cat and others well. Will send more MS I hope very soon.
[Note by Sykes: Romeo Rogers — Cat's name — brought from Z to Loc.]
7 December 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR):
Mrs [H.G. Wells] has also sent on
assurances of H.G.'s admiration of Joyce. H.G.'s review having been a
valuable piece of imbecility … Joyce writes that the first division of his
novel is at the typists. Enough for three numbers. So it looks as if we
should be able to start him in March, O.K.
12 December 1917, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): Many thanks for your kind words about my book. You
will receive the second episode on the 20th. Can you arrange with Mr
Goldschmidt for a few afternoons as his machine is better. The episode is
only half as long as the other. Better arrange in advance … PS needless to
add I rec'd safely the typescript: thanks.
PM 16 December 1917, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): Sunday. I send you M.O. (10 frs) and second
episode to
be typed as soon as possible. They [L.R.] promise to send me £10 when I send MS
of first part — of which there is a third episode. Please leave a good
margin on the left side of the page not on the right. Two small
alterations. In account of Sir John Blackwood place also after the second
Day! (…) dots as after the first so (Day! … Day! …). In Mr Deasy's
speech beginning ‘You think me an old fogey’ place after ‘I remember the
famine’ the date ‘in '46.’ Hope you will not find the MS difficult. I tried
to write it in a very legible hand but there are interlineations, very
important. Hope you can make them out. When sending back please send
registered. Can you do 3 copies as last time? Is it the same for you. It is
in case one goes astray. Please let me know if MO's sent square accounts,
including of course postage and expenses of Dienstmann. P.S. I hope you will
like the MS.
PM 17 December 1917, Letters I (JJ to Claud Sykes): In the hurry of catching post yesterday I forgot to
make following changes: (1) in description of the boy Sargent for
‘wheywhite’ read ‘wheysour’ (2) After Mr Deasy's words ‘I paid my way’
for ‘Quite right. Quite right’ read ‘Good man. Good man’. (3) In Mr Deasy's
speech which begins, ‘Mark my words,’ omit the sentence, ‘And now it has
come.’ Snowing here. Hope
you got MS all right. Am at work now on last part of Telemachia.
18 (not 19) December 1917, Letters II (Ezra Pound to JJ):
Pages 1-17, in duplicate rec'd. Since you will
get yourself reviewed in modern Greek and thereby suggest new spellings of
the name Daedalus … There was a passage on page three that made me
question it for a moment, but I cant, on rereading find anything wrong …
I wonder about the adjective ‘merry’ in ’merry over
the sea’ page 8. And the movement of the sentence ‘another now yet the same’.
Also ‘fro’ and ‘glow’ in paragraph 4 of that page, look like an accidental
rhyme … Your 17 pages have no division marks. Unless this is the first
month's lot, instead of the first three months, as you wrote it would be, I
shall divide on page 6, after the statement that the Sassenach wants his
bacon, and at the very top of page 12.
Hope to forward a few base sheckles in a few
days time. Wall, Mr Joice, I recon your a damn fine writer, that's what I
recon'. An' I recon' this here work o' yourn is some concarn'd litterchure.
You can take it from me, an' I'm a jedge.
19 December 1917, BUFF (JJ to Claud Sykes): ... gazing on/over the empty bay ...
PM 22 December 1917, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): Please change the word ‘captive’ in phrase ‘Mr
Deasy held his nose captive for a few moments’ etc to ‘tweaked’. The reason
I trouble you so often is that I make notes on stray bits of paper which I
then forget in the most unlikely places, in books, under ornaments and in my
pockets and on the back of advertisements. I hope you arranged about the
machine.
PM 23 December 1917, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): As regards the corrections could you post back to me the illegible one. I have made the following corrections ‘tweaked’ ‘in '46’ (‘whey sour’ and ‘department’ were made by you).
26 December 1917, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): The first episode of Ulysses was sent to Mr Pound a
fortnight ago in two copies. The second I shall send tomorrow. The third
which completes the first part early in January when it is typed.
27 December 1917, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): Thanks for wire and card. The children received
kind present and are writing their acknowledgements. Glad to hear instalment
nearly ready. If at all possible erase the few errors (in original and
copies) and retype amendments I sent on after.
30 December 1917, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): For God's sake do something to cheer
Quinn [re suppression over Lewis's Cantleman's] … imprudent to use the
Rodker thing. Everything else looks safe enough to me, until we get to Joyce.
Whom we have got to print. Suppression or no suppression.
1918
ca. 2 January 1918, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): Herewith M.O. for 4 frs with thanks.
As regards
the corrections could you post back to me the illegible one. I have made
the following corrections ‘tweaked’ ‘in '46’ (‘whey sour’ and ‘department’
were made by you).
6 January 1918, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): I leave Locarno today. My address in Zurich for the
moment will be c/o Sig. Ugo Moggi, Friedenstrasse 7, Zurich. It was not
possible to remain on here as I have no lessons to supplement my income
and my New York publisher writes that the sales of my novel have come to a
standstill … I have no choice. The business of looking for and finding
some tolerable quarters will take up some of my time and may delay for a
week or so the sending of the third episode of the Telemachia. I suggest,
however, that you print the whole first episode in one number and the
second in the next. I confirm my postcard and repeat here the
corrections on the typescript which I beg you to forward at once to the
Little Review and Egoist. Episode 1, p.4, par 9 for ‘Crauly's’ read
‘Cranly's’ : Episode 1, p.10, par 8 after ‘I am, ma'am, Buck etc’ read
‘Look at that now, she said.’ ; Episode 1, p.13, par 7 for ‘We're always
tired’ etc read ‘I'm [always tired]’. I am sure there are other mistakes.
My bad eyesight and the condition in which my typing is done are to blame.
17 January 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Another chunk of Joyce has come so you
can print all the lot I have sent in one no … It might be well to leave
gaps, at the questionable points. well marked. Saying ‘until literature is
permitted in America’ we can not print Mr J.'s next sentence. Mr. J. is the
author of ‘the Portrait’ etc. recognised as literature but he lacks the
sanction of ‘age’. He refers here to tribal custom of the Hebrews, often
mentioned in Leviticus. He refers here to certain current statements of the
New Testament. He refers here to natural facts, doubtless familiar to the
reader. This might help more than anything to enlighten our public. ‘We do
not consider these gaps in the least necessary but we can not afford to be
suppressed [etc]’
18 January 1918, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to H.L. Mencken): Joyce's new novel has a corking 1st.
Chap. (which will get us suppressed), not such a good second one.
23 January 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): James Joyce sends the following
corrections.
Ep 1 p4 par 9 read Cranly's not Crauley's
1.10 8 after I am, m'am, Buck. etc read ‘Look at that now,’ she said
‘We're always tired etc
1.13,7 for ‘We're always tired.’ read ‘I'm always tired’
All the first lot of Joyce can go in March. I strongly recommend the
omissions AND the comments thereon used in my last. I enclose the Joyce for
April.
25 January 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): However Joyce for April, and a letter
from Villerant go by this post, via chief censor.
PM 4 February 1918, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): Arranged matters with Mr and Mrs G. You can go
tomorrow
after ten. Can you arrange perhaps for some other hour or so before Saturday
as I want to get rid of the episode? There is, I find, an omission in the
lot you have. After words ‘upward in the fog’ (v. Clerkenwell allusion)
insert sentence. ‘Shattered glass and toppling masonry’. The sun was in my
eyes as I copied.
10 February 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Can you drop me a line to say whether you
have, with the receipt of this [extract from Rodker] enough mss. actually
rec'd to fill both April and May.
11 February 1918, JML (JJ to Ezra Pound): I hope you are now better and out again. I shall
be looking forward to a letter from you. I sent you this morning the third (and last) episode of the Telemachia. The spelling and mechanical
construction used by me are to be followed by the printer even when words
are misspelled and the grammar is at fault.
21 February 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Joyce has run wode, as per enclosed
p.c. However, I suppose we may as well let him have his own way. This
installment is magnificent in spots, and mostly incomprehensible. Ma che.
22 February 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): You will know bynow that there is
enough Joyce to use the full installment in March, not stringing it over
three issues. That will have helped with the gap you are bewailing.
25 February 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): The big chunks of Joyce and Hueffer
will fill space.
26 February 1918, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I hope Mr Pound is not ill. It is a long time since I heard
from him.
27 February 1918, Ellmann (JJ to Harriet Weaver): [receives letter from Eidengenüssische Bank asking him to
call in in connection with some money]
8 March 1918, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): I enclose draft of 525 francs (£25), the second
payment from the Egoist for the serial rights of your novel Ulysses. The
novel is bitter reading to me at least — difficult too, the third section
— but of vital interest. I am sorry to say our printers are making
difficulties over it. The first episode is in type but at the last moment
before going to press for the March number they refused to print it — even
with deletions.
20 March 1918, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): You are very kind to send me payment for the serial rights
of a book (Ulysses) which is causing you and your paper so much trouble
… I have sent
the first episode of the Odyssey [‘Calypso’] to Mr Pound but I must
apologise for the very bad typescript. I shall try to have the following
episodes done better. I hope it is legible in spite of the typist's mistakes
… Mr Pinker wrote me some time ago about ceding to you the book rights of
Ulysses. I do so gladly … Mr Richards is entitled by contract to a
right of refusal which expires on 15 June 1919. The novel will hardly have
run to its end then and in any case I do not think he would consider it for
publication at any time.
27 March 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): March [issue arrived] here. GOSH!!
Solid dynamite.
29 March 1918, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): As I wrote this a.m. or yesterday, we have got
your first instalment into print, 30 copies have reached me here … Section
4 has excellent things in it; but you overdo the matter. Leave the stool to
Geo. Robey. He has been doing ‘down where the asparagus grows, for some time
3 April 1918, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to John Quinn): I may say that I rec'd the fourth
chapter some days ago, and deleted about twenty lines before sending it off
to N.Y.; and also wrote Joyce my reasons for thinking the said lines
excessive
9 April 1918, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): I have received your card and letter … and am glad
to hear that the first part of the Telemachia has appeared in your review
… Since it seems that the appearance of the book in the The Egoist
will be delayed I request you to change the amount against the balance of
serial rights coming to me … I shall send you tomorrow the second episode
of the odyssey, the Lotophagos. I am sorry you do not like the
Calypso-Penelope episode. The text however is to remain exactly as I wrote
it … I am also well enough but suffer occasionally … the price of all
things go up and up. I shall look forward to a renewal of the treasury grant
made me two years ago and need scarcely say that if it be doubled I shall be
doubly grateful.
14 April 1918, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Has the first instalment of Ulysses appeared in The
Egoist? I have sent on the fifth episode [‘Lotus Eaters’] now to Mr Pound.
23 April 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): I enclose next batch of Joyce.
18 May 1918, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Will you please write to him [Huebsch] and say I could not,
for many reasons, undertake to deliver the entire typescript of Ulysses
during the coming autumn,
If the Little Review continues to publish it regularly he
may publish as a cheap paperbound book the Telemachia, that is the
first three episodes — under the title, Ulysses I … The second part,
the Odyssey, contains eleven episodes. The third part, Nostos,
contains three episodes. In all seventeen episodes of which, including that
which is now being typed and will be sent in a day or two, Hades, I have
delivered six. It is impossible to say how much of the book is really
written. Several other episodes have been drafted for the second time but
that means nothing because although the third episode of the Telemachia
has been a long time in the second draft I spent about 200 hours over it
before I wrote it out finally. I fear I have little imagination … if all
goes well the book should be finished by the summer of 1919. If it be set up
before it could then be published at once. It is not quite clear from Mr
Pound's last letter whether he is transmitting my typescript to New York or
not. However I am sending the next episode also through him.
19 May 1918, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have some slight symptoms in my eye. It may be nothing.
24 May 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Here is most of the Aug. [Henry James]
number, perhaps all 64 pages wil hold … Omit Joyce for that month.
30 May 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): Joyce again down with eye trouble. so
its just as well we dont want him in Aug.
9 June 1918, Letters I (JJ to James B. Pinker): If my publisher there wants to do it he can publish
the first three episodes of Ulysses in autumn as a paperbound book and
episodes 4 to 13 also when I have sent them and finally episodes 14, 15, 16
… send against my account a copy of Mr Lawrence's
novel The Rainbow. I hope that my eyes will soon allow me to set to work
again, if only for a time, on Ulysses. I believe Miss Weaver cannot find
anyone to print it.
19 June 1918, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): Many thanks for your letter. I had hoped there
would have been something definite to say before this as to the appearance
of your novel Ulysses in the form of a supplement but the matter is
still unsettled. Unfortunately Mr and Mrs Woolf … would have liked to do
it as they were very much interested in the first four episodes which they
read … Mr Pound sent his copy of the typescript to America and the book
started in the Little Review for March. I hope all will go well with the
writing of the rest of it. It is not tiresome to me to hear how your book
is written: I like to hear it.
29 July 1918, Letters I (JJ to James B. Pinker): I could not answer till now as I have been very ill
… send a note to Reverend Stephen Browne … thanking him for the
inclusion of my name in his work Ireland in Fiction
29 July 1918, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): After nine weeks' illness I am at last able to read and
write again. I am sorry that the other episodes of Ulysses have been
delayed. A few days [ago] I sent the sixth episode ‘Hades’ to Mr Pound with
a copy for you and very soon I shall send the seventh ‘Eolus’. I received
also The Voyage Out by Mrs Woolf and shall now begin to read it …
the fourth episode of Ulysses as published in the June issue of the
Little Review is not my full text … received this evening Mr Lewis's
novel Tarr
29 July 1918,
Letters III (JJ to Claud Sykes): Please write here and send back
Oxen of the Sun when read. I remain here 2 or 3 months to write
Circe.";
11 August 1918, Letters II (Harriet Weaver to Ben Huebsch): After nine weeks' illness Joyce is
better — for the time being — and able to read and write again … In the
third episode, published in the March issue, a few sentences had also been
excised and these should be restored too. I have not succeeded so far in
finding a printer to set up the text for The Egoist
20 August 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): New sub. Mrs E. McCormick Hotel
Bauer au Lac Zurich (begin with first chap. Ulysses)
25 August 1918, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I sent the eight episode of Ulysses (Eolus) to Mr Pound
some days [ago] and hope you have it now.
28 August 1918, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): Thanks for your card and good opinion of the Hades
episode. I sent you some days ago express the Eolus episode … I have not
seen any issue of the Little Review since the June issue … I shall
send you as quickly as I can the Lestrygonians and after that the Hamlet
chapter (Scylla and Charybdis). I received your M.O. (£10) and thank you
very much. If you need a collective receipt for the £30 I shall send it on
demand … I am house-hunting … I was quite comfortable in these rooms
till the adjoining hospital bought the house … Lewis … sent me a copy of
Tarr.
26 October 1918, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have had no letter from Mr Pound for a long time and I
hope he is not ill. I am surprised that you have not received from him the
seventh episode (Eolus) which I sent a long time ago. I sent yesterday the
eight episode (Lestrygonians) so perhaps you can ask him to send you both
together … I must also apologise for the slow rate at which I deliver the
chapters. But I hope they will be dispatched some day. I am writing now the
Hamlet episode (Scylla and Charybdis).
31 October 1918, Letters I (Ben Huebsch to Harriet Weaver): Miss Anderson says that the excisions in
Ulysses had been made in pencil in the copy that she received and she is
under the impression that they represent Mr Pound's ideas. She says that
she made absolutely no changes herself. Her manuscript appears to be mislaid
and she will search for it, but you know that missing manuscripts are never
found, so that you had better see to it that I receive a duplicate copy in
the form in which it should appear in the volume.
1 November 1918, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): I hope you are not ill … as it is a long time
since I heard from you … The above is my new address … I sent you lately
the 8th episode (Lestrygonians) and before that the 7th (Eolus) but have had
no acknowledgment of receipt … I hope to be able to send you the ninth
episode (Scylla and Charybdis) shortly … I should be pleased to receive
from you copies of the Little Review for August, September and October.
I hope the chapters have appeared intact … I should like to put the play
[Exiles] in the hands of some active agent. A Mr Marion L. Bloom wrote
to me a long time ago but my illness made me forget his proposal. The name
is rather curious, is it not? But so many of these strange coincidences
happen. But whether he would like to take on the representation for
Ulysses is, I suppose, doubtful.
4 November 1918, Pound Letters (Ezra Pound to LR): I enclose eighth bundle of Joyce.
19 November 1918, BLHW (Messrs Monro Saw to Harriet Weaver): [asks her to reconsider £5000 settlement]
21 November 1918, JJQ (JJ to Carl Bleibtreu): In the book I am writing Ulysses
there is an allusion to your interesting Shakespearean theory, but, in order
to refresh my memory, I should be glad to have your book [Die Lösung der
Shakespear-Frage: Eine neue Theorie Leipzig: Thomas, 1907] for 2 or 3
days. Mr Sykes has mislaid his copy and I cannot get one at libraries.
Would you let have your book for a day or two? Moreover I should like to
know had you this idea for many years or can you tell me what year you began
to make research. Your book was published in '07 or '08, if I remember.
Another small point of interest is the date of your visit to the present
Duke of Rutland. If you could let me know any impression of that event and
also the name of his county-seat I should be obliged.
22 November 1918, Letters II (Ezra Pound to JJ): Bloom is a great man, and you have almightily
answered the critics … Has ‘Ulysses’ 24 Odyssean books? I dont want to ask
silly questions, and I hope it continues forever, but people are
continuously asking ME about it … If there are going to be chapters after
April, I will try to bone a few quid more out of someone
27 November 1918, JJQ (JJ to Carl Bleibtreu): Thanks for your letter … I am sorry to
have to trouble you again but I should like to have the answer to the
following questions: To save you trouble I am sending them in the form of a
‘question and answer’ which you can return to me. I should like your reply
as soon as convenient. I may add that my book Ulysses takes place on 16
June 1904 in Dublin but I should like to open the chapter I am writing with
an allusion to your theory — which I must therefore antedate.
28 November 1918, JJQ (Carl Bleibtreu to JJ): I am afraid I have little interest in
this terrible time for details of that controversy. Yet occasionally I wrote
something this summer about the sonnets in behalf of Oscar Wilde's theory.
Your first question I do not understand. No, not before June 1904. 2) I do
not know. The family Estates are mostly in Warwickshire, at the time of Lord
Roger there was even a countie of Rutland. 3) The Sonnets allude to no man
whatever, but to Shakespeare's own genius — the power of conseption [sic]
—, separated from the Muse — the power of technical construction —
personated by the Black Lady, wayward and fickle, as the Muse is, we poets know
her ladyship. All that rumour about Mary Fulton is trash, she was fair (not
‘black’) and the love-passage between her and Lord Pembroke has nothing to
do with the symbolism of the Sonnets. Only there is a possibility and
probablility that Shakepeare's ever plastic and creative imagination took
some personal observations from active life as a colouring of his
allegorical composition. This would be in accordance with his dramatical
instinct. 4) Mr W.H. is Mr. William Herbert (Lord Pembroke), the cousin of
Rutland and afterwards executor of his intellectual will (Folio). Apparently
he had a manuscript-copy of the Sonnets, as afterwards of many unknown plays
in the Folio, and gave them to the editor Thorpe with the obligation to
publish them anonymously, perhaps with the permission of Rutland or
perhaps not. Thus he, W.H., is the ‘begetter’, by whom Thorpe got it.
Considering that most of the Sonnets were written in the Tower, as I think
certain (‘When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my
outcast state …’ ‘Thus comes it, that my name does bear a brand’), most
things clear up, otherwise unintelligible. And the allusion ‘from hence your
memory death cannot take, although in me each part shall be forgotten’
‘my name entombed with my body be’ (I quote from memory, this last verse is
not verbal) or the grandiloquent prophecy of eternal immortality for the
adored ‘lover’ (lover means in antique English ‘admirer’ or admired one)
till ‘all the breathers of this world are dead’ ‘even in the eyes of all
posterity, which wears the world out to the ending doom’ ‘till the day of
judgement shall arise, you still shall live and love in lovers eyes’ is so
distinct as possible: the adored one is no mortal, to whom such promise of
eternal fame would be ridiculous. How could he get fame at all, if even the
name of this mystical personage is never revealed? (Except ‘Hughes’ in
Wilde's absurdity.) But of course there is no need for that, for the name is
exactly that name all the world knows: Shakespeare, the nom de guerre of His
own genius. And from that name he, the person of The Poet, is entirely
separated and will be buried without this his real name of his
immortal self — he will be buried as the simple Lord Rutland, not under the
name of the greatest mortal that ever lived. ‘My name entombed with my body
be.’ Now the Sonnets are the only inheritance we have of Shakespeares real
personal life, a sort of lyrical and mystical (not mystifying) diary, and it
is most significant that the Baconians evade any touch with the Sonnets like
poison, because here is absolutely nothing in them which would not be in
absolute contradction to Bacons life. It is quite the same with the life of
the Stratford vulgarian, and the only allusion which the Stratford scholars
grasp: ‘my name bears a brand’ as a stage-player, is downright nonsence [sic],
because we know the good position of actors like Burbridge and others —
whereas it is as clear as daylight for a person condemned to
lifelong imprisonment for high-treason. 5) This is not part of my theory,
because it is only a suggestion, first emanated by an American Baconian.
But it is possible; then I should think Pembroke or Ben Jonson did it. 6)
I do not understand, you must have mis-read. 7) In summer 1904 I was
undoubtedly in Berlin and was nearly every day in the Café Kaiserhof, the
centre of chess=players and visited by many literary people. 9) The monthly
of the New Jersey Shakesperian [sic] Society, which has send [sic] me one
[or] two numbers, contained the statement, that Sid. Lee was Simon Lazarus,
clothed in the ironical question, why other people as Shakespeare had
sometimes the hobby to change their names. 8) This fool I know very well
because I have ridiculed very often his collossal [sic] ignorance in quoting
Marlowes [sic] ‘Faustus’ about Hamlets [sic] ‘Wittenberg’. (The academical
scholar Marlowe did not know Wittenberg, he spells it Wirtenberg, Wortenberg,
Wartenberg, only the last edition long after his death spells rightly
Wittenberg, corrected after Hamlet — but the ignorant Stratford comedian
should have known this German university, known it too as the university
where all Danish and Swedish noblemen studied — especially Rosencrans and
Gyldenstjerne!) … I have read once a rather mediocre, but well-intentioned
essay of Dowden about Othello, but the way of his polemics in
defence of the Stratford clown is worthy even of Sidney Lee. You must have
forgotten my book, for I mention there Dowden often enough.
1 December 1918, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I am glad to say that my health is better and my eyes give me
no trouble but my sight is very bad sometimes.
5 December 1918, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): Many thanks for your kind … words about my book
Ulysses. The book is in 18 episodes: Telemachia (3), Wanderings (12),
Nostos (3). If regularly sent and printed it should run till the autumn of
next year. I cannot possibly deliver any faster than I am doing. I suppose
you understand this already. If sometimes a month goes by without my
contribution I cannot help it. I cannot send any episode till it is quite
finished. However, I send you an inclusive receipt which may be of use (or
detriment?) to you if you are looking for someone to finance the review
after April next. If any other money comes in I shall be glad to receive
more … very soon I shall send you the Scylla and Charybdis episode
(Hamlet) and immediately afterwards the Wandering rocks. I hope that Mrs
Pound, if she ever honours me by reading the former, will not take amiss
certain words of Telemachus about her illustrious ex-namesake.
12 December 1918, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): I don't want to hurry you; and the slowness of
making permanent literature is incomprehensible to all save a few of us who
have tried … As to Hamlet, or whatever, Dorothy is among your constant
readers, and so far as ascertainable from close scrutiny, has never jibbed
[at] any remarks by Telemachus Daedalus or other protagonists. She has a
growing affection for Bloom.
1919
6 January 1919, Private (JJ to M[r] Nugent): I enclose a snapshot taken by a friend of mine after my illness. I hope it will serve your purpose.
23 January 1919, BLHW (Antoine Chalas to Harriet Weaver): Madame. Mr Joyce étant malade
depuis six jours, m'a chargé de Vous écrire pour Vous prier d'écrire à son
agent littérataire afin que l'éditeur milanais sache les conditions pour la
traduction de son roman. Mr Joyce accepte d'avance les conditions qu'on
fixera. Le chapitre d'Ulysse [Plangtai Petrai] a été envoyé au
dactylographe.
25 February 1919, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I appreciate very much your friendly words about the
Scylla-Charybdis episode of my book Ulysses but am sorry that it
deprived you of sleep … I sent some days ago the episode Wandering Rocks
to Mr Pound who is ill also. If he has not sent it to you could you write to
him. As soon as I am able to work again I shall finish the Sirens and send
it … for five weeks I could do little or nothing except lie constantly
near a stove … I hope I shall be able to finish the book this year or
early next year. It is as difficult for me to write it as for my readers to
read it
ca. 28 February 1919, JML (JJ to Ezra Pound): I am very sorry to hear you have had the Spanish
influenza … I have been ailing all this year with my eyes but I hope in a
few days to begin work again … I hope you received the episode of the
Symplegades. That of Sirens will follow.
1 April 1919, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): [Trouser affair; JJ's ingratitude re grant] In any
other country would a writer who can point to such a press be, as I am, a
beggar living on charity … I have beaten them to their knees twice before
and will do so again.
30 April 1919, Letters I (JJ to Ben Huebsch): [Trouser affair] I need scarcely say in conclusion
that in such circumstances it is impossible for [me] to continue the book I
am engaged on — Ulysses.
3 May 1919, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I regret the delay in forwarding the episode of the Sirens
but perhaps I am the only person who finds it a subject for regret. I have
had some worries which prevent me from doing much
20 May 1919, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Locarno where I am staying for a few days
30 May 1919, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to JJ): In face of mss just arrived, I think
however I may adjoin personal op. that you have once again gone ‘down where
the asparagus grows’ and gone down as far as the lector most bloody
benevolens can be expected to respire. I dont arsk you to erase — But
express opinion that a few sign posts. perhaps twenty words coherent in
bunches of 3 to 5 wd. not only clarify but even improve 1st. page
… I am sending mss today to Egoist and L.R. and if you have any
relentings, please communic. direct to said offices … Also even the assing
girouette of a postfuturo Gertrudo Steino protopublic dont demand a new
style per chapter
4 June 1919, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to Harriet Weaver): Not so good as usual [of ‘Sirens’]
10 June 1919, Letters I (Ben Huebsch to JJ): Colum immediately determined to lay the
matter before a wealthy young man, whose soul is not crushed by his money,
with the result represented by the enclosed cheque, the equivalent of $700
… The man's name is Scofield Thayer
12 June 1919, Ellmann (JJ to Harriet Weaver):: [J.S. Watson, Jr., a friend of Thayer, sent $300]
18 June 1919, Potts (JJ as quoted by Borach): ‘I finished the Sirens chapter during
the last few days. A big job. I wrote this chapter with the technical
resources of music. It is a fugue with all musical notations: piano,
forte, rallentando, and so on. A quintet occurs in it, too, as in the
Meistersinger, my favourite Wagner opera. The barmaids have the upper
parts of women and the lower of fish. From in front you see bosom and head.
But if you stand behind the bar, you see filth, the empty bottles on the
floor, the ugly shoes of the women, and so on. Only disgusting things.’
19 June 1919, Letters I (JJ to Ben Huebsch): Colum … raised a subsidy of $2000 … It
would greatly facilitate to have this money cabled as we have now reached
the crisis.
19 June 1919, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): I sent on your dream book and hope it reached you
… Pound writes disapproving of the Sirens, then modifying his
disapproval and protesting against the close and against ‘obsession’ wanting
to know whether Bloom … could not be relegated to the background and
Stephen Telemachus brought forward. The chapter of the Cyclops is being
lovingly moulded in the way you know. The Fenian is accompanied by a
wolfhound who speaks (or curses) in Irish. He unburdens his soul about the
Saxo-Angles in the best Fenian style and with colossal vituperativeness
alluding to their standard industry. The epic proceeds explanatorily ‘He
spoke of the English, a noble race, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones
of alabaster, silent as the deathless gods’.
26 June 1919, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: Would you care to dispose of the manuscript of
‘Ulysses’? How many pages will it run? If it is not finished and you wish to
dispose of it, to me, I should be glad to send you a draft on account …
P.S. If you wish to trade with me for the MS. of ‘Exiles’ [sic, means
‘Ulysses’], please do not send it without having it carefully wrapped, fully
insured, and sent by registered post. But there is no hurry about sending it.
2 July 1919, Letters II (JJ to Ben Huebsch): CABLE SUM COLM COLLECTED.
2 July 1919, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): As regards my book Ulysses it will not be finished, I
suppose, for a year or so … I forwarded some time ago the chapter
Wandering Rocks to Mr Pound but it was not acknowledged. Was a copy of
the typescript forwarded to you? I also sent him in France the episode of
the Sirens. This, at least, reached him and he told me he had sent it on
to you and to Miss Anderson. I fear he does not like the book. I shall send
the episode of the Cyclops next — but when I cannot say
6 July 1919, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): After the last number of the Egoist came out
(in April) our printers gave us notice, chiefly, though not entirely, on
account of Ulysses. I have since made arrangements with another firm and
they are bringing out the next number this week. Half of the sixth episode
will appear in it; the other half in the following number … I remember
mentioning this new plan [to suspend the Egoist and concentrate on book
publishing] … the mananger, a Roman Catholic Irishman, had been much
interesterd in your first novel. He has now seen the first ten chapters of
Ulysses and … will be willing to print the complete text … Mr Pound
sent me the Sirens episode a little time ago
11 July 1919, Yale (JJ to Frank Budgen): Sir Whorearse Rumphole has been ‘gently
removed’ from Berne. Lord Acton in charge. 5000 frs cabled from U.S.A. for
my cause … I have offered to finance the E.P. [English
Players] … they very kindly … consented to accept 10,000 francs of my
dirty money
20 July 1919, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): … you write me that the last episode sent [Sirens]
seems to you to show a weakening or diffusion of some sort. Since the
receipt of your letter I have read this chapter again several times. It took
me five months to write it and always when I have finished an episode my mind
lapses into a state of blank apathy … Mr Pound wrote to me in hasty
disapproval … Mr Brock also … If the Sirens have been found so
unsatisfactory I have little hope that the Cyclops or later the Circe
episode will be approved of: and, moreover, it is impossible for me to
write these episodes quickly. The elements needed will fuse only after a
prolonged existence together … the progress of the book is in fact like
the progress of some sandblast … I shall feel very thankful to you if you
will accept from me the MS of [A Portrait]. It is in Trieste and, as
soon as circumstances are more favourable, I shall get it and forward it to
you.
3 August 1919, Letters II (JJ to John Quinn): Ulysses will not be finished probably till the
end of next year — if even then. A chapter takes me about four or five
months to write.
6 August 1919, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Perhaps I ought not to say any more on the subject of the
Sirens but the passages you allude to were not intended by me as
recitative, There is in the episode only one example of recitative, on page
12 in preface to the song. They are all the eight regular parts of a fuga
per canonem: and I did not know in what way to describe the seductions of
music beyond which Ulysses travels. I understand that you may begin to
regard the various styles of the episodes with dismay and prefer the initial
style much as the wanderer did who longs for the rock of Ithaca. But in the
compass of one day to compress all these wanderings and clothe them in the
form of this day is for me possible only by such variation which, I beg you
to believe, is not capricious
26 August 1918, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I do not know Mr Pound's address.
3 September 1919, Ellmann (claims JJ finished ‘Cyclops’ and sent it off to Pound):
8 September 1919, Letters II (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): I am sending off today the first case of my books.
Two more boxes of books, one box of pictures, and my typewriter will follow
at intervals … I expect to be able to leave on 1 October … I am now
writing The Cyclops
10 October 1919, Letters II (Mrs McCormick to JJ): I am not free on Sunday, so I will say
‘Good-bye’, in this letter. I know that you will reach Trieste safely, and
that you will continue your work there with enthusiasm and with inward
conviction.
13 October 1919, Letters II (Mrs McCormick to JJ): Thank you for your fine manuscript,
— which I am glad to keep for you with the understanding that, when for
any reason, you want it, you have only to write for it. As the Bank told you,
I am not able to help you any longer financially, but now that the
difficult years of the war are past, you will find publishers and come
forward yourself, I know.
14 October 1919, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): Starting cable maximum advance manuscript Ulysses via
Sanita two Trieste
15 October 1919, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Travelling Trieste Via Sanita Two Please Inform Ezra Pound.
16 October 1919, Letters II (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce):
We arrive tomorrow evening at seven
24 October 1919, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): Thanks for your amusing and encouraging letter. I
left Zurich with my family on the 14 as I was afraid to face the long damp
winter there. The removal expenses were enormous and conditions here are
very difficult. On the 12 I cabled to Mr Quinn to remit me by cable a
maximum advance on the MS of Ulysses which he had offered to do some
months ago. I expected to find the remittance here on my arrival but have
now been here ten days and have received neither money nor message …
Possibly he did so and the order has been rejected … may I ask you to
cable him at once to remit it to you and you can send it on to me … by
cheque in a registered express letter. I shall be able to live from the 1
January on when the first interest of the £5000 comes in but this move here
has cost me about 3000 francs. I am aware that it is foolish of me to
dispose of the MS in this way as I shall receive only a fraction of its
eventual value — or so I think — but I must get a large sum of money
within the next week or ten days at latest … [dreadful conditions]
I shall be
obliged, to my infinite disgust, to resume teaching in order to supplement
my income … If [Quinn's] silence be due to a wish to revoke his proposal I
want to know it at once so that I may dispose of the MS elsewhere. When this
trouble is over I hope to be allowed time and leisure to set to work on
Nausikaa (the next episode).
25 October 1919, Pound/Joyce (Ezra Pound to John Quinn): Last ms. chapter of Joyce perhaps the
best thing he has done … parody of styles, a trick borrowed from Rabelais,
but never done better, even in Rab. Our James is a grrreat man. I hope to
God there is a foundation of truth in the yarn he wrote me about a windfall.
Feel he may have done it just to take himself off my mind.
28 October 1919, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): A few days before I left I forwarded to Mr Pound the
episode of the Cyclops but I suppose there are many mistakes as I had
not time to revise the typescript carefully.
2 November 1919, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): I asked [Pound] at the same time for the
episode of the Cyclops and it reached me last night … I noticed a
number of mistakes in the typescript and I shall read it through carefully
and make what corrections I can
7 November 1919, Letters I (JJ to Frank Budgen): Not a word from Quinn! Not a flat to be had.
Prices very high. Will write in a day or so … Three imbecile lines from
W — unanswered by me. As for Ulysses — it
is like me — on the rocks.
15 November 1919, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): As there is nothing to be hoped for from Mr Quinn
I wrote urgently to my agent Mr Pinker … asking him to cable Huebsch for
an advance of royalties on any or all of my books … Will you please send
me the last number of the Little Review.
22 November 1919, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: I should be willing to pay a reasonable sum
for the MS. of ‘Ulysses’ when it is all finished. I was going to write that
to you but it has been impossible to write before today … I am cabling you
today as follows: James Joyce Twenty-nine Universitatstrasse Zurich
Switzerland Willing cable advance twenty-five pounds account manuscript
Ulysses but do not understand words your cable via Sanita two Trieste.
Please cable definite instructions regarding cabling money. I think £25
would be a reasonable advance to you on account of the completed MS. of
Ulysses. I should not want a fragment but only the completed MS. I could not
give you an estimate of what the completed MS. would be worth until I had
seen it and knew the number of pages in it and so on.
ca 1 December 1919, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Since I came here I wrote a long letter to Mrs M,
asking her very urgently to consider the ‘advisability of the revivability’
of her aid. That distinguished lady never answered … Pound wrote
‘enthusing’ about the Cyclops episode and thereafter less heatedly telling
me that Quinn is no monk, he, (Q,) having bought £300 worth of pictures from
Wyndham Lewis — unpaid for …
Also if Mrs M doesn't reply within a month I shall
take back the MS … I have not written a word of Nausikaa beyond
notation of flappers' atrocities and general plan of the specially new
fizzing style (Patent No. 7728. S.P. E.P. B.P. L.P.).
1 December 1919, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): The MS of A Portrait … is safe and at your disposal.
2 December 1919, Letters II (JJ to James B. Pinker): The text hitherto published in Little Review
is not my text as sent on in typescript. The book is to be published as
I wrote it with a few additions on the proof.
8 December 1919, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: Willing cable you equivalent hundred twenty-
five dollars advance part payment manuscript Ulysses provided you cable me
definite address for cabling money.
10 December 1919, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): perhaps you might venture to send me the
manuscript of your book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man …
please understand that I shall value it very highly indeed
1920
3 January 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): For six weeks after my arrival I neither read nor
wrote nor spoke. But as it cannot go on so I started Nausikaa and have
written less than half. Perhaps I can finish it for February 2. No reply
from Mrs M. It seems that gentility cannot be acquired in a single
generation. Quinn replied after a month offering 700 frs down on account of
Ulysses MS. I did not answer. He now offers 1500 frs down, without
naming the ultimate sum. I shall write to Mrs M. to know if she wants it
… To abandon the book now would be madness. First half of Cyclops
appeared in November with excision of the erection allusion …
Nausikaa is written in a namby-pamby jammy marmalady drawersy (alto
là!) style with effects of incense, mariolatry, masturbation, stewed cockles,
painter's palette, chitchat, circumlocutions, etc etc. Not so long as the
others.
5 January 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Aunt Josephine): Will you please send me a bundle of other
novelettes and any penny hymnbook you can find as I need them? … Another
thing I wanted to know is whether there are trees (and of what kind) behind
the Star of the Sea church in Sandymount visible from the shore and also
whether there are steps leading down at the side of it from Leahy's terrace.
If you can find out these facts for me quickly I shall be glad.
6 January 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): [re AP MS] Of course if all or any of it goes astray I shall
write it out again for you but it would be better for you to have the
original. The ‘original’ original I tore up and threw into the stove about
eight years ago in a fit of rage on account of the trouble over Dubliners.
The charred remains of the MS were rescued by a family fire brigade and tied
up in an old sheet where they remained for some months. I then sorted them
out and pieced them together as best I could and the present MS is the
result … I am working at the Nausikaa episode … I hope to finish
this episode during January … hope to complete my book during the year.
13 January 1920, Ellmann (Frank Budgen to JJ): What's this about abandoning Ulysses?
As if that were possible! The Zurich skies might just as easily quit raining.
28 January 1920, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): I am doubly glad that the whole manuscript has
arrived intact because, although I am touched that you should suggest
copying out for me any or all of it that might fail to reach me, I should
have been very sorry for you to waste your time in such a way … In view of
what happened to the ‘original’ original it is fortunate that the chapters
of Ulysses are typed out as soon as they are written and the typescript
dispatched to safer keeping in England and America!
ca. 1 February 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Aunt Josephine):
Thanks for the journals. I want that information about the
Star of the Sea church, has it ivy on its seafront, are there trees in
Leahy's terrace at the side or near and, if so, what, are there steps
leading down to the beach? I also want all the information you can give,
tittletattle, facts etc about Holles Street maternity hospital. Two chapters
of my book remain unfinished till I have these so I shall feel very grateful
if you … write me a long letter with details.
ca. 1 February 1920, Letters II (JJ to Frank Budgen): Gloria in excelsis Deo! Nausikaa episode
finished. Typing: and will send you a copy at once
ca. 1 February 1920, Letters II (JJ to Frank Budgen):
Hope you got Nausikaa. Do you like it? We wrote you two
cards to wrong number in Forschstrasse. Did you get them … Wrote to Mrs M to
know whether she wants MS of Ulysses. No reply! How the hell am I to get
it back … Oxen of the Sun now. Whoo! … Thanks for birthday wish
4 February 1920, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): Cable immediately advance manuscript Ulysses.
5 February 1920, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: Cabling you three thousand lire through
National Bank Commerce New York advance manuscript Ulysses … Three
thousand lire at today's rate of exchanged, 19.50, amounts to $153.85
13 February 1920, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): ????
18 February 1920, Letters II (JJ to Frank Budgen): More than a fortnight ago I sent you Nausikaa
and a letter. Did you get them. The chapter you may pass on to Sykes with
instructions to send back to me registered
24 February 1920, Letters II (JJ to Claud Sykes): The Nausikaa episode was sent to Budgen three weeks
ago but not acknowledged … Please appy to him for it … Working on Oxen
of the Sun
25 February 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): … several letters sent by me (including two to you) went
astray it seems … About three weeks ago I sent the Nausikaa episode in
duplicate to Mr Pound. If he has not sent it on to you will you please write
to him for it. I heard from him this morning much to my relief for I feared
that too had gone astray and the prospect of doing it all over again was not
pleasant … I am now working on the Oxen of the Sun the most difficult
episode in an odyssey, I think, both to interpret and to execute … Mr
Huebsch writes rather urgently about
Ulysses. I shall tell him that it may be finished for publication late
in autumn but without engagement on my side. If the type for the first half
were set early in summer I could perhaps revise it then. I do not know
whether they have my complete typescript in New York. It would be creating
trouble to set from the Little Review, as many passages are omitted and
hopelessly mixed.
8 March 1920, JML (JJ to Jane Heap):
The Nausikaa episode was sent off about a month
ago and I hope has reached you. I am writing the Oxen of the Sun and
shall send as soon as it is finished. There remains of the adventures
Circe and the close of the book, the nostos proper, part of which is
already written, divided, like the Telemachia, into three episodes.
10 March 1920, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): … let me know … if Mr Pound has sent on the Nausikaa
episode?
11 March 1920, Letters II (JJ to John Quinn): I received in due course your cabled remittance,
advance of purchase money for MS of my book Ulysses, and now your letter
confirming dispatch of same. I thank you for your prompt reply to my cable.
The Nausikaa episode was sent off some time ago and I am working at the
Oxen of the Sun. There remains to be written Circe of the adventures.
The close of the book or Nostos propoer is, like the Telemachia, in
three parts, but simpler, and is in part written
15 March 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): You will hear (till you get sick) the bloody Oxen
of the bloody Sun
20 March 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): I thought if you came you could bring the MS of
Ulysses … Am working hard on Oxen of the Sun, the idea being the
crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition. Scene,
lying-in hospital. Technique: a nine-parted epsiode without divisions
introduced by a Sallustian-Tacitean prelude (the unfertilized ovum),
then by way of earliest English alliterative and monosyllabic and
Anglo-Saxon (‘Before born the babe had bliss. Within the womb he won worship.’
‘Bloom dull dreamy heard: in held hat stony staring’) then by way of
Mandeville (‘there came forth a scholar of medicine that men clepen etc’)
then Malory's Morte d'Arthur (‘but that franklin Lenehan was prompt ever
to pour them so that at the least way mirth should not lack’), then the
Elizabethan chronicle style (‘about that present time young Stephen filled
all cups’), then a passage solemn, as of Milton,
Taylor, Hooker, followed by a choppy Latin-gossipy bit, style of
Burton-Browne, then a passage Bunyanesque (‘the reason was that in the way
he fell in with a certain whore whose name she said is Bird in the Hand’)
after a diarystyle bit Pepys-Evelyn (‘Bloom sitting snug with a party of
wags, among then Dixon jun., Ja. Lynch, Doc. Madden and Stephen D. for a
languor he had before and was now better, he having dreamed tonight a
strange fancy and Mistress Purefoy there to be delivered, poor body, two
days past her time and the midwives hard put to it, God send her quick
issue’) and so on through Defoe-Swift and Steele-Addison-Sterne and
Landor-Pater-Newman until it ends in a frightful jumble of Pidgin English,
nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel. This
progression is also linked back at each part subtly with some foregoing
episode of the day and, besides this, with the natural stages of development
in the embryo and the periods of faunal evolution in general. The
double-thudding
Saxon motive recurs from time to time (‘Loth to move from Horne's
house’) to give the sense of the hoofs of Oxen. Bloom is the spermatozoon,
the hospital the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo.
How's that for high?
12 May 1920, Letters II (JJ to Harriet Weaver): As soon as I get [Pound's] new address I shall send him
on the Oxen of the Sun episode which is now being typed to forward to
you and to New York.
18 May 1920, Yale (JJ to Ezra Pound): The Oxen of the Sun episode is finished but the
typing is still a job. As soon as it is ready will post you express to be
sent on to New York and to Miss Weaver as it is overdue … Ulysses
leaves me no time for sleep much less for other work … This episode has
cost me about a thousand hours of work. Thank the lord it is finished …
I shall get on with the typing as quickly as possible and send off the
script.
18 May 1920, Letters II (JJ to Frank Budgen): The oxen of the bloody bleeding sun are finished.
Typing nearly so. Will send if I do not hear that you have changed address …
Please write to me about Oxen
25 May 1920, SB (Harriet Weaver to JJ): I suppose that the Oxen of the Sun episode,
now being typed you say, concludes the second part of Ulysses (the
Odyssy) for I remember that you told me that the book would contain
seventeen episodes in all, three in the last part.
31 May 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Ezra Pound): I am in need of a long holiday (by this I don't mean
abandonment of Ulysses but quiet in which to finish it) away from here
… I … have had great difficultyu in securing time and peace enough to
write those two chapters … I spend the greater part of my time sprawled
across two beds surrounded by mountains of notes …[I] buy the Daily Mail
… So I propose to spend three
months in Ireland in order to write Circe and the close of the book. I
should return here with my family in October (if anyone finds a flat for us
in the meantime) or, if not, without them in order to write the end of it
… I hope you received safely the Oxen of the Sun and have sent it off
to London and New York. I was bringing down another copy this morning.
9 June 1920, Ellmann (from Pound to Linati): [Joyce arrived last night]
17 June 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Aunt Josephine): As regard the gazette or police news or whatever
the devil it is it was always on sale in low newsagents. You must be
misinformed unless it is a brandnew regulation. Well, can you obtain for me
Reynolds or Lloyd's Weekly News or News of the World for the
weeks ending? Keep them till my next card when I shall tell you where to
send them either to Paris or to London.
22 June 1920, JML (JJ to Margaret Anderson): I shall be obliged if you will pass on to Mr Huebsch
the typescript of Ulysses, as he is signing a contract for publication
which my agent has drawn up. The last adventure Circe is being written;
that of Oxen of the Sun was sent on to you by Mr Pound from Sirmione,
Italy, some weeks ago. The close of the book is also drafted and I shall
send it in the autumn. I hope to leave Trieste in a week or so for Paris.
Having worked very hard I need a few months' rest. Letters sent to me here
will be forwarded by my brother.
22 June 1920, Letters I (JJ to Ben Huebsch): I … have written to Miss Anderson to send you
on the typescript of Ulysses. The last adventure Circe is being
written. The close of the book is drafted and I shall send you it in
duplicate this autumn.
24 June 1920, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): I shall send you tomorrow five chapters or episodes,
Wandering Rocks, Sirens, Cyclops, Nausikaa and Oxen of the
Sun and a few days later nine more, making entire MS so far. The final
adventure and close of the book I shall remit you as written during the next
few months … [Joyce also asked Quinn to cable an additional advance on
receipt c/o Thomas Cook and Sons, Paris,] or, if you prefer, the balance of
the total price.
12 July 1920, Letters III (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): MSS came today and sent them on.
12 July 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I arrived here with my family three days ago. 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 … I hope you duly received Oxen of the Sun which Mr Pound
sent you on from Italy … I hope also I shall be able to finish the
twelfth adventure at my ease. Like its fellows it presents for me great
technical difficulties and for the reader something worse. A great part of
the nostos or close was written several years ago and the style is quite
plain … The whole book … will be finished about December
re ca. 12 July 1920, Shakespeare and Co (Sylvia Beach): Joyce … had spent
his entire savings on the removal to
Paris. He must look for pupils … I wondered when Joyce found time to write.
At night, he said, after the lessons were over … Did he sometimes dictate?
‘Never!’ he exclaimed. He always wrote by hand. He liked to be held back,
would otherwise go too fast. He had to see his work as he shaped it word by
word … It appeared that John Quinn, the brillant Irish-American lawyer in
New York, was buying the manuscript of Ulysses bit by bit. As soon as
Joyce completed an instalment, he made a fair copy and sent it off to Quinn,
who, in return, sent Joyce the sum agreed on — small sums, but they helped.
19 July 1920, Letters III (JJ to A.F. Bruni): Circe is making progress once more.
25 July 1920, Letters III (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): MSS of Ulysses arrived safely and I sent them on
… Madame Circe advances regally towards her completion after which I hope
to join a tennis club
27 July 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Besides I want to hear you on the Oxen episode
and want to bore the life out of you about Circe which is half written
… Circe is the last adventure, thank God. Hope you got something out
of M'Cormick Stiftung. Just mention my name
29 July 1920, Letters III (JJ to Claud Sykes): Please write here and send back Oxen of the Sun
when read. I remain here 2 or 3 months to write Circe.
10 August 1920, JJQ (Ezra Pound to JJ): Recd yr. museum piece of (undated but
presumably 8th inst.) I never read them till after breakfast. I enclose
contribution for yr. upkeep and running exp. from deux marchands de tableaux.
(£6/ and 26.30 fr)
15 August 1920, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: I received July 13 your letter … June 24,
1920 … There was received at my office in a parcel marked ‘Via Cherbourg’
day before yesterday, August 13, nine separately fastened sections of MS.
… These sections make a total of 235 MS. pages … I am cabling to Thomas
Cook and Sons, Paris, on your account, 3400 francs, which is the equivalent
of $250 at the present rate of exchange … It is difficult, in
fact impossible, to put a price upon a MS. until it is completed. Perhaps
when I receive the nine further chapters or episodes I might send you a
further advance on account of the total price of the MS.
15 August 1920, Ellmann (met and dined with T.S. Eliot):
16 August 1920, Letters III (JJ to Harriet Weaver):
Circe is giving me in all ways a great deal of worry.
I have written the greater part of it four or five times
25 August 1920, Ellmann (Harriet Weaver to JJ): [New benefaction of £2000 intended to free his]
best and most powerful and productive years [from material worries]
29 August 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): I had a letter yesterday from Miss Weaver, saying
that she has made me a further gift of £2000 … Quinn sent 3500 francs.
Huebsch is crying off Ulysses. Miss Weaver writes nobody will print it.
So it will be printed, it seems, in Paris and bear Mr John Rodker's imprint
as the English printer … Budgen was here a week, gone to London
P.S. Ask Frank to ask that Hungarian in his bank the Magyar for Mr e.g.
Mr Joseph Smith.
29 August 1920, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I hope that Ulysses will soon be finished …
something to set against your generosity
3 September 1920, Letters I (JJ to John Quinn): Thanks for second remittance on account, which I
received. I hope you now have the other parcel of MS. Ulysses is in 3
parts (Telemachia, Odyssey, Nostos) [scheme follows] The dotted line
represents the first half [also 2nd parcel], but not part or division
… I am now writing the Circe episode for, I think, the sixth time
6 September 1920, Letters I (JJ to Carlo Linati): I am working like a galleyslave, an ass, a brute.
I cannot even sleep. The episode of Circe has changed me too into an
animal.
ca. 8 September 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to A.F. Bruni): I have already written the Circe episode some
six times
13 September 1920, Letters III (JJ to John Rodker): I have not received that copy of The Oxen of the
Sun but perhaps you have read part of the Nausikaa episode. The best
plan is to ask Miss Weaver to let you see these two episodes so that you may
judge of their length.
14 September 1920, Letters III (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Have written Circe about five times … The M.S.
I sent Quinn from Triest on 10 June never reached him (by his letter of 17
August) while that sent from Paris 6 weeks later did … He sent 3500 francs
on the first batch and will send more if the other parcel arrives. I suppose
I have to write it out all over again! Curse them again! He will give 20,000
Lire for the entire MS of Ulysses but wants the end of it and the
corrected proofs
21 September 1920, Letters I (JJ to Carlo Linati): it would be better to send you a sort of summary —
key — skeleton — scheme (for your personal use only). Perhaps my idea will
appear clearer to you when you have the text. I have given only catchwords in
my scheme but I think you will understand it all the same. It is an epic of
two races (Israelite — Irish) and at the same time the cycle of the human
body a well as a little story [storiella] of a day (life).
27 September 1920, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: [Acknowledges receipt of MS of 5 episodes.]
29 September 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Have met Sargent several times and dined. He is
held up here for a week. The stories he tells me of mob manners in London
are almost incredible. Have worked some of it into Circe … It gets
wilder and worse and more involved but I suppose it will all work out.
Thanks for the papers you send which, though very onesided, are most useful.
Tomorrow I send you another 10 francs. I see there is or was a paper by Lord
Alfred Douglas Plain English. Can you lay hold of any copies? In fact
anything in that line will be useful. I am sorry you do not think your ideas
on Circe worth sending. As I told you a catchword is enough to set me
off. Moly is a tough nut to crack.
My latest is this. Moly is the gift of Hermes, god of public ways, and is
the invisible influence (prayer, chance, agility, presence of mind,
power of recuperation) which saves in case of accident. This would cover
immunity from syphilis (σύ φιλος = swine-love?). Hermes is the god of
signposts: i,e, he is, specially for a traveller like Ulysses, the points at
which roads parallel merge and roads contrary also. He is an accident of
providence. In this special case his plant may be said to have many leaves,
indifference due to masturbation, pessimism congenital, a sense of the
ridiculous, sudden fastidiousness in some detail, experience. It is the only
occasion in which Ulysses is not helped by Minerva but by her male
counterpart and inferior. Curious that Sargent should be an authority on
animals. His character, also, it seems to me, may have been like his
namesake in the Nestor episode … Are you strong on costume? I want to make
Circe a costume episode also. Bloom for instance appears in five or six
different suits. What a book! … Hell, I must get Circe finished and
Eumeus under way before I move anywhere.
11 October 1920, Letters III (JJ to Claud Sykes): Circe progresses.
12 October 1920, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): [He has heard from his aunt in
Dublin that a letter he had sent from Trieste on 28 June had not reached her
until 22 September. He wanted assurance that the balance of the MS (the five
episodes) had reached New York.] If not, I shall write it out again.
24 October 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Flat hunting … Must leave here on Friday or
Saturday. A dreadful job and of course Circe put aside completely
… The problems raised in Circe (of good taste, tact, technique, etc)
are taking up all my time. In order to solve them I must be delivered of all
other cares … P.S. Last night I thought of an Entr'acte for Ulysses in
middle of book after 9th episode Scylla and Charybdis. Short with
absolutely no relation to what precedes or follows like a pause in the action
of a play. It would have to be balanced by a matutine (very short)
before the opening and a nocturne (also short) after the end. What? I
agree about the explanation of syphilis. I always thought the etymology was
syn philein (together with loving, connected with it) but a man named
Bradley says the other. Moly could also be absinthe the cerebral
impotentising (!!) drink or chastity. Damn Homer, Ulysses, Bloom and all the
rest.
28 October 1920, Letters III (JJ to Stanislaus Joyce): Miss Weaver sent me … an extra gift of £200
3 November 1920, Letters III (JJ to Carlo Linati): I am now writing the final version of Circe. I
had to wait for my case of books to come
5 November 1920, JJQ (Ezra Pound to JJ): Can only repeat that as J.Q.'s only person in
U.S.A. who can or will do anything for you in this matter; sensible thing is
to cable giving him a free hand. Huebsch can't pirate what is already
copyright by L.R. I have no connection with L.R. — have seen nothing since
Jul-Aug — which is I take it the no. suppressed
10 November 1920, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Huebsch was here but on me he made anything but a
favourable impression … Circe has been very much delayed by a number
of causes … I am now writing out the final (the sixth or seventh) draft of
the episode which is about twice as long as the longest episode hitherto,
The Cyclops
17 November 1920, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): I did not reply to your last letter which contained
a supplementary cheque of 1400 francs for the other MS sent on because until
the 31 October I never knew where we were going to lodge … I changed into
this address on the 2 November … the Circe episode (a tasteful
production on which I am now engaged)
24 November 1920, Letters III (JJ to John Quinn): The complete notes fill a small valise … The
insertions (chiefly verbal or phrases, rarely passages) must be put in for
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. Therefore I must stipulate that I 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 … I hope to finish the Circe episode before Christmas.
Eumeus, being already drafted, I could send on in January … write the
Ithaca and Penelope episodes which, however, have been sketched
since 1916 and are very short in comparison with the Circe episode
9 December 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have been ill for the past few weeks with my eyes …
It is better now … I shall try to finish the Circe episode before
Christmas … the next one is already drafted
10 December 1920, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Thanks for the papers. Now I want you to do
another favour for me and in a great hurry. The whirligig movement in
Circe is on the refrain My Girl's a Yorkshire etc, but to unify the
action the preceding pas seul of S.D. which I intended to balance on the
gramophone of the opposite kip should be on the air of that same ditty
played on Mrs Cohen's pianola with lights. I enclose 10 francs. Will you be
so kind as to apply to any vendor (a big one) of musichall airs. It was
popular between 1904 and 1908. I want words and music. I have a piano here
and telephone (Saxe 34-33). I hope to finish Circe before Christmas
… My mood grows bitterer on account of Trieste and other things. At first
I had not thought of the slaughter of the suitors as in Ulysses' character.
Now I see it can be there too. I am going to leave the last word with Molly
Bloom — the final episode Penelope being written through her thoughts and
body Poldy being then asleep. Eumeus you know so there remains only to
think out Ithaca in the way I suggest … I have … been botching and
patching that bloody old Circe since last June. The Nauiskaa case comes
on next Monday … A point about Ulysses (Bloom). He romances about Ithaca
(Oi want teh gow beck teh the Mawl Enn Rowd, s'elp me!) and when he gets
back it gives him the pip.
19 December 1920, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: the 1,400 francs … was a payment in advance
and on account of the further MS. to be received
20 December 1920, Letters III (JJ to Ezra Pound): Circe finished this morning at last. Will
revise, type and forward soon
24 December 1920, Shakespeare and Co (Beach): [JJ meets Larbaud]
1921
5 January 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Italo Svevo): The Circe episode was finished some time ago
… typists … I am told it will contain 170 pages, commercial size. The
Eumeus episode, which is almost finished, will also be ready around the
end of the month … [asks Svevo to collect his 4.78 kilos of notes for him]
7 January 1921, Letters I (JJ to John Quinn): … terms of offer to Huebsch … Circe is
finished and is being typed. When it reaches New York the whole book so far
can be set up and sent to me. I shall return it corrected a few days after
receipt, with the Eumeus episode and probably Ithaca also. The
second revise can be sent me then and I shall return it with the final
episode, Penelope. This last is a short episode — can be checked by the
proofreader, in whom I have more confidence now that your continent is
‘dry’ … I wrote the Circe episode nine times from first to last.
18 January 1921, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): [Send $200 as soon as possible] pending
completion of contract [i.e. with Huebsch. Quinn
interpreted this as a further advance on MS]
24 January 1921, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): Cable Joyce.
ca. February 1921, Letters I (JJ to Claud Sykes): At last came forward a young woman barrister who reads my
books and she offered to do it in her spare time .. for an hour or so every
other day. When she had done about half of it her father had a seizure (an
incident, by the way, in the episode) … now the proprietress of a small
bookshop here says she will finish it, beginning tomorrow … Eumeus.
The first episode of the close of the book much shorter about 30pp and quite
different, is also nearly finished; and I am, in fact, working at the second
Ithaca. There remains to be written the last: Penelope
4 February 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I ought to have acknowledged before with thanks Mr [Allen] Upward's book
[The Divine Mystery, 1913], the
first part of which seems to me like a running marginal comment on Circe
… I finished that episode some weeks ago and sent it to be typed …
[trouble with typists] … will
not be ready for some weeks more … On Monday I hope to deliver to another
typist the first part of the Eumeus episode and the rest in a week or a
fortnight. This will leave me the time I need for composing the two final and
shorter episodes … I hope the projected (U.S.) edition of Ulysses will
come out in June
18 February 1921, Letters III (JJ to Carlo Linati): I'm working like a convict until 3 or 4 in
the morning. I finished Circe and Eumeus. The last two episodes that
are left, Ithaca and Penelope are also giving me a hard time
21 February 1921, NOTE: [QQ: Quinn made his final argument before the three-judge
Court of Special Sessions in defence of the ‘Nausikaa’ episode. Little
Review editors Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap were convicted of
publishing obscenity and fined $50. Case began 14 February resumed 21 February]
28 February 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Circe is finished long ago, also Eumeus
and I am writing Ithaca. I have dreadful worries about a typist. Four
declined to do Circe, at last one admirer(ess) volunteered. She started
but when she had done 100 pp her father got a seizure in the street (a
Circean episode) and now my MS is written out in a fair hand by someone who
passes it to someone else who sends it to be typed.
28 February 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Circe is finished long ago, also Eumeus and I am writing Ithaca. I have dreadful worries about a typist. … I sent Eumeus to a third typist … I am heaping all kinds of lies into the mouth of that sailorman in Eumeus which will make you laugh. At one time I thought the slaughter of the sailors un-Ulyssean. In my present frame of mind, I have modified my opinion
28 February 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Circe is finished long ago, also Eumeus
and I am writing Ithaca. I have dreadful worries about a typist. Four
declined to do Circe, at last one admirer(ess) volunteered. She started
but when she had done 100 pp her father got a seizure in the street (a
Circean episode) and now my MS is written out in a fair hand by someone who
passes it to someone else who sends it to be typed. I sent Eumeus to a
third typist … No word [from] Trieste where I wrote asking for the forwarding
of certain MSS … I am writing Ithaca in the form of a mathematical
catechism. All events are resolved into their cosmic physical, psychical etc.
equivalents, e.g. Bloom jumping down the area, drawing water from the tap,
the micturation in the garden, the cone of incense, lighted candle and
statue so that not only will the reader know everything and know it in the
baldest coldest way, but Bloom and Stephen thereby become heavenly bodies,
wanderers like the stars at which they gaze. The last word (human, all too
human) is left to Penelope. This is the indispensible countersign to Bloom's
passport to eternity … I am heaping all kinds of lies into the mouth of
that sailorman in Eumeus which will make you laugh. At one time I
thought the slaughter of the sailors un-Ulyssean. In my present frame of
mind, I have modified my opinion
28 February 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): P.S. If you or Sargent can pick up any
handbook cheap on Freemasonry or any ragged, dirty, torn, defiled,
effaced, dogeared, coverless, undated, anonymous misprinted book on
mathematics, or algebra or trig. or Eucl. from a cart for 1d or at most
2¼d tant mieux.
1 March 1921, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): Circe and Eumeus are both finished but the
typing is dreadfully slow … I am working at the end of the book and rarely
go to bed before 2 or 3 in the morning.
1 March 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): A fortnight ago when nearly 100 pages of Circe
(about half) were typed the father of my typist had a seizure in the street
(a Circean episode as it happens) and consequently the work came to an end.
Now a fair copy is made from my MS and and then passed on to another typist
who will finish the episode slowly. I sent the first half of Eumeus to
still another typist and I am told it is almost finished. I am writing out
the fair copy of the end of it and shall send it on in a few days.
// I am now working on Ithaca. This episode and Penelope will take all
my time till May. As I needed for both of them my notes left in Trieste I
have been writing express registered letters to my relatives there and
certain friends without success till yesterday when I got a letter saying
that a person who is coming to Paris shortly will bring them
22 February 1921 (JJ to Harriet Weaver): [clipping from New York Times] Improper novel costs woman $60
Mr Quinn admitted that it was cast in a curious
style … Joyce, he said, didn't use punctuation marks in this story
probably on account of his eyesight
24 March 1921, NYPL (Ben Huebsch to John Quinn):
[Cannot publish U without some
alterations]
3 April 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): (partly I)
Four copies of Circe and Eumeus have been
delivered to
me at last. Unfortunately there are only 122 pages of the former as the
present typist … can work only an hour or so at night. They (the copies)
are so irritating that I wish I knew where to throw them. It is risky to
send them to Mr Pound … and Mr Rodker or the Little Review or Mr Quinn
or Mr Huebsch may not want them either. The Circe episode, typed by
several different typists using different machines and all colours and kinds
of paper is a horrible thing to look at — much less to read … I received
safely about a fortnight ago the bag full of notes for Ulysses …
Ithaca and Penelope are progressing as well as the worries here set
forth permit
5 April 1921, NYPL (Ben Huebsch to John Quinn):
[formally exercised first refusal U]
8 April 1921, NYPL (JJ to John Quinn): Manuscript forwarded you. Kindly return immediately
registered complete transcript now with Huebsch.
9 April 1921, Letters III (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Last night at 6 o'clock Mrs Harrison, to whom the final
scenes of Circe had been passed on for typing after the accident to Dr
Livisier, called on me in a state of great agitation … her husband,
employed in the British Embassy here, had found the MS, read it and then
torn it up and burned it … she told me he had burned only part and that
the rest was ‘hidden’.
9 April 1921, NYPL (JJ to Harriet Weaver): [Note: Joyce stopped in at Shakespeare and Company: ‘My book
will never come out now’. Sylvia beach proposed to publish it. The plan,
put to JJ the next day, was for a 1st ed of 1000 copies to be sold by
subscription as far as possible.]
10 April 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): On Saturday night I received a packet from Mrs Harrison
containing the rest of the MS of Circe … Only some pages which she had
left on her table have been destroyed. I shall have to go over the notes of
the scene again and recreate it which is not so easy as since writing it I
wrote the end and all the Eumeus episode and a good part of Ithaca
… On receipt of Mr Huebsch's letter forwarded by you I cabled Mr Quinn to
withdraw the entire typescript of Ulysses from Mr Huebsch and all other
American publishers and return it to me immediately. Not that I need it
but in order to break off relations definitely. Mr Huebsch will not pirate
an edition of Ulysses (as he kindly suggested) in the United States but
not because of consideration for the writer. The next day I arranged for
a Paris publication to replace the American one — or rather I accepted a
proposal made to me by Shakespeare and Co., a bookseller's here …
The proposal is to publish here in October an edition (complete) of the book
… Today I delivered the first sheets to the printer and am to receive
trial proofs on Saturday together with his estimate. The actual printing
will begin as soon as the number of orders covers approximately the cost of
printing which they estimate at 20,000 to 25,000 francs … about 150 copies
… The form of the book is to be carré, the type which they call here
no 9 and it will make about 600 pages if that … in the months between now
and September I can write with comfort the two last episodes … I shall send
you the two episodes [Circe and Eumeus] in a day or so when the end of Circe
is typed.
13 April 1921, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ)::
… before returning the copy [of the TS]
that Miss Weaver had sent to Huebsch to you … [try] Liveright /// John Quinn to Ben
Huebsch: Ite! — Go! — to or otherwise — the typescript goes to rejoice
Joyce.
17 April 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I hoped to send you the first trial proofs with this letter
… but they have not come … To my surprise I received a card from Mr
Pound who is now in Paris. I met him yesterday and at his request gave him
Circe and Eumeus to read and he will send them on to you (if he
survives them) as before. As regards the former, the final typescript which
arrived only yesterday, it is very difficult to follow on account of the
medley of papers and types. Moreover, after p. 112 there should be a blank
indicated where the scene or scenes burned by Mr Harrison will be replaced
when I rewrite them. P.113 is not the proper sequence. The scene which
intervenes covers an episode outside the door, a hue and cry in the street
(imaginary) after Bloom and the opening scene of the quarrel.
19 April 1921, Letters III (JJ to John Quinn):
I understand that the typescript of Ulysses is
on its way back, as I instructed. The publication of Ulysses (complete)
was arranged here in a couple of days. I hope you received the MS of
Circe and Eumeus. As a curiosity I threw in the 8th draft of the
former … [Mrs Harrison] What I am concerned with is there is now a lacuna
of several pages in the typescript, which has already gone to the printer,
and I must write it in … Six or seven pages after Bloom's exit (which you
will find at a glance by the long catalogue of persons in pursuit) will
suffice
23 April 1921, Letters III and BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): … prospectus which Miss Beach is having printed
… I sent you sample pages. Frankly I didn't like the size of the page
(which in volume form is likely to fall out of the reader's hands when the
narrative is more than usually unintelligible) but they tell me it is the
usual form for such editions … I saw Mr Pound. He has read Circe and
Eumeus about which he appears to be very excited
2 May 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I would have sent on the typescript of Oxen of the Sun
with this for Mr Eliot but that this with all the copies of the Little
Review was lent to Mrs Harrison to enable her, as she said, to follow the
names and allusions in Circe when typing … Nevertheless I shall present
the typescript [of Oxen] to [Pound] (another copy) for forwarding as I
have done hitherto knowing that it will never appear in the review …
Tomorrow evening I hope to send you a proof of the prospectus
5 May 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I enclose the typescript of Oxen of the Sun which I
obtained from Mrs Harrison … I also enclose uncorrected proof of the
prospectus which will be ready on Tuesday next
17 May 1921, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ):: Mailing you photographic copies pages
manuscript requested also copy received from Huebsch registered insured
ca. 18 May 1921, Letters I (JJ to Claud Sykes): Quinn has had the pages photographed (as he won't
send back the ms) and is sending on the result so that I shall not need to
trouble you. You can return the typescript here registered if sending by
return. Otherwise better send it c/o Shakespeare and Co, rue Dupuytren 8,
Paris VI … I am glad you liked Circe and Eumeus. Struggling with
the aridities of Ithaca — a mathematico-astronomico-physico-mechanico-
geometrico-chemico sublimation of Bloom and Stephen (devil take 'em both)
to prepare for the final amplitudinously curvilinear episode Penelope.
21 May 1921, T.S. Eliot to JJ: I am returning your three mss by
registered post as you require and am exceedingly obliged for a taste of
them. I think they are superb — especially the Descent into Hell, which is
stupendious. Only, in detail, I object to one or two phrases of Elijah:
‘ring up’ is English, ‘call up’ American; ‘trunk line’, if applied to the
telephone service, is English, the American is, if I remember, ‘long
distance’. I don't quite like the wording of the coon transformation of
Elijah, either, but I cannot suggest any detailed alteration. But otherwise,
I have nothing but admiration, in fact, I wish, for my own sake, that I had
not read it.
5 June 1921, NYPL (John Quinn to JJ)::
Before this time you have received the ten
photographic copies, enlarged, of ten pages of the MS that you requested, as
stated in Mr Watson's letter of May 18, and also the copy galley proofs and
typewritten, of the parts or sections of Ulysses as described in Mr Watson's
letter, which were finally got from Huebsch … Huebsch … has as much
backbone as the traditional invertebrate … Meanwhile the last parts of
your MS have been received at my office. On April 21st there was received …
the manuscript of Circe and Ecumeus [sic] episodes … There were also 27
large sheets, forming what I presume is the first draft of these parts of
Ulysses … I am sending one of the prospectuses to .. Dr. Rosenbach …
at 273 Madison Avenue
5 June 1921, Letters III (JJ to Valery Larbaud): I begin to feel so comfortable that the episode
of Ithaca is progressing rapidly … I expect the first proofs of
Ulysses on the tenth inst..
6 June 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): … new address … the removal took up a great deal of
time [from work on] Ithaca. The first proofs are due on Saturday.
6 June 1921, Letters III (JJ to Claud Sykes): Did you return the typescript. A copy arrived
about a week ago but my family opened the wrapper so I don't know if it is
yours or Eliot's.
7 June 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to A.F. Bruni):
[in Larbaud's flat] The episode of Ithaca is now
all geometry, algebra, and mathematics, and then finally Penelope! I'd
like to dip my head in a sea of ice. The book is already in press and I
expect the first proofs day after tomorrow. It will be published only in
October or November. Three expensive editions being involved, misprints have
to be avoided. The colours of the binding (chosen by me) will be white
letters on a blue field — the Greek flag though really of Bavarian origin
and imported with the dynasty. Yet in a special way they symbolize the myth
well — the white islands scattered over the sea … I have become a
monument — no, a vespasian.
21 June 1921, Letters III (JJ to Valery Larbaud): The first proofs have arrived and I am working right
and left on the corrections and on Ithaca.
ca. 28 June 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): Ithaca is giving me fearful trouble.
Corrected the first batch of proofs today up to Stephen on the strand which
I read out to you on a memorable night in Zurich … I'll break the back of
Ithaca tomorrow so 'elp me fucking Chroist.
6 July 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Violent eye attack
7 August 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): (also partly I) I am advised to go to Aix-les-Bains but am in Ithaca
instead. I write and revise and correct with one or two eyes about twelve
hours a day I should say … I believe some 5000 prospectuses went out and
the capture is 260 but people ought not to be told this figure … I have the
greater part of Ithaca but it has to be completed, revised and
rearranged above all on account of its scheme. I have also written the first
sentence of Penelope but as this contains about 2500 words the deed is
more than it seems to be. The episode consists of eight or nine sentences
equally sesquipedalian and ends with a monosyllable. Bloom and all the
Blooms will soon be dead, thank God
ca. 12 August 1921,
Letters I (JJ to Valery Larbaud): Mlle Monnier spoke to me of your impatience to
read the last episode. But there are two,
Ithaca and
Penelope.
Of the latter I have since the beginning sketched the outline and now I have
filled in at least three quarters. Of the former I have written almost as
much but it needs much more work. I work six hours a day in adding also text
to the proofs which I correct … I have added to
Circe a Messianic
scene with a litany sung in honour [of the titles of the adventures]
Kidney of Bloom, pray for us!
Flower of the Bath, pray for us!
Mentor of Menton, pray for us!
Canvasser of the Freeman, pray for us!
Charitable Mason, pray for us!
Wandering Soap, pray for us!
Music without Words, pray for us!
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us!
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us!
Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us!
[…] the last word of Ulysses. Here it is: yes.
16 August 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Frank Budgen): First of all send me that Sieges of Gibraltar
and also Conan Doyle's History of the South African War published by
same house Nelson in their cheap collection … registered and express …
As regards that 60pp book would it be too much to suggest to you the
following: get an exercise book and detach the leaves of it. If you read
rapidly through the book again you could jot down on the sheets anything
in the words of the book you think interesting and a quick sketch of
those views (not artistic I am not an artist) this plan you might follow
with the other books and then simply put the sheets in an envelope and send
them on to me. Penelope is the clou [Fr. star-turn] of the book.
The first sentence contains 2500 words. There are eight sentences in the
episode. It begins and ends with the female word yes. It turns like the
huge earth ball slowly surely and evenly round spinning, its four cardinal
points being the female breasts, arse, womb and cunt expressed by the words
because, bottom (in all senses bottom button, bottom of the class,
bottom of the sea, bottom of his heart), woman, yes. Though probably
more obscene than any preceding episode it seems to me to be perfectly sane
full amoral fertilisable untrustworthy engaging shrewd limited prudent
indifferent Weib. Ich bin der [sic] Fleisch der stets bejaht.
27 August 1921, Letters I (JJ to Robert McAlmon): [Collapse]
30 August 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have been obliged to reduce my working from about sixteen
hours daily to about six in consequence of an attack I got, some kind of
syncope … looking … to see if there is any place where I could throw
Bloom with a 56lb weight tied to his feet. I have made a great deal of
additions to the proof so far (up to the end of Scylla and Carybdis).
Perhaps you would like to see them. If so I shall send them on. I have also
added a messianic scene to Circe but the printer has not reached that
yet.
3 September 1921, Letters III (JJ to Robert McAlmon): I sent on that lot of Penelope to Budgen but
he hasn't written yet about it. If you see him please ask him to send it
back. I have now written in a great lot of balderdash all over the damn book
and the first half is practically as it will appear. I shall give Molly
another 2000 word spin, correct a few more episodes and write all over them
and then begin to put the spectral Ithaca into shape … If you ever
find anything relating to what I am doing throw it into an envelope and
perhaps it will go into the stew. No more subscriptions for Ulysses.
Only 4 or 5 last month.
6 August 1921, Letters I (JJ to Frank Budgen): Received first instalment of Gibraltar. What is
wrong with the rest? … I send you 1st part of Penelope in its draft
form to let you see it and have your opinion. This is only the draft
a great deal will be added or changed on 3 proofs. Let me know how it
strikes you and return it by registered post as quickly as possible. Will
send you more money on Monday or Tuesday for the following if obtainable:
(1) Love's Old Sweet Song. (2) In Old Madrid. (3) Fanny Hill Memoirs
(unexpurgated). If you find this latter you can put a stop on it … To
understand Penelope well you should have an idea of Ithaca but it is
not ready
9 September 1921, Letters III (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I have a new eye attack threatening me
24 September 1921, Letters III (JJ to Valery Larbaud): I am nearly dead with work and eyes. Sent
Penelope to the printers so that you may have it to read when you come
here. All will be ready for you on the 2 October. The Ithaca episode I
shall put in order in October … You will scarcely recognise parts of
Ulysses I have worked so much on them
26 September 1921, Buff (Maurice Darantiere to JJ):
Sections 1 and 2 that your courier sent us this afternoon are definitively printed [définitivement tirés].
The sole correction from page 31 can still be executed on the [vergé d']Arches copies,
because we are obliged to re-impose them by 4 pages [réimposer par quatre pages] because of the format of this paper.
We have reread the bons à tirer for the first five signatures. The corrections for pages
17… Agenbite of Inwit
21… and lips and breastbone
25… Oh
were not indicated.
Those on pages 3 (except for the word jesuit which was written with a capital letter), 14, 22, 31, are our fault. The error on page 3 is the most ridiculous ; if you would like, we could re-pull a four page cancel [carton de quatre pages] that will be exchanged in the stitching.
3 October 1921, Letters III (Rev Charles Doyle SJ to JJ):
The Christian name of the wife of the
first Earl of Belvedere was Mary, She was the daughter of Lord Molesworth.
She never lived in Belvedere College, however. After the divorce
court proceedings she was confined in Gaulstown, Co. Westmeath, the old seat
of the family, near Belvedere House by the shore of Lough Ennel, a new
residence just completed by the Earl. The Countess Mary died about 1780.
Belvedere House (now Belvedere College) was not completed by the second Earl
(the builder of it), until 1786.
6 October 1921, Letters I (JJ to Robert McAlmon): Penelope is finished and at the printers. As it
is to be done before the others for Larbaud I could send it over if this is
still your address. Am working now putting Ithaca in order
7 October 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I am here again with MSS and pencils (red, green and blue)
and cases of books … nearly snowed up in proofs and nearly crazed with
work. Ulysses will be finished in about three weeks … and ought to be
published early in November. I sent the Penelope episode to the printer
… the Ithaca episode which precedes it I am now putting in order. It
is in reality the end as Penelope has no beginning, middle or end. I
expect to have early next week about 240 pages of the book as it will appear
ready and will send on. Eolus is recast. Hades and the
Lotuseaters much amplified and the other episodes retouched a good deal.
Not much change has been made in the Telemachia (the first three
episodes of the book).
10 October 1921, Letters I (JJ to Robert McAlmon): Darantiere is damn slow setting Penelope …
Have sent the first part of Ithaca to the typist and am working like a
lunatic, trying to revise and improve and correct and continue and create
all at the one time
11 October 1921, Letters III (JJ to Valery Larbaud): I am still waiting for Penelope. Perhaps it
will come tomorrow.
14 October 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Aunt Josephine):
Thanks for prompt reply to my letter.
Ulysses, a huge book of about 800 pages, about 11 inches by 7, ought to
be out in about three weeks or so. The cheapest copies cost £3 each, the
dearest £7 each. I shall send you one … I want all the information, gossip
or anything you remember about the Powells — chiefly the mother and
daughters. Were any of them born abroad? When did Mrs Powell die? I never
heard of a third brother, only Gus and Charley. The women were Mrs Gallaher,
Mrs Clinch, Mrs Russell. Where did they live before marriage? When did the
major, if that was his rank, die? Also any information you have about the
Dillons (Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters, Tiny, Floey, Atty, Sara,
Nannie, and Mamie, especially the last, the cigarette smoker and
Spanish type). Get an ordinary sheet of foolscap and a pencil and scribble
any God damn drivel you may remember about these people … Also I forgot to
ask what do you know about Hunter who lived in Clonliffe road and Alf Bergan
etc etc. I mean what has become of them. I know what the relations were
there.
20 October 1921, Letters III(JJ to Valery Larbaud): Herewith the Penelope episode, uncorrected
and incomplete but perhaps enough to allow you to get a general idea of it.
29 October 1921, Letters I (JJ to Robert McAlmon): A few lines to say I have finished the Ithaca
episode so that at last the writing of Ulysses is finished. I have still
a lot of proofreading and revising to do but the composition is at an end.
I shall send you Penelope with all my revisions and additions when the
printers send it back.
30 October 1921, Letters III(JJ to Valery Larbaud): My typist has sent you extracts (of course
uncorrected) from the beginning and middle of Ithaca. In a few days she
will send you extracts from the end. I will send you the proof of the
Messianic [scene] from Circe when I get it back. I finished Ithaca
last night so that now the writing of Ulysses is ended, though I have
some weeks of work in revising the proofs.
1 November 1921, Letters III (JJ to Harriet Weaver): A fortnight ago I sent you by registered post a set of
proofs … will you send them back … I have two new sets to send … I
have now finished the Ithaca episode and with that the writing of
Ulysses. What remains is the revision of the proofs of the last four
episodes … About 400 subscriptions are made …
Ulysses began on 1 March (birthday of a friend of mine, a cornish painter [Frank Budgen]} and was finished on Mr Pound's birthday [30 October]), he tells me. I wonder on whose it will be published.
2 November 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Aunt Josephine):
Thanks for the information … Two more questions.
Is it possible for an ordinary person to climb over the area railings of no
7 Eccles street, either from the path or the steps, lower himself from
the lowest part of the railings till his feet are within 2 feet or 3 of the
ground and drop unhurt. I saw it done myself but by a man of rather athletic
build. I require this information in detail in order to determine the
wording of a paragraph. Secondly. Do you know anything of Mat Dillon's
daughter Mamy who was in Spain? If so, please let me know. Did any of your
girlfriends ever go there? Thirdly and last, Do you remember the cold
February of 1893. I think you were in Clanbrassil street. I want to know if
the canal was frozen and if there were any skating.
6 November 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Since the completion of Ulysses I feel more and more
tired but I have to hold on till the proofs are revised. I am extremely
irritated by all those printer's errors. Working as I do amid piles of notes
at a table in an hotel I cannot possibly do this mechanical part with my
wretched eye and a half. Are these to be perpetuated in future editions?
I hope not. I am glad the first proofs I sent didn't go astray … I sent
you a new batch yesterday. Will you please read them as quickly as you can
and send them back as I sometimes need them to refer to.
6 November 1921, Letters I (JJ to Robert McAlmon): I shall send you tomorrow some extracts from
Ithaca. They are not complete or revised and consecutive only in so
far as order is concerned. I mean they are separated by gaps … I like the
episode myself. I find it of a tranquilising spectrality
6 November 1921,
Letters I (JJ to Frank Budgen):
Ulysses is finished. Have you time or do you
want to see extracted (type) from
Ithaca? When do you arrive here? I
enclose 20 francs. Will you please do poor
Ulysses these last favours? I
want
any little handbook of fortune telling by cards
〃 〃 〃 〃 Brit. freemasonry
any catalogue of Whitelely's or Harrod's stores
〃 〃 〃 a Tottenham Crt Rd furnisher
any bookseller's catalogue preferably old.
Can you let me have these as quickly as possible registered. Also if you
can find any little manual of stampcollecting.
11 November 1921, Letters III(JJ to Valery Larbaud): Here is my copy of the book so far for you
to look through to refresh your memory. I should like to have it back as
soon as possible — even piecemeal — as I need it to refer to. One copy of
each page proof coming in will also be sent you. I add the unrevised pages
(galley) of the Messianic scene from Circe
23 November 1921, Letters III (JJ to Frank Budgen): Let me know what day you arrive. Can you bring me
a little book on palmistry? I enclose 10 francs … Can you find out the
price of a book published about a year ago My Three Husbands, author
unknown [Methuin, May 1921; anonymous woman author]
25 November 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I had an interview yesterday with the printer. From what I
can gather a crisis seems to have been reached as a result of which I need
£75 to pay him a draft falling due on the 30 November and to keep myself
alive till the first week in December … Anyhow for the last two or three
weeks the printer has shelved my book in favour of McAlmon's (who, I take it,
paid promptly and in advance). This latter is now out but for the past
week not a single word has been set, the printers confining themselves to
executing my corrections … The printer told me that I have made such
alterations in Ulysses as reduce my estimated gain (on total sale) by
about £600 — and this after 7½ years labour. I cannot help it. I must give
as much as I can. He says the book will weigh about 4 lbs. I suggest it be
sold by the ounce. Typing has been a heavy item for me personally as I had
certain parts done over three or four times to facilitate the printer in
setting. Also I am afraid I must have the proofs of Ithaca (the ugly
duckling of the book and therefore, I suppose, my favourite) read by a
competent person — which will be another expense … I made out a rough
chart of the book for Mr Larbaud in order to help him to confuse the
audience a little more … I hope when all is over you will give me a
position as gardener though I shall spend as much time as possible sitting
on the wheelbarrow.
2 December 1921, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): There has been an endless amount of confusion all these
days mostly about the printing and the séance. The former is now removed
but I am certain that had the draft not been paid the printer would have
refused to continue. As it is he has waited for confimration from the bank
here before continuing … I sent you the plan. It is incomplete, made from
memory. The one I made is locked up in my case of books.
6 December 1921, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): As regards Ithaca the question of printer's errors is not
the chief point. The episode should be read by some person who is a
physicist, mathematician and a number of other things. I hope to find one
however … Penelope in printed proof (the 4th) is so illegible with
interlineations that it would be useless to send it
10 December 1921, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): There are only about 180 pages more to print … the
printer, for some reason, sends me now proofs of Circe, Eumeus and
Penelope at the same time without having finished the composition of the
first two and I have to work on them simultaneously different as they are
1922
23 January 1922, Letters III (JJ to Robert McAlmon): Here pp.683 to end of Penelope in uncorrected
semi-final form
31 January 1922, Letters III (JJ to Frank Budgen): I have been working on the last proofs till this
morning and am exhausted.
2 February 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Ulysses published today thanks for all your generous kindness [Note by Sylvia Beach: seven
hundred and thirty-two pages ‘complete as written’, and an average of one to
half-a-dozen typographical errors per page … 1 Kilo 550 grams.]
8 February 1922, Selected Letters (JJ to Harriet Weaver): … an English edition. I hope it will be possible in that
event to correct the numerous misprints … Thanks also for the prompt
return of the Penelope episode … It did not arrive too late … I
have rejected the usual interpretation of her as a human apparition — that
aspect being better represented by Calypso, Nausikaa and Circe, to say
nothing of the pseudo Homeric figures. In conception and technique I tried
to depict the earth which is prehuman and presumably posthuman.
1 March 1922, Letters I (JJ to Robert McAlmon): There are heaps of misprints in the last two
episodes
11 March 1922, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): In a second edition the mistakes must be corrected. Some of
the blunders and omissions which disfigure Ithaca especially are
lamentable.
8 April 1922, Letters III (JJ to Jacques Benoist-Méchin): I am glad to know that you have
received your copy of Ulysses safely and that your manuscript of the
music on pp.643-644 has been decently reproduced.
16 May 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): (also partly I) I think it will be a long time before the Paris
edition is finished. In the last two months, Miss Beach tells me,
only 5 copies of the 250 francs edition were sold (this is in confidence)
… there are some loose sheets of Ulysses lying about. If I sent them
to you could you, when you have time, put in the corrections you speak of.
That would leave me free for the correction of the text only. But the
printer says that the changes are to be as few as possible.
20 September 1922, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I should be glad to know as soon as possible whether the few
corrections which we agreed to make of hideous blunders are being made.
Perhaps a short note, similar to that in the first edition, could be
inserted.
21 September 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I enclose also a letter from Mr Darantiere by which it
would seem that it was decided to go ahead with the printing already twelve
days ago and apparently without any mention of the revision of the text.
28 September 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): (also partly I) Mr Rodker sent me the list of misprints (which I
should prefer to errata if it did not involve a slight depreciation of the
printer). I am sending it back to him through you as it is better for you
to explain my corrections. The lines cancelled in red pencil, bought in
Paris, are to stand. These are not mistakes but beauties of my style
hitherto undreamt of. The red cross at the top is not a signal to posterity
to cease fire. It means that the paging is wrong.
I have not checked the paging from p.680 on as my head was
reeling after the effort. The corrections in black pencil are mistakes in
the setting. Mr Rodker wants the proof at once so will you please let him
have it. A revised proof should be sent to you which you could keep so that
as soon as the second edition is out the printers could start to alter the
plates for a third edition.
29 September 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I cannot find information in the dictionaries here about two
words you have corrected. Of course my notes are all locked up.
iris: which plural is used? English or Latin?
feintruled: my impression is that the correct term is with an ‘e’
Will you please look them up and correct accordingly. I prefer the form
‘irides’ but if it is not used perhaps the other form will do.
29 September 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I groped my way through a few pages of Ithaca and
found the enclosed mistakes. Can you please see that they are added to your
proof in their proper places?
1 October 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I got to the end of Ithaca but can do no more. It
contains the enclosed additional mistakes. Will you see if you can get these
in if possible?
4 October 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I suppose it is too late to correct: p 484 l 5 for 1882 read
1886. […] I wonder if I shall see Mr Rodker before I leave Paris. I shall stop a half day in Dijon as six hours train is enough for me. Will you please tell him that the stupid hosier in Folkestone to whom I wrote prepaying reply did not answer so he will not have the trouble of bringing me the collars.
12 October 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I am on my way South with my wife and daughter … The second
edition of Ulysses was published this morning.
13 October 1922, Beach Letters (JJ tp Sylvia Beach): Leaving for Nice. Penelope is here and flourishing.
I had not seen her for eight years.
17 October 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): (also partly I) At Dijon I spoke to Mr Darantiere who thinks that the
correction of plates ought to be begun at once so that when ever a third
edition is called for the book can appear letter perfect. He says the cost
will be about 1 fr. per ‘operation’ (agreeable word) that is change of
letter or word or line. He asked me if the list of errata prepared was final.
I said it was not but that I would read through the book and prepare the
final list. Meanwhile if you approve we could begin with your list and my
additions. I am reading steadily through the book and am preparing the list
though it is not amusing work and I cannot do more than 30pp a day. When I
send it to you of course it will include the errors you collected but these
can be struck out. If I had your list I would do it. There are a few general
remarks to be added. The impression of certain pages of the second edition
seems to me rather faint. Also will it be possible to change those broken
‘f's which are very irritating? There are some misprints also in the leaflet
of press extracts. And, finally, experts say (and Mr Darantiere agrees) that
the only blemish in the book is the type of capitals used in the Eolus
episode. The book is set in Elzevir and these are Grasset. There are no
Elzevir capitals it seems. I suggest (and Mr Darantiere agreed) that it
would be better to substitute block capitals especially as these are the
type used by newspapers.
27 October 1922, Letters III (JJ to Harriet Weaver, dictated): Will you please confirm your instructions which I
sent to Mr Darantiere.
30 October 1922, Beach Letters (JJ to Sylvia Beach, dictated): I was able to correct the first half of Ulysses
for the third edition and to read the first two volumes recommendes by Mr.
Schiff of A la Recherche des Ombrelles Perdues par Plussiers Jeunes Filles
en Pleurs du Côté de chez Swann et Gomorrhee et Co, par Marcelle Proyce et
James Joust … Please send me any good news there is as it will remind me
that I was once a writer dans le temps.
3 November 1922, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver, dictated): … yesterday my eyes took a sudden turn for the better
… I send you my list of corrections pages 1 to 290 which you can perhaps
check and forward. At the end of the cahier are the names of Group B to whom
I should like copies of the new leaflet A (on different coloured paper) to
be forwarded. I hope you can read my handwriting as I could only scribble
… can you send me one for myself and also the July number which has an
article on Monsieur Proust
6 November 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver, dictated): Miss Beach sent me Criterion so will you please send the copy you meant for me to Mrs M[—] (Group A). Mr Larbaud's article reads very well. It is a relief after recent criticisms to meet a man who knows what he wants to say, knows how to say it and says it. The touch (of) at the end of the second last paragraph is very neat. It will flatter English crtics too as coming from a Frenchman.
P.S. Errata p.37 li 2 from foot … Divid better A catalectic
… join better march ing
10 November 1922, Selected Letters (JJ to Aunt Josephine):
I told you to read the Odyssey first.
As you have not
done so I asked my publisher to send you an article which will throw a
little light on it. Then buy at once the Adventures of Ulysses (which is
Homer's story told in simple English much abbreviated) by Charles Lamb. You
can read it in a night and can buy it at Gill's or Browne and Nolan's for a
couple of shillings. Then have a try at Ulysses again … Send me
any news you like, programmes, pawntickets, press cuttings, handbills. I
like reading them.
16 November 1922, BLHW (JJ to Harriet Weaver): I stopped overnight in Lyon and telephoned to Mr
Darantiere to meet me on the platform at Dijon. He took the same view as I
did about the changes against the second edition
17 November 1922, Letters I (JJ to Harriet Weaver): Before deciding on A of enclosed could Mr Darantiere let you
have a single page proof with B so as to compare them? He told me in our
hurried conversation that all the changes had been now made. I told him he
must wait as I had still to get over 500 pages of revision when my eyes let
me.
25 November 1922, Letters III (JJ to Harriet Weaver): My eyes have not been and are not well … Everything else
sent me to Nice was forwarded. Strange to say
the writer whom I mentioned in my letter asking for them — Mr Marcel Proust
— died this day week. His name has often been coupled with mine … I am
sure you are anxious to be away in Cheshire. King Beaver will never find you
there.
1923
6 February 1923 Letters I (to Harriet Weaver): Then it had to be arranged about my being admitted to the American hospital as a bogus American (this Dr Borsch is arranging) … in a way I was glad of all these obstacles for I detest the operations. But next week they must begin — alas! I have been able to do some reading and note taking with my back to the light but of course it cannot go on like that. All I hope now is that they will be successful … I am very glad that you like the Book of Kells. What can I say about the Odyssey? I made heaps of notes about it (supposedly) which I could not fit in. I was trying lately to sort these out according to a brandnew system I have invented for the greater complication and torment of myself. But I need eyes for that.
6 February 1923 BLHW (to Harriet Weaver): I did not get the copy from Mr Rodker. When it comes I shall try to push on with the corrections.
16 February 1923 BLHW (to Harriet Weaver from Lucia Joyce): the dionine treatment was begun on Thursday (15 February 1923) and continued yesterday. He is to go again today … My father was not able to continue the corrections as you wish because the copy from Mr Rodker arrived only to-day but as soon as this experiment is over he will continue them here and in the hospital.
1924
24 May 1924 Letters I (to Harriet Weaver): Dr Rosenbach sent me a message asking me what would be my price for the corrected proofs of Ulysses. When he receives a reply from me all the rosy brooks will have run dry.
Rosy Brook he bought a book
Though he didn't know how to spell it.
Such is the lure of literature
To the lad who can buy it and sell it. [German Bach, brook]
1926
29 August 1926 Beach Letters (to Sylvia Beach): Goyert arrived with the complete Ulysses — to appear in October! They give only 14 days for revisions but it will take at least 6 weeks. working morning and afternoon in this heat … and the Dial?
1932
9 February 1932 NLFF (from Paul Léon to T.S. Eliot): Mr Joyce …owner of world rights … Ulysses … 4 conditions: 1) There will not be any preface; 2) The text is to be published unabridged and unaltered; 3) The publication is to be made as soon as possible; 4) The text of the 11th Paris edition is to be read by an expert proof reader.
22 February 1932 Letters I (to T.S. Eliot): Ulysses is a book with a beginning, middle and an end and should presented as such. The case is quite different with W. i. P. which has neither beginning nor end
14 July 1932 NLPL (from Paul Léon to JJ): Holroyd Reece … Reddish whiskers, a tie tied twice around a very open collar, a very clean shaven face, a talk implying “I am the important person in this house” … (silence is golden and speech is merely silver) … He said the power behind the scenes of the Albatross was Sir Edmund Davis (the south-african copper magnate) … However the Director of Public Prosecution … was at the mercy of receiving a letter from Mrs Grundy saying that her daughter after reading Ulysses could not see during the night nothing but spears perforating her navel and during the day other things perforating something that would be lower (this is copyrighted by me).
2 October 1932 NLPL (to Paul Léon): Please forward Dr Jung's article to Miss Weaver when read … Thanks for the words, all used.
10 October 1932 NLAB (from RHB to JJ): The Albatross have requested me to adhere strictly to the 1930 Shakespeare and Company edition and to eliminate only the "literals" contained therein. They have also requested me to write direct to you, should any difficulties arise. I am at present reading the 1930 edition and, as soon as I have finished it, I will send you a list of any corrections which I consider it advisable to make. On receipt of your approval to these, I will see that they are indicated on the proofs. Meanwhile, there is a point on which I should be glad of your immediate decision, as composition is due to begin at the end of this week. The Shakespeare and Co. edition follows, where dialogues are concerned, the French custom, i.e. a long dash is placed before the beginning of each speech. In all Albatross books hitherto (including the Albatross edition of ‘Dubliners’), we have followed the English custom, i.e. using quotation marks, which are more familiar to the English reader and are also preferable from the typographical point of view. I notice that quotation marks are also used in the Rhein-Verlag edition of the German translation of ‘Ulysses’, and therefore imagine that you will have no objection to their being substituted for the dashes in the Albatross English edition. In all other matters I wll adhere strictly to the Shakespeare and Company edition
12 October 1932 NLPL (to Paul Léon): … for the past 25 years I have refused to allow the detestable system of inverted commas or punctuation marks … to disfigure my pages … let them follow the French system
11 November 1932 BLHW (to Harriet Weaver): No trace of the MS. Your bundle of notes came safely. Mr Jolas is afraid some unscrupulous person may have the MS and wants me to complete the instalment without delay. I typed the last four pages from memory and shall have to start again on the notes tomorrow with what calm you can imagine. Unforunately Stuart Gilbert cannot help me. The Albatross Press flung the whole printed test of Ulysses (about 900 pp) into his hall yesterday and he has to check it … Faber and Faber are bringing out for Xmas ‘The Mookse’ and ‘The Ondt‘ … Reece … liked her alphabet and has written to the manager of Burns and Oates about using these lettrines for a reprint of Chaucer's A.B.C. poem … Reece lent Lucia a stack of books about this kind of work … Jolas has just come so I must go down.
1933
1 March 1933 NLHW (from Harriet Weaver to Paul Léon, addressed Paris, Hotel Galilée): Thanks for copy of letter to Miss Beach signed by directors of Albatross Press and himself.
1934
9 January 1934 NLHW (from Paul Léon to Harriet Weaver): Finally three days ago Mr Allen Lane came over from London and made me a formal offer for an option on an edition of ULYSSES.
6 August 1934 Letters III (to T.W. Pugh): My American publisher would like to have for a circular … some photographs of scenes mentioned in Ulysses
26 August 1934 NLPK (from Paul Léon to J. Ralph Pinker): Friday (?31 August 1934) … Mr Lane … is forming a new company to print ULYSSES.
20 October 1934 NLPL (to Paul Léon): Please pay Jung, Mrs Raphael (900 frs, the rest in a week or so) … Has Lane arranged for anybody to read the proofs of Ulysses or is he supposed to be printing it? … My wife is again against any return to Paris or setting up a flat there.
23 November 1934 NLPK (from J. Ralph Pinker to Paul Léon): Thank you for your letter of yesterday. With regard to the point you raise about the proof reading of Ulysses, I understand that this is a very important matter, but I thought that this would have been done by someone in Paris under yours or Mr Joyce's supervision. If you definitely decide that it would be better for it to be done by Lanes, I will ask them to undertake this.
27 November 1934 NLPK (from Paul Léon to J. Ralph Pinker): Nothing has been arranged for the proofreading of ULYSSES and certainly I could not do it as a foreigner. Mr Joyce himself is also not in a position to do it. At the time the Albatross went to the press, they asked Mr Gilbert to do the proof-reading but as it involved an expense I dare not suggest it to Lane. In England I daresay they will find a specialist without any suggestion from us, the important part is however that they should realise this is not a trifling matter and should give it some thought.
5 December 1934 NLPK (from J. Ralph Pinker to Paul Léon): John Lane … say they think they had better take it that the edition from which they set is correct and let the printers have special instructions to double check these themselves.
12 December 1934 NLPK (from Paul Léon to J. Ralph Pinker): The arrangement for the proof reading seems to me to be allright. I do not know though from what edition the type is set. The Albatross edition contains two misprints which I discovered on a perusal otherwise I am told it is very correct. I have not read the American edition so I cannot say anything about it.
17 December 1934 NLPK (from J. Ralph Pinker to Paul Léon): John Lane have two copies of Ulysses … the Random House edition and the … Odyssey Press … glad to know which Mr Joyce would like them to follow and whether there are corrections to be made to either.
29 December 1934 NLPK (from Paul Léon to J. Ralph Pinker): I have not heard from Mr Joyce about the edition of ULYSSES to be followed. As he has not read either of them I think and take it upon myself to advise the American one though it would be necessary to verify it according to the Albatross. As I know Mr Gilbert made some hundreds of corrections for the latter and I do not know if Mr Cerf followed this text.
31 December 1934 NLPK (from J. Ralph Pinker to Paul Léon): I note you consider the American edition of Ulysses is the one to follow and I am therefore telling John Lane this.