[Up: IQI] [JAJportal] [master timeline]
"It was part of that ineradicable egoism which he was afterwards to call redeemer that he imagined converging to him the deeds and thoughts of the microcosm." [PoA04]
This page tries to collect all the relevant events from this period, in order to nail down the timing of all the significant events in Joyce's life during this critical stage (ages 16 to 22yo). The three main pitfalls that have to be avoided are: Ellmann's carelessness with sequence (eg, effects preceding causes), Stannie's general unreliability [more], and the temptation to view Joyce's fictions as factual.
When passages are indented in brown it's a reminder that I'm quoting someone else besides Joyce-- usually Gogarty or Yeats.
Separate timeline for Yeats circle: [timeline]
Jump to:
# 1898 -
# 1899 -
# 1900 -
# 1901 -
# 1902 -
# Paris -
# 1903 -
# 1904
# June -
# Nora -
# July -
# Tower plan -
# Aug -
# Sept -
# Tower stay -
# Oct
# bibliog
five postoffice deliveries/day, 1st collection at 1:15am [n31 via Thom's] stamps cost a penny; deliveries were at 7am, noon, 2:20, 6:10, 8pm; one on Sunday [G13.1170]
theater seat: 6p? [rff326]
cheapest trip to Paris £3; telegraphing money to Paris cost 3-4 shillings each time [L2-33] [prices]
how long was a pawn ticket good for? (eg L2-25)
pre-1898 [more]
1888-1891: admitted to Clongowes Wood College 2yrs early, at 6.5yo
1892: Nov: father JSJ loses job, sudden move to north side of Dublin [map:J93]
"Stephen began to enumerate glibly his father's attributes. --A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a storyteller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a taxgatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past." [PoA5]"He remembered the first mood of monstrous dissatisfaction which had overcome him on his entrance into Dublin life..." [SH158]
"His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivined and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin." [PoA2]
1893-98: JAJ at Belvedere college (US: jr-sr highschool) [history] practices stylistic parody under English teacher George Dempsey; regularly reads essays to appreciative family group [j&c206]
"When Joyce read, Dempsey would literally wriggle and chuckle with delight..." [ehm2, jfb147]Dempsey of JAJ: 'a plethora of ideas in his head' [mbk58]
1893?-1904: parties at Sheehys every other Sunday [j&c219] [memoir] (declares his pet aversion is soap and water; once, JAJ is so dirty that Mrs S makes him change his shirt; Hanna describes him later as farouche) [def] (SH152 implies Cosgrave 'replaced' wearisome Sheehy-parties for JAJ after apostasy, ie spring 1901)
1894: 19May (Sat): last night of Araby bazaar [e40, pc129] cf [Araby] (his 'crush' was probably on 17yo Hanna Sheehy or ?15yo Maggie Sheehy)
1894: 08Jun? (Fri): miching (playing hooky) with Stannie leads to encounter with 'captain of 50' [pc130, e47, mbk62] cf [Encounter]
1895: first masturbation at 13yo while nursemaid pees in field behind him [e418, mbk69] [more]
housing: 29 Windsor ave, Fairview (Sept1896-Jul1899) two-storey, 'pleasant' [pc140, e68] [pic] [map:J97]
1896: 30Nov (Mon): Belvedere retreat begins, maybe w/Fr Cullen [e48, pc141] cf [PoA3]
02Dec? (Wed) JAJ confesses masturbation, in Capuchin chapel one mile sw of Belvedere [map:Ch] cf [PoA3]
1897: religious fervor, lasts at least until Nov [pc142] cf [PoA4] (mother May "the companion of his devotions" rjj10)
"One day in a wood near Malahide [map] a labourer had marvelled to see a boy of fifteen praying in an ecstasy of Oriental posture." [PoA04]
spring 1897: last of 38yo mother May's ?15 birthings is stillborn (JAJ eldest of 10 surviving) [j&c204] [siblings]
1897-1904: JAJ an enthusiastic swimmer [mbk42] "habitually a very late riser" [mbk105]
Intermediate-exam scores: [cpc7, e751-752]
1894 1895 1897 1898
max Prep Jr Mid Sr
Latin 1200 700 636 642 560
English 1200 455 540 457 650
French 700 400 410 528 345
Commercial 200 33 102
Italian 500 211 223 342 205
Arith 600 430 250 340 145
Euclid 600 230 175 180 40
Algebra 600 130 175 230
Trig 700 20
Natl Phil 500 190 175 10
Chemistry 500 100(Joyce's best scores and biggest prize in middle of his fervor-phase, June 1897. cf PoA2)
no-date: translated Horace? [e50, hg45 claims c1897, style is atrocious by JAJ's ?1902 standards]
Brighter than glass Bandusian spring
For mellow wine and flowers meet,
The morrow thee a kid shall bring
Boding of rivalry and sweet
Love in his swelling forms. In vain
He, wanton offspring, deep shall stain
Thy clear cold streams with crimson rain.The raging dog star's season thou,
Still safe from in the heat of day,
When oxen weary of the plough
Yieldst thankful cool for herds that stray.
Be of the noble founts! I sing
The oak tree o'er thine echoing
Crags, thy waters murmuring.
(i kinda like 'Boding of rivalry and sweet Love in his swelling forms')
no-date (1898): Palestrina's 1565 'Missa Papae Marcelli' performed for 1st time in Dublin at St Teresa's [G1.653]
12Jan (Wed): death of JAJ's godfather, childless 51yo Philip McCann, JSJ and JAJ attend funeral on Friday [pc143/149/172, e23, j&c212] (bequest to JAJ probably finances university fees of 10 guineas/yr)
21Jan: Synge visits WBY in London on way from Dublin to Paris [Saddlemyer p26]
[j&c208] speculates (by analogy with Bloom) that JSJ was working at Cuffe's cattlemarket around this time
09Mar-18Mar: Yeats leaves London for Dublin (and Maud Gonne) [rff192]
10Apr (Sun): Easter
"While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution from such pursuit he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things. These voices had now come to be hollowsounding in his ears.When the gymnasium had been opened [c1894] he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when the movement towards national revival had begun to be felt in the college yet another voice had bidden him be true to his country and help to raise up her language and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labours and, meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best to get free days for the school.
And it was the din of all these hollowsounding voices that made him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades." [PoA2]
'monstrous' impulses:
1904 minus 6: "Six years ago I left the Catholic Church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature." [JAJ to Nora, 29Aug 1904, SL25]no-date: "The monster in Stephen had lately taken to misbehaving himself and on the least provocation was ready for bloodshed. Almost every incident of the day was a goad for him..." [SH29-- bloodshed = killing insults, by analogy with Turpin Hero? info]
late-Apr: WBY from London to Paris (w/Mathers and Gonne) [rff194]
10May-25Jun: Synge's 1st visit to Aran Islands [Saddlemyer p28]
23May (Mon): celebrations begin for centennial of 1798 rebellion [etext]
28May (Sat): JAJ parodies rector (Fr Henry) in "Vice Versa"; Stannie has a small part [pc144, ehm9, j&c209, cf? e56 '10Jan'] cf [PoA2] (e56n suggests cf also 'Fr Butler' in Encounter)
08Jun: WBY with MaudG in Dublin [rff194] MG breaks arm 12Jun, WBY reads her George Moore's newly published 'Evelyn Innes'
09Jun: AE marries 'sentimental English Theosophist' Violet North [rff186]
14Jun (Tue): JAJ and Albi Connolly skip religion exam [pc145, e56] (fervor-phase definitely over-- pc151 has a group photo of the 1898 Belvedere sodality with 16yo JAJ scowling like he wishes he were anywhere else)
Jun: math and science test-scores suggest zero effort
Jun: graduation ceremony, presumably-- Jack and May's first but entirely unremembered? the whole family would have included: James 16yo, Poppie 14yo, Stannie 13yo, Charlie 12yo, Georgie 11yo, Eileen 10yo, May 8yo, Eva 7yo, Florrie 6yo, Baby 5yo
20Jun: WBY to Coole [rff195]
implausible rumor: summer job as office boy in attorney's firm? [j&c209, e751n14 consigns to endnote]
15Jul: Gogarty gets bronze medal for courage re drowning [uoc36]
08Aug (week): first prostitute after play 'Sweet Briar' [passim?] ditto? [pc151, e48, j&c210] (Alf Bergan had gone to play too, with JSJ)
no-date: JAJ practices by writing theater-reviews for every play he sees [mbk88]
"The applause following the fall of the curtain fired his blood more than the scene on the stage... He felt the quaking of the earth... He felt himself alone in the theatre." [wod96- no date]
[SH40] implies these poem-fragments were pre-Ibsen: "The spectacle of the world... filled him with such sudden despair as could be assuaged only by melancholy versifying."
And I have sat amid the turbulent crowd,
And have assisted at their boisterous play;
I have unbent myself and shouted loud
And been as blatant and as coarse as they.I have consorted with vulgarity
And am indelibly marked with its fell kiss,
Meanly I lived upon casual charity
Eagerly drinking of the dregs of bliss. [cf Yeats 1899 qv]
Yea, for this love of mine
I have given all I had;
For she was passing fair,
And I was passing mad.All flesh, it is said,
Shall wither as the grass;
The fuel for the oven
Shall be consumed, alas!
Of thy dark life, without a love, without a friend,
Here is, indeed, an end.There are no lips to kiss this foul remains of thee,
O, dead Unchastity!
The curse of loneliness broods silent on thee still,
Doing its utmost will,
And men shall cast thee justly to thy narrow tomb,
A sad and bitter doom.
15Aug (Mon): JAJ and JSJ (and 100k others) celebrate slab for Wolfe Tone monument [pc151] Byrne skips celebration for solo trip to Vinegar Hill [jfb221] Yeats addresses company, Gonne on platform [rff195]
"In the roadway at the head of the street a slab was set to the memory of Wolfe Tone and he remembered having been present with his father at its laying. He remembered with bitterness that scene of tawdry tribute. There were four French delegates in a brake and one, a plump smiling young man, held, wedged on a stick, a card on which were printed the words: Vive l'Irlande!" [PoA5]
(Gonne was rabblerousing all year, and Joyce probably heard her speak at some point)
01Sep: WBY and AE at Galway feis [rff196]
03Sep (Sat): results of exams: £35 = just £1 (in books) for exam scores, £4 for best composition, £30 from 2yr-prize the year before [pc152] Magennis singles out composition as publishable [e56] (maybe £30 was applied to UC fees?)
09Sep (Fri): JAJ uses book-prize on Ruskin's "Mornings in Florence" [pc152] (this was a tour-guide, so he was imagining putting his Italian to use, but he never made it to Florence)
16Sep (Fri): WBY takes mescaline (in London?) [rff196]
continued 'shocks' (ie, occasions when he expressed his nature and others responded in shocked and shocking ways):
"...In spite, however, of continued shocks, which drove him from breathless flights of zeal shamefully inwards, he was still soothed by devotional exercises when he entered the University." [PoA04] (cf SH148 "molten rages and glowing transports on which the emotions of helplessness and loneliness and despair had first acted as chilling influences.")"...the most that devotional exercises could do for him was to soothe him. This soothing he badly needed for he suffered greatly from contact with his new environment. He hardly spoke to his colleagues and performed the business of the class without remark or interest." [SH29]
no-date: ?10yo sister Eileen impressed to see him saying rosary on way to school [ehm61]
University College: (300-400 total students, 64 in his entering class) [pc161] [info]
UC = three houses. #85 and #86 were classy, #87 was modest red brick (ground floor housed Irish Monthly) [cpc3]
classes mid-Sept (or early Oct?) to early June?
preparatory 'matriculation course' first year [cpc4-- fixed curriculum? no Italian]
Modern Languages major (normally followed only by girls)
JAJ lists JSJ's occupation as 'Entering for competitions' [e69 via Sheehy]
'inscribed' in Sodality [e65, JAJ denied this to hg]
18.5yo JF Byrne [bio] befriends 16.5yo JAJ (JFB famous for his solecisms [mbk172], not actually taking classes that year: jfb39)
JFB: "...it was only natural for him to cleave to me. We had been together at Belvedere, and in the intervening years had maintained acquaintanceship." [jfb40] (JFB had entered UC early, in 1895, but failed many exams due to laziness according to SH)SH on Cranly: "It was in favour of this young man that Stephen decided to break his commandment of reticence." [SH124 Ch20, where Cranly/Byrne is postdated after Madden/Clancy]
JFB: "George Clancy was the one other person besides myself in UC whose companionship J courted. (There was one other [Cosgrave, introduced by JFB per SH] whose company J accepted and in whom, to his later regret, he partially confided.) Clancy always called J 'Jebh' as if the 'b' were aspirated." [jfb54. cf? L1-357 GC called JAJ 'Jim']
(Byrne was JAJ's primary and invaluable whetstone from 1899 thru 1902. if they averaged 20 'pages' per week of dialog during this time this would total 4000 pages in which Joyce explored every sort of question about life and art and morality.)
27Sep (Tue): long freshman essay on 'Force' [pc157, e67, cw17] for WP Coyne? [cpc6]
"There was a special class for English composition and it was in this class that Stephen made his name. The English essay was for him the one serious work of the week... Stephen's style of writing, though it was over affectionate towards the antique and even the obsolete and too easily rhetorical, was remarkable for a certain crude originality of expression. He gave himself no great trouble to sustain the boldnesses which were expressed or implied in his essays. He threw them out as sudden defence-works while he was busy constructing the enigma of a manner. For the youth had been apprised of another crisis and he wished to make ready for the shock of it. On account of such manoeuvres he came to be regarded as a very unequilibrated young man who took more interest than young men usually take in theories which might be permitted as pastimes." [SH26, cf PoA2]
no-date: "Coyne: Beauty is a white light. Joyce: Made up of seven colours." [wod87, via 1904 Pola notebook. another Coyne may have been a student?]
12Oct and 30Oct: Synge spends evening with AE [lfae229]
autumn: over several months, JAJ waits while JFB plays chess at DBC with John Howard Parnell [jfb53]
late-Oct: JAJ dubs Byrne 'Cranly' (loving the sounds of the name) [ehm5, jfb44]
Sept-Dec: esthetics-debate in 'Daily Express' between Eglinton (classics-Scylla-British), Yeats (decadents-Charybdis-Irish) and AE (synthesis):
"I think that we will learn again how to describe at great length an old man wandering among enchanted islands, his return home at last, his slow gathering vengeance, a flitting shape of a goddess, and a flight of arrows..." --WB Yeats [more]
(this debate was published in May 1899 in book form-- JAJ surely saw it then, if not as it was first appearing)
late-Nov: WBY to Dublin, stays at Crown Hotel (or MaudG does, or both) , studies in Natl Library with MaudG (in private are, not in reading room w/JAJ and JFB) [rff196-200] (they are creating an "Order of Celtic Mysteries" with a tarot whose suits are Cauldron, Stone, Sword and Spear)
01Dec (Thu): Stannie's Belvedere retreat begins (3 days) [pc159, SH57 ch17]
08Dec (Thu): MaudG finally tells WBY of Millevoye and their children [rff202]
18Dec: WBY proposes to MaudG, who says 'I have a horror and terror of physical love' [rff203] MG returns to Paris, WBY goes to Sligo and takes hashish pills [rff204]
no-date: JAJ instantaneously understands spirit of Ibsen, via "hardly procured" translations [SH40] (likely: Doll's House [etext]. maybe: Peer Gynt [etext], praised by WBY)
Ibsen reconciled for SD "the spectacle of the world which his intelligence presented to him with every sordid and deceptive detail, set side by side with the spectacle of the world which the monster in him, now grown to a reasonably heroic stage, presented..." [SH40]cf Mar 1903 review: "Ibsen has united with [1] his strong, ample, imaginative faculty [2] a preoccupation with the things present to him... this union [should be] a truism of professional criticism." [cw101, italicised bits added]
no-date: essay "The Study of Languages" anticipates 'Oxen of the Sun' plan [more] [cw25]
no-date, maybe even 1901-02: French essay on bells in tintinnabulating style [cpc23]; JAJ coins (?) idée-mère for 'leitmotif' [e60] JAJ and Clancy feign duel to tease Cadic [cpc22]
09Jan: WBY back in Dublin promoting theater [rff204]
12-14Jan: Daily Express prints Yeats letter and article on theater
14Jan (Sat): JAJ debates literature at Literary and Historical Society ('L&H') [e70] normally Saturday nights in Physics Theatre [cpc13]
27Jan: WBY's letter in Daily Chronicle explains theater will use formalised chanting, simple scenery altered by light, attempting to invoke spiritual realities [rff210]
31Jan-16Feb: WBY in Paris with MaudG, Mathers, Synge [Saddlemyer p29]
11Feb (Sat): 'Ibsen night' at L&H-- JAJ arouses interest of group "eager to back winners" [mbk128, e70]
mid-Feb: WBY returns to London from Paris [rff205]
18Feb (Sat): JAJ elected executive committee of L&H [pc160, e70] (this may have been when 21yo Skeffington started serving as JAJ's great supporter at UC)
23Feb: Millevoye arrested (MaudG has absorbed his view that England is run by Freemasons and Jews) [rff205]
08Mar (week): sees Sudermann's 'Magda' at Theatre Royal with Jack and May [pc160, e54. cf typo? j&c219 '1898'] [info]
Magda: "We must sin if we wish to grow." [e54n]JAJ to parents: "The subject of the play is genius breaking out in the home and against the home... It's going to happen in your own house." [mbk87]
11Mar: Griffith predicts WBY's theater will fail because it will be over people's heads [rff206]
11Mar: WBY attacks Trinity College in the Daily Express [rff206]
21Mar (Tue): JAJ loses treasurership of L&H to Louis J Walsh, 5-to-2 [pc160, e70, cf Nausikaa revenge]
30Mar-07Apr: WBY and Florence Farr visit Dublin to finalise arrangements for play [rff207] (rehearsals are in London, Martyn financing professional actors; Gonne refused lead) Russell draws 'occult angels' for poster; Martyn frets about blasphemies
02Apr (Easter)
15Apr: Hugh O'Donnell attacks WBY (and published text of play) in United Irishman: 'a meandering decadent with a diseased mind' [rff209]
23Apr: WBY addresses Irish Lit Society in London about theater [rff207] praises Ibsen but challenges realism; audience highly skeptical
late-Apr: Yeats' poems 'Wind Among the Reeds' published. [etext]
According to WBY's original notes: [cite]
Michael Robartes = fire reflected in water; the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of its possessions; the adoration of the Magi
Red Hanrahan = fire blown by the wind; the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather permanent possessions; the adoration of the shepherds
Aedh = loftiest of three; fire burning by itself; the myrrh and frankincense the imagination offers continually before all that it loves
(JAJ surely saw this then, and just as surely pondered this psychological analysis, deeply and long. It would have provided an excellent romantic counterbalance to Ibsen's classicism.)
no-date: AE to WBY re 'WATR': "I like all the verses except the "Elemental Powers" [qv] which I think the weakest poem you have yet published... Your proof-reading is abominable... irritating because your verses are so perfect... Your detestable symbols too get a reflected light from the general twilight luminousness and beauty..." [lfae31]
no-date: AE promotes 'Cathleen' in Irish Homestead [rff210]
06May (Sat): WBY speaks in Dublin on 'Dramatic Ideals and the ILT' [rff208] plans to time plays for Beltaine (May) and Samhain (Nov)
08May (Mon): JAJ hears 'Who Goes with Fergus?' [etext] at "Countess Cathleen" opening (verse play w/Florence Farr) [info], amid minor disruptions by UC students [pc161, e66] MaudG also attends but keeps low profile [rff213]
Cast: [anjask6]
1st demon: Marcus St John
2nd demon: Trevor Lowe
Shemus Rua: Valentine Grace
Teig Rua: Charles Sefton
Maire Rua: Mme San Carolo
Aleel: Florence Farr
Oona: Anna Mather [IMDb]
herdsman: Claude Holmes
gardener: Jack Wilcox
sheogue: Dorothy Paget
peasant woman: M. Kelly
servant: TE Wilkinson
the Countess Cathleen: May Whitty [IMDb]
no-date: JAJ attempts verse-play called 'Dream Stuff' [e80, probably more like 1901]
In the soft nightfall
Hear thy lover call,
Hearken the guitar!
Lady, lady fair
Snatch a cloak in haste,
Let thy lover taste
The sweetness of thy hair
09May (Tue): Martyn's 'Heather Field' performed [pc161]
Program: [yahc35]
10May (Wed): 23 nationalist UC students (incl Kettle, Skeffington, Byrne, Richard Sheehy) protest 'Cathleen' in Freeman's Journal [pc161, e67] (JAJ had refused to sign) Quote:
"...to protest against an art, even a dispassionate art, which offers as a type of our people a loathesome brood of apostates..."'
19May? (Fri): Daily Express hosts grand dinner at Shelbourne Hotel to celebrate the Theatre, with WBY, Moore, Martyn, Eglinton, JF Taylor, Douglas Hyde and many others [rff211] WBY has to defend himself against various attacks
20May: Griffith in UI attacks 'union of Butter and Poesy' (Daily Express was connected to ag co-op movement via Horace Plunkett)
21May: WBY to Coole until September [rff213]
27May (Sat): Stannie elected to Sodality at Belvedere [pc161]
31May? WBY speech at Trinity [rff589]
Jun-Sep: three months of pure vacation, devoted to Ibsen certainly and Yeats probably. Summer whetstones: Stannie, Byrne, maybe Clancy
housing: Convent ave (aka 225 Richmond road), Fairview (?Jun1899-?Sept1899) [pc162, e68] large house on corner, maybe shared with Hughes family
Jul: JAJ crams Norwegian while Byrne reads Diseases of the Ox in library [jfb58, pc162, ehm6] (thrown out by Lyster for laughing, they walk and discuss why the title is funny) cf SH124, [PoA5]
Jul: JFB walks to Glendalough and back with Skeffington, Merriman, Paddy Doherty and Jim O'Toole (no JAJ) [jfb172]
04Aug: Gogarty fails in attempted rescue of drowning person at Ballbriggan [map] [uoc36]
OG c1899
17Aug: Gogarty turns 21yo, told by mother she's spent his inheritance educating all four children
housing: 13 Richmond ave (?Oct1899-May1900) [pc163, e68, j&c221] [map:J00] shared with Hughes and family
'a ramshackle house with many spacious rooms, gates, and a garden...' [mbk93] also, happily, an abandoned piano [j&c221]
Sep: exam results: honours in Latin [pc161]
Sep: CP Curran meets Joyce [pc157, cpc4] morning honors-class in English but JAJ's attendance grew infrequent [cpc8] anecdote of 'Paolo and Francesca' ('Have you read it, Mr Joyce?' bored yes)
cf? Dec1922 note for FW: "discussing Holy war SD said he had read Motley's Rise of Dutch Republic (had read title)" [VI.B.10.86]
Nat'l Philosophy (physics) course taught by Stewart [cpc24] ('Moynihan' = Bob Kinahan) cf [PoA5]
Sep: essay on 'Ecce Homo' [pic] analyses painting as drama [pc162, e65, cw31] (this is the last surviving clearly-written student paper. supposedly there was a Ruskin tribute in 1900)
no-date: visits National Gallery from time to time? [pc162]
(Joyce in later years was indifferent to pictoral art, so we might see this phase as a failed experiment, in imitation of Ruskin, Symons, Moore, and many other literati who also wrote art criticism)
no-date: JAJ 'reads' at Natl Library every night until 10pm closing [mbk98]
cf SH122: "...every evening after tea-time... Stephen repaired to the Library where he was supposed to be engaged in serious work. As a matter of fact he read little or nothing in the Library. He talked with Cranly by the hour..."
early-Oct? JAJ contacts Courtney at 'Fortnightly Review' via Dempsey??? [pc162 via Sheehy, but no evidence for the date so more likely Jan] [etext]
09Oct (Mon): Boer ultimatum initiates two years of war (England vs Dutch in S Africa: eb); Ireland of two minds-- JSJ loudly supports Boers [pc163, j&c222]
09Oct (Mon): JAJ offers to read paper for L&H [e69]
no-date: "About this period the enigma of a manner was put up at all comers to protect the crisis. He was quick enough now to see that he must disentangle his affairs in secrecy, and reserve had ever been a light penance... he began loftily diagnosis of the younglings." [PoA04] (shift in literary style from clear to cloudy) cf also SH30 "there was no face that passed him on its way to its commercial prison but he strove to pierce to the motive centre of its ugliness"
19Oct: Gogarty gets testimonial for courage re drowning [uoc36]
late-Oct: Joyce attends Childs murder case [pc163, e91] probably hears Bushe's oratory [Eolus]
31Oct? (Tue): maybe Halloween party at uncle John Murray's (Maria O'Donohoe had been diagnosed with cancer in June, died 8Dec) [pc165] cf [Clay] (but would 17yo JAJ have gone with many younger siblings, who would also have been invited?)
Nov: JFB joins L&H [pc170, inspired by prospect of JAJ's talk. JFB would already have heard all about the meetings JAJ had been to]
Nov-Dec: Byrne recalls Joyce spending two months writing Ibsen essay [ehm7/jfb61 claims this was for the Fortnightly, but surely it was for L&H]
no-date: Curran imagines JAJ read Brandes's 'Ibsen and Bjornson' around this time [cpc117]
23Nov (Thu): JAJ attends L&H committee meeting [pc164] (still tolerating 'sodality' of 'virginities')
Xmas? JAJ plays Capt Hawtree in Maggie Sheehy's livingroom production of 'Caste' by TW Robertson [mbk111. cf e93 '1900 or later' not supported by Sheehy] (year unspecified, but JAJ must have tested his skills before the XL Cafe in March 1900)
no-date: Fr Ghezzi ('Artifoni') introduces JAJ to Dante, Bruno, Cavalcanti, Petrarch, Castiglione, Leopardi, Alfieri, Machiavelli, Tasso, Maffei, Monti, Manzoni, maybe even heretical D'Annunzio [cpc26/120, e59, speculative] no-one else in class but Eugene Sheehy [cpc24] (SH169 claims SD chose Italian for Dante, not vice versa)
no-date (1899): acquires Maeterlinck's Allodine and Palomides and Melisande and Pelleas [French] [pc160] (probably he was reading everything he saw compared to Ibsen, and bought these because M withstood the comparison)
10Jan (Wed): JAJ finishes "Drama and Life", reads to mother [e70, cw38, SH84]
no-date: mother May and father Jack try reading some Ibsen [e70, SH86]
Ellmann [e70, based on SH] imagines UC president Delany censored this paper but I don't see any evidence [e70 also cites mbk144 but that's just about 1902]
no-date: JAJ writes to Courtney offering an Ibsen article (probably 'Drama and Life' itself) [e71-- JAJ never seems to have sent the essay itself]
19Jan (Fri): Courtney responds soliciting review of 'When We Dead Awaken' [L2-6]
20Jan (Sat): JAJ reads "Drama and Life" to L&H, witnessed by JSJ, Stannie, Byrne, Eugene Sheehy, Clandillon, Murnaghan, Magennis, Coyne, Clery ('Whelan'), Hugh Kennedy, John Marcus O'Sullivan [cw38, cpc10]
no-date: JAJ rattles off Ibsen review in a week
no-date, post 20Jan: tribute to Ruskin, titled 'A Crown of Wild Olive' [mbk89]
no-date: Skeffington [bio] nominates JAJ for L&H auditor, but vote is 15-9 for Hugh Kennedy [bio] [e73]
no-date: Walsh beats JAJ again, for L&H oratory medal? [e96]
03Feb (Sat): Courtney accepts Ibsen review but demands Pinero-reference be cut [L2-6, e74]
Feb: JAJ acquires Hauptmann's 'Coming of Peace' [cpc9] (another Ibsen-survivor)
10Feb (Sat): Skeffington addresses L&H on 'The Progress of Women' [cp21]
19Feb (Mon): JAJ attends Irish Literary Theatre's "Bending of the Bough" (Moore) [e88] (1901's 'Rabblement' would dismiss Moore as lacking originality: etext)
21Mar (Wed): JAJ plays villainous Geoffrey Fortescue in Maggie Sheehy's "Cupid's Confidante" at the XL Cafe in Grafton st [e93, ehm12-- 'made his arse-cheeks blush': mbk124]
31Mar (Sat): Tom Kettle addresses L&H on 'Nationality and Education' [cp21] (Clongowes-boy Kettle was better-read than JAJ but cool-fish JAJ claimed to find him 'too demonstrative' to be a close friend)
01Apr (Sun): JAJ's Ibsen article in Fortnightly Review [e74, cw47, pc165 says late March] JAJ seeks out in Natl Lib? [pc165] Lyster congratulates him
no-date: "Immediately after the publication of the Ibsen article, J began occasionally, and when in the mood, to seek expression in writing short poems... not prolific... as he sat beside me in the library he would write and rewrite and retouch..." [jfb63, ehm8] (there were definitely earlier poems, so this was just coming out of the closet)
1898-1902? Stannie describes two exercise-books of poems, the first called 'Moods' containing 50-60 lyrics, some long, plus some translations; the 2nd called 'Shine and Dark' (after Whitman: etext) [mbk85] (Stannie dates these to a time he was still at Belvedere, so pre June 1901? mbk86) (1st ref to Whitman is Feb 1902 on Mangan; 'S&D' may have been the two-part work still being written in Dec 1902)
And orient banners they outfling
Before the ripple-bearded king.
"Am I foolish to be hopin' That you left your window open To be listenin' to me mopin' Here and singin', lady mine?" cf? FW notes: "I'd like to be pickin/ of a little bit of chickin/ a little bit of turkey or a little bit of ham/ And ain't I a good 'un/ at a little piece of pudden/ a little piece of pie ay ay or raspberry jam"
no-date: check for twelve guineas from Fortnightly [pc165] ($1260 in 1998 prices: more)
15Apr (Easter): JAJ and JSJ visit London [pc165, cf? e77] leaving just £1 with May and the sibs? [j&c223]
16Apr (Mon): 72yo Ibsen writes Archer with thanks to 18yo JAJ [e74]
19Apr (Thu): Aleister Crowley in London challenges Yeats for control of Golden Dawn (JAJ oblivious, though he'd just been in the city) [more]
23Apr (Mon): Archer passes on Ibsen's thanks [L2-7, SL6]
28Apr? (Sat) JAJ receives thanks from Ibsen via Archer, while "swinging in the garden about dawn" with 10yo (??) Susie McKernan after they returned from dance [hg69, e74. pc165 says Wed]
28Apr (Sat): JAJ writes Archer thanks for Ibsen message "I am a young Irishman, 18yo, and the words of Ibsen I shall keep in my heart all my life." [L2-7, SL6, e74]
housing: 8 Royal terrace (later Inverness rd), Fairview (May1900-Sep1901) [pc166] [pic] fine two-storey plus basement, sunken front garden, kept the piano; back lane w/nuns' madhouse
"The lane behind the terrace was waterlogged and as he went down it slowly, choosing his steps amid heaps of wet rubbish, he heard a mad nun screeching in the nuns' madhouse beyond the wall. --Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus!" [PoA5]
summer? Stannie reads (Protestant) Gospels found in ashpit, loses religion [j&c227]
May: Lady Gregory 'comes out' as Irish nationalist [rff169]
17May (Thu): JAJ and JFB attend Pearse's Gaelic League meeting (for EC?) [pc166, pc190]
May: JAJ acquires D'Annunzio's 'La Gioconda' [cpc9] [info] [Italian]
late-May: JAJ returns to London alone, visits Archer, sees 42yo Duse in 'Gioconda' (and 'Città Morta'? etext) and sends her poem of tribute [pc166, e77, rjj8]
Joyce keeps a pic of Duse on his desk; when she disparages Ibsen in an interview, JAJ brags to Stannie he could convert her with a half-hour's conversation [mbk186] (she's 37yo D'Annunzio's significant other, he writes plays for her; JAJ must wish for such luck!)
Jun? surprisingly good score on math final (715 out of 1200) [e756]
June: 22yo Gogarty's anonymous acrostic 'Ode of Welcome' in 'Irish Society' sells out issue within minutes, still being talked of months later (but no-one JAJ ran with was necessarily likely to hear about it):
The Gallant Irish yeoman
Home from the war has come
Each victory gained o'er foeman
Why should our bards be dumb.How shall we sing their praises
Our glory in their deeds
Renowned their worth amazes
Empire their prowess needs.So to Old Ireland's hearts and homes
We welcome now our own brave boys
In cot and Hall; neath lordly domes
Love's heroes share once more our joys.Love is the Lord of all just now
Be he the husband, lover, son,
Each dauntless soul recalls the vow
By which not fame, but love was won.United now in fond embrace
Salute with joy each well-loved face
Yeoman: in women's hearts you hold the place.
summer: JAJ and JSJ and Stannie in Mullingar stay w/photographer Shaw, JAJ reads D'Annunzio's 'Child of Pleasure' [e77, pc167] (if Stannie was already losing his faith he'd be debating JAJ about it during this vacation, and JAJ would have read the gospels too)
19Jul: escaped female lunatic drowns in Mullingar canal [j&c229] cf SH Ch14
Aug: JAJ acquires Hauptmann's 'Hanelle' [cpc9]
30Aug (Thu): JAJ sends "A Brilliant Career" to Archer [e78, L2-7]
four acts, populated with recognisable acquaintances, stage directions in violet ink: young doctor (Paul) chooses career over girl (Angela), becomes mayor, deals with plague, re-discovers Angela and realises too late she was his soulmate [mbk115] (who was he picturing to play Angela opposite his Paul?) A surviving chorus:
We will leave the village behind,
Merrily, you and I,
Tramp it smart and sing to the wind,
With the Romany Rye.
Sep: JAJ acquires D'Annunzio's 'La Gloria' and 'Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autumno' [cpc9]
15Sep (Sat): Archer critiques "A Brilliant Career" [e79, mbk116, L2-8]
'...possibly more than talent... wildly impossible... canvas too large... loses sight of central interest... gift of dialogue... deficient in projecting characters... I am interested... impressed... bewildered.'
(the profound cataclysm this represented can be gauged by Joyce's creative near-silence for the next year (until Rabblement): a few poems, translations, and lots of reading, mainly mystical)
30Sep (Sun): party with Sheehys [e92]
epiphany (likely written up later, from memory- note it's both autobiographical and written as a play): 'Dublin: at Sheehy's, Belvedere Place'
Joyce-- I knew you meant him. But you're wrong about his age.
Maggie Sheehy-- (leans forward to speak seriously) Why, how old is he?
Joyce-- Seventy-two.
Maggie Sheehy-- Is he?
(Ibsen turned 72 in March 1900. cf treatment of Maggie here with "he began loftily diagnosis of the younglings" PoA04)
no-date: acquires Ibsen's 'Little Eyolf' and 'Wild Duck' [pc160]
no-date: prose vignette series 'Silhouettes' [j&c219]
no-date: AE's first son Brian
maybe, maybe not: ?35yo woman flirts with 16yo Stannie at concert [mbk159] cf [PainfulCase]
no-date: JFB borrows the two copybooks of JAJ's poems but hands them over to 51yo Fr Darlington when the latter notices/asks about them [mbk171] (Darlington finds nothing dangerous)
no-date: JAJ attends inaugural meeting of Aquinas Society [e65, denied by cpc37?]
08Jan (Tue): JAJ reprises role in "Cupid's Confidante" at Antient Concert Rooms [e93, j&c232]
09Jan (Wed): Freeman's Journal praises JAJ: 'a revelation of amateur acting' [e93]
22Jan (Tue): Edward VII coronation
24Feb: Russian Orthodox Church excommunicates Leo Tolstoy
20Mar (Wed): JAJ sends Ibsen birthday greeting "I am a young, a very young man... I have sounded your name defiantly... [not] a hero-worshipper... your wilful resolution to wrest the secret from life... inward heroism" [e86, pc172, L1-51, SL6]
no-date, pre-spring 1901: "a temperament ever trembling towards its ecstasy... a soul... over which the image of beauty had fallen as a mantle" [PoA04] (this would later be associated with Lucy and relocated to 1898 in the fictions?)
no-date: maybe troubles at school lead 'earnest Jesuit' to prescribe clerkship in Guinness's [hg53. e97 says JSJ in 1902 but it makes no sense with BA from UC. SH (like PoA04) implies it was mid-UC, not intended seriously but as a scolding] [PoA04]
no-date: reads Franciscans [SH176] (St Francis info: Cath, eb, etext, prayers-- all probably long familiar)
"He had begun to be interested in Franciscan literature... He had found on one of the carts of books near the river an unpublished book containing two stories by W.B. Yeats... This discovery, coming so aptly upon his own researches, induced him to follow his Franciscan studies with vigour." [SH176, but moved after apostasy and Isabel's death there]
no-date: JAJ finds 'unpublished book' of Yeats stories on bookcart [SH176. Kenner says 1897 versions were in Savoy magazine? or edition of 110 copies? cite)
quote from 'Adoration of the Magi': (three wise Aran Islanders are mystically summoned to Paris to the bed of the dying mistress of a symbolist painter [Moreau's died in 1890] who will 'give them secret names'-- 'Harsh sweetness,' 'Dear bitterness,' 'O solitude,' 'O terror'-- 'and thereby... transform the world' permitting 'the coming again of the gods and the ancient things')
"'When the Immortals wish to overthrow the things that are today and to bring the things that were yesterday they have no-one to help them except one whom the things that are today have cast out. Bow down and very low, for they have chosen this woman in whose heart all follies have gathered, and in whose body all desires have awakened; this woman who has been driven out of Time and has lain upon the bosom of Eternity.'" [1st sentence as quoted at SH192]
fave quote from 'Tables of the Law': [mbk215] (Owen Aherne in Dublin shows the narrator the only surviving, priceless copy of a heretics' bible by Joachim Abbas, and announces he's setting out to find the secret law prophesied by Abbas, to promote a supreme art of peaceful living. Ten years later he returns haunted by his realisation that sin is necessary to know God, yet sin is impossible for him because he understands his own being too well. The narrator is terrfied by this closing hallucinated glimpse of that knowledge.)
"Suddenly I saw, or imagined that I saw, the room darken, and faint figures robed in purple, and lifting faint torches with arms that gleamed like silver, bending above Owen Aherne; saw, or imagined that I saw, drops, as of burning gum, fall from the torches, and a heavy purple smoke, as of incense, come pouring from the flames and sweeping about us. Owen Aherne, more happy than I who have been half-initiated into the Order of the Alchemical Rose, or protected perhaps by his great piety, had sunk again into dejection and listlessness, and saw none of these things; but my knees shook under me, for the purple-robed figures were less faint every moment, and now I could hear the hissing of the gum in the torches. They did not appear to see me, for their eyes were upon Owen Aherne; now and again I could hear them sigh as though with sorrow for his sorrow, and presently I heard words which I could not understand except that they were words of sorrow, and sweet as though immortal was talking to immortal. Then one of them waved her torch, and all the torches waved, and for a moment it was as though some great bird made of flames had fluttered its plumage, and a voice cried as from far up in the air, 'He has charged even his angels with folly, and they also bow and obey; but let your hearts mingle with our hearts, which are wrought of Divine Ecstasy, and your body with our bodies, which are wrought of Divine Intellect.' And at that cry I understood that the Order of the Alchemical Rose was not of this earth, and that it was still seeking over this earth for whatever souls it could gather within its glittering net; and when all the faces turned towards me, and I saw the mild eyes and the unshaken eyelids, I was full of terror, and thought they were about to fling their torches upon me, so that all I held dear, all that bound me to spiritual and social order, would be burnt up, and my soul left naked and shivering among the winds that blow from beyond this world and from beyond the stars; and then a voice cried, 'Why do you fly from our torches which were made out of the wood of the trees under which Christ wept in the gardens of Gethsemane? Why do you fly from our torches which were made of sweet wood after it had vanished from the world and come to us who made it of old times with our breath?'" [WBY later deleted last 13 words, apparently, and made other small changes I've restored from SH178]
no-date: JAJ acquires signed copy of Yeats' 1891 "John Sherman and Dhoya" [cite]
no-year: "One night in early spring, standing at the foot of the staircase in the library, he said to his friend 'I have left the Church' ...through the gates of Assisi." [PoA04] SH138 places it during Isabel's illness but before the L&H speech (mostly Mangan 1902) and doesn't mention Francis (Byrne implies it was 1903!?? jfb85)
cf 1909 Trieste notebook "Having left the city of the church by the gate of sin he might enter it again by the wicket of repentance if repentance were possible." [wod96]
07Apr (Easter): Stannie claims he refused his Easter duty before James [mbk103, no year, but implausibly reports J comparing the Mass to his poetry at this time]
no-date (pre-Mar1902): 'bitter and painful altercation' with mother about apostasy [rjj10, mbk134] May calls James a 'mocker' [L2-132, no-date]
Tables-inspired poem? [e82, linebreaks collapsed here]
I intone the high anthem, Partaking in their festival. Swing out, swing in, the night is dark, Magical hair, alive with glee, Winnowing spark after spark, Star after star, rapturously. Toss and toss, amazing arms; Witches, weave upon the floor Your subtle-woven web of charms...Some are comely and some are sour, Some are dark as wintry mould, Some are fair as a golden shower. To music liquid as a stream They move with dazzling symmetry; Their flashing limbs blend in a gleam Of luminous-swift harmony. They wear gold crescents on their heads, Hornèd and brilliant as the moon...
(I see JAJ here as Donovan c1966, with lute, lust and bellbottoms)
07May (Tue): JAJ buys Olcott's Theosophical Studies [e76, pc172] (later?) Buddhist Catechism (interest lasts until Aug 1902?)
no-context: "in 6 months I shall be a theosophist" [June 1923 note for FW]
read everything that came into his hands about Theosophy: Swedenborg, Blake, Blavatsky, Olcott, Leadbeater, Besant [rjj11] writes poem 'Nirvana'? [mbk131]
no-date: "...Extravagance followed. The simple history of the Poverello [St Francis] was soon out of mind and he established himself in the maddest of companies. Joachim Abbas, Bruno the Nolan, Michael Sendivogius, all the hierarchs of initiation cast their spells upon him. He descended among the hells of Swedenborg [etext] and abased himself in the gloom of Saint John of the Cross [etext]. His heaven was suddenly illuminated by a horde of stars, the signature of all nature, the soul remembering ancient days... he came forth at last with a simple purpose-- to reunite the children of the spirit, jealous and long-divided, to reunite them against fraud and principality. A thousand eternities were to be reaffirmed, divine knowledge was to be re-established." [PoA04]
no-date: JAJ to Stannie in 1907: "I may not be the Jesus Christ I once fondly imagined myself..." [e255, continues "but I think I must have a talent for journalism"]
mid-Jun: university exams, poor results [pc174]
no-date (1901): Gogarty banned from bicycle-racing in Dublin for swearing during race
no-date: Gogarty wins Vice Chancellor's Prize at Trinity for poem on 'In Memoriam: Robert Louis Stevenson' (set topic) [uoc19, sw23]
23Jun (Sun): Gogarty saves bookmaker Max Harris from drowning [G16.292]
no-date: (sent to Archer before 15Sep, only survivor from that batch)
Commonplace (CMii)The twilight turns from amethyst
To deep and deeper blue,
The lamp fills with a pale green glow
The trees of the avenue.The old piano plays an air
Sedate and slow and gay;
She bends upon the yellow keys,
Her head inclines this way.Shy thoughts and grave wide eyes and hands
That wander as they list--
The twilight turns to darker blue
With lights of amethyst.
summer (maybe 1902 or 03): JAJ reads Yeats' 'Adoration of the Magi' to Capuchin monk on the beach by the Bull [rjj8] (but cf SH177 "he had over and over to restrain an impulse...")
Jul-Aug: JAJ and JSJ in Mullingar again [e87, pc173] stay with Awley Bannon? [j&c233] cf SH's Mr Fulham? (Stannie didn't recognise)
epiphany (written down later, from memory?): 'Mullingar: a Sunday in July: noon'
Tobin-- (walking noisily with thick boots and tapping the road with his stick) ...O there's nothing like marriage for making a fellow steady. Before I came here to the Examiner I used to knock about with fellows and boose... Now I've a good house and... I go home in the evening and if I want a drink... well, I can have it... My advice to every young fellow that can afford it is: marry young.
23Jul (Tue): JAJ completes translation of Hauptmann's "Before Sunrise" for Irish Literary Theatre ("Michael Kramer" in Aug) [e87]
"The rainladen trees of the avenue evoked in him, as always, memories of the girls and women in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann; and the memory of their pale sorrows and the fragrance falling from the wet branches mingled in a mood of quiet joy." [PoA5]
27Jul (Sat): Gogarty saves Max Harris from suicide-by-drowning [uoc36]
15Jul??? Gogarty gets testimonial for courage re drowning [uoc36, probably typo]
no-date (maybe 1902): Gogarty has his mother invite Yeats to an 'evening' leading to frequent visits (start of friendship)
George Moore
no-date (by July 1901): 49yo George Moore moves back from London, invites 23yo Gogarty into circle: "Gogarty is the Arch Mocker, the youngest of my friends, the author of the jokes that enable us to live in Dublin, of the limericks of the Golden Age, full in the face with a smile in his eyes, and always a witticism on his lips overflowing with quotations." [uoc47] circle meets at Bailey Restaurant? [uoc48] 'They would sacrifice their mother for a witty phrase' (anon)
no-date: 34yo AE meets Gogarty at Moore's "I had long hoped to meet the author of the witty verses and scandalous sayings that circulated the city... He was then an undergraduate at Trinity, and when he came into the room, Moore had the rare experience of being brilliantly out-talked... How we exulted in that dazzling conversation, which spared neither the maker of the Universe or His creatures...' [uoc49-50]
no-date: at Moore's, William Archer asks Richard Best (re OG): 'Who is that astonishing young man?' [uoc50]
epiphany (written from memory?): 'In Mullingar: an evening in autumn'
The Lame Beggar-- (gripping his stick) ...It was you called out after me yesterday.
The Two Children-- (gazing at him) ...No, sir.
The Lame Beggar-- O, yes it was, though... (moving his stick up and down) ...But mind what I'm telling you... D'ye see that stick?
The Two Children-- Yes, sir.
The Lame Beggar-- Well, if ye call out after me any more I'll cut ye open with that stick. I'll cut the livers out o' ye... (explains himself) ...D'ye hear me? I'll cut ye open. I'll cut the livers and the lights out o' ye.
summer: JFB's Hellfire Club expedition with Skeffington, Merriman, O'Toole, Kettle, the Sheehys, and Alphy O'Farrelly (no JAJ) [jfb172]
no-date: Stannie claims JAJ suggests to ILT he play Eilert in 'Hedda Gabler' [rjj21-- planned stage name 'Gordon Brown' mbk121] (but if he had actually approached anyone at the ILT they would have remembered him in autumn 1902, so this was just a fantasy he was too timid to effect)
?15Sep (Sun): poems rejected by Archer: "I do not find that as yet you have very much to say" [pc174, mbk142, L2-9]
26Sep (Thu): Archer responds to JAJ's reply to poetry criticism [L2-10]
housing: 32 Glengariff parade (Oct01-Sep02): [pic] [map:J01] cramped redbrick house of two bedrooms [j&c235] small backyard overlooked by Mountjoy Prison [vi72]
Stannie dates the first epiphanies to Glengariff (also interest in dreams) [mbk124] [etext] this first one is from nearby Eccles street (and is the least autobiographical of all!) but SH210 places it in late spring:
The Young Lady-- (drawling discreetly) ...O, yes... I was... at the... cha... pel...
The Young Gentleman-- (inaudibly) ...I... (again inaudibly) ...I...
The Young Lady-- (softly) ...O... but you're... ve... ry... wick... ed...
also interest in dreams, probably shaped by Theosophy: [mbk126] (first non-dramatic epiphanies are dreams)
A white mist is falling in slow flakes. The path leads me down to an obscure pool. Something is moving in the pool; it is an arctic beast with a rough yellow coat. I thrust in my stick and as he rises out of the water, I see that his back slopes towards the croup and that he is very sluggish. I am not afraid but thrusting at him drive him before me. He moves his paws heavily and mutters words of some language which I do not understand.
Yes-- they are the two sisters. She who is churning with stout arms (their butter is famous) looks dark and unhappy; the other is happy because she had her way. Her name is R... Rina. I know the verb 'to be' in their language.
-- Are you Rina?--
I knew she was.
But here he is himself in a coat with tails and an old-fashioned high hat. He ignores them: he walks along with tiny steps, jutting out the tails of his coat... My goodness! how small he is! He must be very old and vain-- maybe he isn't what I... It's funny that two big women fell out over this little man... But then he's the greatest man on earth.
Stannie claims this one was also a dream about Stannie: [mbk126]
Dull clouds have covered the sky. Where three roads meet and before a swampy beach a big dog is recumbent. From time to time he lifts his muzzle in the air and utters a prolonged sorrowful howl. People stop to look at him and pass on; some remain, arrested, it may be, by that lamentation in which they seem to hear the utterance of their own sorrow that had once its voice but now is voiceless, a servant of laborious days. Rain begins to fall.
SH211 says the 'Vilanelle of the Temptress' was inspired by the Eccles epiphany: [PoA5]
Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.
no-date (also Glengariff): improvises 'liturgical chants' on piano to accompany poems incl Yeats's 'Cloths of Heaven' [etext], 'Fergus' [etext], 'Impetuous Heart' [etext] and five others by Yeats, Mangan's 'Dark Rosaleen' [etext], 'Morn and Eve', and 'Swabian Love Song'. [rjj13, mbk123, mbk153, jfb66, cpc41, hg78] (music for 'Rosaleen' apparently in J's hand survives in JJA2 p620!?)
15Oct (Tue): "Day of the Rabblement" written, submitted to St Stephen's editor Hugh Kennedy [e88, cw68] [etext]
no-date: Fr Brown (Browne?) censors article because of reference to D'Annunzio's Il Fuoco (on Papal Index of forbidden works) [e88, cpc20]
21Oct (Mon): "Day of the Rabblement" published-- 85 copies for 2/5/0 [e89, cf? pc175] George Moore finds it 'preposterously clever' [e100] sold in bookshops for 2p, Skeffington's title listed first [ofjj11]
21Oct (Mon): 'Diarmuid and Grania' and 'Twisting of the Rope' premiere at Gaiety (Trench would star in later production of latter: ofjj65)
24Oct (Thu): JAJ hears JF Taylor defend Irish language? [e91] [Eolus] (also published in 1904 pamphlet, and praised in 1916 Yeats memoir)
no-date: epiphany of the Rabblement
Hanna Sheehy-- O, there are sure to be great crowds.
Skeffington-- In fact, it'll be, as our friend Jocax would say, the day of the rabblement.
Maggie Sheehy-- (declaims)-- Even now the rabblement may be standing by the door." [cw69]
02Nov (Sat): Arthur Griffith reviews "Day of the Rabblement" in United Irishman [where did I find this? what did it say?]
no-date (1901): acquires Huysmans' 'La Bas', Ibsen's 'Bygmyster Solness' (in Dano-Norwegian) [pc160]
no-date: "In another phase it had been not uncommon to devise dinners in white and purple upon the actuality of stirabout..." [PoA04] [cpc29 associates this with Huysmans and Rimbaud, maybe 1902?]
no-date: JAJ occasionally plays handball "somewhat in the manner of an unathletic girl" [jfb176]
no-date: Byrne and JAJ sometimes use a small UC room w/pianoforte to work on JAJ's settings [jfb66]
no-date: Cosgrave to Byrne: "Joyce is the most remarkable man any of us have met." [e63. cf SH152]
1930 UC history: 'During his student days JJ was not taken seriously. It was understood that he had a weird sort of talent but no one in the college seems to have guessed that he was destined to achieve almost world-wide celebrity." [hg57]
no-date: reads Skeats' Etymological Dictionary [1899 in SH]
no-date: favorite Elizabethan poem, attributed to Dowland: [mbk161]
Weep you no more, sad fountains!
What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
Heaven's sun doth gently waste!
But my Sun's heavenly eyes
View not your weeping,
That now lies sleeping
Softly, now softly lies
Sleeping.Sleep is a reconciling,
A rest that peace begets.
Doth not the sun rise smiling
When fair at ev'n he sets?
Rest you then, rest, sad eyes!
Melt not in weeping,
While she lies sleeping
Softly, now softly lies
Sleeping!
no-date: manuscripts of 'Moods' and 'Shine and Dark' (poems) lost, burnt, or given to Clancy [hg68] burnt [SH226, post-Emma, post-epiphany]
no-date: [SH37]
The dawn awakes with tremulous alarms,
How grey, how cold, how bare!
O, hold me still white arms, encircling arms!
And hide me, heavy hair!Life is a dream, a dream. The hour is done
And antiphon is said.
We go from the light and falsehood of the sun
To bleak wastes of the dead.
undated samples of 'Shine and Dark' [e80]
Let us fling to the winds all moping and madness,
Play us a jig in the spirit of gladness
On the creaky old squeaky strings of the fiddle.The why of the world is an answerless riddle
Puzzlesome, tiresome, hard to unriddle.
To the seventeen devils with sapient sadness:
Tra la, tra la.
'Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine';
Silently, sorrowfully I bent down my head,
For I had hated him-- a poor creature of clay:
And all my envious, bitter cruel thoughts that came
Out of the past and stood by the bier whereon he lay
Pointed their long, lean fingers through the gloom...
O Name,
Ineffable, proud Name to whom the cries ascend
From lost, angelical orders, seraph flame to flame
For this end have I hated him-- for this poor end?
Wind thine arms round me, woman of sorcery,
While the lascivious music murmurs afar:
I will close mine eyes, and dream as I dance with thee,
And pass away from the world where my sorrows are.
Faster and faster! strike the harps in the hall!
Woman, I fear that this dance is the dance of death!
Faster!-- ah, I am faint... and, ah, I fall.
The distant music mournfully murmureth...
poems: Chamber Music probable: I, V, XII, XXIV, XXV, XXVIII, XXXIV; certain: XXXV
no-date: Edward Martyn founds all-male Palestrina Choir [info]
no-date: references to Novalis, da Vinci, Whitman, Blake, Dante in Mangan speech (indicating that he's finally found his literary compass)
no-date: JAJ says to Curran that 'he offered the gift of certitude and loved the enigmatic' [cpc35. cf SH76]
03Jan: private performance of AE's play 'Deirdre' for Diarmuid Coffey's 12th birthday, starring AE as Naisi, Violet Mervyn as Deirdre, Richard Best as Ainle, Ella Young as Lavarcam, George Coffey as Fergas, and James Cousins as Buinne [lfae36 great photos! Best looks like Dickie Smothers]
Jan: Padraic Colum introduced to ILT group [Saddlemyer p38]
01Feb (Sat): JAJ reads "James Clarence Mangan" at L&H to Curran, Kettle, Bob Kinahan, Louis Walsh, Wm Dawson, Felix Hackett, Magennis, JSJ [e94, pc176, ofjj24, cpc13, cw73 says 15th] [etext]
"...they who think that such a terrible tale is the figment of a disordered brain do not know how keenly a sensitive boy suffers from contact with a gross nature..."
favored Mangan lyric: [ofjj24]
Veil not thy mirror, sweet Amine,
Till night shall also veil each star!
Thou seest a twofold marvel there:
The only face so fair as thine,
The only eyes that, near or far,
Can gaze on thine without despair.
02Feb? (Sun??): JFB reads paper for L&H on Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ [etext] and the contribution of monastic discipline in barbarous medieval Europe [mbk172, pc176]
03Feb (Mon): Freeman's Journal reports Mangan paper as "the best paper ever read before the Society" [cpc17]
no-date: Arthur Clery parodies JAJ as the Mad Hatter in St Stephen's magazine: "The Hatter as usual was dreaming beautiful dreams..." [e90, post-Rabblement]
Feb: Arthur Clery notes 'Dreamy Jimmy' and JFB attending address by JF Taylor [e91]
Mar: JAJ guffaws during Fr Sutton's L&H speech about Bacon and Shakespeare authorship [pc176, cf? e59 via Sheehy says 'Fr O'Neill']
Mar: poem preserved by JFB: [jfb65] (cf Yeats? qv)
IO, it is cold and still-- alas!--
The soft white bosom of my love,
Wherein no mood of guile or fear
But only gentleness did move.
She heard as standing on the shore,
A bell above the water's toll,
She heard the call of, "come away"
Which is the calling of the soul.
IIThey covered her with linen white
And set white candles at her head
And loosened out her glorious hair
And laid her on a snow-white bed.
I saw her passing like a cloud,
Discreet and silent and apart.
O, little joy and great sorrow
Is all the music of the heart
IIIThe fiddle has a mournful sound
That's playing in the street below,
I would I lay with her I love--
And who is there to say me no?
We lie upon the bed of love
And lie together in the ground:
To live, to love and to forget
Is all the wisdom lovers have.
13Mar (Thu): 14yo George Joyce (brother) falls ill of typhoid fever [pc176]
22Mar (Sat): WBY to LadyG: "Moore writes to me, by the by, that the acting in Russell's play is the silliest he ever saw..." [gyL151]
26Mar (Wed): WBY arrives Dublin [gyL151]
29Mar (Sat): ad in United Irishman: [gyL138]
Inghinidhe na h-Eireann.
----------
WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY,
AND FRIDAY NEXT
(APRIL 2nd, 3rd and 4th),
AT EIGHT O'CLOCK
At the Hall of St. Teresa's Total
Abstinence Association,
CLARENDON STREET, DUBLIN
"DEIRDRE"
A Play in Three Acts, by "A. E."
...AND...
"KATHLEEN
NI HOULIHAN"
A Play in One Act, by W. B. YEATS,
Will be presented for the first time,
AND PRODUCED BY
MR. W. G. FAY'S IRISH NATIONAL
DRAMATIC CO.
The Cast includes:- Miss Maud Gonne, Miss
Mary T. Quinn, Maire Nic Shuibhlaigh, Mr. J.
Dudley Digges, Mr. P. J. Kelly, Mr. C. Caulfield,
Mr. Frederick Ryan, Mr. Henry Sproull, Mr. P.
Collumb, Mr Brian Callender, Mr. F. J. Fay,
Mr. W. G. Fay.
------
MUSIC BY STRING BAND OF THE WORKMEN'S
CLUB, YORK STREET.
------
Admission - 6d., 1s., 2s. and 3s.
Tickets can be had at Messrs. CRAMER, WOOD & Co's,
Westmoreland Street, and at the office of THE UNITED
IRISHMAN, 17 Fownes' Street, Dublin.
30Mar (Sun): Easter
02Apr (Wed): WBY's 'Kathleen Ni Houlihan' (w/36yo Maud Gonne) and AE's 'Deirdre' (with AE as druid) premiere at St Teresa's; JAJ scornful of Yeats 'claptrap' [mbk184]
(could this have been JAJ's first glimpse of Maud? bio; pix)
Cast: [anjask31]
Cathleen: Miss Maud Gonne
Delia Cahel: Miss Maire nic Sheubhlagh
Bridget Gillan: Miss M.T. Quinn [IMDb?]
Patrick Gillan: Mr C. Caulfield
Michael Gillan: Mr T. Dudley Digges [IMDb]
Peter Gillan: Mr W.G. Fay [IMDb]
early-Apr: Byrne introduces JAJ and Cosgrave (and John Bassett) to registrar of med school; they register? [jfb76]
Apr??? (post-Rabblement): Stannie claims JAJ writes CMxii [qv] on cigarette package (cf PoA5) and also CMxxv [qv] after walking in hills with Skeffington and Mary (??? should be Hanna) Sheehy [mbk150 cf? e149 '1904']
What counsel has the hooded moon
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,
Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet--
A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?Believe me rather that am wise
In disregard of the divine,
A glory kindles in those eyes
Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!
No more be tears in moon or mist
For thee, sweet sentimentalist.
Lightly come or lightly go,
Though thy heart presage thee woe,
Vales and many a wasted sun
Oread let thy laughter run
And the irreverent mountain air
Ripple all thy flying hair.Lightly, lightly-- ever so
Clouds that wrap the vales below
At the hour of evenstar
Lowliest attendants are,
Love and laughter song-confessed
When the heart is heaviest.
May: Mangan essay published in "St Stephen's" [e96, pc177, cw73]
02May (Fri): epiphany:
Mrs Joyce-- (crimson, trembling, appears at the parlour door) ...Jim!
Joyce-- (at the piano) ...Yes?
Mrs Joyce-- Do you know anything about the body? ...What ought I do? ...There's some matter coming away from the hole in Georgie's stomach... Did you ever hear of that happening?
Joyce-- (surprised) ...I don't know...
Mrs Joyce-- Ought I send for the doctor, do you think?
Joyce-- I don't know... What hole?
Mrs Joyce-- (impatient) ...The hole we all have... here. (points)
03May (Sat): George Joyce dies of perforated intestine [pc177, cf? e94 '09Mar'] (cf SH163)
They are all asleep. I will go up now... He lies on my bed where I lay last night: they have covered him with a sheet and closed his eyes with pennies... Poor little fellow! We have often laughed together. He bore his body very lightly... I am very sorry he died. I cannot pray for him as the others do. Poor little fellow! Everything else is so uncertain!
05May (Mon): JSJ shocked after funeral by JAJ's request for stout [pc177]
no-date: Stannie says priests advised disconsolate May to put 'cowardly' JAJ and Stannie out of house before they corrupt siblings [mbk190]
25May (Sun): JAJ's Easter duty not made? [pc178]
epiphany 'Dublin: in the National Library': (cf SH169 'acme of unconvincingness')
Skeffington-- I was sorry to hear of the death of your brother... sorry we didn't know in time...to have been at the funeral...
Joyce-- O, he was very young... a boy...
Skeffington-- Still... it hurts...
Jun? brother Charlie leaves Belvedere and enters seminary for less than a year [mbk137]
Jun: MaudG writes sister May of plan to become Catholic and marry MacBride [gyL154]
no-date: Gogarty wins Vice Chancellor's Prize at Trinity for poem on 'The Death of Byron' (set topic) [uoc19]
no-date: Kettle met AE and Yeats before JAJ [cpc33]
summer: Synge in Wicklow writing "Riders' and 'Glen' [Saddlemyer p37] also poem 'Queens' [etext]
pre-AE? possible date for birdgirl epiphany (throwing off timidity) [speculation] cf [PoA4]
15Aug (Fri): JAJ visits 35yo AE [bio] in night (again on 18th?) [e98, pc178, cpc33] (MaudG was renting the house next door, but had returned to Paris the day before) [gyL154]
15Aug (Fri): AE writes Sarah Purser "I expect to see my young genius on Monday and will find out more about him. I wouldn't be his Messiah for a thousand million pounds. He would always be criticising the bad taste of his deity." [L2-12]
?16Aug (Sat): AE postpones 2nd mtg to Monday [L2-11, ambig]
?18Aug (Mon): AE to WBY "young fellow named Joyce... writes amazingly well in prose... engaged in writing a comedy which he expects will occupy him five years or thereabouts as he writes slowly... certainly more promising than Magee" [L2-12, Ellmann thinks 11th???]
(what comedy? an abandoned play? the first hint of Stephen Hero? the epiphanies, combined into one unity? By March (below) he'd be targetting the comedy for 1912! In fact, when Exiles was finished in 1915 he referred to it somewhere as a comedy, but none of its themes could have been dreamt of in 1902. e104 suggests JAJ promised to write this play at WBY's invition, but they hadn't even met yet.)
no-date: AE thinks of writing writing a play about JAJ, specifically his 'search for a Messiah' (as AE understood it). "The play might end by his discovery of himself." [rff270]
Oct: Byrne: "J gave me copies of all the poems he wrote prior to October, 1902" [jfb64] (none later because of breakup?)
Oct: Arthur Griffith proposes Sinn Fein policy [eb] (JAJ reading United Irishman regularly-- since Rabblement review?-- quick to appreciate boycott idea: mbk168)
02Oct (Thu): JAJ registers for med school at St Cecilia's [pc179, cf? e97 'Apr']
06Oct (Mon): UC finals, mediocre results, just short of lowest honours [pc180, e756]
1899 1900 1901 1902
Latin 725/1200 756/1200 353/1200 French 416/800 489/900 465/800 English 490/800 358/800 313/900 344/800 Mathematics 220/1000 715/1200 Natural Phil 183/500 373/800 Italian 373/800 295/900 417/800 Logic 240/900
no-date: UC oral exams: "The phrase 'poetic justice' is unmeaning jargon so far as I am concerned." [e59 via Sheehy ehm11] (someone explains these orals were notoriously easy to pass)
Stannie of JAJ: 'always in doubt, then and later, as to whether university studies were worth the trouble' [mbk114]
JAJ 1904 on JAJ 1902: "he set out from UC with a few gentlemen of his acquaintance to find his summum bonum." [cdd95]
no-date: AE to WBY: 'The first spectre of the new generation has appeared... I have suffered from him and I would like you to suffer.' [e100 via AE's memoir, likely afterwit]
early-Oct: AE invites JAJ to visit Yeats Tues at 5pm at Nassau hotel
Oct: JAJ meets Yeats-- legend holds JAJ insulted WBY but Stannie's theory makes sense, that JAJ revered WBY's talent, and was trying to say WBY should compromise less, and be more arrogant [mbk181]
WBY wrote up his version in 1903: [e102]
I went out into the street and there a young man came up to me... I asked him to come with me to the smoking room of a restaurant in O'Connell Street, and read me a beautiful though immature and eccentric harmony of little prose descriptions and meditations. [ie, epiphanies] He had thrown over metrical form, he said, that he might get a form so fluent that it would respond to the motions of the spirit...
(that phrase could practically be a technical term; cf theory of gesture SH184)
...he began to explain all his objections to everything I had ever done. Why had I concerned myself with politics, with folklore, with the historical setting of events, and so on? Above all why had I written about ideas, why had I condescended to make generalizations? ...He is from the Royal University, I thought, and he thinks that everything has been settled by Thomas Aquinas... But the next moment [JAJ criticised Wilde's deathbed conversion]. He did not like to think he had been untrue to himself in the end. No, I had not understood him yet... "Generalizations aren't made by poets; they are made by men of letters. They are no use."
no-date: letter fragment from WBY praises verse technique, 'fountain or cistern', "I will do anything for you I can" [e104, L2-13]
22Oct (Wed): JAJ reads Joachim Abbas in Marsh's Library (on a tip from WBY, then?) [G3.108, pc180]
24Oct (Fri): JSJ commutes part of pension via Drimmie's life insurance policy to buy £550 house in Cabra [e105, pc179, mbk140, j&c240] monthly pension now £8 [pc179]
housing: 7 St.Peter's Terrace, Cabra (bought 24 Oct 1902, sold 26 May 1905) [e105] [pic] five rooms incl 3 bedrooms, two-storey, little back garden (this coincidental move may have played a role in JAJ's urgent decision to leave town-- eg, different arrangement of sleeping quarters?)
no-date: JSJ immediately takes out £100 mortgage against property, maybe to pay last UC fees for JAJ? [pc158] parties so hard he ends up at old Fairview tramstop [j&c242, e105]
29-31Oct: plays by Yeats, Fred Ryan, and Seumas O'Cuisin premiere at Antient Concert Rooms [cal]
Cast for WBY's 'Pot of Broth' [anjask89]
a beggarman: WG Fay
Sibby: Maire T Quinn
John: PJ Kelly
Padraic Colum [pic source]
no-date: Colum claims he met JAJ (with Gogarty!??) post-AE at one of Lady Gregory's parties for the National Theatre crowd, with Yeats also in attendance [ofjj10. uoc42 calls this a 1901 play-reading at the Nassau hotel]
30Oct (Thu): JAJ receives BA from UC [posed pic] [pc180, cf? e105 '31'] (many students were obstreperous at the ceremony, and e105 sees Joyce as a ringleader)
no-date: acquires Sudermann's 'Femme en gris' [L2-25]
no-date: JAJ reads in Library starting at 8 or 9pm, book on heraldry [ofjj18] Colum walks JAJ home from library, JAJ talks in 'set speeches' [ofjj19] "I distrust all enthusiasms"
01Nov: United Irishman publishes WBY's play 'Where There Is Nothing' [Saddlemyer p54]
03Nov (Mon): L2-14 from WBY inviting JAJ to dine with Lady Gregory and JB Yeats Sr at Nassau hotel, 6:45pm (Yeats Sr may have been something of a booby-prize among dinner guests. Lady G 'regarded him as the most trying visitor possible in a house' according to BL Reid's bio of John Quinn, "The Man From New York".) JBY may have done two sketches of JAJ on this occasion? [cite]
04Nov (Tue): JAJ dines with Yeats and 50yo Lady Gregory at Nassau Hotel [e104]
![[older]](img/ladyg.jpg)
Nov 1902? suggestive postcard to ME Cleary? [e53, ofjj12] [more]
Mary Colum, c1957: "The first I heard of James Joyce was under odd circumstances. I was living in a university residence house in Dublin, studying for the matriculation examination. [Nov 1902 is plausible I think-- she was born in 1884] It happened that one of the girl students in the house-- a graduate, I seem to remember [ME Cleary, the original of Emma, had graduated with Joyce in October]-- got a postcard from one of the men students that annoyed her very much by its contents. At the time, though Queen Victoria was dead, girls took offense in Ireland at any uncalled-for communication or approach from the male sex. The contents of the postcard became known to a number of us younger girls: the writer, I remember, suggested a meeting or rendezvous of some sort; the signature was 'James A. Joyce.' The recipient of the postcard seemed to know who the writer was, for, highly indignant, she penned a haughty answer that was meant to humiliate and insult this James A. Joyce. In due time she received an equally haughty reply, phrased with extreme politeness but conveying to her that it was foolish to imagine that he, James A. Joyce, would have perpetrated such a missive, as he never remembered to have seen her, and anyhow never communicated with girl students unless they were family friends.... there was no resemblance between the handwriting on the postcard and that in the second communication [cf? Greek E's]... He had already taken his B.A. degree..."
JFB also writes, mysteriously: "for two reasons, the less impelling of which was financial, J decided to defer his medical studies and take a trip to Paris" [jfb79] (but SH203 claims SD told only Lynch of his approach to Emma: "From Cranly he expected scant sympathy")
why the Paris trip? [speculation]
You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! [Proteus]
17Nov: AE's 2nd son Diarmuid born
18Nov (Tue): JAJ applies to Paris med school [e106]
20Nov (Thu): U of Paris sends application forms [L2-14]
late-Nov: AE writes advice about Paris (Gonne, Gregory, WBY, not Moore) [L2-15]
late-Nov: JAJ writes Lady Gregory for help: [SL8, L1-53]
"...I had made plans to study medicine here. But the college authorities are determined I shall not do so, wishing I dare say to prevent me from securing any position of ease from which I might speak out my heart... they refuse to get me any grinding or tuitions or examining-- alleging inability... [cpc80 dismisses this as persecution mania, e106 implies they would have given him grinding if they'd had any to give]I want to get a degree in medicine, for then I can build up my work securely. I want to achieve myself... for I know that there is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being and accordingly I am going to Paris... my case can hardly be worse than it is here... I shall try myself against the powers of the world... though I seem to have been driven out of my country here as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine"
no-date: Gogarty credits this limerick to JAJ: [mbms50, e107] (who botched the last line???)
There was an old lady called 'Gregory'
Said 'Come to me, poets in beggary';
But found her imprudence
When thousands of students
Cried, 'All, we are in that category!'
Colum's version ends 'We're in that noble category.' [ofjj12]
?23Nov: Lady G to JAJ suggests Yeats, Longworth, Synge, Parisian churchman [L2-15]
sequence of poems not complete [L2-15] (cf SH174 re Vita Nuova "make his scattered love verses into a perfect wreath" and SH214 "a series of hymns in honour of extravagant beauty")
25Nov: Archer regrets can't meet JAJ in London, "I am sure you are making a mistake" [L2-16]
?25Nov (Tue): WBY invites JAJ to stop by Tues morn, suggests 'Speaker' for poems [L2-17]
?28Nov (Fri): JAJ visits Longworth at Daily Express and arranges to do book reviews [e108]
29Nov (Sat): testimonial letter from Mayor Harrington [L2-17]
"Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." {PoA5]
(when PoA was published, his Dublin acquaintances found this last claim especially preposterous)
01Dec (Mon): JAJ writes Lady G of contacts with Longworth and Synge, MacLagan "I am dead tired at present from moving about" [L2-18] (LG sends £5? pc199)
01Dec (Mon): JAJ leaves Dublin for Paris [e109]
leaves poems and epiphanies with AE [L2-21, e109] instructs Stannie to send copies to all the great libraries of the world (Vatican not excepted) should he not survive [e109]
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. [Proteus]
'My Brother's Keeper' makes this date the start of Ch5 but confuses some Jan1905 events. [mbk195]
Yeats in London introduces JAJ to Symons (evening?), feeds and transports [e111, pc199, L2-19]
WBY letter of 04Dec: 'unexpectedly amiable... did not knock at the gate with his old Ibsenite fury' [e111]
Symons: 'a curious mixture of sinister genius and uncertain talent' [e112] JAJ laughs when S mentions Balzac, WBY "You are not courteous, Joyce." [ofjj36]
train to Newhaven, boat to Dieppe, train to Paris, walk (?) from Gare St Lazaire to Corneille [e112, pc200]
03Dec (Wed)
takes room in Hotel Corneille in Paris [e112, pc200]
7-course brunch with Riviere [L2-18, e112 says Thu?]
L2-18 to JSJ from Corneille: busy till Sunday, sending in reviews tomorrow
04Dec (Thu)
weather very cold and windy, coffee all day black w/sugar [L2-19]
admission card to lectures: 9am-10 or 11, practical work 1:30pm-4 [L2-19]
buys alarmclock (4 francs) [L2-19]
JAJ writes first reviews for Daily Express [L2-19]
05Dec (Fri)
no-date: L2-20 fragment from May warns to boil water [E thinks 12Dec?]
pre-18Dec (Iseult ill): letter from Maud Gonne apologises that her concierge turned him away 'last evening' and invites him to call any day at 2pm. [mbk198-- 7 Ave d'Eylau] (Stannie says JAJ never followed up because he was embarrassed by his shabby dress-- presumably he hoped she'd fall in love with him?)
06Dec (Sat)
7pm? warm bath
SL8, L2-19 to family, 7:30pm?
07Dec (Sun)
08Dec (Mon)
Stannie has stationery forwarded from Eason's? [L2-20]
09Dec (Tue)
10Dec (Wed)
11Dec (Thu)
money due from Lloyd's [L2-20] (probably overoptimistic, for Daily Express)
1st two reviews published in Daily Express [pc201, cw84, cw88] include 1st reference to dramatic/ lyrical/ epical/ romantic classification, based on 1902 Yeats essay [etext]
12Dec (Fri)
13Dec (Sat)
no-date: letter to JAJ from WBY [L2-21 passim]
14Dec (Sun)
no-date: JAJ sends poem to WBY [L2-21] surely CMxxxv (Stannie thinks CMvi or CMxviii, see below)
no-date (1902): acquires Verlaine's anthology Le Poètes Maudits (incl Rimbaud, Mallarme, Villiers) and Fogazzaro's Picollo [pc160]
no-date: translation of Verlaine's 'Les sanglots longs' [hg59]
Tout suffocant | My soul is faint
Et blême, quand | As the bell's plaint
Sonne l'heure, | Ringing deep;
Je me souviens | I think upon
Des jours anciens | A day begone
Et je pleure, | And I weep.
Et je m'en vais | Away! Away!
Au vent mauvais | I must obey
Qui m'emporte | This drear wind,
Deçà, delà, | Like a dead leaf
Pareil à la | In aimless grief
Feuille morte. | Drifting blind.
15Dec (Mon)
got up at 11am [L2-21]
weather milder
SL10/L2-21 to May, 2pm: expects 20-25 francs/month from Douce, Berlitz offer for 150 francs/month would interfere with classes, curious weariness, say if I should go home for Xmas, have Stannie get Sharp's 'Book of British Song', expects 1/1/0 from Express, speaks of teeth for May
Gogarty sees the photo as an imitation of Rimbaud
L2-20 photo postcards to Byrne (w/CMxxxv: qv, pictured at e110) and Cosgrave (dog latin about prostitutes) and JSJ
poem is described as 'Second Part-- Opening which tells of the journeyings of the soul.' [ji24+, L2-20] (maybe 'Dark' of 'S&D')
All day I hear the noise of waters
Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is, when going
Forth alone
He hears the winds cry to the waters'
Monotone.The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing
Where I go;
I hear the noise of many waters
Far below,
All day, all night I hear them flowing
To and fro.
Byrne: 'During J's absence in Paris something had occurred which hurt me deeply... I felt so badly about it I wanted to break with him.' [jfb84- he doesn't elaborate]
theories:
- Byrne was possessive and jealous that JAJ sent a more intimate message to Cosgrave [Stannie's view, mbk211]
- Byrne was priggish and found the dog-latin 'like something you'd find in a urinal' [mbk212, re-interpreted]
- the dog-latin may have referred slightingly to JFB (ie, start of the arrogant-SD phase?)
16Dec (Tue)
L2-22 from May: yes, come home, 'not robust enough for Dieppe route'
no-date: L2-22 fragment from May says come home for a week [E thinks 18Dec?]
17Dec (Wed)
18Dec (Thu)
L2-23 from WBY: CMxxxv (?) "poetry of a young man who is practicing his instrument", write essays (Stannie [mbk209] guesses the poem in question was CMvi or CMxviii)
I would in that sweet bosom be
(O sweet it is and fair it is!)
Where no rude wind might visit me.
Because of sad austerities
I would in that sweet bosom be.I would be ever in that heart
(O soft I knock and soft entreat her!)
Where only peace might be my part.
Austerities were all the sweeter
So I were ever in that heart
O sweetheart hear you
Your lover's tale,
A man shall have sorrow
When friends do him fail.For he shall know then
Friends be untrue
And a little ashes
Their words come to.But one unto him
Will softly move
And softly woo him
In ways of love.His hand is under
Her smooth round breast.
So he who has sorrow
Shall have rest.
JSJ takes £50 mortgage to finance JAJ's Xmas return [e106/114, pc203, j&c243]
19Dec (Fri)
Stannie claims, incredibly, that just after the postcards JAJ sent Byrne a pound via Stannie, repaying a loan [mbk210] (yeah, right!)
20Dec (Sat)
Griffith quotes JAJ in ad for Rooney [cw84]
JSJ telegram
9:00 engagement at Paris Thespians, could not get to Cook's
21Dec (Sun)
SL11 to Lady Gregory: no pay from Longworth, 10 francs per fortnight from Douce, "to create poetry out of French life is impossible" [L2-24 fragment only]
L2-24 to JSJ
22Dec (Mon)
less than three weeks
JAJ departs Paris via Calais-Dover and briefly Yeats in London again [pc204, e116]
AE to WBY: 'Of all the wild youths I have ever met he is the wildest.' [e109]
23Dec (Tue)
arrives Dublin 8:10pm, unshaven [L2-24, j&c244]
WBY to Lady Gregory: 'I have had J all morning... He has now given up the idea of medicine and will take up literature. He said some rather absurd things and I rather scolded him but we got on very well.' [e116]
24Dec (week?): JAJ meets Gogarty and Eglinton? chance conversation about Yeats at counter of Natl Library [mbk174] (JAJ and OG had probably crossed paths in the past without having a conversation: uoc64)
Gogarty remembers JAJ as weighing about 125 at this time, carrying 20 poems [ehm22]
[uoc64] and [mbk174] claim JAJ got the idea of fancy vellum leaves for his poems from OG
no-date: sings 'naughty' French songs at Sheehy's [mbk213] (maybe epiphany of engaged merchandise? below)
JAJ 'went about little' over holidays [mbk213]
no-date: toothaches
no-date: JAJ to Stannie: "I think I may have been mistaken in Byrne." [mbk212] (Stannie-- who was himself envious of Byrne (and shouldn't be trusted)-- recites 'Te Deum'?)
no-date: Stannie ill with bronchial cold [L2-25, mbk214]
no-date: Maud Gonne back in Dublin for some days
12Jan (Mon): WBY introduces Synge to John Masefield at WBY's regular London Monday 'at Home' night [Saddlemyer p45]
17Jan (Sat)
JAJ returns to Paris via five day stopover in London [pc204, e119]
no-date: it may have been here that JSJ gave £7 (from mortgage) [usually dated to Oct 1904]
18Jan (Sun)
19Jan (Mon)
20Jan (Tue)
21Jan (Wed)
no-date: appointed Paris correspondent for new 6p weekly, 'Men and Women' [L2-25]
no-date: leaves article with Hind of the 'Academy' [L2-25] insults him? [pc204, mbk195, e119]
letters to Courtney and Archer [L2-25]
L2-24 to JSJ: push Irish Times, query O'Hara
late: visits Mr Tuohy
epiphany of whorehouse: 'London: in a house at Kennington'
"Eva Leslie-- Yes, Maudie Leslie's my sister an' Fred Leslie's my brother-- yev 'eard of Fred Leslie? ...(musing)... O, 'e's a whoite-arsed bugger... 'E's awoy at present...(later) I told you someun went with me ten toimes one noight... That's Fred-- my own brother Fred... (musing)... 'E is 'andsome... O I do love Fred..."
attends race-meeting? [pc204]
The human crowd swarms in the enclosure, moving through the slush. A fat woman passes, her dress lifted boldly, her face nozzling in an orange. A pale young man with a Cockney accent does tricks in his shirtsleeves and drinks out of a bottle. A little old man has mice on an umbrella; a policeman in heavy boots charges down and seizes the umbrella: the little old man disappears. Bookies are bawling out names and prices; one of them screams with the voice of a child-- "Bonny Boy!" "Bonny Boy!" ...Human creatures are swarming in the enclosure, moving backwards and forwards through the thick ooze. Some ask if the race is going on; they are answered "Yes" and "No." A band begins to play... A beautiful brown horse, with a yellow rider upon him, flashes far away in the sunlight.
22Jan (Thu)
long unbusinesslike talk with Archer at Liberal Club [L2-25]
met with Lady Gregory
saw O'Connell briefly just before train [L2-25]
23Jan (Fri)
JAJ reaches Paris again
24Jan (Sat)
afternoon: JAJ gets Paris library card [pc205]
Jan: Stannie's mailed reports on Municipal Election contribute to 'Ivy Day'? [j&c245, timing dubious, no other confirmation at any level?]
25Jan (Sun)
sent review of Gwynn to Express [L2-25]
26Jan (Mon)
parcel received, no letter [L2-26]
27Jan (Tue)
L2-25 to May from Corneille dated 25Jan: written 'Mon morn' then delayed for parcel; errands for Stannie incl old pawnticket, urge on Charlie for exam in spring; write about the things that interest you
28Jan (Wed)
29Jan (Thu)
review in Daily Express [mbk216, cw90]
needs Wagner's operas and Grant Allen's 'Paris' (not sent) from Stannie [L2-25]
30Jan (Fri)
no-date: "I have revelled in ties, coats, boots, hats since I came here-- all imaginary!" [L2-28]
31Jan (Sat)
L2-2 from JSJ birthday greetings, be a gentleman
He is a new male: his growth is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's enemy. In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it. [Scylla]
01Feb (Sun)
pm: hand laundry [L2-26]
in Dublin: Irish Literary Theatre becomes the Irish National Theatre Society
no-date: Vincent O'Brien discovers tenor John McCormack [cite]
02Feb (Mon)
am: 'budget of cards' [L2-26]
borrowed a few francs for train to Saint-Cloud, 50c steamer back to Paris [L2-26, pc206]
theater [L2-26]
letter and cigarette case from Aunt Jo [L2-26]
in Dublin, Synge reads 'Riders' to WBY and MaudG [Saddlemyer p39]
03Feb (Tue)
04Feb (Wed)
05Feb (Thu)
no-date: seeks out friends at lunchtime to mooch lunch [L2-27]
no-date: hangs out at Odeon cafe speaking Latin with Italian Riciotto Canudo, German poet Teodor Daubler, French Villona, and Eugene Routh [hg100]
06Feb (Fri)
three reviews in Daily Express [mbk217, cw93-97]
'Speaker' solicits Ibsen review [L2-26]
07Feb (Sat)
no-date: "up to my eyes in Aristotle's Psychology" [L2-28]
Aristotle quotes: [hg95]
The soul is the first entelechy of a naturally organic body.
That which acts is superior to that which suffers.
Only when it is separate from all things is the intellect really itself and this intellect separate from all things is immortal and divine.
The principle which hates is not different from the principle which loves.
The intellectual soul is the form of forms.
Speculation is above practice.
Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that a thing should be otherwise.
God is the eternal perfect animal.
Nature, it seems, is not a collection of unconnected episodes, like a bad dream (or drama?).
08Feb (Sun)
JAJ sees Sarah Bernhardt in a Paris premiere? [pc206, L2-27] writes review for Express (unpublished)
L2-26 to May: wire cash before Tues, expect to make over £200/yr; have Stannie send Feb 'St Stephen's' and Allen's 'Paris'
SL14/L2-27 JAJ to Stannie incl CMxxxvi [qv] and CMiv [qv]
"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... So damn Russell, damn Yeats, damn Skeffington, damn Darlington, damn editors, damn free-thinkers, damn vegetable verse and double damn vegetable philosophy!"
I hear an army charging upon the land
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees,
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.They cry amid the night their battle-name;
I moan in sleep, hearing afar their whirling laughter.
They ride through the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
With hoofs clanging upon the heart, as upon an anvil.They come triumphantly shaking their long green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore--
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
Little white breast, O why have you left me alone?
Ellmann sees this one as Jonsonian (Ben). Maybe it was written for Maud Gonne:
When the shy star goes forth in heaven,
All maidenly, disconsolate,
Hear you amid the drowsy even,
One who is singing by your gate.
His song is softer than the dew
And he is come to visit you.O bend no more in revery
When he at eventide is calling,
Nor muse who may this singer be
Whose song about my heart is falling?
Know you by this, the lover's chant,
'Tis I that am your visitant.
09Feb (Mon)
10Feb (Tue)
11Feb (Wed)
12Feb (Thu)
13Feb (Fri)
JAJ begins esthetic notebook [pc206, cw145] desire, loathing, comedy, tragedy, terror, pity [hg96]
14Feb (Sat)
first issue of 'Men and Women' [pc206]
Gogarty's poem in Trinity magazine, 'Threnody on the Death of Diogenes, the Doctor's Dog' [sw253] later reprinted in 'United Irishman'
15Feb (Sun)
no-date: outing to Tours with Chown to hear opera at cathedral [pc207] picks up Dujardin's Les lauriers sont coupées
16Feb (Mon)
no food all day (42 hours total) [L2-29]
no-date: comforts self when hungry by reciting poems, etc [mbk323]
17Feb (Tue)
May sells carpet to send £0/3/4 [L2-29]
18Feb (Wed)
19Feb (Thu)
20Feb (Fri)
no-date: up till 4am waiting for checks
budget [hg184] (J seems to use a conversion rate of 8p = 1fr, or two shillings = three francs)
1st Month
from 23 January 1903 to 20 February 1903 (exclusive of Hotel Bill)
Received 25--
15.50 £ 4 1 5 1/2
27 / Total Debts
24.50 / -----------
15.65 / £ 1 14 8
15.10 / / -----------
------ / /
122.75 /
------ 14 8 1/2
Debts 5 0 (Casey) / + £ 1 0 0 (Gogarty)
10 0 (Chown) /
3.40 (Casey fils)
--------- /
18.40 /
-------
Hotel Bill (appr) £ 1 7 2 1/2
30 0 /
1.20 /
2.80 /
-------- /
34.0 /
------- Hotel Bill - 38fr 70c
----------------------------------------------
TOTAL EXPENSES
--------------
156.75 -£-5-8-8- £ 6 4 9 1/2
4.70 -3-9- 3 9
------ ----- ----------
161.45 -£-5-12-5- £ 6 8 6 1/2
----------------------------------------------
Remainder - 0
Jas A Joyce11pm meal [L2-34]
21Feb (Sat)
Maud Gonne marries Major MacBride in Paris [L2-32]
L2-29 to May: 20 hrs w/o food; no news from 'Speaker' or 'Express'; plans to do own cooking; 'fear you aren't doing what I said about Stannie'; "I have not gone to Miss Gonne nor do I intend to go"; transcribes music for 'Upa Upa'
hotel bill due: 1/6/0 [L2-29]
fast all day [L2-34]
7pm: meal [L2-34]
22Feb (Sun)
sees marriage-news in paper, hopes smashed? [speculation]
?L2-34 to May, very short-tempered: letter unintelligible, Gaze's closed so couldn't cash MO; 40hr fast following 20hr; shall sit in room all day; 5 fr due from new pupil, Auvergniot [Ellmann thinks 08Mar]
With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Fermé. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. [Proteus]
23Feb (Mon)
24Feb (Mardi Gras)
proofs from 'Speaker' [L2-31]
money from home spent on kitchen supplies (stove, saucepan, plate, cup, saucer, knife, fork, spoons, bowl, salt, sugar, figs, macaroni, cocoa) to reduce expenses and avoid "constant periods of fasting" [SL15] also cigar, confetti, supper (vomited) [L2-31]
hotel bill presented: 1/10/0 incl 3/0 for 7 candles [L2-31]
25Feb (Wed)
felt very bad all day [L2-31]
dinner: 2 hardboiled eggs, bread and butter, macaroni, figs, cocoa [L2-31]
26Feb (Thu)
felt better except attacks of neuralgia (nerve pain) [L2-31]
brunch: cold ham, bread&butter, Swiss cream w/sugar [L2-31]
sends 'Express' account of Mardi Gras, never published [L2-31]
dinner: 2 poached eggs, Vienna bread, macaroni, milk, cocoa, figs [L2-31]
SL15/L2-30 to JSJ: 0/18/0 in debt, send 1/10/0 by 01Mar
"I am seriously thinking of entering the church if I find editors and managers and 'practical' people so very stubborn as they appear to be."
27Feb (Fri)
early am: the big wind in Ireland [jfb73]
brunch: last of ham, bread&butter, Swiss cream w/sugar, last of figs [L2-31]
28Feb (Sat)
Stannie: 'He had learned in Paris that the world was not waiting for him' [mbk231]
Mar: AE to Thomas Mosher: 'Joyce may do something. He is proud as Lucifer...' [e100]
01Mar (Sun)
planned dinner: mutton stew w/potatoes, mushrooms, lentils, cocoa, biscuits
02Mar (Mon)
L2-32: May sends £1/12/0; JSJ strange lately, Stannie works and wants to send JAJ money, Charlie refuses to work, says he'll sing in streets; Stannie tutoring Charlie; send suit home for cleaning
no-date: Stannie claims to have worked ten months without pay as an apprentice accountant [mbk205]
03Mar (Tue)
L2-34 to JSJ: paid landlady; have Stannie dun Express after 11pm???
04Mar (Wed)
05Mar (Thu)
06Mar (Fri)
comment in esthetic notebook [cw145] lyric, epical, dramatic [hg97]
Synge arrives in Paris for a week [pc206]
07Mar (Sat)
paid 25 francs, 8 went for debts [L2-35]
08Mar (Sun)
calls on Synge at 90 rue d'Assas, leaves card
L2-34 from Synge: meet tomorrow 10am under Odeon Cloisters; only here for week
09Mar (Mon)
10am: meets Synge [L2-35]
no-date: JAJ shows Synge collection of solecisms (and esthetic?) [cw127n, L2-35] solecisms-collection titled 'Memorabilia' [hg89]
JAJ reads 'Riders' [etext] [L2-35]
Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C'est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i' the forest. [Scylla]
SL17/L2-35 to Stannie: write Unicorn Press, get 'Everyman' and 'Elizabethan Songs'; running for post; will write Charlie end of week; planning entertainment; cold
"I have written fifteen epiphanies-- of which twelve are insertions, and three additions" [SL17] (so there was a sequence, and not just chrono-by-date-written. chrono-by-date-experienced? chrono-by-age-of-actors, as in Dubliners?)
She comes at night when the city is still, invisible, inaudible, all unsummoned. She comes from her ancient seat to visit the least of her children, mother most venerable, as though he had never been alien to her. She knows the inmost heart; therefore, she is gentle, nothing exacting, saying, I am susceptible of change, an imaginative influence in the hearts of my children. Who has pity for you when you are sad among the strangers? Years and years I loved you when you lay in my womb.
Stannie thinks this one expresses a dislike of prostitutes: [mbk254]
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... No man has loved them, and they have not loved themselves: they have given nothing for all that has been given them.
10Mar (Tue)
11Mar (Wed)
12Mar (Thu)
13Mar (Fri)
no-date: JAJ tries to convince Synge to visit carnival with him in St Cloud [e124]
Synge departs, writes Lady G on 26Mar [e125n] 'He seems to be pretty badly off... unbrushed and rather indolent... Ben Jonson... French literature I understand is beneath him! ...being gradually won over by the charm of French life... coming back to Dublin in the summer to live there on journalism while he does his serious work at his leisure'
no-date: Gogarty letter to JAJ: Eglinton told OG 'There is something sublime in Joyce's standing alone.' [L2-38]
"Dear Joyce, It is myself that write to answer the letter you kindly sent me and I waiting for it in Ireland. For a long time I have been wanting to speak to you and tell you what I was thinking about you. Yourself it is that must have had the strange thoughts about me not writing to you, and you so long gone from the old place where you were born and reared. There are fine poets in your country who have been making songs in the tounge [sic] in which the sons of Usna were betrayed." [uoc74. 'Kiltartan dialect' refers to Lady G more than Synge, I think]
14Mar (Sat)
plays by Yeats and Gregory premiere at Molesworth Hall [cal]
no-date: Gogarty meets Elwood at 'the Play'? [uoc77]
15Mar (Sun)
walk thru woods of Clamart to Sèvres, back by steamer [SL19, L2-38]
mid-March: death of ?58yo Richard 'Ned' Thornton ('Tom Kernan') [L2-39, pc124]
16Mar (Mon)
reading every day in Bib Nationale and nights in Bib Sainte-Genevieve reading only Aristotle's Metaphysics (in French? mbk198) and Ben Jonson; vespers at Notre Dame or Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois
Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. [Nestor]
JAJ reads all of Jonson systematically [mbk198] excerpts in notebook from Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels', 'The Poetaster', 'Volpone', 'Epicoene', 'The Devil is an Ass', 'The Staple of News', 'The New Inn' [hg95]
17Mar (Tue)
sends in Gregory review [L2-36]
5:45pm L2-35 to May from Grand Boulevard: out all day; no suit for Irish Ball tonight
18Mar (Wed)
no-date: wrote back to Ghezzi [L2-38]
19Mar (Thu)
L2-36 fragment from May: MO for 0/9/0; JSJ working at Mountjoy Sq; Stannie wants to send money but not being paid; Charlie more sensible, pleased with his letter; eyes very bad but health better
second month's account: expenses reduced from 161 to 106 francs; debts 19 francs, paid 7 and borrowed 7 [L2-37, hg107]
2nd. month:
from 20 February to 20 March 1903 (exclusive of hotel-bill)
Received 6.40
21.40
9.50
25.20
17.00
------
79.50 and
40.20
38.70 (Hotel-bill)
------
1.50 1.50 £3/4/9 1/2
----- £ 4/8
81.00 francs ==========
£3/0/1 1/2
Debts paid 1.50 £1/6/0
5.50 ==========
----- £4/6/1 1/2
7.00 francs
=====
74.00 francs
Hotel-bill 30.00 (probably) Present Debts
1.80 Chown 10.00
.80 fr.c. Casey fils 2.00
------ Casey 5.50
32.60 francs Casey 2.00
====== Hotel-bill 33.00 -----
106.60 francs 19.50
-----
(And Gogarty £1/0/0 = 25.00)
-----
44.5020Mar (Fri)
laughing and singing down Blvd Saint-Michel anticipating dinner [L2-37]
SL19/L2-38 to May: Douce paid advance to 27Mar, Auv to 16Mar; no clean linen, black suit presentable but other not; will write Lady G about severe review; don't intend to shave
"My book of songs will be published in the spring of 1907. My first comedy about five years later. My 'Esthetic' about five years later again."
21Mar (Sat)
finally sends two more reviews to Express after two delays (unpublished?) [L2-36/38/39]
review of Ibsen's 'Catalina' in The Speaker [mbk219, cw98]
no-date: paid Casey 2 fr [L2-39]
22Mar (Sun)
am: got 'Speaker' with review [L2-39]
23Mar (Mon)
plans to write Aunt Jo [L2-38]
1:45pm: L2-39 to May: send more
24Mar (Tue)
25Mar (Wed)
comment in esthetic notebook [cw145] rhythm [hg98]
plans to send notes to O'Hara at Irish Times [L2-39]
misses Fournier the race-driver [L2-39]
26Mar (Thu)
L2-39 to May: couldn't cash MO, got hotel bill, send more
JAJ's critical review of Lady Gregory in Daily Express [SL18, mbk220, cw102]
27Mar (Fri)
?L2-40 from May with 0/5/0 MO: pay Casey; send measurements for suit
comment in esthetic notebook [cw145] art imitates nature [hg98]
interviews Fournier? [L2-39]
28Mar (Sat)
comment in esthetic notebook [cw145] def of art [hg98]
29Mar (Sun)
LadyG to Synge: "Poor Joyce! The funny thing is that Longworth of the Express, whom I had asked for work for Joyce has sent him my Poets & Dreamers to review, as a kindness to us both! I wonder what the review will be like!" [Saddlemyer p43] (heh)
WBY had reviewed it in 1902: [etext]
30Mar (Mon)
planned visit to Comtesse Vercelli-Rawson with Casey fils [L2-39]
31Mar (Tue)
no-date: Maddox [n32] claims JAJ 'tormented by fantasies of homosexuality and sadomasochism'
But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! [Proteus]
Love that dare not speak its name. --As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a lord. Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them. [Scylla]
Stannie claims these two poems were written in Paris: (CMxxiii and CMxxxiv)
Now, O now in this brown land
Where Love did so sweet music make,
We two shall wander, hand in hand,
Forbearing for old friendship' sake,
Nor grieve because our love was gay
And now is ended in this way.A rogue in red and yellow dress
Is knocking, knocking at the tree;
And all around our loneliness
The wind is whistling merrily.
The leaves-- they do not sigh at all
When the year takes them in the fall.Now, O now we hear no more
The vilanelle and roundelay;
Yet will we kiss, sweetheart, before
We take sad leave at close of day.
Grieve not, sweetheart, for anything--
The year, the year is gathering.
Sleep now, O sleep now,
O you unquiet heart!
A voice crying 'Sleep now'
Is heard in my heart.The voice of the winter
Is heard at the door.
O sleep, for the winter
Is crying 'Sleep no more'My kiss will give peace now
And quiet to your heart--
Sleep on in peace now,
O you unquiet heart!
01Apr (Wed)
02Apr (Thu)
03Apr (Fri)
JSJ, Mat Kane, Charlie Chance, and Mr Boyd attend 3-day 'Grace' retreat [dd55, mbk225, j&c251, cf pc179 'autumn'] (there's no supporting evidence for this so I'm inclined to move it to autumn 1902)
04Apr (Sat)
L2-40 to May: paid bill; make suit blue with matching felt hat from Plasto's; well-packed pudding; have Stannie send last two 'St Stephen's' and Holy Week book; send MOs from GPO before 6pm; Casey wants 3 fr more
Fournier interview to Irish Times [L2-40]
05Apr (Sun)
06Apr (Mon)
07Apr (Tue)
race-driver interview in 'Irish Times' [pc207, cw106]
08Apr (Wed)
receives 0/13/9 for interview [pc207]
09Apr (Thu)
10Apr (Good Friday)
services at Notre Dame all afternoon, until 9pm [pc207]
NOTHER DYING telegram from JSJ [pc208]
L2-41 to May: what's wrong
borrows 75 francs from Douce [pc208, hg108]
11Apr (Sat)
L2-41 telegram to JSJ: arrive morning
am: leaves from Gare St Lazaire [pc208]
epiphany:
I lie along the deck, against the engine-house, from which the smell of lukewarm grease exhales. Gigantic mists are marching under the French cliffs, enveloping the coast from headland to headland. The sea moves with the sound of many scales... Beyond the misty walls, in the dark cathedral church of Our Lady, I hear the bright, even voices of boys singing before the altar there.
"Pretending to speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back: Le Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge, a blue French telegram, curiosity to show: --Nother dying come home father." [Proteus]
12Apr (Easter)
JSJ meets boat, takes JAJ's hand [j&c253]
"Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me." [Scylla]
Apr-Aug: May nursed by Aunt Jo [mbk233]
17Apr (Fri): after walking and debating all week, Byrne tells JAJ their friendship can't continue (they also debate J's refusal to do Easter duty at mother's request?) [jfb84, and cf PoA5]
(if this is the discussion at SH138, as JFB implies, could there be Franciscans involved here too?)
18Apr (Sat): JAJ writes JFB to reconcile [L2-41]
19Apr (Sun): 1pm meeting with JFB, admits his fault but can't explain it, gradually healed by June 1904 [jfb84]
24Apr (Fri): JSJ takes 3rd mortgage for £50 [e106] repays Douce [j&c253]
spring: Gogarty's version of meeting JAJ involves a tram, in the spring, whan JAJ lived in Cabra, spending many days in OG's Glasnevin garden [mbms41]
no-date: Gogarty wins Vice Chancellor's Prize at Trinity for poem 'Cervantes: Tercentenary of Don Quixote' (set topic) [uoc19, sw23]
14May: John McCormack wins Feis Ceoil [cite]
Jun: 25yo Skeffington weds 26yo Hanna Sheehy [e205]
Hanna much later
no-date: epiphany of engaged merchandise:
She is engaged. She dances with them in the round-- a white dress lightly lifted as she dances, a white spray in her hair; eyes a little averted, a faint glow on her cheek. Her hand is in mine for a moment, softest of merchandise.
-- You very seldom come here now.--
-- Yes I am becoming something of a recluse.
-- I saw your brother the other day... He is very like you.--
-- Really?--
She dances with them in the round-- evenly, discreetly, giving herself to none. The white spray is ruffled as she dances, and when she is in shadow the glow is deeper on her cheek.
(I'm starting to think Mary Sheehy was Stannie's red herring, and it was Maggie (or maybe Hanna, as here?) that J favored. 'recluse' might work at Xmas as well, with this epiphany being written in Paris?)
08Jun (week): amateur Dublin production of 'Doll's House'
no-date: JAJ (w/Cosgrave?) to Colum "two frightful examples of the will to live" (picking up girls) [ofjj47] shortly after amateur 'Doll's House' [more likely Hedda Gabler April 1904?]
Jul: Joyce mocks election of new pope at Sheehy party (Leo XIII died Jul 1903) [e93 via Sheehy]
no-date: "A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting." [Telemachus]
early-Aug: JSJ almost strangles May for lingering [mbk233]
12Aug? (Wed): JAJ ignores uncle John Murray's order to kne