17. Book Reviews XIII: Irish Literature (Joyce, Yeats)

I. Dubliners, James Joyce
II. A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, James Joyce
III. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
IV. Ulysses, James Joyce
V. Selected Writings, W.B. Yeats


I. Dubliners, James Joyce

Two Gallants
1. The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets.
2. Lenehan said no more. He did not wish to ruffle his friend’s temper, to be sent to the devil and told that his advice was not wanted.
3. Refers to Silent O' Moyle, from Songs of Ireland, by Mary O'Hara.
4. Make up your own life, write the script of your own life.
5. The Irish people are overwhelmingly Catholic.
6. Refers to the Great Famine of Ireland, or the Irish Potato Famine.
7. In the city, make life up as you go along: sometimes go to a restaurant to sit and eat, sometimes do this, sometimes do that.
8. The end.
9. To be continued.
10. The Boarding House
11. Mrs Mooney was a butcher's daughter. She had married her father's foreman. But as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr Mooney began to go to the devil. He drank, gambled, and ran into debt.
12. One night he went for his wife with a cleaver. After that they lived apart. She went to the priest and got a separation from him with care of the children.
13. He was a shabby stooped little drunkard with a white face and a white moustache. Mrs. Mooney was a big, imposing woman.
14. Mrs Mooney set up a boarding house. Jack Mooney was her son. When he met his friends he had always a good one to tell them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing.
15. During one ordeal, Mrs Mooney intervened. She dealt with moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she made up her mind.
16. In the end of the story, Mrs Mooney's daughter marries her boyfriend.
17. The Little Cloud
18. The protagonist in this story's name is Gallaher.
19. There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.
20. It was a pity his name was not more Irish-looking. Thomas Malone Chandler, or T. Malone Chandler perhaps would be better.

21. --Does a fellow good, a bit of a holiday. I feel a ton better since I landed again in dear dirty Dublin. Here you are, Tommy. Water? Say when.
Little Chandler allowed his whisky to be very much diluted.
22. --I drink very little as a rule, said Little Chandler modestly.
--Ah, well, said Ignatius Gallaher, cheerfully, here's to us and to old times and old acquaintance.
They clinked glasses and drank the toast.
23. --I met some of the old gang today: O'Hara, Hogan.
24. After some discussion, "The old personal charm was still there under this new gaudy manner. And, after all, Gallaher had lived, he had seen the world. Little Chandler looked at his friend enviously."
25. --Everything in Paris is gay. They believe in enjoying life. And mind you, they've a great feeling for the Irish there.
26. --Ignatius Gallaher puffed thoughtfully at his cigar and then, in a calm historian's tone, he proceeded to sketch some pictures of the corruption which was rife abroad. He summarised the vices of many capitals...He revealed many of the secrets of religious houses on the Continent...
27. --Well Tommy, he said, I wish you and yours every joy in life, and may you never die till I shoot you. And that's the wish of a sincere friend.
28. Gallaher gave Little Chandler a chance to talk. Little Chandler impresses Gallaher.
29. A volume of Byron's poems lay before him on the table. He began to read the first poem in the book.
30. The child awoke and began to cry. It was useless. He couldn't read. The child was crying too loudly.
31. The end.

Dubliners, James Joyce
18. Counterparts
19. A story about a businessman, Mr Alleyne. He was a little old man, with a bald head, which looked like a large egg.
20. Do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?

21. You ruffian! You apologise to me for your impertinence! You apologise to me!
22. He felt annoyed at himself and with everyone else.
23. I don't think that's a fair question to put to me, says I.
24. After drinking, they were all beginning to feel mellow.
25. When Paddy Leonard called him he found that they were talking about feats of strength. Weathers was showing his biceps muscle to the company and boasting. The two arms were examined and compared and finally it was agreed to have a trial of strength. The two began arm wrestling.
26. --You're not to put the weight of your body behind it. Play fair, he said.
27. --Light the lamp. What do you mean by having the place in darkness? Are the other children in bed?
28. Omitted.
29. Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose and a very long chin. She talked a little through her nose, always soothingly.
30. And Ginger Mooney was always saying what she wouldn't do...Everyone was so fond of Maria.

31. Joe was a good fellow. She had raised him and Alphy too, and Joe used to always speak kindly of them.
32. In a few minutes the women began to come in by twos and threes.
Notes:
33. coppers. Slang:penny coins.
34. tracts on the walls. Religious and biblical texts hung on the walls for the moral improvement of the inmates.
35. tincture. Literally a slight trace; euphemism for a drink which is hardly a drink at all and scarcely counts.
36. smahan. Irish: a taste, used similar to 'a tincture.'
37. In Virgil's ten pastoral poems Bucolica the Roman poet characterized rustic life as essentially innocent.
38. six shillings. A considerable sum for a man, with a wife and family to support on a clerk's wages.
39. caraway seed. A particularly pungent seed of a herbal plant of the carrot family. Useful in disguising the smell of alcohol on the breath, so available in the pub.
30. lambabaun. Irish term of affection: lamb-child. Jesus in the Gospel of St John is described by John the Baptist as 'the lamb of God'.
31. very flush. Slang: with lots of spending money.
32. gone to the dogs. Slang. deteriorated markedly, especially in moral and personal matters.
33. Lithia. A mineral water characterized by the presence of mineral salts, especially lithium.
34. Atalantas. In Greek mythology Atalanta would marry no one who could not beat her in a foot-race. In archaic art Atalanta is often shown as a huntress and as an athlete in short tunic.
35. when his hour had struck. When his working day had ended.
36. Silent O Moyle. One of the Irish Melodies by Thomas Moore.
37. strangers. Traditional mode of reference to the English invasion and occupation of Ireland.
38. Bunsen Burner. A gas burner which produces an extremely hot blue flame, often used in chemistry experiments in the classroom.
39. ragged boys...ragged girls...the ragged troop. Possibly a reference to pupils of charitable schools run by Catholic and Protestant agencies for the education of the city's poor.
40. After the Race, is the correct title of the short story.

41. electric candle lamps. Electric bulbs shaped to look like lit candles. In 1903 only the most pretentious of hotels would have boasted such amenities.
42. Candles and lamps (old fashioned,) have historically been used at night.
43. To be continued.
44. We are taught in life, not to accept things that don’t make sense.


Wednesday, June 19, 2024


Dubliners, James Joyce
1. A Painful Case
2. The protagonist in this story is named Mr Duffy.
3. Duffy. The name derives from the Irish Dubh: black or dark.
4. He met a young girl, and they talked. "While they talked he tried to fix her permanently in his memory."
5. After he reads news about the girl in the newspaper, he begins to think. In the end, because of his faulty thinking, he is alone.
6. In modern phraseology or slang, the moral of this story is: even though we don't always understand our partner, don't get upset. Just let your girlfriend get you; women have a way about them.
7. Notes
8. saturnine. Medieval medicine attributed psychological states to the influence of the body, and the influence of the planets.
9. Mozart's music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Austrian composer whose works were acclaimed in late Victorian times for their genial good spirits.
10. reefer over-coat. A tight-fitting jacket of thick cloth.
11. Ivy Day in the Committee Room
12. The protagonist in this story is named Mr O'Connor.
13. Mr O'Connor rolls tobacco into cigarettes meditatively.
14. Omitted.
15. What's the world coming to when people behave that way?
16. Won't he? said Mr Hynes. Wait till you see whether he will or not. I know him. Is it Tricky Dicky Tierney.
17. Uses the slang "floosie," to refer to women.
18. Mr Henchy began to snuffle and to rub his hands over the fire at a terrific speed.
19. It's no go, said Mr Henchy, shaking his head. I asked the little shoeboy, and he agreed.
20. --What did I tell you, Mat? said Mr Hynes. Tricky Dicky Tierney.
--O, he's as tricky as they make 'em.
21. You can play with anyone's name.
22. Military voice, military mind.
23. Some of these people are a little too clever if you ask me, said Mr Henchy.
24. Sure, that'll be alright. I'm sure she has forgotten all about it.
25. Yes...but he's not worth anything as a canvasser. He hasn't a word to throw to a dog.
26. People have things to say, people have things to talk about, if you give them time to talk about them.
27. The French have a tradition of looking down and thinking while walking, that is, they look down, walk, and think.
28. Mr Crofton got up from his box and went to the fire.
--Right you are, Crofton! said Mr Henchy.
29. "The Death of Parnell"
He fell as the mighty ones,
No sound of strife disturb his sleep.
Calmly he rests: no human pain
Or high ambition spurs him now.
Rise, like a Phoenix from the flames,

33. the thin end of the wedge. In logging the thin end of the wedge opens the wood to prepare for the thicker end which finishes the job. The implication of this proverbial phrase is that, the first step taken, there is no going back.
34. the Irish Revival. The Irish literary and cultural renaissance, a movement which since the 1880s had sought to raise Irish national awareness through cultivation of aspects of Celtic and Gaelic civilization.
35. "Dubliners," contains stories which are based on the lives of real people in Ireland.
36. A Mother
37. The protagonist in this story is named Mr Holohan.
38. He had a game leg and for this his friends called him Hoppy Holohan.
39. Reminds us that a smoked ham is simply a bigger version of thinly sliced ham.
40. To be continued.

41. Notes
42. the real cheese. Slang: the real thing, the authentic experience.
43. Allan Line. A passenger shipping line out of Liverpool in England that served the Pacific coast of North America by way of a voyage which involved sailing round Cape Horn, calling at Beunos Aires en route.
44. Persia. Now Iran. Throughout the nineteenth century the Orient was associated with romance and mystery.
45. High Toast. Brand of snuff, i.e. pulverized tobacco to be snuffed up the nostrils.
46. racing tissues. Cheap publications about horse racing.
47. (name lost). - the Irish name for a drink with only a few drops of alcohol in it.
48. Lanterns, in addition to candles, can also be helpful at night.
49. A Mother
50. Miss Devlin often tried to console herself by eating a great deal of Turkish Deligh in secret.
51. She bought the dress. I cost a pretty penny; but there are certain occasions when a little expense is justifiable.
52. One of these gentlemen was Mr O'Madden Burke. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely respected.
53. He had paid his money and wished to be at peace with men. However, he said that Mrs Kearney might have taken the artistes into consideration.
54. "If you're a lady, then act like a lady."

57. ...a tall agile gentleman of fair complexion, wearing a long yellow ulster, came from the far end of the bar.
58. Mr Kernan was helped into the house. His wife put him to bed while Mr Power sat downstairs in the kitchen asking the children where they went to school and what book they were in.
59. I know you're a friend of his not like some of those others he does be with. They're all right so long as he has money in his pocket to keep him out from his wife and family. Nice friends!
60. The part of mother presented to her no insuperable difficulties and for twenty-five years she had kept house shrewdly for her husband.

61. Mr Cunningham was the very man for such a case. He was an elder colleague of Mr Power. His own domestic life was not very happy. People had great sympathy with him because he had married a woman who was an incurable drunkard.
62. The scheme might do good and, at least, it could do no harm.
63. Tell the truth, I want you to tell me the truth.
64.--It keeps coming like down from my throat; sickening thing.
--Yes, yes, said Mr M'Coy, that's the thorax.
65. Mr Power said:
--Ah, well, all's well that ends well.
66. Mr Power did not relish the use of his Christian name.
67. --You see, we may as well all admit we're a nice collection of scoundrels, one and all.
68. --And tell me, Martin...Is he a good preacher?
--Mmmno...It's not exactly a sermon, you know. It's just a kind of a friendly talk, in a common-sense way.
69. --Pope Leo XIII., said Mr Cunningham, was one of the lights of the age. His great idea, was the union of the Latin and Greek churches.
70. --The old system was the best: plain honest education. None of your modern trumpery.
71. In one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr Cunningham and Mr Kernan. In the bench behind sat Mr M'Coy alone: and in the bench behind him sat Mr Power and Mr Fogarty.
72. The preacher read a verse from the Bible. It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, to interpret properly.
73. Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to be straight and manly with God.
74. The Dead
75. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.
76. Enjoy life while you're young, because before you know it, you'll be old, and about to die.
77. For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
Which nobody can deny.
78. The end.

79. Notes
80. Royal Irish Constabulart in Dublin Castle. The R.I.C. an armed militia-like poliice force that was responsible for the security of the state in the country at large.
81. the holy alls of it. Slang from the Irish: the truth of the matter, all that's to be said about it.
82. good with the mits. - skilled at fighting.
83. Robert Browning. English Victorian poet. Although his passionate wooing of his wife, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was a famous love story, his poetry was often reckoned by Victorian and Edwardian readers to be obscure and difficult.
84. references Joyce's poem "She Weeps for Rahoon."
85. snow was general all over Ireland. A very rare occurrence indeed given Ireland's generally temperate climate.
86. The end.



II. A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, James Joyce
1. Tells a humorous story about a moocow coming down the road. And the moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt (lemon candy).
2. His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
3. When Stephen was younger, he hid under the table.
4. Pull out his eyes...apologise - derived from Song XXIII of Isaac Watts' Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children.
5. The wide playgrounds were swarming with boys. The evening air was pale and chilly and after every charge and thud of the footballers the greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light.
6. If you have a dog in a blanket, then you have a dog-in-a-blanket. If you have a dog in a bag, then you have a doggie-bag.
7. Nasty Roche asks his name, he replies, --Stephen Dedalus.
"Then Nasty Roche had said: --What kind of name is that?"
And Stephen had not been able to answer, so Nasty Roche asked a different question.
8. Cantwell says: --Go and fight your match. Give Cecil Thunder a belt. I'd like to see you.
9. Then at the door of the castle the rector, his soutane fluttering in the breeze, the car had driven off with his father and mother in it.
10. Dante knew a lot of things. She taught him where the Mozambique Channel was and what was the longest river in America and what was the name of the highest mountain in the moon.

11. And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was queer and wettish. But soon the gas would be lit and in burning it made a light noise like a little song.
12. "He enjoys drinking hot tea, and he enjoys drinking hot cocoa."
Many people from different world cultures enjoy drinking tea year round.
13. Stephen Dedalus - the name conjoins the first Christian martyr, St Stephen, stoned to death outside Jerusalem in 34 AD, and the great pagan artificer-artist hero, Daedalus.
14. After being impressed by a silk badge, "he tried his best so that York might not lose."
15. kiss your mother - probably a reference to St Aloysius Gonzaga, a famous Jesuit who is reported to have avoided even looking at his mother. This version of the Oedipal complex understandably worries Stephen. Kissing his mother or being kissed by her is an anxiety that recurs throughout the novel.
16. Dingdong!...carry my soul away - anonymous nursery rhyme.
17. He heard the noise of the refrectory every time he opened the flaps of his ear. It made a roar. When he closed his ears, the sound abruptly went off. He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and then stopping, roaring again, stopping.
18. And how cold and slimy the water had been! And a fellow had once seen a big rat jump plop into the scum.
19. Recommends that you stay in school.
20. He was writing. "He read the verse backwards but then they were not poetry."

21. He could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen.
22. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person praying. This applied to people praying in all the different languages of the world, too.
23. It pained him that he did not know what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended.

Sunday, June 23, 2024


A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, James Joyce
1. Stephen grew up, aged a few years.
2. "Mr Dedalus went over to the sideboard. He brought forth a great stone jar of whisky from the locker and filled the decanter slowly, bending now and then to see how much he had poured in, Then replacing the jar in the locker he poured a little of the whisky into two glasses, added a little water and came back with them to the fireplace."
2. Stephen's companion's name is Mercedes.
3. "One of the jobs of the priest was to prevent people from sinning." Emphasizes the importance of being pious.
4. Stephen observed a spirit of quarrelsome comradeship in his rival.
5. The road smelled like horse pee and rotted straw, he thought. "But it is a good odor to breathe. It will calm my heart. My heart is quite calm now. I will go back."
6. To be continued.
7. M. - "Many of the people of Africa speak quietly and slowly."
8. To be continued.
9. M. - Our emotions can sometimes control us more than our sense of reason.


Tuesday, June 25, 2024


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
1. "Rhythm is a characteristic of being soulful."
2. How to Read a Book is a book where Mortimer Adler recommends "systemic skimming," or reading the first line of every paragraph, when a reader does not want to read the entire book.
3. "Yes, his mother was hostile to the idea, as he had read from her listless silence."
4. "He set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him."
5. "...to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty."
6. "Some people can talk in a deep bass note."
7. "...it was a great day for European culture, he said."
8. "...that seems to be a maze out of which we cannot escape. I see however, two ways out."
9. Distinguishes pure science from applied science.
10. To be continued.

11. "He's taking pure mathematics and I'm taking constitutional history. There are twenty subjects."
12. "I'm taking botany too. You know I'm a member of the field club."
13. "Aquinas says pulcritudinem tria reuiruntur, integritas, consonantia, claritas. I translate itso: Three things are needed for beauty, wholeness, harmony and radiance."
14. "The anonymous artist is a strong figure."
15. Discusses midwifery.
16. "He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweet music."
17. "A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water, sweet as dew, moving as music."
18. Possessed an Irish phrasebook.
19. "And yet he felt that, however he might revile and mock her image, his anger was also a form of homage."
20. She represented the womanhood of her country.
21. To be continued.
21. M. - "Let my words disappear in the wind, like rain disappearing after a storm."



Thursday, June 27, 2024


A Portrait of the Artist, James Joyce
1. M. - "One person turned the hearts of the people against another person, he started a campaign in the eyes of the people to tarnish the reputation of the other person, and cause his destruction." --Homer
2. M. - "There are good ideas, and there are bad ideas."
3. M. - "He only thought evil thoughts." --The Fairie Queen, Edmund Spenser
4. --With guns and cattle, added Stephen, pointing to the titlepage of Cranly's book on which was printed Diseases of the Ox.
5. --The captain has only one love: sir Walter Scott. Isn't that so, captain?
--I love old Scott, the flexible lips said. I think he writes something lovely. There is no write can touch sir Walter Scott.
He moved a thin shrunken brown hand gently in the air in time to his praise and his thin quick eyelids beat often over his sad eyes.
6. The park trees were heavy with rain and fell still and ever in the lake, lying grey like a shield.
7. --Tell us, Temple, O'Keefe said, how many quarts of potter have you in you?
--All your intellectual soul is in that phrase, O'keefe said Temple with open scorn.
8. "Our speeds and clarity of speech differ according to varying conditions: fast, slow, with a slight stutter, clearly."
9. --What age is your mother?
--Not old, Stephen said. She wishes to make my easter duty.
10. The characters have a discussion about religion.
11. It is important to speak clearly and with coherence.

12. "...in certain circumstances it is not unlawful to rob."
" " Research in Psychiatry and Law
13. Apply to the Jesuit theologian Juan Mariana de Talavera who will also explain to you what circumstances you may lawfully kill your king.
14. --Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not even one friend.
15. "I wonder if William Bond will die
For assuredly he is very ill."
16. 25 March, morning: Strange figures advance from a cave. They are not as tall as men. One does not seem to stand apart from another. Their faces are phosphorescent, with darker streaks. They peer at me and their eyes seem to ask me something. They do not speak.
17. 11 April: Read what I wrote last night. Vague words for a vague emotion.
18. 13 April: That has been on my mind for a long time. I looked it up and find it English and good old blunt English too. Damn the dean of studies and his funnel! What did he come here for to teach us his own language or to learn it from us? Damn him one way or the other!
19. 15 April: Met her today in Grafton Street...This confused her more and I felt sorry and mean...I made a sudden gesture of a revolutionary nature.
20. 26 April: So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience...

21. Notes
22. rector: the rector is the ecclesiastic who has charge of the government of a college. He is superior to the prefect of studies and the prefect of a discipline, both of whom are also ecclesiatics.
23. seventyseven to seventysix: the number of days to go to the end of the first term.
24. green rose: possibly the references to red, green and roses are covert allusions to Ireland, traditionally associated with the rose in its dark or sacrifically crimson shades.
25. dead mass: a Mass for the dead, a Requiem Mass. The colours of the vestments for such a Mass would be black and gold.
26. Bodenstown: this townland in County Kildare contains the churchyard in which Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish republicanism, is buried.
27. boss: a kind of footstool.
28. Bless us, O Lord...Amen: a standard prayer recited before meals.
29. The bishops...the English people?: in November 1890, Parnell's divorce case came up for trial... On 29 November he published his Manifest to the Irish People, an intemperate attack on his enemies. The Catholic hierarchy intervened decisively in December, just before the Parliamentary Party met to consider Parnell's position.
30. renegade catholics: the practice, quite common under the Penal Laws of Ireland, of changing one's faith from Catholicism to Protestantism in order to retain property or the means of survival. A proper nationalist pedigree would bear no such stain.

31. Tower of Ivory...House of Gold!: a litany is a form of united prayer by alternate sentences, in which the clergy lead and the people respond. The Litany of Our Lady came into general use about the thirteenth century...
32. priestridden: the reorganization of the Catholic Church in Ireland after the Famine was undertaken by Cardinal Paul Cullen.
33. whiteboy: the Whiteboys were an agrarian secret society that flourished initially in the 1760s. They wore white garments to help identify one another at night during their raids on stock, farmhouses and the like. Their grievances were payments of tithes, raised tents, enclosures and various taxes. Whiteboyism endured, in different forms, into the nineteenth century. The movement was condemned on several occasions by the Catholic Church.
34. car: a two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle.
35. boatbearer: the server who carries the vessel that holds the incense before it is transferred to the censer in the rite of Benediction...The incense is then transferred to the thurbile, burnt and the thurbile swung before the Host.
36. a sprinter: a racing cyclist.
37. cricket was coming: rugby football, a winter sport, was giving way to cricket, a summer game.
38. rounders: a mild version of baseball.
39. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: Macbeth, Act V, scene v.
40. Magnall's Questions: Richmal Magnall (1769-1820) published Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the use of Young People in 1800. It remained in use throughout the nineteenth century.

41. Peter Parley's Tales: Peter Parley was the pseudonym of Samuel Griswold Goodrich, author of Peter Parley's Tales about Ancient and Modern Greece and Peter Parley's Tales about Ancient and Modern Rome.
42. saint Francis... John Berchmans: St Francis Xavier (1506-52), the most famous of Loyoloa's disciples, went as a missionary to India and Japan. He is often portrayed pointing to the crucifix on his chest, indicating the centrality of the cross to his mission.
43. To be continued.
44. black twist: tobacco twisted in a cord.
45. All serene: equivalent of 'no problem.'
46. Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes: a quotation from "The Count of Monte Cristo.' Dantes twice makes this declaration to Mercedes.
47. without...ever reaching: Stephen's heresy consists in the fact that he has denied that the soul could never come closer to divine perfection. It is orthodox, of course, to say that it can never attain it.
48. bake: hot and bothered.
49. 'Tis youth and folly...The mountain dew: the verses are from an anonymous ballad.
50. come-all-yous: popular street ballads that traditionally began with the invocation 'Come all you...'

51. Dilectus: a phrase book of Latin quotations.
52. the particular judgement: the belief that souls are judged at the moment and in the place of death.
53. He founded...prevail: Matthew 16:18-19. Joyce liked the idea that the Church was founded upon a pun -- i.e., the Latin for Peter, Petrus, also means a rock.
54. To be continued.
55. Mercedes: the beloved of Dantes who ultimately comes to live in a cottage in Marseilles.
56. in a sack...a serpent: the Roman punishment for parricide.
57. beatific vision: the sight of God, face to face, the essential bliss of angels and humankind.
58.mortal sin...venial sin: mortal sin destroys the soul; venial sin infects it but leaves it in a reparable condition.
59. The face of conscience...O why? Stephen, associating sexual arousal with sin, is, according to Catholic doctrine, in error. Concupiscence is the appetite of the fallen state. It is an incentive to sin, not a sin in itself.
60. angel guardian: Catholic belief assigns an angel guardian to every person as a defence against evil and a help towards salvation.

61. heroic offering: 'heroic' in this instance means an act by which the agent offers to God all the satisfactory works which he performs in his lifetime for the sake of another or others -- in this case for the sake of the Pope.
62. interleaved prayerbook: a prayerbook containing devotional and in memoriam cards; a serious sign of piety.
63. ...mysteries: Stephen says three chaplets to strengthen his hold on the three theological virtues -- Faith, Hope and Charity -- each identified with one of the Three Persons in God and each assigned to one of three sets of mysteries.
64. Whose symbols...fire: the New Testament emblems for the Holy Ghost were the dove and the wind. The six sins against the Holy Ghost are Presumption of God's Mercy, Despair, Resisting Christian Truth, Envy at another's spiritual good, Obstinacy in Sin, Final Impenitence. For the last of these there is no forgiveness.
65. books...saint Alphonsus Liguori: St Alphonsus (1696-1787) wrote Visits to the Most Blessed Sacrament, and Preparation for Death.
66. saint Thomas and saint Bonaventure: St Bonaventure, a Franciscan, and St Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, were friends at the University of Paris.
67. Lord Macaulay: Thomas Babington Macaulay, English historian, essayist, politician.
68. Victor Hugo: dominant figure in French Romanticism.
69. Simon Magus...no forgiveness: Simon Magus offered money in exchange for spiritual power -- hence the sin of simony. The sin against the Holy Ghost was Final Impenitence, involving a refusal to acknowledge even the existence of a spiritual force for good.
70. To be continued.


Friday, June 28, 2024

A Portrait of the Artist, James Joyce
1. "I can't answer you at this exact moment, please ask me the question at a later date when I will be more ready to give you an answer."

A Portrait of the Artist
Notes
4. novena...patron saint, the first martyr: a novena period of nine days devoted to a special prayer dedicated to a saint or the Virgin for a particular goal or purpose. Stephen was the first Christian martyr, stoned to death outside the walls of Jerusalem.
5. the fainting sickness of his stomach: because he would, as a novice, be fasting from the night before in order to be able to receive Holy Communion.
6. References The Idea of a University, by Newman.
7. References The Testimony of the Rocks; or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, by Hugh Miller.
8. Groceries: a pub that also sold groceries.
9. nuns' madhouse beyond the wall: St Vincent's Lunatic Asylum in Fairview, run by nuns.

10. Guido Cavalcanti: Italian poet (1259-1300) whose famous poetic style, developed for the expression of pure feeling, would be a contrast to the cheap world of commerce and provision shops.
11. References A Synopsis of Scholastic Philosophy for the Understanding of St Thomas, by St Thomas Aquinas.
12. Ivoire, avorio, ebur: French, Italian and Latin for 'ivory'.
13. References Metamorphoses, by Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso).
14. Horace: a selection of the poems of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 bc), the great Roman poet.
15. You've no call...no one in it: 'You've no reason to be frightened; there's no one here' (Hiberno-English speech).
16. Vive l'Irelande!: 'Long live Ireland!'
17. levite...canonicals...ephod: a levite is a subordinate priest under Mosaic law.
18. Bonum est...appetitus: 'The good that which all things desire.' Stephen is again quoting, but strategically, from the same passage in Aquinas.
19. cliffs of Moher: dramatic cliffs in County Clare.
20. tundish: this is in fact an English (Elizabethan) word, not an Irish word.

21. the souls of the lax...the prudent: the Jesuits were often accused of being worldly and of catering to the more comfortable classes.
22. two photographs: of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorvina. The Tsar issued a 'Peace Rescript' in 1898. It resulted in the Hague Peace Conference of 1899. MacCann (Sheehy-Skeffington) was an ardent supporter of this plan for world peace.
23. Ego habeo: dog-Latin, 'I have'. This schoolboy joke Latin is continued in the subsequent conversation.
24. Per pax universalis: 'for universal peace'.
25. handball: used in the game of that name. Handball was one of the games revived by the Gaelic Athletic Association. It is played on a court with an end wall and side walls.
26. Collins: Anthony Collins (1676-1729), one of the eighteenth-century deists and freethinkers. His most famous work was Discourse of Free-Thinking. In fact the first man to be called a freethinker was the Irish deist John Toland (1670-1722)
27. Lynch...criticism of life: an ironic reminder of Matthew Arnold's dictum that 'Poetry is a criticism of life'.
28. Long pace, fianna!...one, two!: military instructions from the Fenian handbook. The word 'fenian' derives from Irish 'fianna', 'warriors'.
29. To be continued.


Saturday, June 29, 2024


III. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
1. This early work by James Joyce was originally published in 1939 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Finnegans Wake' is a an experimental novel of comic fiction.
2. Joyce wrote and published articles in Italian in the local newspaper Piccolo della Sera, and continued to work on his English-language fiction.
3. After the war, the modernist poet Ezra Pound persuaded Joyce to come to Paris. His wartime publications had provided him with some fame as an avant-garde writer, as well as a degree of financial security, and he was now able to focus fully on Ulysses. Upon its completion, the American journal The Little Review began to serialize it, but this came to a halt in 1921 when a court banned the work as obscene. Following a similar reaction in England, Joyce was only able to publish Ulysses with the help of Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate living in Paris who owned and ran the bookshop Shakespeare & Co. The novel appeared in February of 1922, and is now regarded as one of the most important works of Modernist literature, and one of the most groundbreaking English language works of all time.

Joyce’s last and perhaps most challenging novel, Finnegans Wake, was published in 1939. A year later, with the prospect of a Nazi invasion looming, he fled to the south of France, before dying in 1941, at the age of 59.

Finnegans Wake
4. She carried a nice kettle of fruit.
5. His sister played in the mirror.
6. His sister cleverly tooted.
7. Sometimes she sits gloomy, “glooming so gleaming in the gloaming.”
8. Sometimes she corrected his language.
9. Then she says, “Let’s study grammar.”
10. She has a lot of stories to tell.

11. She wants to get her fortune read.
12. She had her other ways about her also.
13. "And he did a get, their anayance, and slink his hook away, aleguere come alaguerre."
14. She was a tomboy.
15. "For poor Glugger was dazed and late in his crave, ay he, laid in his grave."
16. Helpmeat too, contrasta toga, his fiery goosemother, laotsey taotsey, woman who did, he tell princes of the age about.
17. Omitted.
18. The why if he but would bite and plug his baccypipes and renownse the devlins in all their pumbs and kip the streelwarkers out of the plague and nettleses milk from sickling the honeycoombe and kop Ulo Bubo selling foulty treepes...
19. It darkles, (tinct, tint) all this our funnaminal world.
20. "Spickspuk! Spoken."

21. Glamours hath moidered’s lieb and herefore Coldours must leap no more. Lack breath must leap no more.
22. Aghatharept they fleurelly to Nebnos will and Rosocale.
23. "But listen to the mocking birde to micking barde making bared!"
24. "...king’s game, if he deign so, are in such transfusion just to know twigst timidy twomeys, for gracious sake, who is artthoudux from whose heterotropic, the sleepy or the glouch, for, shyly bawn and showly nursured, exceedingly nice girls can strike exceedingly bad times unless so richtly chosen’s by..."
25. Till they go round if they go roundagain before breakparts and all dismissed. They keep. Step keep. Step. Stop. Who is Fleur? Where is Ange? Or Gardoun
26. "A condamn quondam jontom sick af a..."
27. He does not know how his grandson’s grandson’s grandson’s grandson will stammer up in Peruvian for in the ersebest idiom I have done it equals I so shall do. He dares not think why the grandmother of the grand-mother of his grandmother’s grandmother coughed Russky with suchky husky accent since in the mouthart of the slove look at me now means I once was otherwise.
28. The Zionist lion is cryin'.
29. Only the caul knows his thousandfirst name, Hocus Crocus, Esquilocus, Finnfinn the Faineant, how feel full foes in furrinarr!
30. To be continued.

31. "Attach him! Hold! Yet stir thee, to clay, Tamor!"
32. "Too soon are coming tasbooks and goody, hominy bread and bible bee, with jaggery-yo to juju-jaw, Fine’s French phrases from the Grandmere des Grammaires and bothered parsenaps..."
33. "...about old Father Barley how he got up of a morning arley and he met with a plattonem blondes named Hips and Haws and fell in with a fellows of Trinity some header Skowood Shaws like..."
34. You’re well held now, Missy Cheekspeer, and your panto’s off! Fie, for shame, Ruth Wheatacre, after all the booz said!
35. For the Clearer of the A* from on high has spoken in tumbul-dum tambaldam to his tembledim tombaldoom worrild and, mogu--
36. To see in his horrorscup he is mehrkurios than saltz of sulphur. Terror of the noonstruck by day, cryptogam of each nightly bridable...
37. Hearasay in paradox lust. seldomers that most frequent him. That same erst crafty hakemouth which under the assumed name of Ignotus Loquor, of foggy old, harangued bellyhooting fishdrunks on their favorite stamping ground, from a father theo-balder brake.
38. But is was all so long ago. Hispano–Cathayan-Euxine, Castillian—Emeratic—Hebridian, Espanol—Cymric—Helleniky? Rolf the Ganger, Rough the Gang—ster, not a feature alike and the face the same...
39. Pastimes are past times. Now let bygones be bei Gunne’s. Saaleddies er it in this warken werden, mine boerne, and it vild need older-wise 3 since primal made alter in garden of Idem. The tasks above are as the flasks below, saith the emerald canticle of Hermes...
40. We dont hear the booming cursowarries, we wont fear the fletches of fightning, we float the meditarenias and come bask to the isle we love in spice.

41. Even Canaan the Hateful. Ever a-going, ever a-coming. Between a stare and a sough. Fossilisation, all branches.
42. A phantom city, phaked of philim pholk, bowed and sould for a four of hundreds of manhood in their three and threescore fylkers for a price partitional of twenty six and six.
43. By this riverside, on our sunnybank, 2 how buona the vista, by Santa Rosa! A field of May, the very vale of Spring. Orchards here are lodged; sainted lawrels evremberried. You have a hoig view ashwald, a glen of marrons and of thorns.
44. The Big Bear bit the Sailor’s Only. Trouble, trouble, trouble.
45. Making it up as we goes along. The law of the jungerl.
46. ...knowledge that often hate on first hearing comes of love by second sight.
47. The O’Connor, The Mac Loughlin and The Mac Namara with summed their appondage, da, da, of Sire Jeallyous Seizer, that gamely torskmester,1 with his duo of druidesses in ready money rompers...
48. You may fail to see the lie of that layout, Suetonia,3 but the reflections which recur to me are that so long as beauty life is body love4 and so bright as Mutua of your mirror holds her candle to your caudle, lone lefthand likeless, sombring Autum of your Spring, reck you not one spirt of anyseed whether trigemelimen cuddle his coddle or nope.
49. All his teeths back to the front, then the moon and then the moon with a hole behind it.
50. "Shake eternity and lick creation."

51. "My globe goes gaddy at geography giggle pending which time I was looking for my shoe all through Arabia."
52. "It must be some bugbear in the gender especially when old which they all soon get to look."
53 Amum. Amum. And Amum again. For tough troth is stronger than fortuitous fiction and it’s the surplice money, oh my young friend and ah me sweet creature, what buys the bed while wits borrows the clothes.
54. Slash-the-Pill lifts the pellet. Run, Phoenix, run!
55. "The bookley with the rusin’s hat is Patomkin but I’m blowed if I knowed who the slave is doing behind the curtain."
56. Vieus Von DVbLIn, ’twas one of dozedeams a darkies ding in dewood) the Turnpike under the Great Ulm (with Mearingstone in Fore ground).
57. When I’m dreaming back like that I begins to see we’re only all telescopes. Or the comeallyoum saunds. Like when I dromed I was in Dairy and was wuckened up with thump in thudderdown.
58. Sewing up the beillybursts in their buckskin shiorts for big Kapitayn Killykook and the Jukes of Kelleiney.
59. Till its nether nadir is vortically where (allow me aright to two cute winkles) its naval’s napex will have to beandbe. You must proach near mear for at is dark. Lob. And light your mech. Jeldy! And this is what you’ll say.
60. Vely lovely entilely! Like a yangsheep-slang with the tsifengtse. So analytical plaus—ible! And be the powers of Moll Kelly, neigh—bour topsowyer, it will be a lozenge to me all my lauffe.

61. He was mister-mysterion. Like a purate out of pensionee with a gouvernament job. All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law.
62. ACCORDING TO COCKER. TROTHBLOWERS. FIG AND THISTLE PLOT A PIG AND WHISTLE.
63. Old Keane now, you’re rod, hook and sinker, old jubalee Keane!
64. Thou in shanty! Thou in scanty shanty!! Thou in slanty scanty shanty!!! Bide in your hush! Bide in your hush, do! The law does not aloud you to shout.
65. Not Kilty. But the manajar was. He! He! Ho! Ho! Ho!
66. Sometimes, wild animals don't eat anything.
67. Oikey, Impostolopulos?1 Steady steady steady steady steady studiavimus. Many many many many many manducabimus.2 We’ve had our day at triv and quad and writ our bit. Art, literature, politics, economy, chemistry, human-ity, &c. Duty, the daughter of discipline, the Great Fire at the South City Markets, Belief in Giants and the Banshee, A Place for Every-thing and Everything in its Place, Is the Pen Mightier than the Sword? A Successful Career in the Civil Service,3 The Voice of Nature in the Forest,4 Your Favorite Hero or Heroine...
68. Do you Approve of our Existing Parliamentary System? The Uses and Abuses of Insects, A 1 The divvy wants that babbling brook. Dear Auntie Emma Emma Eates. 2 Strike the day off, the nightcap’s on nigh. Goney, goney gone!
69. Noah. Plato. Horace. Isaac. Tiresias. Marius. Diogenes. Procne, Philo-mela. Abraham. Nestor. Cincin-natus. Leonidas. Jacob. Theocritus. Joseph. Fabius. Samson. Cain. Esop. Prometheus. Lot. Pompeius Magnus, Miltiades Strategos. Solon. Castor, Pollux. Dionysius. Sappho. Moses. Job. Catilina. Cadmus. Ezekiel. Solomon. Themistocles. Vitellius
70. Visit to Guinness’ Brewery, Clubs, Advan-tages of the Penny Post, When is a Pun not a Pun? Is the Co–Education of Animus and Anima Wholly Desirable?1 What Happened at Clontarf? Since our Brother Johnathan Signed the Pledge or the Meditations of Two Young Spinsters,2 Why we all Love our Little Lord Mayor, Hengler’s Circus Entertainment, On Thrift,3 The Kettle–Griffith-Moynihan Scheme for a New Electricity Supply, Travelling in the Olden Times,4 American Lake Poetry, the Strangest Dream that was ever Halfdreamt. 5 Circumspection, Our Allies the Hills, Are Parnellites Just towards Henry Tudor? Tell a Friend in a Chatty Letter the Fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant,6 Santa Claus, The Shame of Slumdom, The Roman Pontiffs and the Orthodox Churches,7 The Thirty Hour Week, Compare the Fistic Styles of Jimmy Wilde and Jack Sharkey, How to Understand the Deaf, Should Ladies learn Music or Mathematics? Glory be to Saint Patrick! What is to be found in a Dustheap, Who No One Likes Darkness, The Value of Circumstantial Evidence, Should Spelling? Outcasts in India, Collecting Pewter, Eu,8 Proper and Regular Diet Necessity For,9 If You Do It Do It Now.

71. Then sagd he to the ship’s husband. And in his translaten-tic norjankeltian. Hwere can a ketch or hook alive a suit and sowterkins?
72. But first, strongbowth, they would deal death to a drinking. Link of a leadder, dubble in it, slake your thirdst thoughts awake with it. Our svalves are svalves aroon!
73. Nummers that is summus that is toptip that is bottombay that is Twomeys that is Digges that is Heres. In the frameshape of hard mettles. For we all would fain make glories. It is minely well mint.
74. Thus as count the costs of liquid courage, a bullyon gauger, stowed stivers pengapung in bulk in hold (fight great finnence! brayvoh, little bratton!).
75. Paradoxmutose caring, but here in a present booth of Balla-clay, Barthalamou, where their dutchuncler mynhosts and serves them dram well right for a boors’ interior.
76. ...willpip futurepip feature apip footloose pastcast with spareshins and flash substittles of noirse-made-earsy from a nephew mind the narrator but give the devil his so long as those sohns of a blitzh call the tuone tuone and thonder alout makes the thurd.
77. There were no pea-nats in her famalgia so no wumble she tumbled for his famas roalls davors.
78. Burniface, shiply efter, shoply after, at an angle of lag, let flow, brabble brabble and brabble, and so hostily, heavyside breathing, came up with them and, check me joule, shot the three tailors, butting back to Moyle herring.
79. ...bump as beam and buttend, roller and reiter, after the diluv’s own deluge, the seasant samped as skibber breezed in, tripping, dripping, threw the sheets in the wind, the tights of his trunks at tickle to tackle and his rubmelucky truss rehorsing the pouffed skirts of his overhawl.
80. Heaved two, spluiced the menbrace. Heirs at you, Brewinbaroon! Weth a whistle for methanks.

81. Is gossiping a lost art?
82. He was the care-lessest man I ever see but he sure had the most sand. One fish—ball with fixings!
83. And a disk of osturs for the swanker! Allahballah! And he salaamed his friends.
84. Osler will oxmaul us all, sayd he, like one familiar to the house, while Waldemar was heeling it and Maldemaer was toeing it.
85. The because of his sosuch. Uglymand fit himshemp but throats fill us all! And three’s here’s for repeat of the unium! Place the scaurs wore on your groot big bailey bill, he apullajibed, the O’Colonel Power.
86. Yet never shet it the brood of aurowoch, not for legions of donours of Gamuels. I have performed the law in truth for the lord of the law, Taif Alif I have held out my hand for the holder of my heart in Anna-polis, my youthrib city.
87. He made one summery (Cholk and murble in lonestime) of his the three swallows like he was muzzling Moselems and torched up as the faery pangeant fluwed down the hisophenguts.
88. Afferika is a beautiful continent.
89. Till Irinwakes from Slumber Deep. How they succeeded by courting daylight in saving darkness he who loves will see.
90. That’s fag for fig, metinkus, confessed, mhos for mhos.

91. ...that a hole in his tale and that hell of a hull of a hill of a camelump bakk. Fadgest-fudgist!
92. With the old sit in his shoulders, and the new satin atlas onder his uxter, erning his breadth to the swelt of his proud and, picking up the emberose of the lizod lights, his tail toiled of spume and spawn, and the bulk of him, and hulk of him as whenever it was he reddled a ruad to riddle a rede from the sphinxish pairc while Ede was a guardin, ere love a side issue.
93. Thus street spins legends while wharves woves tales but some family fewd felt a nick in their name.
94. Hooks are used in hunting and fishing trips.
95. To be continued.

Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
1.Omitted.
2. The chal and his chi, their roammerin over, gribgrobgrab reining trippetytrappety.
3. Why, wonder of wenchalows, what o szeszame open, v doer s t doing?
4. The aged crafty nummifeed confusionary overinsured ever-Iapsing accentuated katekattershin clopped, clopped, clopped...
5. ...a weerpovy willowy dreevy drawly and the patter of so familiars, farabroads and behomeans, as she shure sknows...
6. ...nonce at a time, with them Murphy’s puffs she dursted with gnockmeggs and the bramborry cake for dour dorty dompling obayre Mattom Beetom...
7. And this is defender of defeater of defaulter of deformer of the funst man in Danelagh, willingtoned in with this glance dowon his browen and that born appalled noodlum the panellite pair’s cummal delimitator, odding: Oliver White, he’s as tiff as she’s tight. And thisens his speak quite hoarse.
8. The sound of maormaoring The Wellingthund sturm waxes fuercilier. The whackawhacks of the sturm. Katu te ihis ihis! Katu te wana wana! The strength of the rawshorn generand is known throughout the world.
9. Leave the letter that never begins to go find the latter that ever comes to end, written in smoke and blurred by mist and signed of solitude, sealed at night.
10. And oodlum hoodlum dood-lum to yes, Donn, Teague and Hurleg, who the bullocks brought you here and how the hillocks are ye?

11. But da. But dada, mwilshsuni. Till even so aften. Sea vaast a pool!
12. The guberniergerenal in laut-lievtonant of Baltiskeeamore, amaltheouse for leporty hole! Endues paramilintary langdwage. Ullahbluh!
13. Come alleyou jupes of Wymmingtown that graze the calves of Man!
14. Omitted.
15. Omitted.
16. ...fumfing to a fullfrength with this wallowing olfact). Mortar martar tartar wartar.
17. Pitsy Riley! Gurragrunch, gurragrunch! They are at the turn of the fourth of the hurdles. By the hross of Xristos...
18. To be continued.
19. M. - “He was a colorful man, and he dressed in colorful clothes.”
20. To be continued.
21. Norfolk Virginia, Nor’folk, or North folk, the folk from the north of Virginia, as distinguished from the folk from other parts of the state.
22. Many people grew up in military households. --" " Research in Psychiatry and Law
23. “She sipped her drink slowly, while he gulped his down,” writes James Joyce. Joyce also reminds us that different drinks have different alcoholic content. --Favorite Notes.
24. m. “Answer a fool according to his folly.” —John Henry Cardinal Newman
25. m. "Whether there is a visible or invisible church, people will still ascribe to religious doctrines.” --John Henry Cardinal Newman

26. “The couple sat in the garden and drank coffee.” --Marcel Proust
27. “The cakes that are sold in supermarkets go good with coffee.” --Marcel Proust
28. “The two friends played nose goes, or the nose game.” — James Joyce


IV. Ulysses, James Joyce
1. He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying: - In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
2. View Irish art.
3. Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.
- Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette. Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.
4. He had been wearing a Panama hat.
5. Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind.
6. Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.
7. “I don’t know why it’s discolored. It came like this from the factory.”
8. Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’s voice said, and I feel as one. I don’t want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That’s our national problem, I’m afraid, just now.
Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.
9. Briefly refers to Bullock Harbour, Ireland.
10. A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round.

11. Two of the characters discuss Irish history.
12. I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.
13. May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.

Ulysses, James Joyce
1. I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c’est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.
2. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman.
3. A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty.
4. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of dwarfs, my people, with flayers’ knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat.
5. The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back.
6. Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired.
7. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws.
8. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
9. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the dead.
10. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think?
11. He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pock his hat.
12. Cup your hands. The shell of your hand.
13. Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew.
14. Drink water scented with alcohol.
15. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory.
16. “There are many pubs and taverns in Ireland.” —James Joyce

Ulysses, James Joyce
1. When cooking, you can smell when the food is burning.
2. Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.
3. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest love Your fond daughter, MILLY. P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry.
4. A paper. He liked to read at stool.
5. He fixed the hair over his head.
6. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall.
7. Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the leather headband inside his high grade hat.
8. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic.
9. Tell about places you have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown
10. Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank. Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland.


V. Selected Writings, W.B. Yeats

7/28/2025 - 12:00pm
THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT - SAMHAIN: 1901
1. The Irish dramatic movement began in May, 1899, with the performance of certain plays by English actors who were brought to Dublin for the purpose; and in the spring of the following year and in the autumn of the year after that, performances of like plays were given by like actors at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.
2. Whether the Irish Literary Theatre has a successor made on its own model or not, we can claim that a dramatic movement which will not die has been started. When we began our work, we tried in vain to get a play in Gaelic. We could not even get a condensed version of the dialogue of Oisin and Patrick. We wrote to Gaelic enthusiasts in vain, for their imagination had not yet turned towards the stage, and now there are excellent Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, by Father O’Leary, by Father Dineen, and by Mr. MacGinlay; and the Gaelic League has had a competition for a one-act play in Gaelic, with what results I do not know.
3. A mixture of Irish and English culture.
4. The Irish saints are similar to the English saints.
5. If the Diarmuid and Grania and the Casadh an t-Sugain are not well constructed, it is not because Mr. Moore and Dr. Hyde and myself do not understand the importance of construction, and Mr. Martyn has shown by the triumphant construction of The Heather Field how much thought he has given to the matter; but for the most part our Irish plays read as if they were made without a plan, without a ‘scenario,’ as it is called. European drama began so, but the European drama had centuries for its growth, while our art must grow to perfection in a generation or two if it is not to be smothered before it is well above the earth by what is merely commercial in the art of England.

7/28/2025 - 6:00pm
THE HOUR-GLASS: A MORALITY, W.B. Yeats
Discussion between a wise man and a fool.
FOOL.
What is eaten is gone. I want pennies for my bag. I must buy bacon in the shops, and nuts in the market, and strong drink for the time when the sun is weak. And I want snares to catch the rabbits and the squirrels and the hares, and a pot to cook them in.
-- Blessed be the Father, blessed be the Son, blessed be the Spirit, blessed be the Messenger They have sent!
WISE MAN.
Well, there are your four pennies. You, a fool, say ‘Glory be to God,’ but before I came the wise men said it.
FOOL.
Four pennies! That means a great deal of luck. Great teacher, I have brought you plenty of luck!
WISE MAN.
Though they call him Teig the Fool, he is not more foolish than everybody used to be, with their dreams and their preachings and their three worlds; but I have overthrown their three worlds with the seven sciences.

CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN, W.B. Yeats
PETER.
What is that sound I hear?
PETER.
It might be a hurling.
PATRICK.
There’s no hurling to-day. It must be down in the town the cheering is.
PATRICK.
There’s no hurling to-day. It must be down in the town the cheering is.
PETER [shifts his chair to table].
Those are grand clothes, indeed.
BRIDGET.
You hadn’t clothes like that when you married me, and no coat to put on of a Sunday more than any other day.
PATRICK.
I think it is a stranger, but she’s not coming to the house. She’s turned into the gap that goes down where Murteen and his sons are shearing sheep. [He turns towards BRIDGET.] Do you remember what Winny of the Cross Roads was saying the other night about the strange woman that goes through the country whatever time there’s war or trouble coming?
PETER.
You are the best woman in Ireland, but money is good, too. [He begins handling the money again and sits down.] I never thought to see so much money within my four walls. We can do great things now we have it. We can take the ten acres of land we have a chance of since Jamsie Dempsey died, and stock it. We will go to the fair of Ballina to buy the stock. Did Delia ask any of the money for her own use, Michael?
PETER.
Time enough, time enough, you have always your head full of plans, Bridget.
MICHAEL.
They’re not done cheering yet.
BRIDGET.
Who is it, I wonder? It must be the strange woman Patrick saw a while ago.
PETER.
I may as well put the money out of sight. There is no use leaving it out for every stranger to look at.


THE GOLDEN HELMET, W.B. Yeats
CONAL.
A law has been made that nobody is to come into this house to-night.
YOUNG MAN.
Then I will unmake the law. Out of my way!
LEAGERIE’S WIFE sings.
My man is the best.
What other has fought
The cat-headed men
That mew in the sea
And carried away
Their long-hidden gold?
They struck with their claws
And bit with their teeth,
But Leagerie my husband
Put all to the sword.
LEAGERIE.
You have done us a great wrong.
CONAL’S WIFE.
[While EMER is still singing.]
Silence her voice, silence her voice, blow the horns, make a noise!
FIRST VOICE.
Did you see them putting out the torches?
ANOTHER VOICE.
They came up out of the sea, three black men.
ANOTHER VOICE.
They have heads of cats upon them.



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