James Joyce
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After the publication of Chamber Music, Joyce continued to write occasional poems, some of which have Triestine settings (‘Watching  the Needleboats at San Sabba’, ‘On the Beach at Fontana’) or refer to events which occurred during  this period. A number of these poems (‘A Flower Given  to my Daughter’ and ‘Nightpiece’) are clearly related  to Giacomo Joyce or to his relationship with Nora (‘Tutto è sciolto’ and ‘She Weeps Over  Rahoon’), while ‘Nightpiece’ would also have a role in the genesis of Finnegans Wake. 

There is more of Joyce in these verses, and occasionally we can see a command of language that seems more appropriate to the author of Ulysses. Less lyrical than Chamber Music, these poems have a darker and more somber feel, and more than a few seem touched by a hint of nostalgia. This collection also contains "A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight," a sharply drawn piece that ranks up with the best of any poet's work.

Collected as Pomes Penyeach, the poems had been offered to Ezra Pound in 1926, who said "They belong in the Bible or in the family album with the portraits." In March 1927, though, Archibald MacLeish responded very favorably so Joyce went ahead with publication.

They were first published 6 (or 7) July 1927 by Silvia Beach's Shakespeare & Company - to its lone review in the Daily Herald - with a pale-green cover, the color of Joyce's favorite 'Caville' apples (and included his daughter's illustrations?). Fifty copies were printed and sold for one shilling (twelvepence) or twelve francs, according to Ellmann, thus verifying the title, since for twelve pence one would receive a baker's dozen of short lyric poems.

Jeffares and Kennelly explain: "This book cost a shilling, so that we might have expected from its title a dozen poems, but Joyce followed an Irish custom in adding a 'tilly' (from Irish tuilleadh, an added measure), a thirteenth poem, the first poem in the book being titled 'Tilly'. He probably had in mind the custom of Dublin milkmen and milkwomen of pouring an extra amount of milk into the purchaser's receptacle from the small, usually pint-sized, tilly can that accompanied a larger can or churn."

In 1936 Joyce' published his Collected Poems. It included the first public appearance of "Ecce Puere" which was written in 1932. The title meaning "Behold the Boy-child," this poem was written soon after Joyce's father died and his grandson Stephen was born, and it contains that same unguarded honesty of his earlier poems. It shows a man in transition from a son to a grandfather and torn between "joy and grief," finally realizing his need for reconciliation – and forgiveness.

The collection also included two additional poems: 'The Holy Office' (1904) and 'Gas from a Burner' (1912).

"The Holy Office"

This poem dates from 1904, shortly before Joyce was to leave Ireland, and originally took the form of a broadside printed by Joyce and circulated throughout his Dublin circle. Designed to defend and clarify his artistic position, it took a well-aimed swipe at the narrow minded people of Dublin, their refusal to face reality, and their predilection for art in the "Celtic Twilight" vein. Joyce, putting himself squarely in the tradition of Aristotle and St. Aquinas, reckons his writing as a purgative for all Dublin's hypocrisy: "That they may dream their dreamy dreams/I carry off their filthy streams... Thus I relieve their timid arses / Perform my office of Katharsis." His unflinchingly honest art is a mirror which reflects the things they would rather not acknowledge. And furthermore, the poem declares that he's perfectly willing to pay the price of his holy office – that he must bear the brunt of their anger and their hypocritical scorn, for that is the task for all artists true to their principles, even if it leaves them "self-doomed, unafraid, unfellowed, friendless and alone."

"The Holy Office" is a delightfully wicked satire, and when one remembers that Joyce had the vast majority of his career ahead of him, it seems a deliciously arrogant spurt of venom, a swift strike from the lucifer match of a morning star.

Returning to the Pomes Peneyeach, unlike the poems in Chamber Music, not much about the poetry is overtly "musical" — yet by the time they were published, Joyce was famous, and his social circle in Paris had expanded to include artists of every stripe, including (not surprisingly) many in the music business. Two of his friends, Herbert Hughes and Arthur Bliss, conscripted 11 other composers to create a book of 13 songs, with each one to write an original setting for one of the poems. The Joyce Book, as it was called, was published in 1933 as a tribute to the author in a limited edition of 500 copies. The following table lists the composers and the respective poems they set to music.

Dublin, 1904

[Earlier versions' titles: 'Cabra' (1903, after his mother's death), 'Ruminants' (1919). Cabra is the Dublin district where Joyce was living at his mother's death (also depicted in Ulysses)]This poem was originally written as "Cabra" in 1903, "sometime after the death of his mother [May Joyce] on 13 August. The poem was revised in 1919 and retitled 'Ruminants.' Joyce later rewrote the poem, yet again, renaming it 'Tilly,' and placed it first in his collection Pomes Penyeach (1927)." (Fargnoli and Gillespie) "Cabra" is a name of "a Dublin district where Joyce's family lived at 7 St Peter's Terrace from late October 1902 until late March 1904." (Fargnoli and Gillespie)

Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba

Trieste, 1912

[Published in the Saturday Review (London), 17 September 1913. San Sabba is near Trieste. 'Return no more' is from Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West" accoring to Ellmann, which the scullers were singing that day. ]

A Flower Given to My Daughter

Trieste, 1913

[Ellmann claims this is about one of Joyce's students, whom he had a crush on, also the subject of Giacomo Joyce. Lucia turned six in July 1913.]

She Weeps over Rahoon

Trieste, 1913

[This is based on Nora's relationship to Michael Bodkin, also used in "The Dead"]

[The title translates: "All is unloosed"]

On the Beach at Fontana

Trieste, 1914

[The "Fontana" baths - Molo Maria Teresa (today Molo Fratelli Bandiera)

In the summer Joyce was a regular visitor to the "Fontana" baths. Of the original bathing places only the "Lanterna" (Movie of the baths: 1.3 Mb MPEG) baths have survived; they are the only ones to maintain the old tradition of keeping the beach divided into two separate areas, one for the male swimmers and the other for the female. Joyce mentions the "Fontana" baths in the Trieste Notebook, in a passage entitled "Giorgino" dedicated to his newly-born son. "I held him in the sea at the baths of Fontana and felt with humble love the trembling of his frail shoulders: Asperge(s) me, Domine hyssopo et mundabor: lavabis me et super nivem dealbalor ". He returned to the theme when Giorgio was older in a lyrical poem called "On the Beach at Fontana" which he wrote in 1914 and later included in Pomes Penyeach .

Joyce's son Giorgio turned 9 years old in July 1914. The opening line faintly echoes Stephen's 'drivel' poem in Portrait V]

Simples

Trieste, 1914

[The epigraph translates "O fair blonde, Thou art as the wave!" Lucia turned seven in July 1914.

Wallace Stevens had a similar poem: "Cy Est Pourtraicte, Mme Ste Ursule..." written 1915, published September 1923. (Joyce may have seen it and jotted FW note 2.59 in Sept23: "God annoyed by prayer".) The first verse:

O bella bionda,
Sei come l'onda!

Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild The moon a web of silence weaves In the still garden where a child Gathers the simple salad leaves. A moondew stars her hanging hair And moonlight kisses her young brow And, gathering, she sings an air: Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou! Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear To shield me from her childish croon And mine a shielded heart for her Who gathers simples of the moon.

Nightpiece

Trieste, 22 January 1915

['starknell' should be pronounced with a silent 'k': star-knell not stark-knell.

Joyce used this poem in a very early Finnegans Wake draft. The context seems to suggest that Isolde is shocked by the poet's (Tristan's) heartlessness. (Cf. FW note: "T S Eliot ends idea of poetry for ladies") (I've removed most of the commas, based on this earlier version)

Robert Herrick wrote a poem with the same title. Ellmann associates it with Giacomo Joyce on the strength of the phrase 'sindark nave' (otherwise unlikely).]

Alone

 Zurich, 1916

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight

Zurich, 1917

[Joyce's Zurich theatrical company, the English Players, wasn't founded until 1918 (using money given anonymously by Mrs Harold McCormick in February) so this poem predates it.]

Bahnhofstrasse

Zurich, 1918

• Poetry - http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/pomes.html and http://www.retortmagazine.com/mindcandy/pomespenyeach.htm and http://www.joycean.org/index.php?work=89
• Image - http://artscad.com/A55A04/Adtel.nsf/plinks/SRVV-66BNSN
• http://www.james-joyce-music.com/pomes_penyeach.html
• http://www.readprint.com/author-52/James-Joyce
• Holy Office notes - http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/joyce_works_other.html

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Created: Monday, February 13, 2006; Last Updated: Thursday, July 12, 2007
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