Ecce Puer

Ecce Puer
[]
Of the dark past
A boy is born.
With joy and grief
My heart is torn.

Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!

New life is breathed
Upon the glass:
A world that was not
Comes to pass.

A child is sleeping,
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!

The Holy Office

The Holy Office

[the unapologetic braggadocio and contempt for all his competition establish this as uniquely Edwardian battle-rap. Joyce's newfound success with Nora may have given him confidence]

Myself unto myself will give
This name Katharsis-Purgative.

Aristotle describes catharsis as the purging of the emotions of pity and fear that are aroused in the viewer of a tragedy

'cathartic' and 'purgative' were slightly less genteel (?) terms for laxatives.

I, who dishevelled ways forsook
To hold the poets' grammar-book,

'dishevelled' usually refers to hair

so when did he forsake these ways?
for which poets?
(instead of joining the 'dishevelled' Dublin literary community, he announces himself as their... higher conscience?)

Bringing to tavern and to brothel
The mind of witty Aristotle,

nobody has ever found Aristotle funny

The Jesuits, via Aquinas, continued to hold him in the highest intellectual esteem, and Joyce felt this gave him an edge over anyone without this training.
Carrying this viewpoint into tavern and brothel was a daring and original plan.

Lest bards in the attempt should err
Must here be my interpreter:

I... Must here be my own interpreter

Wherefore receive now from my lip
Peripatetic scholarship.

learned in the world, not in the library

To enter heaven, travel hell,

Blake: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

Be piteous or terrible

ie, arouse Aristotle's tragic emotions of pity and fear

One positively needs the ease,
Of plenary indulgences.

(maybe: Catholics believe that relief from punishment for their sins can be won by obedience, with 'plenary' implying complete relief rather than 'partial'. Joyce takes this pseudo-seriously as permitting every sinful experiment???)

For every true-born mysticist
A Dante is, unprejudiced,

(this is how they fancy themselves, anyway?)

Who safe at ingle-nook, by proxy,
Hazards extremes of heterodoxy

i see Yeats and AE dreaming of revolution without daring to actually disturb the universe

(probably 'ingle-nook' is a jab at someone's particular use of that cheap imagery)

Like him who finds a joy at table
Pondering the uncomfortable.

Joyce wouldn't have known that Yeats had been using hashish and mescaline (but probably would have condemned it as a safe substitute for real risk)

Ruling one's life by common sense
How can one fail to be intense?

this paradox seems obviously unconvincing-- common sense is the opposite (cf Blake again)

But I must not accounted be
One of that mumming company —

'mummers' implies actors, here especially the Irish Literary Theatre movement (also, faking their radicalism)

With him who hies him to appease
His giddy dames' frivolities
While they console him when he whinges
With gold-embroidered Celtic fringes —

Yeats was fairly asexual (he lost his virginity at 30) but enviably charming, with loyal supporters like Lady Gregory, Annie Horniman, Florence Farr, and the weird sisters of Dun Emer (who in fact specialised in embroidered Celtic fringes): Elizabeth Corbet Yeats, Lily Yeats and Evelyn Gleeson.
Maud Gonne was a raving terrorist by comparison

'hies' is obsolete for 'hurries'

Or him who sober all the day
Mixes a naggin in his play —

Synge uses the word 'naggin' in works published later, in 1905 and 1912

Or him who[se] conduct "seems to own"
His preference for a man of "tone"

Gogarty had written a poem a few months earlier, probably about his sister: "When the sun shines on Mary's hair / The splendour seems to own / That solid rays of sunlight there / Are blended with the brown." JAJ must have judged it weak.

OG's friend-since-1899 Arthur Griffith was a follower of Wolfe Tone. OG would help AG found Sinn Fein in 1905.

but assuming this couplet does means Gogarty, it couldn't have been worse-timed, for he'd just agreed to host Joyce at the Tower for a year, but withdrew the offer when he read these insults

Or him who plays the rugged patch
To millionaires in Hazelhatch
But weeping after holy fast
Confesses all his pagan past —

Padraic Colum the year before had been promised a stipend to write by millionaire Thomas Kelly of Celbridge/Hazelhatch, who'd rejected Joyce's overambitious plan to start a daily newspaper called the Goblin

Or him who will his hat unfix
Neither to malt nor crucifix
But show to all that poor-dressed be
His high Castilian courtesy —

Eglinton/Magee, teetotaler [more]

Joyce's limerick:
There once was a Celtic librarian
Whose essays were voted Spencerian
His name is Magee
But it seems that to me
He's a flavour that's more Presbyterian

Stannie:  "Magee is a dwarfish, brown-clad fellow, with red-brown eyes like a ferret, who walks with his hands in his jacket pockets and as stiffly as if his knees were roped with sugauns. He is sub-librarian in Kildare Street, and I think his mission in Ireland is to prove to his Protestant grandaunts that unbelievers can be very moral and admire the Bible. He is interested in great thoughts and philosophy, whenever he can understand it."

Or him who loves his Master dear —

George Roberts, w/AE

Or him who drinks his pint in fear —

Starkey

Or him who once when snug abed
Saw Jesus Christ without his head
And tried so hard to win for us
The long-lost works of Eschylus.

AE (anticipated Prince by adopting the ligature Æ)

But all these men of whom I speak
Make me the sewer of their clique.
That they may dream their dreamy dreams
I carry off their filthy streams
For I can do those things for them
Through which I lost my diadem,

(skeptics would have asked how he could lose a badge of royalty if he'd never won one)

Those things for which Grandmother Church
Left me severely in the lurch.
Thus I relieve their timid arses,
Perform my office of Katharsis.
My scarlet leaves them white as wool
Through me they purge a bellyful.
To sister mummers one and all
I act as vicar-general



And for each maiden, shy and nervous,
I do a similar kind service.
For I detect without surprise
That shadowy beauty in her eyes,
The "dare not" of sweet maidenhood
That answers my corruptive "would",



Whenever publicly we meet
She never seems to think of it;
At night when close in bed she lies
And feels my hand between her thighs
My little love in light attire
Knows the soft flame that is desire.

Joyce was paid, later in August, for a poem that begins "My love is in a light attire / Among the apple trees". He'd been dating Nora for two months, so this presumably refers to her, alone in bed, remembering his touch and probably masturbating. We have to assume he was throwing all caution to the wind and challenging even those closest to him-- Nora and Gogarty-- to accept his art even when it addressed them personally.

But Mammon places under ban
The uses of Leviathan
And that high spirit ever wars
On Mammon's countless servitors
Nor can they ever be exempt
From his taxation of contempt.
So distantly I turn to view
The shamblings of that motley crew,
Those souls that hate the strength that mine has
Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.
Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed
I stand the self-doomed, unafraid,
Unfellowed, friendless and alone,

JAJ had used the phrase "I am going alone and friendless" in his 1902 letter to Lady Gregory asking for help

Indifferent as the herring-bone,

a very odd metaphor. Joyce had not yet written : "the artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails". Maybe the herringbone that chokes someone to death is indifferent to its victim?

Firm as the mountain-ridges where
I flash my antlers on the air.

'firm' seems a little weak-- wasn't there any other one-syllable synonym? tough? stout? fixed? strong? hale?

already in January he had written "...behind the rapidly indurating shield the sensitive answered. Let the pack of enmities come tumbling and sniffing to the highlands after their game — there was his ground: and he flung them disdain from flashing antlers." [PoA04]

Let them continue as is meet
To adequate the balance-sheet.

uncommonly a verb

Though they may labour to the grave
My spirit shall they never have
Nor make my soul with theirs at one
Till the Mahamanvantara be done:

in Theosophy, 311 trillion years, or about 20,000 times the age of the universe [cite]
Joyce's targets had mostly dabbled with Theosophy, but the reference seems trivial now (and there's an extra syllable!?)

And though they spurn me from their door
My soul shall spurn them evermore.

Gas from a Burner

Ladies and gents, you are here assembled
To hear why earth and heaven trembled
Because of the black and sinister arts
Of an Irish writer in foreign parts.
He sent me a book ten years ago
I read it a hundred times or so,
Backwards and forwards, down and up,
Through both the ends of a telescope.
I printed it all to the very last word
But by the mercy of the Lord
The darkness of my mind was rent
And I saw the writer's foul intent.
But I owe a duty to Ireland:
I held her honour in my hand,
This lovely land that always sent
Her writers and artists to banishment
And in a spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
'Twas Irish humour, wet and dry,
Flung quicklime into Parnell's eye;
'Tis Irish brains that save from doom
The leaky barge of the Bishop of Rome
For everyone knows the Pope can't belch
Without the consent of Billy Walsh.
O Ireland my first and only love
Where Christ and Caesar are hand and glove!
O lovely land where the shamrock grows!
(Allow me, ladies, to blow my nose)
To show you for strictures I don't care a button
I printed the poems of Mountainy Mutton
And a play he wrote (you've read it, I'm sure)
Where they talk of "bastard" "bugger" and "whore"
And a play on the Word and Holy Paul
And some woman's legs that I can't recall
Written by Moore, a genuine gent
That lives on his property's ten per cent:
I printed mystical books in dozens:
I printed the table book of Cousins
Though (asking your pardon) as for the verse
'Twould give you a heartburn on your arse:
I printed folklore from North and South
By Gregory of the Golden Mouth:
I printed poets, sad, silly and solemn:
I printed Patrick What-do-you-Colm:
I printed the great John Milicent Synge
Who soars above on an angel's wing
In the playboy shift that he pinched as swag
From Maunsel's manager's travelling-bag.
But I draw the line at that bloody fellow,
That was over here dressed in Austrian yellow,
Spouting Italian by the hour
To O' Leary Curtis and John Wyse Power
And writing of Dublin, dirty and dear,
In a manner no blackamoor printer could bear.
Shite and onions! Do you think I'll print
The name of the Wellington Monument,
Sydney Parade and Sandymount tram,
Downes's cakeshop and Williams's jam?
I'm damned if I do — I'm damned to blazes!
Talk about Irish Names of Places!
It's a wonder to me, upon my soul,
He forgot to mention Curly's Hole.
No, ladies, my press shall have no share in
So gross a libel on Stepmother Erin.
I pity the poor — that's why I took
A red-headed Scotchman to keep my book.
Poor sister Scotland! Her doom is fell;
She cannot find any more Stuarts to sell.
My conscience is fine as Chinese silk:
My heart is as soft as buttermilk.
Colm can tell you I made a rebate
Of one hundred pounds on the estimate
I gave him for his Irish Review.
I love my country — by herrings I do!
I wish you could see what tears I weep
When I think of the emigrant train and ship.
That's why I publish far and wide
My quite illegible railway guide,
In the porch of my printing institute
The poor and deserving prostitute
Plays every night at catch-as-catch-can
With her tight-breeched British artilleryman
And the foreigner learns the gift of the gab
From the drunken draggletail Dublin drab.
Who was it said: Resist not evil?
I'll burn that book, so help me devil.
I'll sing a psalm as I watch it burn
And the ashes I'll keep in a one-handled urn.
I'll penance do with farts and groans
Kneeling upon my marrowbones.
This very next lent I will unbare
My penitent buttocks to the air
And sobbing beside my printing press
My awful sin I will confess.
My Irish foreman from Bannockburn
Shall dip his right hand in the urn
And sign crisscross with reverent thumb
Memento homo upon my bum.

Flushing, September 1912.