He noted down "secret" (VI.B.16.075), referring to the emotional valences arising from the state's authority to intervene in personal correspondence: "Montesquieu...seems to have had some antagonism against the institution of the post: 'Conspiracies in the State have become difficult,' he says, 'because ever since the intervention of the post, all the secrets of individuals are in the power of the state'" (Histoire 9). In the first draft version of the Wake, Joyce uses these notes, interestingly, in the scene of departure between Shaun and his sister Issy: The Shaun symbol appears with the word "consoler" (VI.B.16.075), which becomes in MS 47483-125, ILA "I'm leaving my darling proxy behind for your consolering, lost Dave." Soon Joyce transformed this into "I'm leaving my proxy behind for you. Dave the Dancer....Be sure & love him my treasure as much as you like...He's every damn biter's bit ... a romeo as I am myself."
With the sister figure left behind in the company of Shaun's "proxy," the relationship of Shaun and Izzy becomes that of correspondents, with Izzy taking on the role of the State: that is, she becomes not only a letter writer, keeping in touch with the brother (whose absence is made present by correspondence) but also a letter intercepter, a person capable of making "conspiracies...difficult...since...all the secrets of individuals are in [her] power." Notebook entry VI.B.16.077 identifies her as an intercepter; MS 47482b-57, ILS makes this role even more explicit: "Izzy said intercepted flushing as she grabbed her male correspondent," and note VI.B.16.094 and MS 47482b-57-58 both extend the idea of her power over Shaun with "_ I know" and "Of course I know you know who sent it [...] never will I give you away to anyone. You may trust me I know [...] listen, Jaun, I know, warn me when to wed."
Once again, the biographer is faced with how to use notes taken for a work of fiction as evidence of the experiences of family life. But once again the notes of 1924 tell us, at the least, that Joyce configured the departure of the brother figure as a moment of extraordinary importance for both of the siblings of his imagination. If this is not a refiguration of a transitional moment in the life of his own family, it is nonetheless a father's way of imagining the emotional repercussions of such a moment in the life of children who have been close to each other, and it is notable for the idea of substitution: the brother leaves a "proxy"someone whom he likessomeone like, for example, Emil Fernandez (who was Giorgio's friend and who did take the actual Lucia out dancing)to take his place in the sister's affections.
At this point in the notebooks, the voice of a parental figure intervenes. Although Joyce would not use these notes until 1928 in FW III, i (439.02), he jotted down in VI.B.16.131 "make up your mind," turning this eventually into "Once and for all make up your mind to it. I'll have no college swankers" (MS 47482b-48v, LPA) VI.B.16.136 "trespass on yr" MS 47482b-49 "danger zone." The father/writer speaks, as if to a daughter, warning her against losing her virginity, warning her not to experiment, not to have sex, and yet, in note VI.B.16.141, we fine the observation "on the road to/ maternity," followed by note VI.B.16.146 which either records or imagines "night noises/ rustlings/ twittering/ raspin/ tuping/scuttling"Ña theme that is transposed in MS 47472-282, MsTMA to "and how she was lost away [...] and the rustlings and the twitterings and the raspings and the snappings and the sighings and the panting and the ukukukings and the (hist!) the springapartings and the (pist!) the bybscuttlings and all the scandalmunkers."
By May of that year, Joyce was once again reading Chateaubriand, noting "Chateaubriand's deep love of his sister, Lucile, comparing it to Renan's love for his sister Henriette." In the same set of notebook entries (notebook VI.B.5), he continued to record, what, for lack of other sources, seem like further family reflections that are specifically about Lucia: VI.B.5.014 notes "_ wiser than Borsch [Joyce's eye doctor]/ re face lotion"; VI.B.5.106 records "I think her pretty"; VI.B.5.071 observes "_ flings down glove/to make/sel/f attractive"; VI.B.5.107 makes two comments: "_ gets rain water in/ jug for face" and "Good God cry of shame & horror/ she only 15." Note VI.B.5.072 returns to the concern of note VI.B.10.111: "faire des anges [F. faire des anges. [To perform abortions]." Joyce continued reading Chateaubriand, where he noted down, from Oeuvres choisies illustrées I, Atala 68-69 the words of a father or a Father: "Be reassured, my child. He who searches loins and hearts will judge you by your intentions, that were pure rather than by your action, that was blameworthy."
With regard to Lucia's life, what conclusions can we draw from this set of suggestive notes? We cannot say that she had an abortion, but we can say that abortion was on Joyce's mind. And we can say that these notebook entries about the departure of the brother figure are consistent with and indeed reiterate and confirm what Joyce did in fact write about Lucia in the "Anamnese von Fraulein Lucia Joyce" that Joyce prepared, with the help of Paul Léon, in the early 1930s: "She loved her brother in an out of the ordinary way. When the brother became the lover of a pretty, rich, married women, whom he eventually married, the patient suffered many difficulties." [Ihren Bruder habe sie ausserordentlich geliebt. Als sich der Bruder dann in eine sehr schone, reiche und verheirateste Frau verliebte and diese schliesslich auch heiratet, habe die Patientin viel Schweres durchgemacht" (Richard Ellmann Papers).
First Draft: II, i-ii, "The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies" (MS 47477, 2, FW 219ff)
Often, as Joyce continued composing, he wrote meta-fictionally, that is, his text alluded to its own method of composition. One such moment occurs in the first draft of the Wake III, iii, when a character is asked "did it ever occur to you prior to this by a stretch of imagination that you might be very largely substituted by a complementary character"? (in Hayman 237). The levels of self-reflective irony in such a fictional moment are manifold, for the distinguishing, and confusing, feature of the Wake as a whole is that it redefines the novelistic idea of "character," substituting for fixed and consistent personages a series of constantly modulating traits and names and associations. Issy, for example, is always changing into another version of herself, another manifestation of young womanhood, while always remaining "placed" as that manifestation of girlhood, adolescence and gradually awakening sexuality. Joyce indicated her "placement" by giving her various names a family resemblanceshe is Issy, Izzy, Isolde, Isabeau, Isabey, etc.while he suggested her generalizability by the shifting letterforms themselves. She is a position in life, just as the other "characters" in the Wake, amid all of their various manifestations, mark other positions: mother, father, brother, old man, young man, knight, king, bishop, rival, friend and so forth.
This unchanging changeability, this constant shifting makes this novel uniquely a tale of a world family and not just one family, a story of regeneration itself and not just the fading away of one set of parents and the upsurge of their boisterous offspring. Amid this various, unvarying modulation, Joyce recounts another transformative stage of human life, which is itself the shifting, the searching, the sorting of young men and women as they seek suitable mates. This activity, necessary for the rebirth of humanity, Joyce calls in Ms. 47477, 129-130 "the shifting about of lasses and the tug-of-love of the lads ending with a great deal of rough merriment, hoots, screams." Although this particular description was written somewhere between 1931 and 1933, Joyce's general commitment to representing this stage of life development was well developed by 1924-1928, where in notebooks VI.B.14, VI.B.26, VI.B.8, VI.B.19, VI.B.21 and VI.B.22, we find a general repositioning of the sigla (_) for the daughter figure.
There are several major changes. Although Issy will continue to be figured in triangular relationships, remaining, sporadically in the original configuration represented by Tristan, Isolde and King Mark, that is, as the pivotal figure between an older man and a younger man, she will also be positioned between several young men, several suitors, as if beginning to enact the preoccupation of note VI.B.16.094: "listen, JaunÉ warn me when to wed." Notebook VI.B.14, written between July and December of 1924, in various locations, including Joyce family trips to St. Malo, Brittany, Quimper, and Vannes, continues to record what seem to be the jottings of an observation father: "_ made faces at the sea" (VI.B.14.089); "_ sits on coif to iron it" (VI.B.14.094); "_ real world when she/began to live" (VI.B.14.096) or "_ in long trousers" (VI.B.14.100). But there are also new kinds of notations: "_ shocked by AL story" (VI.B.14.208) [I will return to this particular note later]; "_ embracing _ tells/her of (Shem sigla) and _" (VI.B.14.216) and, as one of the final jottings in the notebook: "_ swopped for _2" (VI.B.14.232). The daughter figure hears something that shocks her; she is told, while being embraced, of another couple, where the young woman is apparently also identified as _; and, most significantly, the notes tell us she is "swopped" for _2. Not only has the brother figure departed; but the sister figure is replaced by what Joyce now designates as _2.
In the following notebooks, VI.B.15, 17, 21 and 22, and, indeed, for the rest of Joyce's notetaking life, he will use three variations of the daughter sigla: the original one _ (which in note VI.B.8.147 he now identifies as " _ girl lying on causeway lacin with one leg heavenward, lacing her shoe"), another sigla with the _ lying on its side, facing left, and a third with the _ lying on its side facing right. This differentiation of "right facing" and "left facing" sigla has sometimes in the past been used by scholars to argue that a division has taken place in the "character" of Issy herself, as if she has become "schizophrenic." But I am convinced that this is a misreading on many levels. One reason is that it uses unsupported suppositions about the real Lucia's life to impose a meaning on a notetaking practice. Another related reason is that the timing is entirely wrong; a third reason is that it violates the logic of the note taking in and of itself.
Between 1924 and 1928, Lucia was entering into the fullness of her own enthusiasm for dance; she was inseparable from the girls in her classes and primary dance troupe, and her health was fine. Helen Nutting described her as a laughing, fun loving, Charleston dancing, winking-over-the shoulders of Patrick Tuohy type of girl: "Lucia, half-child, half-woman, vital and audacious, gifted child of a gifted father" (Shloss, Lucia Joyce 173). I am not convinced that Lucia was ever "schizophrenic" even according to the vague, changeable and pseudo-scientific standards that were then used to judge such things, but she was certainly not ill in the early 1920s when Joyce began this new form of notation. One might suppose that the "second" Issy (_2) was one of Lucia's friends. Helene Vanel, one of her most beloved and influential dance teachers, knew that Lucia and Kitten Neel were very, very close and always did things together. Zdenka Podhajsky was another very close personal friend. But this logic does not fit the more general strategy that Joyce seems to have developed for including young girls in his book. They, like the single "characters" have constantly modulating forms, but they are invariably pluralÑbeing part of a "troupe" like the S. Bride's Girl Scouts School (Hayman, First Draft 129) or a group like the "February Filldyke's daughters" (First Draft 227) or "The Floras" (First Draft 129).
The _2 figure seems more logically to be a separate figure, not at all a division of Issy into a schizophrenic self. How else can we explain the previous note: "_ swopped for _2" (VI.B.14.232)? Or the notes that closely follow it: "_ praises/_ (facing right) to _ (facing left)" (VI.B.18.270) or "_ (facing left) sends _ to _ (facing right)" (VI.B.18.271)? These are memos involving three people. Were we to correlate the notes with the events Joyce could conceivably have watched in the mid 1920s, they would more logically coincide with what was in fact happening to his central and centrally observable Wakean family: Shaun has taken leave of "Sister dearest," and in his new adventures has successfully navigated the "shifting about of the lasses and the tug-of-love of the lads," that is, he has a new partner. In life that would,of course, have been Helen Kastor Fleishman, who took up with Giorgio around 1926. Joyce would, from this moment on, have two young women to observe in his creation of the feminine side of his universal family, and Lucia would be faced with negotiating a new chapter of her own existence. This, not surprisingly, is represented in the Wake, as a life among other young women, a life as a mimic and a dancer, and a life as a young woman choosing her own partner, contributing yet another part to the story of regeneration or "recirculation" that was her father's current and enduring preoccupation.
Mid-February-March 1924
Joyce's interest in the closeness of siblings persisted well into 1924, when he began to record notes that would eventually become part of Book III, i of the Wake, where, amid continued jottings about Issy's characteristics, a scene of parting between brother and sister is first imagined. In notebook VI.B.1. 090-091, Joyce notes: "result of yr teaching," which would later become MS 47482b-7, MT: "This is the result of your teaching, Sis" and "You that used to write/ to me the nice," which would develop in MS 47482b-7, MT into "This is the result of your teaching, Sis, you that used to write to me those the nice letters" and "O how I wd kiss you," which became, in MS 47482b-7, MT: "O how I shall kiss you` immediately upon my return. O, Sissie, it is grand/ to be going to meet a king/ the K.of K/ & then be off with/ Our Blessed Lord."
The son/brother figure, is leaving home, already, by 1924 transposed into a myriad of male roles: he is first a postman, bearing a letter, in a setting that is both grandiose ("I am all too unworthy for such eminence, or prominence, to be exact as to bear this letter on his majesty's service") and absurd: he works in an environment where, amid "22,000 sorters out of a possible 22,000, too much administrative stationery was eaten by goats" (First Draft 221). Within a page of Joyce's first draft, the brother figure metamorphosizes into an Ondt, who has a huge following of young female admirers named Floh and Luse and Flutterby and Lovesalight and Bienie and Vespatilla, with whom he was "always making disgraceful ungraceful overtures...to play pupa [& pulcy pulcy] with and to commit commence insects with him" (222).
Note VI.B.1.097 "Sure not to do incest?/ la venere incesta" has undergone its own metamorphosis, from a curiously anxious, but unlocated query in the notebooks to the basis for a comic story, where "incest" becomes "insects," just as it does in A.S. Byatt's novella , Angels and Insects. Shaun, the generalized younger generation male, who still, like Tristan, remains an "abelboobied fellow" [VI.B.16.084], cavorts in weirdly suggestive ways: "revelling in his sunny room] as appi as a oneysusucker...sated at his comefortumble fullupsupper...with Flo biting his big thigh and Luse lugging his left leg, Bieni Bienie bussing him under his bonnet and Vespatilla wintering into his ear blowing cosy fond tutties up his smalls" (First Draft 223). He teaches the girls to dance polkas (with a dig at Raymond Duncan: "No Dorcan from Dunshananagan ever danced it so?) before morphing back to Shaun, who returns to his duty to carry a strange letter "for his majesty" (224).
Clearly Joyce is working in an edgy, almost surrealistic, comic mode, but book III, i-ii is still, unmistakably, about the moment when the first child leaves home, turning his energy to the world of work and adult erotic adventure: The first draft version of the Wake: "Thou art passing hence, dear Shaun, from friends and parents dear" (225) is clearly derived from notebook entry VI.B.16.084 ab + (Earwicker symbol) and MS 47482b-44, LMS: "thou art passing hence, Dearable Shaun, from carnal relations and familiar faces."
The Wakean parents wish their son well: "May the fireplug of filiality safeguard your bunghole! We know you were loth to leave us & but, sure, you will turn up some day when your pocket is empty" (First Draft 225). But, with relevance to Lucia and Giorgio's story, which by 1924 involved the increasing presence of Helen Fleischman in their lives, the writer also stages the scene of leave taking between the brother and the sister.
By this time, in the constantly fluid and modulating geography of the Wake, Shaun is loosening his boots in an Irish landscape, passing a guardian of the peace "asleep there in the embrace of a confiscated bottle" as well as 29 "daughters out of the national [hedge] school" (First Draft 225). Among these young girls, who form a "chorus of praise," "Shaun [...] easily recognized his dear sister, Izzy" [see VI.B.1.143 and Ms 47482b-5v, LPS].
"Sister dearest, Shaun said in taking leave of her with fondnessfondest affection, how I honestly believe you will miss me" (First Draft 225). Their dialogue, alluded to by Joyce in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver in June of 1924 as a "Lenten lecture," is a list of prohibitions, a private version of the Ten Commandments, rendered in comedic, but comedically suggestive, terms: "Never eat good bad meat on a good Friday [...] and preserve your dear chastity during this Lenten season [...] Rather than part with that vestalite jewel emerald of yours which you have where your two nether extremes meet let the entire ekumene universe perish [...] O how I shall kiss you immediately upon my return [...] Sis, dearest" (First Draft 226).
The sister, Izzy's response is straight out of pantomime (but also out of note VI.B.3.026): she offers her "Brother dear" something instead of a "handkerchief handkerchiefduster [to] bear it with you ever & always and when you use it think of the one absent one" (226). Then, following note VI.B.16.012 " listen!", she appends a curious request from MS 47482b-17, LMA: "- Brother Listen, brother dear, Izzy said, accept this [...] & always, listen, when you use it [...] Teach me how to tumble dear, and, listen, warn me whom to love."
When Joyce imagines his avatars of youth parting from one another, he imagines the older brother as the first to go out into the life of duty; he imagines the fondness of the pair; he imagines the brother's concern for his sister's chastity, and her response. She does not protest that she will remain chaste; instead she asks for the benefit of the older brother's experience: teach me, she asks, and though the meaning of "how to tumble" is unavoidable ambiguous, the request to "warn me whom to love" is not. The following note reads as if it is a father's comment on the scene: "Young devils playing/ with fire" [see VI.B.16.020].
p>VI.B.5.119 palpitant de respect/ et de volupté
Chateaubriand, Oeuvres choisies illustrées III, Mémoires d'outre-tombe 39: [The Phantom And so I imagined a woman made up of all the women I had seen [...] A young queencomes towards me, bedecked with diamonds and flowers (it was again my imagined sylph); [...] I fall at the knees of the sovereign of Enna's lands; the silken waves of her loosened diadem fall caressingly on my brow while she leans her sixteen year old head over my face, and her hands rest on my breast throbbing with respect and voluptuous delight.]
VI.B.5.125 divinity (puella) [L. Puella. Girl]
Chateaubriand, Oeuvres choisies illustrées III, Mémoires d'outre-tombe 173: [Coquetry One day, as I was passing through Lyons, a lady wrote to me. She asked me to give her daughter a seat in my carriage and to take her Paris. This seemed to me an odd proposal; but in the endthe signature having been confirmed, the stranger turns out to be an extremely respectable ladyI sent a polite reply. The mother introduced her self and her daughter, a goddess of sixteen. The mother had scarcely cast eyes on me, when she turned scarlet. Her confidence abandoned her. "Forgive me, sir," she stammered, "I am not devoid of consideration.... But you will understand the proprieties.... I was mistaken. I was taken so unawares..." I insisted, while looking at my future companion, who seemed to be laughing at the debate. I protested profusely that I would take all conceivable care of the beautiful young person; the mother humbled herself with excuses and bows. The two ladies withdrew. I was proud to have frightened them to such an extent.]
VI.B.5.127 Ossian (Earwicker symbol)
Chateaubriand, Oeuvres choisies illustrées I, Atala 33: [Prologue Several years after he had returned to his native country, Chactas enjoyed some rest. Yet the Heavens made him pay dearly for this favour: the old man had gone blind. A maiden escorted him on the hillsides of Meschacebé, just as Antigone guided the steps of Oedipus on Citheron, or like Malvina who led Ossian over the rocks of Morven.
VI.B.5.139 &
Chateaubriand, Oeuvres choisies illustrées I, Atala 68-69: [Le Drame Be reassured, my child. He who searches loins and hearts will judge you by your intentions, that were pure, rather than by your action, that was blameworthy.]
VI.B.1.005
VI.B.1.006
VI.B.1.076
VI.B.1.090 Sis
VI.B.1.091 Sis
VI.B.1.095 /
VI.B.1.097
VI.B.1.099
VI.B.1.118
VI.B.1.139
VI.B.1.140 9 Isabelle
VI.B.1.143 Izzy
VI.B.1.150
VI.B.1.166
VI.B.1.167 and
VI.B.1.177
March-May 1924
VI.B.16.006
VI.B.16.009
VI.B.16.012 Izzy.
VI.B.16.020
VI.B.16.023 &
VI.B.16.024 sister
VI.B.16.025
VI.B.16.026
VI.B.16.027
VI.B.16.046 Izzy
VI.B.16.052 Brigit-Isolde
VI.B.16.055 Izzy
VI.B.16.065
VI.B.16.066
VI.B.16.068
VI.B.16.075
VI.B.16.077 Izzy
VI.B.16.086
VI.B.16.084 ab
VI.B.16.086
VI.B.16.094
VI.B.16.097 Izzy
VI.B.16.128
VI.B.16.131
VI.B.16.136
VI.B.16.138
VI.B.16.141
VI.B.16.
May-July 1924
VI.B.5.014
VI.B.5.016
VI.B.5.017
VI.B.5.025
VI.B.5.028
VI.B.5.030
VI.B.5.034
VI.B.5.058
VI.B.5.059
VI.B.5.069
VI.B.5.071
VI.B.5.072
VI.B.5.075
VI.B.5.086
VI.B.5.089
VI.B.5.095
VI.B.5.106
VI.B.5.107
VI.B.5.112
VI.B.5.133
VI.B.5.141
VI.B.5.147
/
VI.B.5.152
July-December 1924 (St. Malo, Brittany, Quimper, Vannes, Paris)
VI.B.14.022 &
VI.B.14.046
VI.B.14.048 &
VI.B.14.078
VI.B.14.082
VI.B.14.089
VI.B.14.094
VI.B.14.096
VI.B.14.100
VI.B.14.107
VI.B.14.120 /
VI.B.14.192 /
VI.B.14.201
VI.B.14.204
VI.B.14.206
VI.B.14.208
VI.B.14.209
VI.B.14.216 / /
VI.B.14.223
VI..B.14.225
VI.B.14.226
VI.B.14.232 swopped for 2
1924-268
VI.B.26.013 (facing left)
(facing left)
VI.B.26.062 (facing left)
VI.B.26.069
(facing right)
VI.B.26.101 _ (facing left)
1925
VI.B.8.147
VI.B.19.220 Buttercup [Issy's baby name]
1926
VI.B.15.045 (facing left)
VI.B.15.153 (facing left)
VI.B.15.163 / (facing left)
VI.B.17.49 Isabeau (facing right)
1926-1927
I, vi "The Twelve Questions" (MS 47473, 116-144; FW 126-149/11)
II, ii "The Triangle" ("The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump" in Tales Told of Shem and Shaun. Paris: Black Sun Press, 1929.) (MS 47482a, 65b,67 ab, 68; FW 282/7-287/17)
1922-19289
VI.B.21.025
VI.B.21.031
VI.B.21.146 ^ (facing left)
VI.B.21.149
VI.B.21.197
VI.B.21.229 (facing left)
VI.B.21.237 Isabey
VI.B.21.287 (facing left)
VI.B.22.021 VI.B.22.039 _ (facing left)
VI.B.22.088 (facing left)
VI.B.22.094 (facing left)
VI.B.22.097
VI.B.22.165
1927-29
VI.B.18.019 (facing left) &
VI.B.18.270 / (facing right) to (facing left)
VI.B.18. 271 (facing left) sends to (facing right)
192810
VI.B.23.107 Lucia
VI.B.23.115 (facing left)
VI.B.23.121
VI.B.23.128
VI.B.23.135
VI.B.23.145 Ponisovsky
1928-192911
VI.B.24.016
VI.B.24.017
VI.B.24.019
VI.B.24.075 (facing left)
VI.B.24.113
VI.B.24.119
VI.B.24.121 (facing left)
VI.B.24.122
VI.B.24.124
VI.B.24.129 (facing right)
VI.B.24.131
VI.B.24.234
VI.B.24.272
VI.B.24.275
III, i "The Ondt and the Gracehoper" (MS 47483, 81-89; FW 414/22-419/8) (in small pink notebook with a picture of "Isabeale" on its cover-David Hayman)
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