You Won't Believe This Incredible Art Edition Of James Joyce's Ulysses

by Stephen J. Gertz

James Joyce completed his novel, Ulysses, on October 30, 1921. Ninety years later, on October 30, 2011, Charlene Matthews, the Los Angeles-based book artist and bookbinder recently the subject of a profile in Studios magazine, began work on an extraordinary edition of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach's true first edition with all its typos included.

Two years later, on October 30, 2013, she completed it: the entire text of Ulysses - all of its approximately 265,000 words in eighteen episodes - transcribed by hand onto thirty-eight seven-foot tall, two-inch diameter poles: Ulysses as a landscape to physically move through; the novel as literary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with language as fragrant, hallucinatory bark, and trunks reaching toward the sky.

Each pole has sixteen 'cels' comprised of four pages, a total of sixty-four pages per pole.  The first cel has the first line in it and then Matthews measured down 9" and wrote that line in the next cel and so on, with the last cel containing the last line on the pole. The whole totals thirty-eight poles.

I talked to Charlene Matthews about the piece, which I've observed in progress since she began. Our interview follows.

SJG: This project involved an extraordinary amount of work and time. What inspired you to begin?

CM: I had to do a sculptural piece for an art show Doug Harvey was doing at the Shoshanna Wayne Gallery.  So I wrote a J.G.Ballard short story (Say Goodbye to the Wind) on a pole I had in the back yard for years  which I hate to say was not very good.  I liked how it looked and I liked the idea of taking the words out of the book and putting them onto an object, I stayed with the pole.  I went through my book collection and found Ulysses.  Nothing else would do but IT, and I had never read it.

Key to the poles.

SJG: Did you have any idea when you began just how all-consuming it would turn-out to become?

CM: I knew the project would take me a while, I researched poles and pens and jumped in. As problems occurred I solved them, like how to write and turn the pole smoothly, how to write without twisting my back, how to exercise my hands to keep them from cramping, how to sand the pole just so to accommodate smooth writing.  The eventual  get-up I rigged was pretty amusing. I also began mapping the characters' movements on my walls.

All typos included, as well as flaws in the medium.

SJG: What is the over-riding theme here? What was/is your intent? In short (from a philistine perspective), what's the point?

CM: Initially I envisioned just a large group of poles standing around with writing on them.  But as I was writing, I had visions of the poles being exhibited in many ways, I am going to publish a small edition book of these drawings this year.  Some of them are pretty basic, most are pretty out there ( Irish Jig Dancers, energy windmills, mirrors etc.).

Also, as I was writing my eyes would look at my process and get memorized in the patterns made by the black pen letters on the wood grain, the letters moving around, the grain going up and down. I saw pictures of faces, and animals and odd formations.

The point?  I wanted to make something beautiful.  That is how I chose to spend my time at night.  I did have some very personal reasons for doing this, but they are moot.  It really is just my most current book art project.

Basically the book is all about sex.  I have A LOT to say about this.

SJG: It seems that the process must have in some way paralleled Bloom's journey, his a walk through Dublin, yours a walk through Joyce. Anything to that?

CM: It definitely felt like I was having a love affair with Joyce. 

SJG: You've read the book, a work of art in and of itself. You've turned it into a work of art in another medium. How has it changed your perspective on the book?

CM: As I was absorbing the story, I was also observing his style, and method of storytelling. I understood what was going on in his head as a story teller, writer and artist.  What he was trying to achieve in his Modernism.  This is when I knew that the book had more than a plot line, it had a picture line, the movements of everyone if they could be seen over head would draw out symbols/pictures.  As I was taking the words off the page, I was in this fourth dimension with Joyce.

Draft schematic plan for exhibition.

SJG: And for the viewer/reader, what is it you expect or hope from them? What do you want people to take away from the experience?

CM: What I want people to take away from seeing the poles is the magic of the hand written word, the beauty of handwriting.  The beauty of a handmade object only they can create, by hand writing.

SJG: Are you looking for or have you found an exhibition space for the piece? Any interest yet from galleries?

CM: I am talking to people about exhibiting them, and welcome any inquiries. Depending on the space will depend on how to show them.  Either anchored to the floor or hanging from the ceiling. All can be done.

Pole #38, with last line.

SJG: You said that "basically the book is all about sex.  I have A LOT to say about this." You can't declare that and not pay it off.

CM: Spoiler Alert! It covers every angle of human sexuality. One interesting point about the Ulysses obscenity trial in America is that the case was won the day after Prohibition was lifted.

•  •  •

The case was won on December 6, 1933. Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933 when the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing the 18th Amendment was ratified.

"...And what is cheese? Corpse of milk" - James Joyce, Ulysses . 

And what is Charlene Matthews' Ulysses? Copse of novel.

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Images courtesy of Charlene Matthews, with our thanks.
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A Landmark In The History of Style

by Stephen J. Gertz

"The task which you propose to me of adapting words to these airs is by no means simple. The poet, who would follow the various sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity, which composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged their music…" (Tom Moore, 1807, to John Stevenson).

In 1846 an extraordinary book was published in England. It was the first illustrated edition of Thomas Moore's "best-known production, the Irish Melodies, based on the airs recorded by Edward Bunting…first issued in two volumes in 1808 and [running] to an additional eight volumes up to 1834" (Oxford Companion to Irish Literature).

What made the book so special? Its visual design and illustrations by Daniel Maclise.

"Maclise laboured hard to make this book a worthy tribute to Tom Moore [1779-1852], whom he loved and revered, inventing decorative borders for every page in addition to his abundant illustrations, and even doing some of the preliminary etching himself...The gratified poet wrote of the volume's 'national character,' an 'Irish pencil' having 'lent its aid to an Irish pen.' Yet the book is totally unpolitical. It is a landmark, instead, in the history of style.

 

"By his treatment of illustration and text into a unit and by his infinite elaboration of detail, Maclise not only introduced to England the effects achieved by the German illustrators of the 1830s and early 1840s, but also anticipated the French Art Nouveau volumes that began with Grasset's Quatre Fils Aymon of 1883" (Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England 1790-1914).

Eugène Grasset (designer and illustrator).
Histoire des Quatre Fils Aymon (1883).

Daniel Maclise (1806-1870, born in Cork City, Ireland, was an Irish history, literary and portrait painter, and illustrator, who lived and worked in London during most of his life. Maclise exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1829. He slowly began to devote himself to subject and historical pictures, with occasional portraits, i.e. of Lord Campbell, novelist Letitia Landon, Charles Dickens, and other of his literary friends.

He also designed illustrations for several of Dickens' Christmas books and other works. Between 1830 and 1836 he contributed to Fraser's Magazine. His work at Fraser's, under the pseudonym Alfred Croquis, resulted in a memorable series of caricatures of the literary and other celebrated figures of his era, which were afterwards published as the Maclise Portrait Gallery (1871).

Frontispiece.

Maclise's design for Moore's Irish Melodies featured steel-engraving throughout the entire book,  the text employing Francis Paul Becker's omnigraph patent process of engraving letters. It was printed by Peter McQueen.

Of Tom Moore, we have this biographical reminisce:

"Oh yes, dear Moore, and you were one of the lively and intellectual circle, of the pleasant and the profound, of the social and the learned, of the sound-sensed, practical, and the genius-fraught imaginative who filled this crowded, stirring scene. What a list I could furnish, what reminiscences I could bring up; but there can only be glimpses of some few of the figures, and snatches at some few of the circumstances, as they vanish into the past.

"The reader need not be told that Moore was a delightful companion; among men, ever full of anecdote and entertainment, and, when the dining-room surrendered its inmates to the better society of the drawing-room, a perfect Orpheus to enchant the only portion of creation it is worth a wish to charm. Seated at the piano, and chanting his own Irish melodies, with all the sentiment and expression of the poet, though almost like recitative and without strong powers of voice, he was then in his glory, his small figure magnified into an Apollo, and his round countenance beaming, or perhaps the more accurately descriptive word would be sparkling with intelligence and pleasure, whilst Beauty crowded enamoured around him and hung with infectious enthusiasm upon his every tone. It is only by reference to the furore sometimes witnessed at a chef d’oeuvre in opera executed by a perfect artist, that an idea can be formed of the effect of Moore’s singing to a refined circle, whose silence of admiration was but casually and briefly broken by murmurs of delight. I have seen instances of extraordinary excitement produced by his musical fascinations" (Autobiography of William Jerdan [1852], Ch. 6, The Periodical Press, p. 91).

A gorgeous copy of Moore's Irish Melodies recently passed through my hands, bound c. 1884-1894 by Joseph Shepherd of the F. Bedford bindery (stamp-signed to front cover) in full forest green morocco with a central medallion to both sides comprised of concentric shamrock rolls and dots in gilt, an onlaid red morocco  ring with gilt coils, and a center element of onlaid tan morocco (the tan, alas, not registering here) with gilt strapwork, the whole within a black and green morocco frame of gilt shamrocks and trailing vines with tri-shamrock corner pieces. The spine compartments reiterate the cover design, and gilt shamrock dentelles highlight the inner covers. All edges are gilt. The whole is wrapped within a green cloth chemise and housed inside a cloth slipcase.

Binder "Francis Bedford was born in 1799, died in 1883 and is one of the few English bookbinders included in the Dictionary of National Biography. After five years of running Charles Lewis's firm for that binder's widow and nine years in partnership with John Clarkes, he established himself on his own in 1851 and was soon the acknowledged leader of the West-end trade in London. After his death the firm was carried on under his name for a few months by his nieces and then for nearly ten years by Joseph Shepherd, who purchased it in 1884 when he was only twenty-six years old" (Nixon, Five Centuries of English Bookbinding).

During his lifetime, Bedford, according to Nixon, did no original design work, his bindings fabulous recreations of 16th and 17th century styles. "It would therefore seem likely that any signed Bedford bindings which show any originality of design date from the Shepherd period..." (ibid). Shepherd "had learned his trade with the successors of the old bookbinding firm of Edmonds & Remnant. It was no slight undertaking for a workman of his age to attempt the production and finish of artistic bindings which had become celebrated in private libraries throughout Europe and the United States and British provinces. Like old wine, or superb Italian paintings of a former era, the Bedford bindings improve with age..." (American Printer & Lithographer, volume 15, 1892).

The firm's pride in its bindings is demonstrated by its most unusual positioning of the signature "Bound by F. Bedford" gilt-stamped to the outer front cover (rather than inside), here at the bottom edge of the frame.

Below, Irish tenor John McCormack sings The Minstrel Boy, that classic Irish patriotic song with lyrics by Tom Moore, purportedly in memorial to his friends who were killed during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, set to the classic Irish air, The Moreen, and, since the American Civil War, the anthem of Irish-Americans:

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death ye will find him;
His father's sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
"Land of Song!" said the warrior bard,
"Tho' all the world betray thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

The Minstrel fell! But the foreman's chain
Could not bring his proud soul under;
The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!"

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[BEDFORD, Francis, bindery]. MOORE, Thomas. Moore's Irish Melodies. Illustrated by D. Maclise. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1846.

First illustrated edition. Quarto (10 5/16 x 7 1/8 in; 263 x 180 mm). iv, 280 pp. Extra-engraved title-page and frontispiece. Engraved text and illustrations within engraved decorative borders designed by Maclise, by the omnigraphic process.

Ray 29.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with out thanks.
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Medieval Scribes Gripe About Writing

by Stephen J. Gertz

Given contemporary physical conditions and tools, if you were a medieval monk or nun and knew how to swing quill and sling ink your take on writing was very likely much as Dorothy Parker's: "I enjoy having written." The process has always been somewhat grueling, the pleasure retrospective.

r

You didn't complain; the boss was God. You kept your mouth shut. But  has there ever been a writer who could be stifled without, at some point, rebelling, even if only surreptitiously, in the margins of leaves or on the colophon?

The latest issue of Lapham's Quarterly contains a short, delightful piece about the marginalia of medieval scribes, and Booktryst presents a sampler with verbal illuminations when clarification is necessary.

"New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more."

Windows 8.

"I am very cold."

"While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun, I finished by candlelight."

Medieval monasteries were not known for their central heating systems and insulation. You wrote in a room that was, basically, the great outdoors with walls and a roof pretending to keep out drafts and cold.

"The parchment is hairy."

Well, no, the parchment wasn't hirsute. "The parchment is hairy" is a medieval proverb that means, on one of its multiple levels,"wasting time in fruitless labor," i.e. the scribe made a mistake and has to start all over again, or the scribe felt that the text wasn't worth time and effort. Or, good grief, related to nuns having abortions rather than being found out. There's more than meets the quill with this  ripe medieval phrase, as you'll learn here. It is deeply embedded in, and revealing of, medieval ecclesiastical culture.

"The ink is thin."

"Oh, my hand."

"Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake give me a drink."

Until recently, that declaration and plea could have been written by many if not most novelists. In fact, it is likely that if certain writers couldn't have a drink until after they finished their novels, the books would have been written in half the time in an ardent sprint to the finish for ardent spirits.

"St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing."

One of the biggest hit songs of the 12th century was written by a scribe who knew the score. Had you turned on the radio you'd have likely heard, in Top 40 rotation, Colm Cille's Is Scíth Mo Chrob ón Scríbainn, a plaintive Celtic rap otherwise known as My Hand Is Cramped With Penwork. 

 

My hand is cramped with penwork.
My quill has a tapered point.
Its birdmouth issues a blue-dark
Beetle-sparkle of ink.
Wisdom keeps welling in streams
From my fine drawn, sallow hand:
Riverrun on the vellum
Of ink from green-skinned holly.
My small runny pen keeps going
Through books, through thick and thin
To enrich the scholars’ holdings:
Penwork that cramps my hand.

It apocryphally ends with the refrain:

My hand is cramped with penwork.
My quill has a tapered point.

Now I've written the whole thing.

For Christ's sake roll me a joint.

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Illumination images courtesy of It's About Time, with our thanks.

Image of this lovely new recording of medieval Celtic lyrics, Songs of the Scribes, courtesy of Pádraigín Ní Uallachán, with our thanks. Listen to a sample of My Hand Is Cramped With Penwork, sung by Pádraigín Ní Uallachán, here.

Translation of Is Scíth Mo Chrob ón Scríbainn by Seamus Heaney.

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Suggested reading:

HAMEL, Christopher de. Scribes and Illuminators. London: British Museum Press, 1992.
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When Ginsberg & Burroughs Met Samuel Beckett

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Vodka with Bill and lisping boyish wrinkled Samuel Beckett
  - he sang Joyce lyrics he heard from Joyce's lips."

On September 26, 1976, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, in Berlin to perform a reading of his work, wrote a postcard to his close friend/lover poet Peter Orlovsky.

Dear Peter -

Been here a week, went to zoo with Bill [William S. Burroughs], several afternoons in East Berlin learning Brecht style MUSIK from poet Wolf Biermann - Now sitting in Cafe Zillemarkt off big [?] cafe avenue...looks like cobblestone floored Cafe Figaro - shooting mouth off about politics - probably wrong - Vodka with Bill + lisping thin boyish wrinkled Samuel Beckett - he sang Joyce lyrics he heard from Joyce's lips. See you the 15th. Allen."

To hear Ginsberg tell it in that one throwaway line, the meeting with Beckett was rich and enchanting. Imagine Beckett reciting Joyce, recalled from a meeting of the two modern giants of literature.  Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that room!

Burroughs' recollection of the get-together was somewhat at odds  with Allen Ginsberg's. It's as if Ginsberg and Burroughs were reporting from different planets.

As Burroughs remembered it:

"I recall a personal visit to Beckett. John Calder, my publisher and Beckett's, was the intermediary for a short, not more than a half and hour audience. This was in Berlin. Beckett was there directing one of his new plays. Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag and myself were there for a reading. Also present in the visiting party were Fred Jordan [an editor at Grove Press] and Professor Hoellerer, a professor of English Literature at Berlin University.

"Beckett was polite and articulate. It was, however, apparent to me at least tat he had not the slightest interest in any of us, nor the slightest desire ever to see any of us again. We had been warned to take our own liquor as he would proffer none so we had brought along a bottle of whiskey. Beckett accepted a small drink which he sipped throughout the visit. Asking the various participants first what Beckett said, and what the whole conversation was about, seems to elicit quite different responses. Nobody seems to remember at all clearly. It was as if we had entered a hiatus of disinterest. I recall that we did talk of my son's recent liver transplant and the rejection syndrome. I reminded Beckett of our last meeting in Maurice Girodias' restaurant. On this occasion we had argued about the cut-ups, and I had no wish to renew the argument. So it was just, "yes," "Maurice's restaurant." Allen, I believe, asked Beckett if he had ever given a reading of his work. Beckett said "no."

"There was some small talk about the apartment placed at his disposal by the academy: a sparsely furnished duplex overlooking the Tiergarten. I said the zoo was very good, one of the best, with nocturnal creatures in dioramas, like their natural habitat...Beckett nodded, as if willing to take my word for this. I think there was some discussion of Susan Sontag's cancer. I looked at my watch. Someone asked Allen or Fred for the time. We got up to go. Beckett shook hands politely" (Beckett and Proust, in The Adding Machine: Selected Essays [1986], p. 182).

Susan Sontag had her own take on the meeting with Beckett. Interviewed with Burroughs by Victor Bockris for With William Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker (1982) she remembered:

Sontag: It all started like this: we were staying in this picturesque hotel in Berlin and Allen Ginsberg said, "We're going to see Beckett, c'mon,'"and I said, "Oh, William [Burroughs] are you are going, I don't want to butt in," and he said, "No, c'mon, c'mon," and we went. We knocked on the door of this beautiful atelier with great double height ceilings, very white. This beautiful, very thin man who tilts forward when he stands answered the door. He was alone. Everything was very clean and bare and white. I actually had seen him the day before on the grounds of the theater of the Akademie Der Kunst. Beckett comes to Berlin because he knows his privacy will be respected. He received us in a very courtly way and we sat at a very big long table. He waited for us to talk. Allen was, as usual, very forthcoming and did a great deal of talking. He did manage to draw Beckett out asking him about Joyce. That was somehow deeply embarrassing to me. Then we talked about singing, and Beckett and Allen began to sing while I was getting more and more embarrassed.

Victor Bockris: Bill [William Burroughs] says Beckett made you feel as if you would be welcome to leave as soon as you could.

Sontag: He didn't actually throw us out.

William Burroughs: Oh, the hell he didn't! See, I have an entirely different slant on the whole thing. In the first place, John Calder said, "Bring along some liquor," which we did. I know that Beckett considers other people different from him and he doesn't really like to see them. He's got nothing particular against the being there, it's just that there are limits to how long he can stand being with people. So I figured that about twenty minutes would be enough. Someone brought up the fact that my son was due for transplants, and Beckett talked about the problem of rejection, about which he'd read an article. I don't remember this singing episode at all. You see Susan says it seemed long, it seemed to me extremely short. Soon after we got there, and the talk about transplant, everybody looked at their watch, and it was very obviously time to go. We'd only brought along a pint and it had disappeared by that time.

Sontag: Allen said, "What was it like to be with Joyce? I understand Joyce had a beautiful voice, and that he liked to sing." Allen did some kind of "OM" and Beckett said, "Yes, indeed he had a beautiful voice," and I kept thinking what a beautiful voice he had. I had seen Beckett before in a café in Paris, but I had never heard him speak and I was struck by the Irish accent. After more than half a century in France he has a very pure speech which is unmarked by living abroad. I know hardly anybody who's younger than Beckett, who has spent a great deal of time abroad who hasn't in some way adjusted his or her speech to living abroad. There's always a kind of deliberateness or an accommodation to the fact that even when you speak your own language you're speaking to people whose first language it's not and Beckett didn't seem in any way like someone who has lived most of his life in a country that was not the country of his original speech. He has a beautiful Irish musical voice. I don't remember that he made us feel we had to go, but I think we all felt we couldn't stay very long.

Bockris: Did you feel the psychic push? That Beckett had "placed" you outside the room?

Burroughs: Everybody knew that they weren't supposed to stay very long. I think it was ten minutes after six that we got out of there. [...] He gave me one of the greatest compliment that I ever heard. Someone asked him, "What do you think of Burroughs?" and he said - grudgingly - "Well, he's a writer."

Sontag: High praise indeed.

Burroughs: I esteemed it very highly. Someone who really knows about writing, or say about medicine says, "Well, he's a doctor. He gets in the operating room and he knows what he's doing."

Sontag: But at the same time you thought he was hostile to some of your procedures?

Burroughs: Yes, he was, and we talked about that very briefly when we first came in during the Berlin visit. He remembered perfectly the occasion.

Sontag: Do you think he reads much?

Burroughs: I would doubt it. Beckett is someone who needs no input as such. To me it's a very relaxed feeling to be around someone who doesn't need me for anything and wouldn't care if  died right there the next minute. Most people have to get themselves needed or noticed. I don't have that feeling at all. But there's no point in being there, because he had no desire or need to see people.

Bockris: How did you feel when you left that meeting?

Sontag: I was very glad I had seen him. I was more interested just to see what he looks like, if he was as good-looking as he is in photos.

Burroughs: He looked very well and in very good shape. Beckett is about seventy-five. He's very thin and his face looks quite youthful. It's really almost an Irish streetboy face. We got up and left, the visit had been, as I say, very cordial, decorous...

Sontag: More decorous than cordial I would say. It was a weightless experience, because it's true, nothing happened.

Burroughs: Nothing happened at all.

Rarely has nothing been so fascinating and earned its much ado.

This little gem of a postcard is being offered by Brian Cassidy, Bookseller.

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Postcard image courtesy of Brian Cassidy, Bookseller, with our thanks.
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When Irish Elves Are Smiling

by Stephen J. Gertz

They offered a cow for each leg of her cow, but she would not accept that offer.

 When Irish elves are smiling
‘Tis an Arthur Rackham Spring
With the lilt of Irish fairies
You can hear the goblins Sing

The waves of all the worlds seemed to whirl
past them in one huge green cataract.

"Arthur Rackham's two great books of the 'Twenties were James Stephens' Irish Fairy Tales of 1920 and Shakespeare's Tempest of 1926...Beyond the softness of style and inventiveness, the most striking thing about the colour plates for Irish Fairy Tales is the felicitous and appropriate use of Celtic borders" (Gettings, Arthur Rackham, p. 143).

They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror.

The reviews for both author and artist were uniformly glowing, i.e.:

"Children may enjoy it, but like Arthur Rackham's exquisite illustrations, it will be fully appreciated only by more sophisticated readers" (The Review, Vol. 3, 1920).

"James Stephens' writing has the gift of everlasting youth. Arthur Rackham's drawing have inherent magic. Wherefore the two are fortunately met in a new book, primarily for children, but also full of appeal to grown-ups with a sense of humor" (The Independent, December 25, 1920).

She looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below.

Dublin-born poet and novelist James Stephens (1882-1950) was a member of the Irish Literary Revival and co-founder of the Irish Review best known for The Crock of Gold (1912). He campaigned for a free Irish state. He wrote many retellings of Irish myths and fairy tales, The Crock of Gold amongst them. His interpretations are noteworthy for their humor and lyricism.

My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and
escape, a burden and anguish of watchfulness.

Irish Fairy Tales is a retelling of ten Irish folktales set in a wooded, Medieval Ireland filled with larger-than-life hunters, warriors, kings, and fairies. Many stories concern the Fianna and their captain, Fionn mac Uail, from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.

This copy is in a contemporary binding in full forest green crushed morocco (possibly by Stikeman & Co.) with triple fillets and tooled borders surrounding an inner panel with corner and side devices, broad gilt dentelles, and top edge gilt.

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[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. STEPHENS, James. Irish Fairy Tales. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1920. First trade edition. Quarto (8 1/4 x 6 3/8 in; 210 x 160 mm). x, 318 pp. Sixteen full color plates with captioned tissue guards, twenty-one drawings in black and white.

Lattimore and Haskell, p. 52. Riall, p. 138.
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Read the full text of James Stephens Irish Fairy Tales here.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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Stephen J. Gertz is a contributor to The Journal of the Arthur Rackham Society.
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Of related interest:

Arthur Rackham Drawing Found in Unrecorded Louis Wain Book.

The Riddle of Arthur Rackham's "Faithful Friends" Solved?

Peter Pan: Still a Boy at 150.
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Unscrambling Samuel Beckett's "Whoroscope"

His first published poem is a real flooz, er, doozy.

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

What do you call a 100-line poem narrated by a grumpy and delirious René Descartes while he anxiously awaits being served an egg that better have been hatched between eight and ten days or else, and that is - Mother of Mercy! - annotated by its author?

You call it Whoroscope, Samuel Beckett’s first published poem.

Poet Andrew Goodspeed, in Contemporary Poetry Review, called it, “Oblique, resistant, and complex to the scholar as it is to the novice reader…squalor for squalor’s sake, indulgence in gloom, endless obscurity, pointless obscurantism, unfollowable erudition, reference to the untraceably personal, and the occasional unexplained diversion towards what seems motiveless degradation of humanity…sprawling, abrupt, amusing, obscure, disgusting, fantastically referential and, of all things, annotated. It betrays the provocative erudition, intellectualist sneering, and verbal confrontationality that Beckett adopted early.”

In other words, you may, when finished reading, ask yourself and anyone nearby, “WTF?” At which point your mettle is tested: run screaming into the void, or go back to re-read, sink into, swallow, and digest. If you’re Samuel Beckett you might add, “then excrete.”

It is, nonetheless,  an inspiring poem. It inspired literary critic William Bysshe Stein to write a sunny  side up eggsegesis, Beckett’s “Whoroscope”: Turdy Ooscopy, that begins:

The method of this study mirrors an ooscopy, a divination from eggs. And it is not alone the fowl taste of the renowned philosopher Descartes for omelets 'made from eggs hatched from eight to ten days' that inspires this approach. Patently, this biographical fact fertilized the imagination of Samuel Beckett, its implicit absurdity underlying his perverse embryogenetic treatment of certain major philosophical, religious, scientific, and emotional crises in the life of Descartes. As a realized conception, the egg in one way or another yokes together these predicaments.

Ova my dead body.

The poem is legendary for its creation. Beckett cranked it out in one night, in Paris, desperate to meet  a submission deadline. He completed "half before dinner, had a guzzle of salad and Chambertin...and finished it about three in the morning." He then mailed it  for consideration in a poetry contest held by shipping-heiress and poet, Nancy Cunard. He won (£10) and  Whoroscope was published in its first separate edition by The Hours Press, Cunard’s small publishing house devoted to literary Modernism and experimental poetry, in 1930.

You can read the full text of, and annotations to, Whoroscope here.

Or, you can avoid a potential cerebral hernia and simply read the Booktryst version, which unscrambles the poem to get to the heart of the matter, that which sets-off and sustains this wacked-out monologue suspended in space and time and exclusive of all but its own internal reference points, The Cosmic Egg:

Ode to Oeuf

What's that?
An egg?
By the brother Boot it stinks fresh.
Give it to Gillot

What's that?
A little green fry or a mushroomy one?
Two lashed ovaries with prosciutto?
How long did she womb it, the feathery one?
Three days and four nights?
Give it to Gillot

What's that?
How long?
Sit on it.

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.
Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

Are you ripe at last,
my slim pale double-breasted turd?
How rich she smells,
this abortion of a fledgling!
I will eat it with a fish fork.
White and yolk and feathers.


Well, maybe not the Cosmic Egg. Sometimes an egg is just an egg.

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Take a look and listen to a very well done reading, courtesy YouTube:

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A beautiful copy (No. 59) of this, the first separate edition of Whoroscope, one of only 100 signed copies, and including the usually absent wraparound, has come to market, courtesy of Santa Barbara-based  rare bookman, Ralph Sipper  (aka Joseph the Provider). A fragile little thing (the book, not Sipper), the wraparound even more so, it is somewhat miraculous that any have survived in complete state. It is dear and highly desired.

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BECKETT, Samuel. Whoroscope. Paris: The Hours Press, 1930. First separate edition, one of 100 copies signed by the author (of a total edition of 300). 8vo. [ii], 4. [2] pp. Printed wrappers.

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Images courtesy of Ralph Sipper, with our thanks.

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