 | JOYCE'S ULYSSES LIBRARY
by
TRISTAN POWER
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III
The next important documentation of Joyce's reading during this period is
found in
his 1918 Zurich notebook, which is composed of notes on books that
he
consulted in the Zentralbibliothek. Among these works is long assumed to
have
been the English prose translation of the Odyssey by
S. H. Butcher and A.
Lang,
based on references to Homer's poem in this notebook.
23
However, in his notes
to Book 11 of
the Odyssey, Joyce refers to Zeus by his Roman name Jove, and to
Oedipus' mother as
"Jokaste" (Ἰοκάστη),
24
rather than Epicaste as she is called
in this particular book of
Homer (Od. 11.271). The gloss suggests that Joyce was
here instead following the
translation by William Cowper, the only one to use
Roman
names (including "Ulysses") and to specify Jocasta in a footnote.
25
Her-
ring's conjecture of "?didipur"
26
for the word under "Jokaste" should obviously
be emended to "Oidipus," which is likewise a
transliteration of the Greek spell-
ing (Οἰδίπους). Atsome point Joyce also obtained
his own contemporary copy
of this translation that survives from his Trieste
library, and it is a version of the
tale that he favored more than has been
realized, despite his dislike of Cowper's
own poetry.
27
Butcher and Lang were certainly read by Joyce too, but
there is
no evidence that he did so at the Zentralbibliothek. They are not the only
old-
in the "Nausicaa" episode. 28 Clearly, he also had in mind the even more archaic,
but hitherto overlooked, style of Cowper's verse translation.
See e.g. Frank Callanan,
"James Joyce and the United Irishman,
Paris 1902–3,"
Dublin
James Joyce
Journal 3 (2010), 88–89.
James Joyce, "I.ii. Notebook with
Accounts, Quotations, Books Lists, etc.," Joyce
Papers 2002,
Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Ireland, MS 36,639/2/A, p.
43.
The list has been mostly transcribed by Luca Crispi, "A Commentary on James Joyce's National
Library of Ireland 'Early
Commonplace Book': 1903–1912 (MS 36,639/02/A)," Genetic Joyce
Studies 9 (2009), 24. However, he does not
correctly identify two ofthe editions: Oscar Wilde,
Art &
Morality, rev. ed., ed. Stuart Mason (London: F. Palmer,1912); Frederick
Corder,
Wagner
(Masterpieces of Music) (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack,
1912).
Phillip F. Herring,
"Ulysses Notebook VIII.A.5 at Buffalo," Studiesin
Bibliography 22
(1969), 294, 308–309 (repr. in id. [ed.],
Joyce's Notes and Early Drafts for Ulysses: Selections
from
the Buffalo Collection [Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia,
1977], 10, 28–29).
James Joyce,
Ulysses:
Notes & "Telemachus"Scylla and Charybdis"; A Facsimile of Notes for
the
Book & Manuscripts & Typescripts for Episodes 1–9, ed. Michael Groden
(New York: Garland,
1978), 160 (=JJA 12:
160).
William Cowper,
The
Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, 2 vols. (London: Printed for
J. John-
son, 1791), 2: 257. A copy of this edition is
indeed held by the Zentralbibliothek.
Herring, "Ulysses Notebook VIII.A.5 at
Buffalo," p. 308 = Joyce's Notes and Early Drafts
for
Ulysses, p. 29.
Pace
Keri Elizabeth
Ames, "Joyce's Aesthetic of the Double Negative and His Encoun-
ters
with Homer's Odyssey," in Beckett, Joyce
and the Art of the Negative, ed. Colleen Jaurretche
(Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2005), 27, 29–30. For his edition of Cowper's translation, see
Gillespie,
James Joyce's Trieste Library, p.
99.
| JOYCE'S ULYSSES LIBRARY
by
TRISTAN POWER
| |