| HJS |
| volume 3, issue 2, 2003 |
| NOTES 1 Matys points out many resemblances to the early poems of Yeats in Chamber Music. See Joyce, Poems and Exiles, passim, in the notes on Chamber Music. 2 Pierce (1992) suggests a less romantic origin for the title. He writes: "In the early years of their relationship, Joyce enjoyed listening to Nora use the chamber pot, an activity that suggested a title for his first collection of poems - Chamber Music, or 'Shamebred Music' as he calls it in Finnegans Wake (164.15-16)" (p. 58) He also quotes an ambiguous reference to the title in Ulysses: "'Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she' (U 11.979-80)." (p. 43) Similar information is found in many other sources, including Joyce, Poems and Exiles (p. 270), and seems to derive from Tindall. It is, however, largely irrelevant to the nature and interpretation of the poems themselves. 3 Quoted in Morris Beja, James Joyce, A Literary Life (London, Macmillan, 1992), p. 28. 4 According to the bibliography given in the Joyce Studies Annual of 1993 (Austin, University of Texas Press), a study by Myra Russell of G. Molyneux Palmer's musical settings of Chamber Music (settings for voice and piano of 32 of the 36 poems) was "forthcoming" (Bloomington, Indiana University Press). 5 Quoted in Vicki Mahaffey, "Joyce's Shorter Works", in Derek Attridge (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 196-197. 6 See the interesting article by Jean L. Kreiling, "A Note on James Joyce, Gottfried Keller, and Music" in James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 3, spring 1988, pp. 349-356. 7 The best source for the poem by Verlaine is Joyce, Poems and Exiles, pp. 69-70 (the commentary, with Verlaine's original text, is on pp. 301-302). The text of "Stephen's Green" is given in Joyce, Poems and Shorter Writings, pp. 140-141, but a more complete discussion can be found in Joyce, Poesie e prose, pp. 693-700. 8 So far as I know, there is no systematic study of Joyce's translations, yet he produced translations during the entire span of his literary career, from his early translations of Hauptmann and Verlaine to his own reworking of 'Anna Livia Plurabelle'. He translated, alone or in collaboration, poems, plays and stories; the languages involved are (mainly) Italian, Latin, German and French (besides English, obviously). Perhaps the time has come to examine these translations with care, to see if there are any underlying or guiding 'principles' that can be identified. This might also illuminate certain aspects of Joyce's methods of composition; for example, the text of Finnegans Wake could be interpreted as one gigantic act of 'translation' of an original Ur-text into the new 'language' Joyce invented as he went along. (A recent, partial study is that by Eric Bulson, "Getting Noticed: James Joyce's Italian Translations" in Joyce Studies Annual 2001 [edited by Thomas F. Staley], Austin, University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 10-37.) 9 Cf. Jorge J.E. Gracia, A Theory of Textuality, The Logic and Epistemology (Albany, N.Y., State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 52-53. 10 For a more complete exposition of these ideas, see Gerald Parks, "Introduction: Poetry as Experience" in Gerald Parks (ed.), Traduzione poetica e dintorni (Trieste, Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio, dell'Interpretazione e della Traduzione, 2001), pp. v-xviii. 11 For notyes on this poem, see Joyce, Poems and Exiles (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1992), pp. 275-276 and Joyce, Poems and Shorter Writings (London, Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 251. 12 For notes on this poem, see Joyce, Poems and Exiles, pp. 289-290; also Joyce, Poems and Shorter Writings, p. 254. 13 This is a characteristic of his translations of Poems Penyeach in general, as Rosella Mamoli Zorzi points out in her introduction to the volume: "Che Camerino optasse per una lettura delle poesie entro i canoni della tradizione si puo arguire anche da quella che probabilmente e una scelta consapevole: le non moltissime, ma peraltro presenti, parole composte che mostrano una certa elaborazione del linguaggio [...] non sono, da Camerino, rese in un italiano che mostri un'analoga sperimentazione." (Joyce, Po(e)mi un soldo l'uno [Venezia, Fondazione Stampalia, 1988], pp. 12-13) 14 Detailed notes on this poem can be found in Joyce, Poems and Exiles (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1992), pp. 331-335; see also the notes in Joyce, Poems and Shorter Writings (London, Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 260, as well as in Joyce, Poesie (Milano, Mondadori, 1976), pp. 301-303 and Joyce, Poesie (Roma, Newton Compton, 1992), pp.119-120. 15 By way of example, here is one of Joyce's limericks and its Italian translation: There once was a lounger named Stephen Whose youth was most odd and uneven He throve on the smell Of a horrible hell That a Hottentot wouldn't believe in. C'era u n tale chiamato Stephen, un giovane perduto, che viveva nel disordine piu dissoluto; si nutriva dell'odore di un inferno nel cui orrore nemmeno un ottentotto avrebbe creduto. (Poesie, Milano, Mondadori, 1976, pp. 250-251) |