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[Aetat. 18-20] J O Y C E 89sertion by the Censor.* The writers are now publishing them in theiroriginal form, and each writer is responsible only for what appears underhis own name. F.J.C.S. J.A.J.' They went into Gerrard Brothers, a stationeryshop, across Stephen's Green from the College, which took onsmall printing jobs, and had 85 copies printed for £2-5-0 on October 21,1901. The two authors distributed them with the assistance of StanislausJoyce, who had the duty of handing one in to George Moore's maid­39servant.Joyce's article was entitled, 'The Day of the Rabblement.' 40It beganwith a surly quotation; 'No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of thetrue or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, thoughhe may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself By ignoringthe Nolan, the Irish Literary Theatre had succumbed to 'the trolls' insteadof warring with them as Ibsen had instructed.t The Irish rabblement,'the most belated race in Europe,' must be countered, not appeased.No dramatist of European stature had emerged from the theater.The artists were not giants but giantlings. Yeats, while he might havehad genius, was too much the esthete and had too floating a wili; + Moorehad once deserved the place of honor among novelists in English, buthad failed to keep up with the tide of the novel which had now sweptfrom Flaubert's naturalism through Jacobsen to D'Annunzio's lyricism.'But truth deals largely with us. Elsewhere there are men who are worthyto carry on the tradition of the old master who is dying in Christiania.He has already found his successor in the writer of Michael Kramer, andthe third minister will not be wanting when his hour comes. Even nowthat hour may be standing by the door.'The publication of Two Essays roused a good deal of talk. No oneknew who the Nolan was. As Joyce told Herbert Gorman later, 'UniversityCollege was much intrigued by this personage whom it supposed tobe an ancient Irish chieftain like the MacDermott or the O'Rahilly.' 42Some students thought it was Joyce himself, later identified in the columnsof Sr. Stephen's as 'the dreamy one of Nola'; others thought it wasthe porter at the Cecilia Street medical school, whose name was Nolan.'Said the Nolan' became a catch phrase. 43Stanislaus had urged him toclarify this reference to Giordano Bruno of Nola, but James replied, 'Laymenshould be encouraged to think,' and fancied that when the studentsdiscovered who the Nolan was, they might go on to read some of his"The word 'Censor' was chosen with some sarcasm, since Father Browne was merely theadviser. It is likely that Kennedy 'commissioned' the two papers only in the sense that hesuggested Joyce and Skeffington write something for the magazine.t Ibsen wrote in 'Et Vers,' To live is to war with the trolls,' and used the word frequentlyto depict the enemies of art.{Joyce clung to this criticism. In A Portrait Stephen reproves Yeats's Michael Robartesfor desiring a beauty that has long faded from the world. Joyce would tell Djuna Barnesin 1921 that Yeats was 'too fond of the aesthetic.' 41

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