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274 / A M E S [ 1907-1909 ]which is not rich of itself. You are obliged to write only about strongthings. In your skilled hands they may become still stronger. I do notbelieve you can give the appearance of strength to things which are inthemselves feeble, not important. I must say that if you had to write awhole novel with the only aim of description of everyday life without aproblem which could affect strongly your own mind (you would not choosesuch a novel) you would be obliged to leave your method and find artificialcolours to lend to the things the life they wanted in themselves.Excuse me, dear Mr. Joyce, these remarks which prove perhaps onlymy conceitedness and believe me yours very truly,Ettore Schmitz 91There was much in the letter that was right, and Joyce made some changesabout this time in Chapter I. Schmitz's approval of the daring introductionof the three sermons, and of Stephen's development in general, wasa tribute to his powers that he valued. He announced to Stanislaus hewas now going to continue his novel and would also send off Dubliners,flung aside for a year, to Maunsel & Co. in Dublin. He sent the bookin April. With the same energy, he wrote to his father to make sure thetrees at Clongowes were beeches. 92Perhaps now he decided to cut outGogarty (whom he had given the name of Goggins in Stephen Hero).The effect was to put on Stephen's frail shoulders the whole burden ofheresy in the book, rather than, as he had intended earlier, to contrastthe sensitive heretic with the insensitive one. 93This latter effect he reservednow for Ulysses, the material for which was beginning to agglomerate.The increased sharpness of his image of himself is reflected in an articleon Oscar Wilde which Joyce wrote for the Piccolo della Sera ofMarch 24, 1909. The firstperformance in Trieste of Strauss's Salome,based on Wilde's play, with Bellincioni in the leading role, was the immediateoccasion for the article. 94But Joyce had been interested in Wildefor a long time, and even wrote to Robert Ross asking permission totranslate The Soul of Man under Socialism. * 95 He took the occasion ofhis article to see in Wilde something of what he was coming to regard ashis own personality, the miserable man who sings of joy. Behind thefacade of Heliogabalus, the Roman emperor who proclaimed a Syriandivinity to be greater than the gods of the Romans, and who treated hiscrown as a plaything, was the man who was poor enough to pawn hismedals. Only when he became 'court jester' to the English did Wildeacquire the wealth which he then gaily squandered. His fall was 'greetedby a howl of puritantical joy,' the more reprehensible because homosexualityt is fostered by the English educational system. Abandoned by his"The permission was accorded on June 19, 1909, but events of the summer put it out ofJoyce's head.t Joyce avoids using this word in his article. Compare 'Wilde's love that dare not speakits name' in Ulysses (49 [69]).