1n6xZiV

t ; , - / A M E S [ 1918-1919Private. . . . This morning a threatening violent letter from the Vormund.The sister has been dying. M— in a madhouse or Nervenanstaltbut now back again threatening suicide. Gave him all my correspondence.Violent gestures towards me. I did not even know she was back nor have Iseen her since the feast of candles. Well, I got up and went to the Lion'sDen. Long interview wherein I displayed all that suave human diplomacy,that goodness of heart, that understanding of others, that timidity whichyet is courage, those shining qualities of heart and head which have sooften . . .* Result, stasis: Waffenstillstand.Mem. No allusion to this in your reply which I expect confidently twentyyears after.10In spite of this man-of-the-world tone Joyce was not one to forget anywoman for whom he had felt strong emotion, and Marthe swam vaporouslyagain into his life later on. Her haughty, naughty beguilementsalso helped him in composing the episode Nausicaa, a point he confirmedby sending her a postcard with greetings to Nausicaa from Odysseus.Shortly after his thirty-seventh birthday, Joyce took part in anotherdramatic episode, this time as litigant rather than as lover. His secondsuit against Carr, for libel, came to trial on February 11, 1919. Dr.Bloch, Joyce's lawyer, had urged him to withdraw it, since with no witnessbut himself he could not hope for a favorable verdict. At firstJoycestubbornly persisted, but at last agreed to let Bloch withdraw the suit. Ingiving his version of the events afterwards he implied that Bloch had beeninfluenced by the sinister hand of British authority, but this notion wasunfounded. Bloch asked the court to cancel the indemnification ordinarilypayable to the defendant in such a case, on the grounds that Carr hadcaused the quarrel and had needlessly prolonged the proceedings by hisappeal to extraterritorial privileges. Carr's attorney, Wettstein, insistedon damages, and the judge ruled that Joyce should bear the court costsof 59 francs and damages of 120 francs." Joyce avoided paying themthen, and refused to pay them afterwards, so that the case was not yetquite over.It was an appropriate coincidence that in February, with Marthe luringfrom one direction and Carr glowering from the other, he should havebeen working on the Scylla and Charybdis episode. For this he drewupon his lectures on Hamlet in Trieste, supplemented by a good deal offurther reading. He then decided to add an episode not in Homer, theWandering Rocks, based upon the voyage of the Argonauts; his purposewas to bring the city of Dublin even more fully into the book by focusingupon it rather than upon Bloom or Stephen. From there he went on tothe Sirens episode. He wrote Miss Weaver on February 25, 1919, of hisliterary progress and its impedimenta:"Joyce's ellipsis.