1n6xZiV

[ Aetat. 39-40 ] J O Y C E 523two episodes together.* ('Seemingly,' he wrote her, 'such an attitude iscompatible with much understanding of the book and friendliness towardsits writer.') 111Larbaud hinted at the extraordinary organization ofeach episode in terms of hour, organ, and the like, but understandablydid not dwell upon it. The book had the complexity of a mosaic, he said,and referred to Joyce's workbooks in which abbreviated phrases wereunderlined in different-colored pencils to indicate in which episode theyshould be inserted. In concluding he anticipated two misconceptions:Joyce's modern Ulysses was not made Jewish for anti-Semitic reasons; andthe distastefulness of the lower functions of man could not justify theirexclusion from a book dedicated to the whole man.Adrienne Monnier now introduced Jimmy Light, with a reminder thatsome of the passages to be read might seem 'audacious.' 112They includedthe execution scene from the Cyclops, the romance in the Sirens,a few passages from Ithaca (which Joyce insisted on), and the last sixpages of Penelope. (During the reading of the 113Cyclops episode, Joyceinformed Miss Weaver, 'the light went out very much as it did for theCyclops himself, but the audience was very patient.') 114Joyce himselfwas hidden behind a screen, but was obliged, much against his will, tocome forward afterwards in response to enthusiastic applause. Larbaudfervently embraced him, and Joyce blushed with confusion. 115On thewhole he felt that the seance had gone well. 116Subscriptions flowedintoShakespeare and Company.The day of publication was becoming, in Joyce's superstitious mind,talismanic. He wrote Miss Weaver on November 1, 1921,A coincidence is that of birthdays in connection with my books. A Portraitof the Artist which first appeared serially in your paper on 2 February[his birthday] finished on 1 September [her birthday]. Ulysses began on 1March (birthday of a friend of mine, a Cornish painter [Budgen, who washalf Cornish]) and was finished on Mr Pound's birthday [October 30], hetells me. I wonder on whose it will be published. 117Chance was too important for Joyce to allow it complete freedom; heresolved to have the book appear on his own fortieth birthday, February2, and from December through January he kept sending letters and telegrams,and making telephone calls, to Miss Beach and Darantiere, embodyinghis latest corrections and additions. Djuna Barnes, who met himduring this period fairly often, said he looked 'both sad and tired, but itis a sadness of a man who has procured some medieval permission tosorrow out of time and in no place,' and 'a weariness of one self-subjectedto the creation of an overabundance in the limited.' 118Another imageshe formed of him was 'the Grand Inquisitor come to judge himself.' 119At Les Deux Magots he said slowly, 'The pity is the public will demandand find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious* He referred to Elpenor in the Aeolus (instead of the Hades) episode.