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670 / A M E S [ 1932-1935 ]Gorman to print it near the beginning rather than the end of his biography.*Captain Alving, the speaker in the poem, points out that he isassumed to have fathered two children, one out of wedlock and one in,the first (Regina) healthy, the second (Oswald) congenitally sick. Pursuingthe trail of guilt with the zeal of the ghost in Hamlet, and profiting fromsuggestions in Ghosts that Parson Manders and Mrs. Alving were oncein love, the captain deduces that Manders was Oswald's begetter. Joyce'sinterest in the profligate father recalls both his own father and himself.The parallel could be pressed a little farther; however much he mightdeny Lucia's malady, he too had one sick and one healthy child. Butonly in the otherness of composition, in the dramatic stance of his poem,would he have allowed himself to think of his children in these terms.While Joyce is immanent in Captain Alving, Captain Alving was someoneelse:Epilogue to Ibsen's 'Ghosts'Dear quick, whose conscience buried deepThe grim old grouser has been salving,Permit one spectre more to peep.I am the ghost of Captain Alving.Silenced and smothered by my pastLike the lewd knight in dirty linenI struggle forth to swell the castAnd air a long-suppressed opinion.For muddling weddings into wakesNo fool could vie with Parson Manders.I, though a dab at ducks and drakes,Let gooseys serve or sauce their ganders.My spouse bore me a blighted boy,Our slavey pupped a bouncing bitch.Paternity, thy name is joyWhen the wise sire knows which is which.Both swear I am that self-same manBy whom their infants were begotten.Explain, fate, if you care and canWhy one is sound and one is rotten.Olaf may plod his stony pathAnd live as chastely as Susanna* Since the poem parodies Ibsen's familiar devices of Spreading the Guilt and the HorribleHint, Joyce carefully emphasized that he had not lost his respect for his Norwegian precursor.He dictated for Gorman the remark: 'This (which is in fact a grotesque amplificationof Osvalt's own attempted defense of his father in the play) is not to be interpreted,however, in the sense that he does not consider Ibsen to be the supreme dramatic poet,basing his belief, however, on the later plays from the Wild Duck onwards, and of coursedoes not mean that he considers Ghosts as anything but a great tragedy.' 96