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Rasik & rest I am very much surprised to read about the notes you quote from the Scholes and Litz edition. Because it reveals an unflattering side of Joyce - of reading other people's diary, and then using it to write a story! I wonder how Stanislaus reacted on this. The other points above the name Sinico, the blending of the characters of the two brothers into Mr. Dufffy is all very interesting. I was wondering yesterday, whether Sinico was a play on cynic, whether Mr. Duffy with his thoughts that "Every bond is a bond to sorrow" is a cynical man. This sentence is a very important sentence in the story. It shows that Mr. Duffy for all his exterior calmness and orderliness is a very scared person indeed.That is why he could not bear to let a woman touch him, did not want to open his heart to anybody. Yes, Joyce is a master story teller. About the economy of words, what stuck me is the way he describes the home of Mr. Duffy. That is such a matter of fact description, so devoid of emotion, till one realises he is saying actually lots and lots about the character of Mr. Duffy by using such a dry language to describe the room in this fashion. Mastery over story telling he shows in how he uses names and references to show the plot of his stories: like the names Chapelizoid and Hauptmann's play Michael Kramer. But for my notes, I would not have realised the significance of the place Chapelizoid, though I knew of Hauptmann. My notes describe the names as: Chapelizod: A village that spans the Liffey about three miles down river to the west of the city center. It borders on the Phoenix Park. Both places are associated with the legend of Tristan and Iseult. Chapelizod dervies from the French, Chapel d'Iseult. The doomed love of that enchanted pair has offered the critics many interpretative opportunities in their reading of Joyce's tale of rejected love. (look at the connection to Zuerich. Wagner wrote the opera, Tristan and Isolde when he stayed as a guest of Wesendonck's and fell in love with Matilde Wesendonck.). Chapelizod comes again in Finnegans Wake. Thus by making Chapelizod Mr. Duffy's hometown, Joyce is saying from the very beginning that the love of/for Mr. Duffy is doomed. Hauptmann's Michael Kramer: Play written in 1900 by German writer Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946). it dramatizes the conflict between a highminded, reclusive father and his bohemian and artistically gifted son which ends in the suicide of the latter and the realization by the former that his demanding treatment of his offspring has contributed to his son's tragic fate. Joyce himself did a translation into English of this work in 1901 which he hoped would be presented by the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin, but it was rejected in 1904 by W. B. Yeats. Again reference to the manuscript of this play lying on the table of Mr. Duffy is used to indicate that Mr. Duffy is very demanding, and tragic fate awaits anyone who comes close to him. Chandra |
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