Richard Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde in the Genesis of Finnegans Wake
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Transcript of Richard Wagner's Tristan Und Isolde in the Genesis of Finnegans Wake
University of Tulsa
Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" in the Genesis of "Finnegans Wake"Author(s): Geert LernoutSource: James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1/2, Joyce and Opera (Fall, 2000 - Winter, 2001),pp. 143-156Published by: University of TulsaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477782Accessed: 27/07/2010 17:50
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Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in the Genesis of Finnegans Wake
GeertLernout
University of Antwerp
That Richard Wagner and his opera Tristan und Isolde play a cru
cial role in Finnegans Wake was clear to the book's first critics.
Early' commentators and annotators such as Adaline Glasheen
in her first Census had commented on the possible Wagnerian origin of Issy.1 In 1991, Timothy Martin's exhaustive study Joyce and Wagner traced the enormous influence of the composer, and the book has
reminded us how pervasive that influence really was; most useful is
a long appendix in which Martin lists all the allusions to Wagner and
his works in Joyce's oeuvre.2
On the other hand, the Tristan and Isolde theme has also been cen
tral in the work of genetic critics of the Wake? In one of the early
genetic studies, David Hayman wrote about "the sources and evolu
tion" of the theme.4 This article formed the basis of The "Wake" in
Transit, the book that kindled the genetic interest in Joyce's work in
the early nineties.5 Both in the essay and in the book, Hayman sees the
Tristan and Isolde myth as crucial to the early history of Finnegans Wake. In Ezra Pound's Instigations,6 a discussion of Jules Laforgue's
parodie treatment of the Salom? story, Joyce found the tone and
strategies of his early Tristan sketch, the second (after "Roderick
O'Conor") of his earliest sketches for the Wake. Moreover, in Wagner's
opera, Joyce found the material that he had earlier used in Exiles and
that he entered on the Exiles pages of the Scribbledehobble notebook
just before he began to write the sketches. According to Hayman,
Joyce's involvement with Wagner and the Tristan material was an
attempt on Joyce's part to mock the intellectual climate that had
"spawned him":
Though the fate of the Tristan and Isolde sketch parallels with impor tant differences that of the Wagner notes [in Scribbledehobble], its even
tual location in the final or recorso chapter of Book II suggests that it constitutes less a
commentary on the composer or the opera than a read
ing, in starkly contemporary terms, of a historical moment and a mind
set: decadence. ("Wake" 73)
143
Hayman's version of the earliest history of Finnegans Wake was and
remains controversial.7 In this essay, I intend neither to cover the
same terrain as Hayman nor to add to the quite exhaustive list of
Wagner allusions in Martin's appendix. Instead, I want to trace
Joyce's references to Wagner in the Finnegans Wake notebooks and to
sketch a history of the Wagner references in the genesis of Finnegans Wake.
Central in the earliest references to Wagner in the notebooks is the
affair between the composer and the wife of his financial savior, Otto von Wesendonck, which took place during the composition of Tristan
und Isolde in the late 1850s. We know that the publication of the cor
respondence between the two lovers, in 1904, created quite a stir
among the Wagner cognoscenti, even among those based in Dublin.8
From a letter to Lord Howard de Waiden that is quoted in Joseph Hone's biography of George Moore, we know that Moore was read
ing a recent English translation of the letters between Wagner and
Mathilde Wesendonck in 1905 when he was finishing his most
Wagnerian novel The Lake.9 And in Vale, the last part of Hail and
Farewell, Moore compares the "gratified" relationship between
Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck, which created Tristan und Isolde, with the ungratified desire for Maud Gonne which "ruined" W. B.
Yeats's poetry.10 Even before the publication of the Wesendonck letters, the opera
had been a crucial text in Symbolist and Decadent literature. The
Liebestod theme became a decadent clich? in such works as Auguste Villiers de TIsle-Adam's Axel and in Gabriele D'Annunzio's II Fuoco.11
Martin has shown how the end of Wagner's opera may have con
tributed to the finales of "The Dead" and Exiles. A careful study of the
early Finnegans Wake notebooks reveals that the story of Tristan and
Isolde was present in the makeup of Finnegans Wake almost from the
very beginning of the note-taking process. The three oldest surviving
Finnegans Wake notebooks contain references to Tristan and Isolde or
to Wagner. VI.B.10 has a list of earlier writers who had used the
Tristan material: this list was taken from "The Story of Tristram and
Isolt in Modern Poetry," an article by T. Sturge Moore.12 VI.A (the notebook formerly known as Scribbledehobble) has notes taken from
Joseph B?dier's version of the story but no references to Wagner.13 VI.B.3 has a whole cluster of biographical notes on Wagner. All of
these, of course, were relevant to Joyce's writing of his second sketch
for Finnegans Wake.
VI.B.10 is the notebook that links Ulysses to "Roderick O'Conor,"
Joyce's first writing after Molly's final "yes." Entries in this notebook
date from October 1922 until January 1923, and they open with cor
rections for the third printing of the earlier novel. The notebook con
144
tains diverse materials, supposedly jottings for the next project. Joyce was reading widely in contemporary newspapers. He seems to have
been interested in Dublin names culled from the Irish Times, in the
women's pages of the same newspaper, and in historical, gastronom ical, orthographical, and biological materials. There is a relative lack
of interest in politics: we can find almost nothing on European events
(the crisis in the Ruhr, the Fascist takeover in Rome), and there is, even more surprisingly, very little on the civil war in Ireland. Clusters
include a couple of pages on fox hunting, Irish expressions and
American idioms, and references to friends and acquaintances, to
actors and singers (Val Vousden, Jackie Coogan, Lillian Gish), to the
Bywaters trial in London, and to birds, bats, rats, and fish. It seems
safe to assume that at this early stage, Joyce did not yet have plans for a "Tristan and Isolde" sketch. Apart from the brief reference to mod ern reworkings of the "Tristan and Isolde" material, there are no allu
sions either to this material or to Wagner. It is a pity that the next notebook did not survive, because that
seems to have coincided with the initial ideas for writing the first pen cil draft of the "Tristan and Isolde" sketch, a draft that unfortunately does not survive either. The only evidence we have is the first fair
copy of the earliest existing draft, which itself shows at least one over
lay of revision. (The fair copy, or "base text," is the normal font text on pages 208-09 of Hayman's A First-Draft Version of "Finnegans
Wake."14) Since the notebook of this period does not survive, our only evidence of Joyce's initial ideas is thus the first existing version of the
sketch. All the additions to this version, that is, all of the words and
phrases in Hayman's First-Draft Version that are printed in bold and
in italics, date from after Joyce's work on VI.B.3, while none of the
base text does. In April 1923, Joyce made a second and third fair copy. Harriet Shaw Weaver made a typescript of the sketch in the summer
of the same year. In the earliest version of the sketch, Tristan is a "rugger and soccer
champion," Isolde a flapper, "the belle of Chapelizod" (Version 208). At this stage, the text reads like a combination of the "Nausicaa" and
"Cyclops" episodes of Ulysses. There is only a little of the Wagner opera in this first version: the setting seems to be that of the opera's first act, and Tristan's suitably Schopenhauerian outburst follows
something that closely resembles an aria: "He then having dephleg matised his frog in the Sweat guttur
. . . uttered as-what follows from
his . . . voicebox: -Isolde!" (Version 208-09). This passage eventually became FW 394.19-395.02.
That "Tristan and Isolde" had become central to the Wake in the
winter of 1923 is obvious in notebook VI.B.3, which Joyce began to fill
in March of that year at a time that he must have been planning the
145
revisions on the first surviving draft. From the beginning, this note
book contains most interesting notes on Tristan and Isolde. The fol
lowing is at the top of the first page: "to circulate/ (Trist) /Trist - Go
away from/me you/(she goes) O come back" (JJA 29:180). VI.B.3 is
full of references to Tristan and Isolde as characters. The lines of
"Trist" tend to be corny and in slang, while those of "Is" are superfi cial and vain. It is obvious that Joyce was collecting materials to revise
and extend the "Tristan and Isolde" sketch.
On page 66 of notebook VI.B.3, we find the start of a group of
Wagnerian items, beginning with the date of the composer's death ("t
1883"), his initials, and, a bit lower on the page, the dates of his first
acquaintance with the Wesendoncks in Zurich. Some of the entries on
this and on the next eleven notebook pages deal with Wagner and
Mathilde:
natural/discretion/t 1883 RW/superior/quality (T&I/MW 20/rest assured (66)
reproach by self/accusations/Zur 1853-1855/love born beneath/the shade of/friendship/She sent lamp/silver teapot, he/replied
with/music books,/a volume of/his own/composition (67)
At home with the/music (M.W.)/he introduced me/to
Schopenhauer's/philosophy (MW)/at the twilight hour/visibly tired
(68)
Clouds dissipate/he formed the third/in this noble intimacy/(O.W)/ tactful & fervent/payment in music & personal/company/admired by
her/husband (69)
Germany and other/lands/. . ./he had recourse/to poetry/optical/ (obstacle)/T&I-en famille (70)
soul - intimacy/.. ./Sweet plantation/(MW's res)/the branches there
(71)
lyrical blooms/our true home/The Torch (T&I)/plentitude/reduced to ashes (75)
Frau Will acts as/Candela, MW & RW/Is? Twice she wrote/better
'Yesterday'/Is when she first/counted 15 then 14/.. ./Thou (Is)/Where did I stop?/(read
- Is) (76)
Art of sonorous silence/sleep RW - music (77)
(JJA 29:213-15, 217-18)
Most but not all of these items dealing with Tristan and Isolde seem
146
to be Wagnerian and apparently come from the same source.
It took me ages to discover where Joyce got his information: none
of the usual English biographies had the necessary discussions of the
triangle including Wagner and Otto and Mathilde Wesendonclc Some
of the notes appear, at first, to originate in an article by Albert Heintz
in the Allgemeine Musikzeitung of Valentine's Day 1896: Joyce's note
book has "at home with the music" and "he introduced me to
Schopenhauer's philosophy," and in Heintz's interview with
Mathilde Wesendonck, we read, "Wagner spielte . . . die betreffende
Satze so lange, bis ich mich ganz heimisch darin f?hlte" and "Im Jahre 1852 f?hrte er mich in die Philosophie Arthur Schopenhauers ein."15
But it seemed obvious that these items must have been quoted from
Heintz's article in the source that Joyce did have at his disposal. Dr.
Eger of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth suggested a num
ber of texts, one of them a book by Edouard Sch?re called Femmes
inspiratrices et po?tes annonciateurs}6 This book contains all the items in
chronological order, from "la discr?tion naturelle des deux familles"
to "l'art de la silence sonore." But it still seemed odd that, in his note
taking, Joyce would have translated everything immediately. I pub lished a full transcription of the Schure index to Woman: The Inspirer in A "Finnegans Wake" Circular; here all of the items can be traced in
the form in which they appear in the notebooks.17 Joyce had used the
English translation of Schur?'s book.
As the writer of novels, of poems, and of "theater of the spirit," Sch?re has been almost forgotten in France. Although he gave his
name to a Lyc?e in Strasbourg where he was born, no articles about
his literary work have appeared in the last ten years. But at the end of
the nineteenth century, he was quite influential. In 1865, at the age of
twenty-four, he attended the first production of Tristan und Isolde. Two
years later, he published a history of the German Lied. In the follow
ing years, numerous enthusiastic articles would appear in Revue des
deux mondes, the magazine that was to have an enormous influence on
Symbolist and Decadent poets such as Paul Verlaine and St?phane Mallarm?. These were later incorporated in a book entitled Le drame
musical: Richard Wagner, son oeuvre et son id?e, and several books on
musical drama and on Wagner followed (among them a book of sou
venirs about the first night of Tristan und Isolde), but in the eighties Sch?re began to work on a series of studies that would be gathered under the title Les grands initi?s and published in 1889.18 Although Sch?re later complained, in an introduction to one of the later editions
of Les grands initi?s, that the book was met with "cold indifference" by the specialists, it was an enormous popular success (vii). Schur?'s
complaint was published in 1927 in the introduction to the book's
ninety-first edition, at a moment when it had been translated into
147
Italian, Russian, English, German, Dutch, and Spanish. Some of his
books are still in print, usually by publishers specializing in the eso
teric: his "prehistoric story" Les avatars de la druidesse was reprinted by Editions Trism?giste in Paris as late as 1981.
Schur?'s thinking in many ways resembles that of Yeats and other
philosophical and aesthetic idealists of the European fin-de-si?cle.
Modern man is torn between the Church and Science, each seeming
ly with a monopoly on truth. Like so many other thinkers in the sec
ond half of the century, Sch?re sought salvation from the positivism and materialism of his age in an esoteric and decidedly Neoplatonist doctrine that was supposed to be common to all religions. The only
reality is spiritual, and matter is but a shadow, the "inferior change able, transient expression" of the spiritual Real, as Sch?re observes in
Les grands initi?s (xix). The gnostic or rational mystic realizes that God
is within each one of us. Reincarnation is the motor of the individual
soul's evolution: when a soul reaches its perfection, it becomes part of
the pure Spirit of God. Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus,
Pythagoras, Plato, and Jesus were the Great Initiates who have passed on this knowledge through the ages. The theosophical thinking of
Sch?re has many connections with Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy,19 and there were personal connections too: the two met in 1906. Sch?re
translated a book by Steiner, who, in turn, wrote an introduction to
the German translation of Les grands initi?s. Schur?'s esoteric books
continue to be published and distributed by Steiner's followers.
Femmes inspiratrices et po?tes annonciateurs was first published in
1908. The book collects a number of articles that had earlier been pub lished in journals such as the Revue des deux mondes. It also combines
Schur?'s different lifelong interests. His initiation into the secret doc
trines was effected by the woman he calls his Guide during her life
and his Genius after her death, Mme Margherita Albana Mignaty, to
whom he devotes a chapter of the book. Other chapters deal with
Mathilde Wesendonck and Cosima Liszt. In addition, Sch?re also dis cusses the work of three "po?tes annonciateurs": Mme Ackermann, Louis le Cardonnel, and Alexandre Saint-Yves?all three completely
forgotten today. The English edition of 1918 drops the sections on the
"po?tes annonciateurs." In the preface, Sch?re speaks of "a kind of
spiritual fecundation of the Eternal-Masculine by the Eternal
Feminine wherein is seen one of the loftiest functions of woman" (v). It is not easy to understand why Joyce became interested in this
particular book. After World War I, Sch?re seems to have become fas
cinated by his Celtic roots. He published a book entitled L'?me celtique et le genie de la France ? travers les ?ges, and a book by Jean Dornis about
Schur?'s life and times was titled Un Celte d'Alsace, la vie, la pens?e, et
les plus belles pages d'Edouard Sch?re?? But there is no indication that
148
Joyce was even aware of this Celtic connection. Since he borrowed
only from the book's section on Wagner, we can conclude that Joyce seems to have been interested solely in the Wagner-Wesendonck tri
angle. In the introduction to the Wagner section of Woman: The Inspirer,
Sch?re describes the autobiographical basis of Tristan und Isolde, at
which Wagner had only hinted in a work that Sch?re refers to by the
title Confessions to my Friends. In this text, according to Sch?re, Wagner wrote that "during this period he had experienced 'absolute love/ and that the revelation had completely transformed both his art and
his philosophy" (3). It was only after the death of Mathilde
Wesendonck in 1902 that Wagner's letters and a private diary he had
written in Venice became public. These were published two years later by Wolfgang Golther and quickly translated into English and
French.21 In the first chapter, Sch?re describes the developing rela
tionship between Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck, which ended
disastrously in 1858, when Minna Wagner intercepted a letter from
Mathilde Wesendonck. The second chapter depicts the aftermath of
this crisis. When Wagner ended up in Venice, the two lovers contin
ued to exchange letters via Frau Elisa Wille ("the faithful
Brangwaine"?30) in which Wagner kept Mathilde informed of the
progress of Tristan. The third chapter then describes what Sch?re calls
"the descent from the summit" (39). Wagner continued to see the
Wesendoncks from time to time (all of the surviving letters from
Mathilde date from this period), but the passion had cooled consider
ably. In an epilogue, Sch?re describes Wagner's growing alienation
from his former lover as lie fell in love with Cosima von B?low and
then had his new Isolde ask the old one for the manuscripts he had
given to her (44-51).
Joyce's note-taking from Woman: The Inspirer is less erratic than on
other occasions. Characteristically, given the precedents set in Exiles
and Ulysses, he seems especially interested in the role of Otto
Wesendonck in the affair, and he notes the rather quaint phrases with
which Sch?re describes the role of the husband in the love triangle: "he formed the third/in this noble intimacy/(O.W.)" (JJA 29:214). This is based on the following sentence in Sch?re: "He formed the
third in this noble intimacy, wherein the master rose to lofty heights as he taught his gifted pupil" (12-13). With just a few exceptions, all
of the notes come from the first part of the article, which describes the
couple's courtship. For the purposes of his new book, Joyce did not
seem to have been interested in the postpartum blues or in the inter
esting complications of Wagner-Tristan and two (married) Isoldes.
Especially interesting from a genetic perspective is Joyce's use of
this material in his revision of the first surviving draft of the "Tristan
149
and Isolde" sketch, an undertaking that must have provided the
impetus for his reading the Sch?re book in the first place. The harvest
here is quite limited. Only three items were used in the revision of the
sketch: on page 68 of VI.B.3, Joyce crossed out "at the twilight hour"
and on page 75 "lyrical blooms" and "our true home," all in brown
pencil, and transferred them to "Tristan and Isolde." The first phrase is based on the words of Mathilde Wesendonck noted by Heintz and
quoted by Sch?re: "What he composed in the morning he was in the
habit of playing for me between five and six the same evening, or at
the twilight hour" (12). The second line represents part of Schur?'s
description of the effect of Wesendonck's poetry on Wagner: "A
strange, intoxicating kind of frenzy must have come over the com
poser at the sight of these delightful, lyrical blooms" (22). The last
phrase is taken from the fourth stanza of "In the Vinery," one of
Mathilde Wesendonck's poems that is quoted by Sch?re: "Well I
know itl Sweet plantation,/Tyrant fate we must obey;/We have both
another nation-/Our true home is far away" (21). (The "true home"
that Joyce takes from the poem refers, of course, to marriage.) A sen
tence in the first fair copy of the Tristan and Isolde sketch describes
the "handsome sixfoottwo rugger and soccer champion" answering a
request, on the part of the "belle of Chapelizod," for poetry: "He
promptly then elocutioned to her ... in decasyllabic iambic hexame
ter: Roll on, thou deep and darkblue ocean, roll!" (Version 208). Between "to her" and "in decasyllabic," Joyce inserted "a favourite
lyrical bloom" {Version 208). Just after this example of decasyllabic iambic hexameter, Joyce added the following sentence: "The sea looked
awfully pretty at that twilight hour" {Version 208). The context in the fair
copy has the same sexually charged energy as the original in Sch?re. The phrase "our true home," originally part of Wesendonck's poem, was inserted into a later extension of "Tristan and Isolde" but never
included in Finnegans Wake.
The reason for this rather limited harvest may have something to
do with the fact that, while copying the entries into VI.B.3, Joyce had
moved on to the third of his early sketches for the Wake. The first draft
of the Saint Kevin episode is to be found at the end of VI.B.3, and in
the same month (July 1923) Joyce worked on "Saint Patrick and the
Druid." But Joyce's use of notebook material sometimes extended far
beyond his immediate interests when he first copied the material in
his notebook. The items taken from pages 66 to 77 of VI.B.3 were used
in successive waves over more than ten years?the earliest, as we
have seen, in March 1923 and the latest sometime in 1934.
The first time Joyce returned to this particular index was in the first
months of 1924, when he was writing the first draft of 1.7. To the third
item on the list of charges against Shem the Penman, a charge which
150
begins with the words "Sniffer of carrion, you have foretold death &
disaster," Joyce added a sequence which was based on items from
VI.B.3: "the dynamitising offricndohip friends, the reducing of records to
ashes, the destruction of customs by fire, the return of green powdered dust
lo dust" (Version 121). Here, one Wagner item has gotten caught up in
these references to the civil-war violence of 1922-1923: on page 75 of
VI.B.3, "reduced to ashes" is struck out in red. Schure quotes these
words from one of Wagner's Venice letters to Mathilde Wesendonck:
"Ah! Once more I inhale the magic perfume of those flowers that thou
didst pluck for me in the garden of thy heart; no blooms of life on
earth were\they, but rather the fragrance of the heavenly flowers of
divine death, of eternal life. In olden times they were strewn over the
hero's body, before it was reduced to ashes by the flames" (23). This
phrase survives in a slightly convoluted form in Finnegans Wake: "the
reducing of records to ashes" (FW 189.35-36). A second use of the Schure material, in the spring of 1924, at two
distinct points in the Second Watch of Shaun, is more obviously linked to the Tristan and Isolde theme. In a section that is addressed
to his sister, Shaun mentions that she should be wary of "furnished
lodgers paying for meals on tally with company & piano music" (JJA
57:32); this eventually becomes "furnished lodgers paying for their
feed on tally with company and piano tunes" in Finnegans Wake (FW
437.27-28). The .phrase was taken from page 69 of VI.B.3, which
quotes from Schur?'s description of Wagner's living arrangements in
Zurich: "Her tactful and fervent pleading enabled Frau Wesendonck
to persuade her husband, in his generosity, to purchase a small house,
roomy and convenient, just on the border of the estate, with a garden attached to it-It was understood that the artist should pay the rent
in music and personal company" (14). On the same page of this draft,
Joyce used another item from one of the first Wagner letters to
Mathilde Wesendonck. First, Joyce drafted an addition?"Tell me the name & address of any fellow that speaks to you on the street and as
sure as I come back I'll break his face for him" (JJA 57:32)?and then
he began to amplify this addition. One of the addenda was "rest
assured," which he put before the sentence "I'll break his face" (JJA
57:32); the phrase survives in Finnegans Wake as "rest insured," which
he put before the sentence "we'll go a long way towards breaking his
outsider's face for him" (FW 442.16,22-23). Although the context here
is one of sexual jealousy, the meaning of the phrase in Schur?'s quo tation from a letter by Wagner has been somewhat altered; Wagner
wrote Mathilde Wesendonck on 17 March 1853, "If, in future, I
impose upon myself more frequent acts of self-denial rest assured
that this is because I am determined, above all else, to obtain forgive ness by showing myself in a more favourable fight" (9).
151
Obviously, Joyce did not need this index to refer to Wagner's opera.
Every time Issy made an appearance, references to the opera were
introduced. In the early drafts of 1.8, there was an innocent "Was it?
Was it?" in response to an account of ALP's youthful exploits in
County Wicklow (JJA 48:23). In July 1925, Joyce changed this into "Wasut? Izod?" (FW 203.08-09), a play on the first words of Tristan in
Wagner's opera. With "Mild und leise," the beginning of Isolde's final
aria, these words were disseminated all over the work. This is espe
cially obvious in those passages that were devoted to Issy. That Joyce was concerned with Wagner in 1925 is confirmed by the presence of
more notes on the composer in notebook VI.B.7, which dates from the
spring of that year. On the flyleaf, we find Wagner's initials followed
by the year of his birth and his death and a number of other dates:
"1838/1857-1870" (JJA 30:170). When he was revising the first typescript of the first two chapters
of book III in March 1926, Joyce added a number of lines to the fol
lowing sentence: "Some time soon shall we all be dead and happy
together in the land of lost of time" (JJA 57:186). He struck out the
word "soon" and replaced it with "very presently now when the
clouds are dissipated after their forty years' shower" (JJA 57:186), which eventually became "[s]ome time very presently now when yon clouds are dissipated after their forty years shower" (FW 453.30-31),
Here, Joyce, working with notes on pages 68-69 of VI.B.3, takes a ref
erence to Wagner's temper and applies it to the weather again. The
English translation of Schur?'s translation of Heintz reads, "At times
when he entered the room, visibly tired and dejected, after a short rest
it was a relief to see the clouds that had gathered upon his brow sud
denly dissipate and his countenance light up when he sat down at the
piano" (12). In both of these cases, the reference to Wagner and to the
actual source of the notes seems to be largely irrelevant.
When he wrote the first chapter of his book in the fall of 1926, Joyce introduced Tristan and Isolde ("Was is? Isot!") in the very first draft
(JJA 44:5). The "Meldundleize" at FW 18.02, on the other hand, was
introduced sometime before the first proofs of transition, number 1, which date from February 1927. In the spring of 1928, Joyce returned
to Shaun's sermon in the third proofs of the transition installment of
III.2. He marked two phrases from page 68 of VI.B.3 in green pencil and entered them in the text with interesting alterations. In the first
instance, there is a shift from music to painting. Sch?re quotes from
Mathilde Wesendonck's "memoirs," as noted in the Heintz interview
of 14 February 1896: "In 1854 he introduced me to Schopenhauer's
philosophy" (12). In VI.B.3, we find a note to the same effect, but in
chapter III.2 this becomes "introducing you to Hogarth and Bottisilly and Titteretto and Vergognese and Coraggio!" (JJA 57:389), which
152
eventually becomes "introducing you, left to right the party compris es, to hogarths like Bottisilly and Titteretto and Vergognese and
Coraggio with their extrahand Mazzaccio" (FW 435.06-09). A bit
lower on the same page of the proofs, we find the addition of "mix
himself so at home with the music and," a phrase which would sur
vive as "mix himself so at home mid the musik" (FW 437.32). This
phrase is based on the note "at home with the music," in its turn
derived from Mathilde Wesendonck's memories of Wagner, noted in
Sch?re: "As I was very fond of Beethoven, he played me his sonatas; if a concert was about to be given, or he was to conduct one of
Beethoven's\ symphonies, he played for me the different parts of the
work, both before and after the rehearsal, until I felt quite at home
with the music" (12). That Joyce was able to remember where the material in the note
books originally came from is demonstrated by the fact that the
largest group of items from Schur?'s book went into the Wagner and
'Wesendonck passage in "The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies" (FW 229-30). On the retyped version of the second section of II.1,
Joyce added the sentence "until they would meet in Parisise after
tourments of years" (JJA 51:55). In a second revision on the same
page, Joyce struck out "they would meet" and replaced the words
with "he would accoster as a wagoner would his wheesindonk at
their trist" (JJA 51:55). These Wagner elements did not come from
VI.B.3, but at some point, when Joyce was preparing his work for
publication in volume 22 of transition, he went back to the notebook.
Both the typescript and the proofs are missing, but we have a number
of pages on which Joyce noted down material for use in transition, 22.
Here we have notes taken ?from VI.B.3: "payment in music and per sonal company/much admired by her husband/[has recourse to
poetry/in soul intimacy" (JJA 51:153). All of these phrases made it
into "The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies." After the words "the
suchess of sceaunonsceau," Joyce added "a hadtobe heldin, thor
oughly enjoyed by many so meny on block at Boyrut season and for
their account ottorly admired by her husband in sole intimacy" (FW
229.33-36). Here, Joyce combines two items which, in Sch?re, apply to
the relationship between Wagner and Otto Wesendonck ("much admired by her husband") and between Wagner and Mathilde
Wesendonck ("in sole intimacy") respectively. The result is the disap
pearance of Wagner, the lover, and the reappearance of the Christian name of the husband, which Joyce had not written down in the note
book. The other items from VI.B.3 are combined with more Wagner lore?which Joyce also found in Sch?re?to create an elaborate
Wagner passage:
153
He would si through severalls of sanctuaries ... so as to meet some
where, if produced, on a demi panssion for his whole lofetime, payment in goo to slee music and poisonal comfany, following which, like Ipsey Secumbe, when he fingon to foil the fluter, she could have all the g.s.M. she moohooed after fore and rickwards to herslF, including science of sonorous silence, while he . . . have recourse of course to poetry. (FW
230.17-24)
Joyce manages to include all of the elements of the Otto-Mathilde
Wagner triangle: Otto was subsidizing the composer, who was sup
posed to repay him with music and personal company but who
instead started an affair with his wife. The demi-pension becomes
passionate, the lifetime a time for love. Wagner has recourse to poet
ry while Mathilde Wesendonck is given the science of sonorous
silence, which was still an art of silence in Sch?re. In Woman: The
Inspirer, Sch?re writes that Wagner has recourse to poetry only because it is the sole way not to betray his friend Otto: "We must how
ever do [Wagner] the justice to state that he was profoundly conscious
of his obligations as Otto Wesendonck's friend. Caught between so
imperious a duty and his ever-increasing love, he had recourse to
poetry as his sole means of deliverance" (16). And the "sonorous
silence" (noted on page 77 of VI.B.3) is that of Tristan und Isolde.
According to a letter from Wagner to Mathilde, which I have already
quoted in the French translation of Sch?re, Tristan was written for her:
"I now return to Tristan. Through it I will speak to thee in the sublime
art of sonorous silence" (35). What is also interesting in this passage is that Joyce refers to something that is in Woman: The Inspirer (11) but
not in VI.B.3: the manuscript of the overture to Die Walk?re was ded
icated "g.s.M.," gesegnet sei Mathilde. These items were all added
sometime in 1933, and Joyce's return to the Wagner material in this
period is confirmed by a brief note in one of the notebooks he was
using at that time. On page 39 of VI.B.35, we find the Christian names
of the Wesendoncks and "g s M si F," two abbreviations used by
Wagner on the musical manuscripts he sent Mathilde. Sch?re writes, "These hasty scraps were often accompanied by a humorous remark
or a word of thanks, a lament or a declaration of affection. On one we
find the initials G. S. M., signifying Gesegnet sei Mathilde (blessed be
Mathilde); on another S. L. Fv meaning seiner lieben Freundin (to his
dear friend)" (11). The rest of the Sch?re items ended up in another Issy context: with
a different pen, Joyce added the phrase "which was all your middle
ages?replies of the poetics Mr Faithful & Fervent, to my fine silver
hallmarked as famille teapot" {JJA 52:240) to that part of II.2 that is
now on page 280 of the Wake. Most of these words find their origin in
different sections of Woman: the Inspirer. An exchange of presents
154
between Wagner and Mathilde is described in Sch?re in these words:
"She sends flowers, a lamp, a silver tea-pot. He replies with rare
books and music of his own composition" (11). Sch?re uses the words
"tactful and fervent" to describe Mathilde's pleading with her hus
band to buy the composer a little house and later writes that the com
poser and his young friend "continued to see each other en famille" (14,17). This phrase does not survive in the Wake, but another one, also based on Sch?re, does: "Is it in the now woodwordings of our
sweet plantation where the branchings then will singingsing" (FW
280.04-06). Two elements from Mathilde's poem "In the Vinery" are
combined here: the "sweet plantation" was taken from the fourth
stanza (quoted above), and the "branchings" echo "branches" from
the sixth stanza, as noted by Sch?re (21).
Although Joyce was some sort of a Wagnerian for most of his life, he read only the most trivial and introductory material on the com
poser, and he made notes from Schur?'s book which he then incorpo rated into Finnegans Wake. His initial interest in this text was obvious
ly related to the Tristan and Isolde sketch that he was writing. Later, when the sketch took a back seat while Joyce wrote first book I, then
book III, and then most of book H, his interest in the material also
diminished, although, as I have shown, Wagneriana from VI.B.3 con
tinued to make it into the text, the vast majority in passages dealing with Issy.
NOTES
1 Adaline Glasheen, A Census of "Finnegans Wake" (London: Faber and
Faber, 1975), p. 61. 2
Timothy Martin, Joyce and Wagner: A Study of Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 184-221.
3 The link between the two kinds of criticism is provided by a footnote in the introduction to Glasheen's first Census: "I have seen early drafts of per
haps a third of Finnegans Wake, or rather I have seen copies of these drafts, made for me by Mr. J. S. Atherton and Mr. M. J. C. Hodgart from papers that Miss Harriet Weaver has deposited in the British Museum. Of those I have
seen, only one draft has the slightest pretension to charm-the Tristram and
Isolde episode which became part of FW U, iv" (p. xv). 4 David Hayman, "Tristan and Isolde in Finnegans Wake: A Study of the
Sources and Evolution of a Theme," Comparative Literature Studies, 1 (Summer 1964), 95-102.
5 Hayman, The "Wake" in Transit (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1990). Further
references will be cited parenthetically in the text as "Wake." 6 Ezra Pound, Instigations of Ezra Pound (New York: Boni and Liveright,
1920). 7 See chapter 4, "Hieroglyphics: The Evolution of the Signs (1.2-5, 7-8; III.l
155
4)/' in Danis Rose's The Textual Diaries of James Joyce (Dublin: Lilliput Press,
1995), pp. 41-88, for a different account of the earliest history of the Wake. 8 See Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk: Tagebuchbl?tter und Briefe, 1853
1871, intro. Wolfgang Golther (Berlin: A. Duncker, 1904). 9
Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936), pp. 258-59, and see George Moore, The Lake (London: Heinemann, 1905).
10 Moore, Vale, Hail and Farewell (London: Heinemann, 1914), pp. 166-68.
11 Auguste Villiers de l'lsle-Adam, Axel (Paris: Maison Quantin, 1890), and
Gabriele D'Annunzio, Il Fuoco (Milan: Fratelli Tr?ves, 1902). 12 T. Sturge Moore, "The Story of Tristram and Isolt in Modern Poetry/'
Criterion, 1 (October 1922), 34-49. 13 See Joseph B?dier, Le roman de Tristan et Iseut (Paris; H. Piazza, 1902). 14
Hayman, A First-Draft Version of "Finnegans Wake" (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1963). Further references to this work will be cited parenthetical ly in the text as Version.
15 Albert Heintz, "Richard Wagner in Z?rich: Ein Gedenkblatt zum 13.
Februar," Allgemeine Musikzeitung, 23 (14 February 1896), 93. 16 Edouard Schur?, Femmes inspiratrices et po?tes annonciateurs (Paris: Perrin
et cie, 1908). 17
Schur?, Woman: The Inspirer (London: Power Book Company, 1918). Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text. My transcription of the Schur? index to Woman the Inspirer was published in A "Finnegans Wake"
Circular, 6 (1990-1991) [1994], 1-11. 18 See Schur?, Le drame musical: Richard Wagner, son oeuvre et son id?e (Paris:
Perrin, 1875), and Les grands initi?s: esquisse de l'histoire secr?te des religions (1889; Paris: Perrin, 1927). Further references to the latter work will be cited
parenthetically in the text. " 19
See, for instance, Rudolf Steiner, Das ich, der Gott im innern und der Gott der ?ussern Offenbarung (Dornach: Philosophisch-anthroposophischer verlag am Goetheanum, 1935), and Texte zur Einf?hrung in die anthroposophie (Munich: K?sel, 1998).
20 Schur?, L'?me celtique et le genie de la France ? travers les ?ges (Paris: Perrin,
1921), and Jean Dornis, Un Celte d'Alsace, la vie, la pens?e, et les plus belles pages d'Edouard Schur? (Paris: Perrin, 1923).
21 The Wagner section of Schur?'s book is really a review, for Revue des deux
mondes, of this French translation.
156