果冻影院

In the spring 1922 issue of the avant-garde American literary journal Little Review, Ezra Pound published a calendar for a modern era. The months were renamed after Greek and Roman deities, under the heading 鈥淵ear 1 p.s.U鈥�. Readers in tune with literary innovations knew that those letters stood for 鈥減ost scriptum Ulysses鈥�, or 鈥渁fter the writing of Ulysses鈥�. With the publication of James Joyce鈥檚 novel in February 1922, on the author鈥檚 40th birthday, a new age had begun. Pound (his most famous slogan: 鈥淢ake It New鈥�) was a great one for announcing, or demanding, literary revolutions; this time history would vindicate him. A century on, 1922 still looks like the year literature changed, when modernism came into its own. It was the year not only of Ulysses, but also 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥�, by the 34-year-old TS Eliot, first published in October. The great novel of modernism was followed by its greatest single poem. These would be enough to mark 1922 as a watershed. But in this year too, Virginia Woolf, the same age as Joyce, published Jacob鈥檚 Room, her first radically experimental novel, and began writing Mrs Dalloway. Pound, who was living in Paris, was embarking on his magnum opus, 鈥淭he Cantos鈥�. It was he who creatively edited the early drafts of 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥�, telling Eliot what to cut from the copious first drafts of the poem. Thus Eliot鈥檚 dedication of the poem to him, quoting Dante: 鈥淚l miglior fabbro鈥� (鈥渢he better maker鈥�).

The main participants in this literary revolution were highly conscious of being part of a shared enterprise, a concerted effort to break with established forms. This was their historical moment. The alliances and rivalries between individual writers gave literary modernism a singular self-consciousness. The web of influences and friendships, and sometimes collaborations, was necessary to their literary innovations.

Eliot was Joyce鈥檚 most ardent advocate: he had read early, serialised sections of Ulysses and declared Joyce 鈥渢he best living prose writer鈥�. In August 1920 the two men met in Paris (in the company of Wyndham Lewis and scornful of this obscure Irish 茅migr茅). A bond was sealed, and Joyce started sending Eliot manuscripts of unpublished parts of Ulysses as he completed them. Eliot, meanwhile, had been befriended by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. In June 1922, four months before it was published, he read 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥� aloud to them at Hogarth House, the Woolfs鈥� Richmond home. 鈥淗e sang it & chanted it rhythmed it,鈥� Woolf recorded in her diary. She admired its 鈥済reat beauty & force鈥�. 鈥淲hat connects it together, I鈥檓 not so sure.鈥� 鈥楾he poem, first printed in Eliot鈥檚 journal the Criterion and then in America in book form in December 1922, would be published with Eliot鈥檚 added notes by the Woolfs鈥� Hogarth Press in 1923.

Traditional literary forms still held sway in 1922. Readers of polite fiction could buy the new omnibus edition of John Galsworthy鈥檚 Forsyte Saga, which had been completed the previous year. Soon they would have the new Arnold Bennett novel, Riceyman Steps (1923). They might relish Bennett鈥檚 dismissive review of Jacob鈥檚 Room in Cassell鈥檚 Weekly, one of the respectable literary magazines of the age. Yet the sniffiness of established writers about new experiments in fiction confirmed a clash that the modernists relished. Bennett鈥檚 review provoked Woolf鈥檚 well-known rejoinder, her essay 鈥淢r Bennett and Mrs Brown鈥�, eventually published in revised form in Eliot鈥檚 Criterion. Here Woolf advocated new ways of representing characters in fiction, catching the movements of consciousness rather than merely providing information about them, as Bennett and his fellow Edwardians did.

Ulysses was the ultimate demonstration of this new way of doing things. Before it appeared in book form, Woolf was aware of Joyce鈥檚 novel-in-progress. In September 1920 Eliot had come to stay with the Woolfs at Monk鈥檚 House in Rodmell, their damp and chilly East Sussex retreat, where Virginia was at work on Jacob鈥檚 Room. He was keen to discuss Ulysses, as Woolf recorded in her diary. 鈥淭his, so far as he has seen it, is extremely brilliant, he says.鈥� Woolf read Ulysses during August and September 1922, while she was writing Mrs Dalloway. She was slightly resentful at having to interrupt her reading of Proust鈥檚 脌 la recherche du temps perdu, the latest volume of which, Sodome et Gomorrhe II, was published a few months before the author鈥檚 death in 1922. Joyce鈥檚 novel fascinated but perplexed her. A quarter of the way through it, she wrote in her diary: 鈥淎n illiterate, underbred book it seems to me.鈥� How could Eliot think it 鈥渙n a par with War and Peace鈥�? Yet she could not dismiss it. The day she finished it, she wrote, 鈥淕enius it has, I think鈥�, though it was 鈥渄iffuse鈥�, 鈥減retentious鈥� and (again) 鈥渦nderbred鈥�. The next day, she shifted: a review had convinced her it was 鈥渧ery much more impressive than I judged鈥�. She would have to read it again.

It is difficult not to imagine that Ulysses had a direct influence on the work that she was herself writing. Mrs Dalloway, not completed until late 1924, is also a novel set on a single day, while reaching back in time through the fragmented memories of its main character. It inhabits the consciousness of this narrator as she leaves her house, walks around a city (London instead of Dublin), performs ordinary tasks, and then returns home. Just like Ulysses, it follows an urban map and an hour-by-hour chronology.

Woolf鈥檚 and Joyce鈥檚 narrative methods are sometimes called 鈥渟tream of consciousness鈥�. The phrase, borrowed from psychology texts, was first used in a literary context by the English writer May Sinclair in 1918 to describe the narrative method of Dorothy Richardson鈥檚 novel sequence Pilgrimage (which Woolf knew well). The phrase hardly does justice to the ways in which the sentences of Ulysses proceed. Thinking happens through words, bringing associations that surprise the character as well as the reader. Speech and thought are hardly distinguished on the page (Joyce does not use what he called 鈥減erverted commas鈥� to mark off dialogue).

Joyce shared with Proust a concern to blend the working of consciousness with sensuous experience: taste, touch and, especially, smell. In Ulysses, Joyce is the most sensitive olfactory novelist since Dickens. In the 鈥淐alypso鈥� section, where we first meet Leopold Bloom, our hero relishes, in his memory, 鈥渁 fine tang of faintly scented urine鈥� on the mutton kidneys he is going to buy for breakfast. Out in the Dublin street in the morning, he thinks of the home to which he is returning. 鈥淭o smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.鈥� He takes his wife, Molly, a cup of tea in bed and she talks of Boylan, the organiser of a concert in which she is to sing. 鈥淗er full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.鈥� Later in the section, Bloom goes to the outside lavatory with a copy of Titbits: 鈥淧rint anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell.鈥� Everything ordinary has its place in this novel.

Beneath the stream of Bloom鈥檚 thoughts and reactions, there is a complex domestic plot. Why is Molly hiding a letter from Boylan? We will only eventually discover the reason. We have to trace the merest hints through the long novel to understand so much: that Bloom cannot help thinking of his son Rudy鈥檚 death, as a baby, ten years earlier; that this is connected to him and his wife having ceased to have sex; that he imagines she might be having an affair; that he himself is dallying with a possibly amorous pen pal. The narration may take us into Bloom鈥檚 thoughts, but they are his thoughts on one day, from one moment to another, without explanation. The story of his life must be pieced together by inference.

There is no limit to the subjects on which the mind might dwell, so there are no longer any limits to what can find its way into fiction. The appalled reflexes of some critics responding to Ulysses on its first publication are a measure of the sheer, heady uncensoredness of the novel 鈥� less remarkable to today鈥檚 reader, but extraordinary in 1922. It was banned for 鈥渙bscenity鈥� in both Britain and the US. In Britain, the director of public prosecutions Archibald Bodkin read only the last section, Molly鈥檚 monologue, and confirmed that 鈥渢here is a great deal of unmitigated filth and obscenity鈥�. In 1922, 500 copies were seized by customs at Folkestone and burned. Eventually, a 1932 court judgment in the US allowed it to be published in the country. It became freely available in Britain only in 1936. It was almost impossible, meanwhile, to obtain Ulysses in Joyce鈥檚 homeland. Yet the novel was a succ猫s d鈥檈stime, the ban sealing its mythical status. Eliot had no doubts. 鈥淚 hold this book to be the most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape.鈥� He did not, however, dare to publish it under the Faber & Faber imprint. (Joyce grumpily dubbed the firm 鈥淔eebler and Fumbler鈥�.)

In 1930 Faber did publish Stuart Gilbert鈥檚 James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses: A Study, a guide with lengthy quotations on which Joyce had collaborated, advertised as 鈥渢he only substitute for the masterpiece itself鈥�. It was the beginning of the Joyce critical industry. The novel鈥檚 鈥渆nigmas and puzzles鈥� have 鈥渒ept the professors busy鈥�, as Joyce jokingly hoped they would. A centenary edition of Ulysses, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in June, will be the most thickly annotated yet, punctuating the novel with introductory essays by academic experts, prefacing each of the episodes of the book, and explaining literary allusions and historical references in footnotes.

Ulysses was soon renowned. As Woolf wrote Jacob鈥檚 Room, she 鈥渞eflected how what I鈥檓 doing is probably being better done by Mr Joyce鈥�. Her own novel was highly experimental, enacting the elusiveness of its central character, a young man who is never quite present to us. All the other characters who come and go are in some way connected to him, seen in glimpses. The novel gives the reader one short episode after another. Sometimes these are rendered entirely in visual terms: we see what characters do, but must infer their feelings and motives. Or we overhear fragments of dialogue. When Jacob quarrels with a close friend, we just get the few disconnected words overheard by a servant. What you must notice most of all are the gaps and omissions between episodes. As the novel鈥檚 drifting narrative voice remarks twice: 鈥淚t is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.鈥� The elusiveness of Jacob is the more haunting because Woolf models his life on that of her brother Thoby, who had died of typhoid aged 26.

Jacob is destined to be killed in the First World War, but the novel requires you to infer the reason for his room鈥檚 emptiness at its end. The only reference to the war comes prior to this, when Jacob鈥檚 mother is half-woken by a distant sound of artillery, 鈥渁s if nocturnal women were beating great carpets鈥�.

The obliquity is characteristic of modernist writing. Mugs鈥� guides to modernism will tell you that it was produced by shattering historical events, but these are only glanced at in the literature itself. At the end of Ulysses, Joyce had printed the places in which and the dates between which the novel was written: 鈥淭rieste-Z眉rich-Paris, 1914-1921.鈥� Like Eliot, he was a self-imposed exile, cut off from the political upheavals in Ireland. While he was re-imagining one day in Dublin a decade before the outbreak of the First World War, there was a civil war in his homeland. 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥� was written in the wake of the First World War, yet does not mention it. The fragmentation of civilisation, culture and literature are enacted in the poem, but not historically explained.

Eliot provides the reader with 鈥淭hese fragments I have shored against my ruins鈥�. He described Joyce鈥檚 鈥減arallel use of [Homer鈥檚] Odyssey鈥� as 鈥渁 way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history鈥�. 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥� was another way. Eliot鈥檚 own semi-helpful notes would indicate, say, how Dante and Baudelaire and Webster had been raided for the utterly memorable passage on the commuters flowing over London Bridge (鈥渟o many,/I had not thought death had undone so many鈥�). But equally audacious was the transformation into poetry of a spouse鈥檚 depressive twitchiness (鈥淢y nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me./Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak鈥�) or some cruelly knowing women鈥檚 pub-chat (鈥淚t鈥檚 them pills I took, to bring it off, she said鈥�), interrupted by a publican who sounds like Death himself (鈥淗URRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME鈥�).

Eliot liked to talk of the poet鈥檚 鈥渋mpersonality鈥�; 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥� is given over to voices quoted or overheard. In his first draft, Eliot had written passages connecting his fragments; Pound ruthlessly and brilliantly excised these. Yet, for all its heterogeneity, it is utterly controlled, with a matchless ear for lines that lodge in the memory. It was an instant critical success. Even those who were baffled by it often acknowledged its significance. As one reviewer put it: 鈥淭o confess鈥� that I don鈥檛 understand Mr Eliot鈥檚 poem seems to me to be no more a criticism of it than to say that (in the same sense) I don鈥檛 understand Shakespeare鈥檚 sonnets.鈥� For other poets, it was, said Pound, 鈥渁bout enough to make the rest of us shut up shop鈥�.

The experiments of 1922 still reverberate. Eliot knew the significance of the year. In his Selected Poems, he had 鈥�1922鈥� printed between the title and the epigraph. 鈥淭he Waste Land鈥� was a poem of its time, renewing literature as civilisation faltered. A staple of a literary education, its originality is still alive on the page and is read with a kind of delighted puzzlement by each new generation of students. Phrases from the poem have seared themselves into the language. 鈥淎pril is the cruellest month鈥�, 鈥淚 will show you fear in a handful of dust鈥�, 鈥淯nreal city鈥�. Woolf鈥檚 most successful and influential attempts to enact the workings of consciousness, Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), were yet to come. Both were influenced and liberated by Ulysses, a demonstration of what fiction could do to match experience. A hundred years on, Ulysses is still the successful non plus ultra of fictional innovation and its example inescapable. Some literary novelists 鈥� Eimear McBride, Will Self, Lucy Ellmann (whose father was Joyce鈥檚 biographer) 鈥� have adopted the Joycean method. The circadian pattern of Ulysses has been followed by many. Its wider influence, even on those who have not read it, is more profound. After Ulysses, the moment-by-moment unfolding of subjective experience became the proper subject of fiction. Joyce showed generations of writers (for screen as well as page) how to give shape to all the not-to-be-spoken stuff of a person鈥檚 thoughts. By formal audacity alone, his novel had made an ordinary day into a modern epic.

This article first appeared in on 3^rd February 2022.

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