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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