TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
The (1)
handsome sixfoottwo rugger and soccer champion and the belle of Chapelizod in
her quite charming oceanbbue brocade with iris petal sleeves [[&
an overdress of net darned with gold] well in advance of the fashion.]
bunnyhugged scrumptiously in the dark where [they] dissimulated
[themself] behind the chief steward's
stewardess's
cabin while with sinister dexterity he alternately
rightandlefthandled on & offside fore and aft
the
her
palpable rugby and association bulbs. She murmurously asked for some but not too
much of the best poetry quotations reflecting on the situation smthng
a stroke above its a fine night and the moon shines bright and all to that
her reason being
for the plain fact of the matter was
that by the light of the moon of the silvery moon she loved to spoon before her
honeymoomoon
honeyoldmoon at the same time drinking
deep draughts of purest air [serene]. He promptly then elocutioned to
her a favourite lyrical bloom in decasyllabic iambic hexameter: Roll on,
thou deep and darkblue ocean, roll! (2)
The sea looked awfully pretty at that twilight hour [so
lovely with such wellmannered waves]. It was
a
just too
gorgeous sensation he being exactly the right man in the right place and the
weather conditions could not possibly have been improved on. Her role was to
roll on the darkblue ocean roll that rolled on round the round roll Robert Roly
rolled round. She gazed while from an altitude of 1 yard 11½
inches his deepsea peepers gazed O gazed O dazedcrazedgazed into her
darkblue rolling ocean eyes
orbs.
Nothing if not amorous. He then having dephlegmatised
his frog in the throat
guttur and getting busy
on the touchline uttered as
what follows from his
lofty
toploftical voicebox:
— Isolde!
By elevation of eyelids that She addressed insinuated
desideration of his declaration.
— Isolde, O Isolde, when theeupon
theeuponthus I
do oculise my most inmost Ego most vaguely senses the
profundity
deprofundity of multimathematical immaterialities
whereby in the pancosmic urge the Allimmanence of That Which Is Itself
exteriorates on this here our plane of disunited solid liquid and gaseous bodies
in pearlwhite passionpanting intuitions of reunited Selfhood in the
higherdimensional Selflessness.
Hear, O hear, all ye caller herrings! Silent be, O Moyle!
Milky way, strew dim light!
When he had shut his duckhouse
She
the vivid girl
reunited milkymouthily his her and their disunited lips and
quick as greased lightning the Breton champion drove the advance messenger of
love with one virile tonguethrust past the double line of ivoryclad forwards
fullback rightjingbangshot into the goal of her gullet.
Now what do you candidly suppose she, a strapping young
old Irish princess 18 hands high & scaling nine stone twelve in her
pelt
madrapolam smock with
nothing
not a thing under her hat but red hair & solid ivory and a firstrate pair
of bedroom eyes, cared at that precise physiological moment about tiresome
old King Mark, that tiresome old pantaloon
ourangoutan
beaver with his duty peck & his bronchial trouble in his tiresome old
twentytwoandsixpenny shepherd's plaid trousers? Not as much as a pinch of
henshit and that's the meanest thing that was ever known in this wide world.
No, on the contrary
far from it, if the real
truth must be told lovingly she lovegulped his pulpous propeller and both
together in the most fashionable weather they both went all of a shiveryshaky
quiveryquaky mixumgatherum yumyumyum. After which before the traditional ten
seconds were up Tristan considerately allowed his farfamed chokegrip to relax
and precautiously withdrew the instrument of rational speech from the
procathedral of amorous seductiveness.
* * * * *
— I'm so
real
glad to
have met you, Tris, you fascinator, you! she said, awfully bucked by the
gratifying experience of the love embrace from a
notoriety bigtimer with an interesting tallow complexion [from whom great
things were expected] like him who was evidently a notoriety also in the
poetry department for he never saw an orange but he thought of a porringer and
to cut a long story short taking him by and large he meant everything to her
just then, being her beau ideal of a true girl friend handsome musical composer
a thoroughbred Pomeranian lapdog, a box of preserved crystallised ginger
clove cushions, peppermint slices, satinette puffs, lime tablets and may
even the Deity Itself (3) strewing, the strikingly shining,
the twittingly twinkling, our true home and (as
her
he
truly
wranograph
wranographically remarked), the lamplights of lovers in the Beyond.
Up they gazed, skyward to stardom, while in
her
his girleen's ear that lovelier lover, sinless sumer,
breathed:
Gaunt in gloom
The pale stars their torches
Enshrouded wave
Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume
Arches on soaring arches,
Nights' sindark nave
Seraphim
The pale stars awaken
To service till
In muted
moonless gloom each lapses, muted, dim
Raised when she has & shaken
Her thurible
As bong and loud
To night's nave upsoaring
A starknell tolls
As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,
Voidward from the adoring
Waste of souls
******
[How gentle & kind I am, Isy. I never hurt the feelings of
another. And, I say, what a lovely nature is mine!]
It wasn't exactly anything he said or it wasn't anything
he exactly did but all the same it was something about him like the way he was
always sticking his finger into his trousers pocket and then sticking it into
his eye like a [bony] baby, [[the great big slob that she
let out a whistle] or the once she dropped her ittle
hanky
hankyfuss and the way so graceful he picked it up with his
foot
hoof and
handed
footed it up [politefully]
to her little nibblems].
— Go away from me instantly you thing she
cried
roared. Curse your stinking putrid soul & all belonged to you [you
scum] Don't forget me!
Forget me not!
— Perfect, you bloody bitch, he said.
He took leave of her and
went
circulated
as bidden. Hearing his name called [before many instants had
passed] he most sagaciously ceased to walk about and turned, [his
look now charged with purpose].
— No, come back, she cried. How sweetly you have responded to me.
I can't live without you!
I so want you!
— It's important, he
her nephew, who was very
continental, said, as he stopped & circulated at walker's pace in the
opposite direction. (4)
******
Over them the winged ones
screamed shrill glee: seahawk, seagull, curlew and plover, kestrel and
capercailzie. All the birds of the sea they trolled out rightbold when they
smacked of the big kiss of Tristan
Trustan with
Isolde
Usolde.
Sosang
So sang seaswans:
— Three quarks for Muster Mark
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark
But O Wreneagle Almighty wouldn't
we
un
be a sky of a lark
To see that old buzzard whooping about for
his
uns shirt in the dark
And he hunting round for
his
uns
speckled trousers around by Palmerston Park.
Hohohoho moulty Mark
You're the rummest old rooster ever flopped out of a Noah's
ark
And you think you're cock of the wark
Fowls up Tristy's the spry young spark
That'll tread her and wed her and bed her and red her
Without even winking the tail of a feather
And that's how that chap's going to make his money and mark
1) This is evidently a fair
copy taken from some missing first- or second- draft version. It is neatly
written in ink in the same hand and on the same paper Joyce used for the second
draft of "Roderick O'Conor." The closing lines, continued on the verso of the
"Roderick O'Conor" fair copy, were, however, added in carpenter's pencil. Notes
for the "Tristan and Isolde" passage are found under the heading Exiles 11 in
the Scribbledehobble notebook. "Roderick O'Conor" piece (FW 380—382) is the
first piece written for "Work in Progress." This was among the last passages to
be incorporated in the book. Joyce's emendations are unusually extensive. On the
verso of this page he wrote and revised an extension to the first draft of the
"Tristan and Isolde" piece, incorporating in it a version of the poem
"Nightpiece."
2) Joyce labelled the following paragraph "Hypotaxis," or the
juxtaposition of propositions with proper joining words. The opposite of this is
Parataxis where the linking words are omitted.
3) Joyce continued the
elaboration of the "Tristan and Isolde" dialogue on the verso of the page
containing the second draft of "Roderick O'Conor,". Like the above, it is
crossed out in red crayon. The author seems to have written the first few lines
as an introduction to the poem "Nightpiece," which occupies the center of the
page. He so fully elaborated upon that introduction as to completely fill the
space surrounding the poem. Later, to differentiate between the two aspects of
the passage, he crossed the poem out in green crayon. None of the material
cancelled in crayon was reused in the later drafts of this episode.
Joyce published "Nightpiece" in Pomes Penyeach (1927) dating
it Trieste, 1915. I have seen no earlier drafts though I assume Joyce's dating
to be accurate. The particular version reproduced here, which differs slightly
from the published text, is evidently transitional. Perhaps, in 1923, Joyce saw
in this early piece, which bears some resemblance to Wagner's libretto,
something appropriate to his new work and specifically to the parody romance of
"Tristan and Isolde." He realized his error only after he had written a setting
for it and thereby gone one step further in establishing the character of his
juveniles, developing the negative side of Isolde's character.
4) The following is the
earliest available version of the "seaswan" poem, which now opens the chapter.
Joyce originally appended this piece at the end of the third fair copy of the
"Tristan and Isolde" piece.
David Hayman: Joyce, James / A first-draft version of Finnegans wake