104
PARTISAN REVIEW
an arty photograph by Man Ray of a pair of the poet's undarned
socks. I am not aware of other writers who have been subjected to such
close scrutiny. Not that the scrutiny is hostile. It seems to be friendly,
even intimate, and is extended with the same warmth from the author to
the city he loved, not with the love of a patriot but with the love of
an artist for his subject.
Yet the authoress of
James Joyce's Dublin
says that my brother
represented the worst side of university life, the worst side of the city
itself. Does she think that any capital can be.a kindergarten? The
picture is not unfavorable, in spite of what Mr. Shaw said in his
ambiguous letter. In fact, my brother attracted much sympathetic interest
in the city.
It
was not his aim to condemn and reform, but to under–
stand in the light of the experience of a lifetime and recreate in the
forge of his art.
If
he had been a Puritan moralist like the late-deceased,
unlicensed preacher of Ayot St. Lawrence, his picture would have been
as crudely misrepresentative as Mr. Shaw's letter, or indeed as
The
Quintessence of Ibsenism
or
The Perfect Wagnerite.
I know of more than
one continental city that might well erect a statue of my brother in its
central square just because that uncompromising realist was
not
born
within its boundaries.
As for the life of University College, if it is the object of such
institutions to provide young men with a trade by means of which,
under clerical guidance, they can get good jobs and support their fam–
ilies, then Arthur Chanel Cleary was right in hiring out his pen to the
Jesuits for attacks on my brother. But
if
a university should be a hot–
bed of new ideas and new purposes, then my brother and his group
represented what was most vital in it.
When my brother left Dublin in 1904, he was written off, with
unconcealed jubilation, as a failure. His return some years later only
to see his hopes of publishing his book of stories disappointed again
by obscure influences, just confirmed the conviction of his failure.
It
was not until after the First World War that a few faint echoes of his
success, the only thing that could impress Dubliners, began to reach
them, and people who had put him completely out of their thoughts,
or had known him but slightly, began to cast about in their memories
for good stories of doings.
It
was difficult because they had almost
forgotten him. They had not imagined what he could do. How could
one, as Mr. Best, that "personality so badly served in
Ulysses,"
aptly
remarks. But one could invent a little. "The personal legend," writes
Patricia Hutchins, "like nicknames, is very much a part of Irish life.
Certain characters, out of uneasiness or vanity, tend to begin a snow-
