FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS OF JOYCE
533
to his cast of mind, he must on one occasion in Zurich have attended
an Anglican service, for I remember him telling me how well a certain
consular official read the lessons. Only once did I see a Catholic priest
in the Joyces' lodgings in Zurich. When I called I found Joyce patiently
trying to get a little Belgian priest to talk about church music, whilst
the priest himself insisted on discoursing on the theme of
"une mort tres
edifiante"
he had just witnessed. I felt that Joyce was not amused.
August Suter told me that Joyce accompanied him once to a High
Mass at the Church of St. Sulpice, and that Joyce explained to him
(a Protestant) the meaning of each action as the Mass proceeded. When
asked by August Suter what he regarded as his principal gain from
his Jesuit upbringing, Joyce replied: "How to gather, how to order and
how to present a given material." A discipline worth possessing whoever
the drill sergeant.
The cosmology, hagiology and the sacraments of the Christian re–
ligion are built into the fa<;ade of
Ulysses
and
Finnegans Wake
for all
to see, but it might perhaps one day profitably interest a theologian to
inquire how far the rejected doctrines of the Churches pervade the
inner structure of those works. For example: Is there a Manichaean
leaning in Joyce's "spirit and nature" duality? Does he in his treatment
of the mystery of fatherhood affirm or deny the consubstantiality of
father and son? And what of the major theme of
Finnegans Wake–
the Resurrection?
For himself, as I say, religion was no longer a problem, but as
a father (and Joyce was a good father) the problem must have cropped
up again in another form. In his later Paris period he told me that
he had been reproached for not causing his children to be brought up
in the practice of religion. "But what do they expect me to do?" he said.
"There are a hundred and twenty religions in the world. They can
take their choice. I should never try to hinder or dissuade them." This
was certainly true, for Joyce would never have denied to others the
freedom he claimed for himself. But perhaps there are some situations
where no completely satisfactory action is possible.
Very skeptical at first when I wrote him from London that I in–
tended writing a book about
Ulysses
and the days we spent in Zurich,
Joyce warmed to the project as it took shape, and when the book got
to the stage of reading the galley proofs, he was positively enthusiastic.
In a taxi driving up the Champs Elysees after a sitting of proofreading,
he kept quoting bits of it from memory. And then: "I never knew
you could write so well. It must be due to your association with me."
While I was
in
Switzerland, in Ascona and Zurich, he dictated to his
