FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS OF JOYCE
541
land's lane, beheaving up that sob of tunf for to claimhis, for to wolpim–
solff, puddywhuck. Ay, and untuoning his culothone in an exitous erse–
royal Deo Jupto. At that instullt to Igorladns! Prronto! I gave one
dobblenotch and I ups with my crozzier. Mirrdo! With my how on
harmer and hits leg an arrow cockshock rockrogn. Sparro! ...")
With regard to the language used by Joyce, particularly in
Finne–
gans Wake
J
it is sometimes forgotten that in his early years in Dublin
Joyce lived among the believers and adepts in magic gathered round
the poet Yeats. Yeats held that the borders of our minds are always
shifting, tending to become part of the universal mind, and that the
borders of our memory also shift and form part of the universal memory.
This universal mind and memory could be evoked by symbols. When
telling me this Joyce added that in his own work he never used the
recognized symbols, preferring instead to use trivial and quadrivial words
and local geographical allusions. The intention of magical evocation,
however, remained the same.
In spite of his more than semi-blindness, Joyce had a natural feeling
for the visual arts. He once asked me to paint for him a salmon (an
avatar of HCE) and I promised him that I would, but, alas, I never
managed to fulfill my promise. My only excuse is that a whole salmon
is a very big lump of fish and costs a lot of money. Besides, my family
seeing me come home with one would be looking forward to salmon
steaks, and in all likelihood by the time I had finished getting the noble
fish on to canvas I should have had to bury it in the garden. But of
one thing I am sure: Joyce would never have been satisfied with a
picture of a disintegrated and synthetically reconstructed salmon. He
loved and admired the natural appearance of the fish. "A salmon is
a wonderful thing," he said to me, "so full and smooth and silvery."
August Suter told me that when Tuohy was painting Joyce's portrait
he started talking about the poet's soul. "Get the poet's soul out of
your mind," said Joyce, "and see that you paint my cravat properly."
But, as is well known, the art that made the greatest appeal to him,
apart from his own art of words, was the art of singing-singing with
any voice, but particularly with the tenor voice, as all his work bears
witness. He could admire a certain measure and some aspects the art
of Count MacCormack, "the tuning fork among tenors" as he called
him in one piece he wrote and "the prince of drawing room singers"
once in talking to me. But his overwhelming enthusiasm was reserved
for another countryman of his, Mr. Sullivan, for many years singer of
leading tenor roles at the Paris Opera. This enthusiasm has already
been alluded to by myself and others who have written about Joyce,
but to what lengths it led him may be seen from the following descrip-
