Nathan Halper
HOW SIMPLE:
A TALE OF JOYCE AND POUND
Wonderworke r
In September, 1916, James Joyce wrote to Yeats , " I can never
thank you enough for having brought me into relations with your
friend Ezra Pound who is indeed a wonder worker." A few years later,
the phrase "wonder worker" developed a second meaning.
Ezra Pound had liked the beginning of
Ulysses.
But in March,
1918, after reading the chapter introducing Bloom, he complained
about the episode in the outhouse-"You overdo the matter" -saying
that it would be better "without such detailed treatment of the
dropping feces." Without telling Joyce, he removed about twenty lines
before sending the installment on to the
Little Review .
A few months
later, in a letter to Joyce, he described himself as a bit more phallic, but
less interested than Joyce in "the excrement and feces of human beings
and animals."
About this time, Joyce came across a leaflet for "Wonderworker,
the world's greatest remedy for rectal complaints."
If
Joyce was
"rectal," Pound-who helped to lessen his distress-was "indeed a
wonder worker."
On the 10th of June, 1919, after reading the eleventh chapter,
Pound worried once again about the anal activity. He had learned that
he must not make deletions. But he implied that a few were advisable.
" I shall send off mss.... But you will have plenty of time ... to revise
if you want to." "One can fahrt ," he said, "with less pomp and
circumstance." He repeated his "gallic preference for the Phallus .. .
know mittel europa humour runs to the other orifice . .. fahrt, yes, but
not as climax to the chapter."
Joyce did not follow his advice. The chapter appeared in the
Little
R eview
with its Middle European "humour" undiminished . Bloom's
problem is depicted with "all pomp and circumstance." He gets his
relief only in the last few paragraphs.
When he came to prepare this segment for publication in
Ulysses,
