NATHAN HALPER
441
"wonder worker" in two enses of the phrase. The meaning it hac! in
the letter to Yeats: the meaning in
Ulysses.
Now it acquired a third.
We have noted tha t the tele cope is a figure for Pound. In the
ea rly versions, it did not have a name. But Joyce wa hurt by the di -
approval. In the ver ion of April, 1927, it was given the name of
"Wounderworker. "
Esra
There was also the question of the poems. Joyce wrote to Harriet
Weaver that he had been asked if he had written enough since
Chamber
Music
to constitute a book. " I did not trust my opinion of it as I rarely
thought of vel' e.... I mentioned this to Pound and asked could I show
him, say, two.... A few day after ... he handed me back the envelope
but said nothing. I asked him what he thought of them and he said:
They belong in the Bible or the family album with th e portraits. I
a ked: You don 't think they are worth reprinting at any time? H e said:
0,
I don 't. " Joyce, no admirer of his own poems, kn ew they were
breaking no new ground.
If
Pound disapproved, it was not as Welling–
ton . Yet the words were painful; they added to the des ignation of
Pound as "Wounderworker." On the subject of
Work in Progress,
Pound continued to playa c nsorious role. He still bea t the drums for
A Portrait
and
Ulysses;
but, in letters and conversa tion, he spoke of
Joyce " in regress. "
There were others who did not care for the new work. His books
had a lways been assailed. It's a theme in
Finnegans Wake.
Lack of
appreciation, la k of understanding, is what a Shem-like artist will
necessarily suffer in a Shaun-like world. As for those who had been his
admirers, Joyce was disappointed when they could not go along with
him in his new adventure. Yet he could understand it if they felt the
doubt he often felt himself. H e cou ld be gentle in the case of Harriet
Weaver. In the case of Pound, he felt something stronger than dismay.
He knew what Yeats had meant when he spoke of Pound as "A rugged
and headstrong nature, and he is always hurting people's feelings."
Yet, in pite of all the slights, rea l or imagined, that he had
received from Pound, Joyce could not forget that he had reason to be
grateful. In 1932, when he wa asked for a testimonial , he chose the
words carefully. He cou ld not praise Ezra Pound the writer; but he
cou ld write, " Nothing could be truer than to say that we all owe a great
deal to him.... I most of all surely ... it is possibl e that but for him I
