Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, And Beckett

FOUR DUBLINERS m * Jrt Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett FOUR DUBLINERS vfrt by RichardEllmann George Braziller BRIGHTON New York Published in the United States in 198? by George Braailler, Inc. Copyright © 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 by Richard Ellmann For information, address the publisher: George Braziller, Inc. 60 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10010 These essays were originally presented in somewhat different form as lectures at the Library of Congress under the auspices of the Lihrary's Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund and have been published in the jVftt' York Rttiru of Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elllmann, Richard, 1918Four Dubliners : Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett. — — 1. English literature Irish authors History and criticism. 2. Yeats, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-19393. Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. 4. Joyce, James, 1882-1941. 6, Authors, Irish 5. Beckett, Samuel, 1906Ireland —Duhlin (Dublin)—Biography. 7. Dublin (Dublin) Intellectual life. 8. Ireland in literature. I. Title. . — — IPR8892.D8E57 198?] 820’.9'941835 ISBN 0-8076-1185-9 Printed in the United States of America First printing, August 1987 87-13245 To my daughter Maud Contents 9 Pjtface 13 39 Oscar Wilde at Oxjmd 65 91 James Joyce In and Out ofAn Samuel Beckett: Nayman ofNoland 117 Acknowledgments 119 Index W. B. Yeats’s Second Puberty m * Preface four Dubliners— Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett— were chary of acknowledging their connections. But these connections exist. Some belong to history. Yeats, then eigh¬ teen, went to listen to Wilde lecture in 1883; Joyce, at twenty, told Yeats when they first met in 1902 that the poet was too old; Beckett, at twenty-two, was introduced to Joyce in 1928 and became as close a friend as Joyce, not given to intimacy, would allow. On inspection their connections thicken. Wilde and Yeats reviewed each other’s work with mutual regard, and sometimes exploited the same themes. Joyce memorialized Wilde as a heroic victim, and repeatedly quoted or referred to him in his later writings. Beckett was saturated in all their works, especially those of Joyce, whose Anna Linn Plumbelle he and a friend translated into French. Yet besides these public admissions of literary kinship, there were affecting personal moments. Wilde invited Years to Christ¬ mas dinner in 1888 as though Yeats had no family in London, and treated him with great kindness. For his part Yeats circulated a testimonial of support for Wilde at the time of the prosecution for indecent behavior. A few years later Yeats rose at dawn to meet Joyce’s train at Eusron Station at six o’clock, and after giving the young man breakfast, took him aroundLondon editorial offices to find him work. Another scene is of Joyce sitting silent but sympa¬ thetic beside Beckett’s hospital bed after Beckett had been stabbed. 9 And there is Beckett’s surprise and pleasure when, on first meeting Yeats, that poet quoted approvingly sonic lines from Beckett’s Whoroscope. For us the quadrumvirate seem bound together in other ways. They touch successively most areas of our consciousness. Wilde proceeds insouciantly to his doom, and on his way jollies us for being so much harsher than he is, so much less graceful, so much less attractive, and mocks the law for being so witless. Yeats struggles by imaginative passion to overcome the prosaic and to revolutionize r