Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:19:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing <gd2-AT-nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: Noted in Joyce's Portrait


Comments below -- 

At 10:56 AM 2/23/2001, William Hagen <william_hagen-AT-mail.okbu.edu> wrote:
>I'm not a Joyce scholar, but would be interested in knowing whether the 
>biblical reference in the first sermon in Chapter 3 of Joyce's Portrait of the 
>Artist... is a deliberate or unintentional mistake,
>according to scholars. 
>
>The first sermon in Chapter 3 cites a verse attributed to Ecclesiastes 
>7:40--"Remember only thy last things and thou shalt not sin for ever--"  
>
>It seemed a strange verse for the Preacher in Ecclesiastes to be uttering, and
>I didn't remember the chapters in Ecclesiastes running that long. Sure enough,
>there are only 29 verses in Chapter 7 and none of them expresses similar
>thoughts.  A colleague suggested to me that it might be Ecclesiasticus, also 
>known as the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, or simply Sirach, one of the
>apocryphal books.  In his edition he located the verse in Chapter 7.  The last 
>verse, 36, reads: "In all you do, remember the end of your life, and
>then you will never sin."  
>

Yes, this is from _Ecclesiasticus_ 7:40 in the Latin/Catholic translation of
the Bible. Your 7:36 citation must refer to an English translation of the
Bible -- likewise, the mention of "apocrypha," which as applied to
_Ecclesiasticus_ was a label added by Protestants after the Reformation.
Father Arnall can be presumed to have used the Latin Vulgate translation of
the Judaic scriptures,  and we know Joyce that had a copy of the Vulgate in
his personal library. It's not that Joyce didn't know other versions of the
Bible, including the King James version of course, but he was fully aware
that Father Arnall would refer to the Vulgate.

Don Gifford, _Notes for Joyce_ (NY, 1967), points out that correct book is
_Ecclesiaticus_, not _Ecclesiastes_.


>So was this a deliberate or unintentional
>mistake?  If intentional, was Joyce slyly
>undercutting the authority of Father Arnall, since
>this is his first Scriptural citation?  
>

It could be either Joyce's slip or Joyce's deliberate attribution of a slip
to Father Arnall. People often confuse the two books due to the similarity
in titles. Yes, Joyce liked to undercut the reputation that the Catholic
clergy had, among mainstream Irish Catholics, for intelligence and other
positive traits. This adds some attractiveness to the idea that Joyce might
have deliberately imputed an error to Arnall in the very first sentence of
the hellfire-sermon passage. However, despite his close attention to detail
in many passages, Joyce also slipped like this on occasion. (See Adams,
_Surface and Symbol_, for a nice early study of the problems of authorial
intentionality that arise when Joyce deliberately attributes slips to
characters in some passages, but nods himself in other spots, leaving
various passages that are not clearly one or the other.)

One way to look into the intentionality problem might be to exmaine Joyce's
copy of the Vulgate (n.d.; 1902?), left behind in Trieste in mid-1920 when
Joyce moved to Paris. That copy is now in the Harry Ransom Research Center
collection at U Texas at Austin: see Michael Gillespie, _JJ's Trieste
Library_ (1986), p. 48, item 54. Perhaps the title and/or heading(s) and/or
abbreviation(s) found for _Ecclesiasticus_ in that edition would shed some
light on whether or not Joyce might well have misread _Ecclesiasticus_ as
_Ecclesiastes_. But the problem may or may not be resolvable.

I'm cc'ing this to the Joyce listserv in case others have further or better
thoughts. I have to get back to work!

Best,

Greg Downing, at greg.downing-AT-nyu.edu or gd2-AT-nyu.edu