Style from Irish childhoods

Press, 25 September 1982, Page 16

Style from Irish childhoods

My Brother's Keeper. By Stanislaus Joyce. Edited by Richard Ellman. Faber and Faber, 1982 252 pp. Index. $10.95. The Strings are False: An Unfinished Autobiography. By Louis MacNeice. Faber and Faber, 1982. 215 pp. Index. $10.95. (Reviewed by Joan Curry) Two poetic Irishmen are the subjects of the two books (paperback reprints of earlier editions) reviewed here. James Joyce and Louis MacNeice were bom within 30 years of each other; both men considered style to be of paramount importance in their work: both produced a variety of prose and poetry based on their own experiences. And finally, both suffered as children, though in different ways. Cyril Connolly maintained that the one golden recipe for art is the ferment of an unhappy childhood working through a noble imagination, and if that is true both Joyce and MacNeice owed their art to their early unhappiness. To borrow a phrase from “The Dubliners,” “My Brother’s • Keeper” is about "a young fellow with a great future behind him" It is an intimate view of James Joyce as seen by his younger brother, and because Professor Joyce died when he had written only half the book he. intended to write, it is indeed the story of the artist as a young man, his background in the Dublin of the late nineteenth century, and the influences that shaped his future as a writer. The young Joyce’s literary ambitions developed early and he wrote his first pieces when he was about nine years old. He wrote poetry, essays, and those curious jottings which he called “epiphanies” — short, impressionistic musings on what he saw and heard, a device which he later developed into his preferred literary form, the plotless sketch. Professor Joyce comments that James “came to consider a well-ordered plot in a novel or story as a meretricious literary interest." James Joyce was fiercely realistic even as a young man experimenting with writing. If his environment was even partly responsible for what his brother calls his ruthless realism, it would not be surprising. Their father was often incapably drunk. Their mother was submissive and disposed to follow the sometimes stupid and remarkably unchristian advice of the local priest. The

family flitted from one rented house to another whenever impatient landlords became too insistent about -the rent. Education by the Jesuits led to both brothers turning their backs on the Catholic Church. James the realist studied the faith and rejected it coolly. Stanislaus was bitter and passionate in his opposition and, as Richard Ellmann says in his

introduction, he "continued throughout his life to shake his first at it.". In writing about his brother. Stanislaus Joyce has revealed much about himself. His attitude to James varied considerably throughout their lives and some of his observations are not uncritical. Nevertheless, the book is a declaration of respect and admiration for the writer that James Joyce became. Professor Joyce points out that the character of Stephen, in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." is a portrait of the interior man. In “Mr Brother's Keeper" the Professor sets out his purpose, which is “to give a picture of the model from the outside, to be the other eye that adjusts, focuses and rounds off contours" Louis MacNeice, in "The Stings are False." started to paint his own portrait. The book has been cobbled together from fragments. rough drafts and autobiographical memoirs, and the result is sometimes ungainly. Certainly MacNeice did not intend the book to appear in its present form but he. too. died before he could complete the manuscript. The last third of the book is in draft form, unrevised and unpolished, but the rythmic vitality of his style is still evident. "MacNeice once said that "the poet dances his experiences in words" and the same poetic rhythms illuminate his prose work. He remembered his childhood as being lonely, plagued by nightmares and the fears, both real and imaginary, that beset a sensitive child. The cook’s dreadful morality tales unnerved him: “There was one about a little boy who filled a slice of bread with pins and covered the points of the pins with butter and jam and give it to his sister and she died.” He was haunted at having murdered a nest full of fledglings by overturning their nest in his eagerness to look at them. He tried to be pious: "On Good Fridays I made a great effort to be Christian, would read the Crucifixion through in all the four Gospels on end and then walk up and down the garden keeping my face austere, trying not to.be pleased by the daffodils.” An appendix in the form of a memoir by' his old friend John Hilton rounds out the story of Louis MacNeice as far as it goes. In this, Hilton performs the same service for his friend as Professor Joyce did for his brother, that is, he acts as the other eye that adjusts, focuses and rounds off contours.