James Joyce was a Goat Lover

'Once as we were walking up the Champs Elysées together, I pointed to a beautiful white goat harnessed to a children's cart and said how much I admired these courageous and inquisitive creatures. Joyce fully agreed and stopping to contemplate the stately little animal, said he couldn't understand why the goat had been selected as a satanic symbol. 'Hircus Civis Eblanensis.' There was a good deal of the surefootedness and toughness of the mountain goat in Joyce's own composition.'  

Frank Budgen 'Further Recollections of James Joyce', Partisan Review, 1956

'We reached the zoo, and Joyce declared that he didn't care much for the animals; only cats and goats appealed to him....The goats entertained him highly with their pranks.' 

Ole Vinding, 'Joyce in Copenhagen', Portraits of the Artist in Exile 

James Joyce loved goats, which caper through the pages of his books, especially Finnegans Wake.  Goats are individualists and anarchists. Joyce identified with their independence and stubbornness.

Joyce liked goats so much that he even grew a goatee beard!

'Shem's bodily getup, included...a trio of barbels from his megageg chin.' 169.11

'Megageg' is the bleating sound made by a goat. So here Joyce is explicitly comparing his own beard with a goat's.  

 

GOATS VS SHEEP

Here's a photo of a flock of sheep and goats I saw in Alonissos,  in Greece.  The timid conformist sheep are keeping to the safe level central ground, while the bold inquisitive goats are exploring the edges.

 

Joyce preferred goats to sheep, reversing the position of Jesus Christ, in the gospel of Matthew:

'All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world....Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.'

Matthew 25 32-41

Christ saves the sheep and damns the goats

If you look up the Matthew passage online, you'll find lots of Christian writing explaining why Jesus preferred sheep to goats. They often repeat the saying 'Shepherds protect sheep from their environment, whereas goatherds protect the environment from their goats.' 

In Finnegans Wake, there are more than thirty uses of the goat/sheep motif, which you can read here in fweet.  Shem the Penman, the artist, is the goat. The conformist Shaun the Post is the sheep.

'I AM NOW HOPELESSLY WITH THE GOATS'

Here's the Exagmination, a 1929 defence of Work in Progress overseen by Joyce, who picked the title. Richard Ellmann says that 'The spelling of Exagmination was to claim its etymological derivation from ex agmine, a hint that his goats had been separated from the sheep.' 

When the Exagmination came out, Joyce wrote a letter to Valery Larbaud in which he parodied Christ's words damning the goats, applying them instead to the sheep:

'I am now hopelessly with the goats and can only think and write capriciously. Depart from me ye bleaters, into everlasting sleep which was prepared for Academicians and their agues!'

To Valery Larbaud, 30 July 1929, Letters 1, 284

The bleating sheep were the enemies of Work in Progress.  Joyce's chosen goats were the Exagmination's twelve writers (a parallel with Christ's apostles).

This goat I photographed in Ithaca tried to steal our sandwiches

'A HELL OF LECHEROUS GOATISH FIENDS'

In A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, terrified of the hellfire sermon, temporarily joins the sheep and denies his goat nature. This vivid surreal scene is the only negative description of goats I can find in Joyce's writing:

'Creatures were in the field; one, three, six: creatures were moving in the field, hither and thither. Goatish creatures with human faces, hornybrowed, lightly bearded and grey as indiarubber. The malice of evil glittered in their hard eyes, as they moved hither and thither, trailing their long tails behind them. A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces. One was clasping about his ribs a torn flannel waistcoat, another complained monotonously as his beard stuck in the tufted weeds....That was his hell. God had allowed him to see the hell reserved for his sins: stinking, bestial, malignant, a hell of lecherous goatish fiends.'

For the rest of his life, James Joyce identified with the goats. 

SCAPEGOATS

Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat, 1854-6

Shem is also a scapegoat, the goat sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people, described in Leviticus 16:7-22:

'And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness....And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.'

Here is Shaun describing his brother:

'my allaboy brother...whom 'tis better ne'er to name, my said brother, the skipgod expelled for looking at churches from behind'. 488.22

skipgod = scapegoat and the goat that skips being offered as a sacrifice for the Lord

R.J. Schork argues that HCE is a Mosaic scapegoat and a Roman comedy lecherous billygoat. See his wonderful 1993 article 'Sheep, Goats, and the Figura Etymologica in Finnegans Wake' which is online here. 

Sometimes Joyce uses the German term for scapegoat, 'sündenbock':

'sindbook for all the peoples' 229.32

'their sindybuck that saved a city' 412.35

When the cad first appears, he is carrying 'his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out' (35.13). 'Schuld' is guilt in German.

'THE FIRST MAN OF DUBLIN WAS A HE-GOAT'

In the Anna Livia chapter, the washerwomen describe Earwicker as a he-goat, suckling Shem and Shaun.

Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. 215.27

The Latin name means 'Goat Citizen of Eblana',  a term used by Ptolemy in his Geography, later identified by antiquarians with Dublin.  Joyce must have talked about this line with Frank Budgen, who related it to the white goat in the Champs Elysées above.

Joyce gave an extraordinary gloss on this passage to C.K.Ogden:

'The first man of Dublin was a he-goat.
Again the letters of Haveth Childers Everywhere.'

The male suckling is from an ancient Irish ritual. In his Confession, St Patrick writes of an encounter with Irish sailors: 'I refused to suck their nipples because of my reverence for God.'

In the lessons chapter, we learn that one name of the pub is 'The Goat and Compasses' (275.16), in which the goat stands for HCE and the compasses for the 'geomater', Anna Livia.

A GLASS OF GOAT'S MILK

The first man of Dublin?

 

Here's a still from Percy Stow's 1909 film, A Glass of Goat's Milk, which Joyce showed at the Volta, Dublin's first cinema, in February 1910. This description is from the BFI:

'In this simple comedy a man drinks the milk of a particularly aggressive goat and grows horns. Instead off using a dissolve, director Percy Stow does it the old fashioned way, with a pair of inflatable horns, fashioned from paper, which blow up as we watch. The goat/man then proceeds to butt everything in sight before getting his horns stuck in a wooden winch where they are finally detached from his head....The actor, whoever he might be, does a splendid goat impression and the comedy builds in a satisfying way as the goat/man demolishes ever larger and more surprising objects - did they really cut down a tree specially for this film? - and there are some amusing special film effects, as when the dairyman is butted up into the air. '

I saw this, with piano accompaniment, at the National Film Theatre on Bloomsday in 1995, when it was part of a programme of films, curated by Luke McKernan, from the Volta (left). It was the only film I could imagine Joyce personally choosing for the programme.  The other films were Italian, and probably chosen by Joyce's partners from Trieste.

After reviving at his wake, Tim Finnegan told to stay lying in his coffin, is promised funerary offerings, including a glass of goat's milk:

'And we’ll be coming here, the ombre players, to rake your gravel and bringing you presents, won’t we, fenians?...and some goat’s milk, sir, like the maid used to bring you. ' 24.35

THE GOAT KING OF KILLORGLIN

My favourite goat in Finnegans Wake makes an appearance as a 'litigant' in the Festy King trial on pages 85-92. Festy King was a real name, but Joyce also plays with the word king as title, bringing in a comic group of Irish kings:

'The litigants, he said, local congsmen and donalds, kings of the arans and the dalkeys, kings of mud and tory, even the goat king of Killorglin, were egged on by their supporters' 87.24-26

There really is a Goat King of Killorglin, chosen every year at the Puck Fair in Killorglin, County Kerry. Here's a lovely film about the ceremony.

THE NANNYGOAT ON BEN HOWTH

In Ulysses, the only witness of Bloom and Molly's lovemaking on Ben Howth is a surefooted nannygoat:

'She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. '  

The goat has a speaking role in the Circe episode:

(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (Bleats.) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!'

Ellmann has this curious footnote:

'Drinking with Weiss, Joyce remarked that he liked women to have breasts like a she-goat's. In Ulysses, Bloom looks at his wife's 'large soft bulbs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder,' and later remembers how in their first embraces on Ben Howth a nanny-goat walked by them.'

James Joyce, p 464

Old Irish Goats have now been reintroduced to Howth, by the Old Irish Goat Society, creating a perfect opportunity to reenact the big kiss scene.

LOOKING FOR OLD IRISH GOATS IN HOWTH

Lisa and I were in Dublin last week, for the big Bloomsday celebrations.   On 15 June, we had day out in Howth, where I hoped to see some of the Old Irish Goats.  

We made boat trip in the Little Flower (Ireland's smallest and oldest passenger ferry) to Ireland's Eye

We saw loads of guillemots

Back on Howth Head, it was a perfect weather for goat spotting

The view south to Dalkey Island (which also has wild goats)

Here's the Bailey Lighthouse

We saw two llamas

But there was no sign of any goats!

After our day out, I learned on twitter that the Old Irish Goat Society had staged their own photo renactment with a magnificent goat. On Instagram, they posted film of of the shoot with this description:

'When Joycean Clare Taylor, approached us about a photoshoot with the goats to mark the centenary of Ulysses, we were a little nervous truth be told! Goats do their own thing it’s a known fact, & ours have a significant horned-presence, which made us question if it would be safe. What we didn’t expect was a day full of laughter & unforgettable moments, like when our handsome goat decided to remove Leopold’s pocket-square in the middle of a shot.'

picture and report from Irishcentral.com

When I mentioned my own failure to find a goat, they tweeted a kind invitation to give me a private tour. 

Unfortunately, we'd already gone south to Bray by this time.

I did find a sheep in Dublin, at F.X.Buckley's (Wakean name!) butcher shop in Talbot Street.

But the only goat I saw was this one on the wall of Sheridans the cheesemongers...

Reading Shem in Sweny's

My weekend in Dublin ended with a return visit to Sweny's Pharmacy, to join in their regular Sunday night reading of Finnegans Wake. On arrival, I was welcomed by volunteer P.J.Murphy, in his white chemist's coat, who offered me a mug of tea and a paperback copy of the book. Twelve people arrived for the reading, and we all sat around the walls of the Pharmacy.

There were also free fairy cakes!

Fairy cakes!

I was nervous beforehand, because I've always believed that Finnegans Wake should be read in an Irish accent. While I'm happy to do that on my own, I'd be  embarrassed to put on an Irish accent in front of a room full of Irish people.

So it was a relief to find that there were other non-Irish folk there. I sat between David Cunningham, a Scottish lighting designer, who was working on a production at the Abbey, and Kirsten, a Danish journalist who'd just moved to Dublin and was discovering Joyce for the first time. She'd already been to the Ulysses reading at Sweny's. I think, after that, Finnegans Wake came as a bit of a shock! There was also a jolly American and another Englishman. The remaining seven were Irish.

Kirsten from Denmark

 

A jolly American

The reading was begun by the bearded Irishman (below) behind the counter, who explained that we were in the Shem the Penman chapter, starting from the middle of page 176. Shem the Penman is a comic and grotesque portrait of Joyce himself, and it's the funniest and easiest chapter in the book. Everyone would read a page in turn, in an anti-clockwise direction.

The reading begins

The fact that there were twelve of us was a wonderful Joycean coincidence. Joyce told his friend Padraic Colum, 'Twelve is the public number. Twelve hours of the day, twelve men on a jury.' In the book, there are twelve drinkers in HCE's pub, who are also members of a lynch mob, mourners at the wake, jurymen, months, hours, apostles, a football team, the twelve tables of Roman Law, Napoleon's marshals, tribes of Israel, and heaps of other things.  

You can spot the twelve in the book because they're always accompanied by pompous words ending in
'-ation'. They 'crunch the crusts of comfort due to depredation, drain the mead for misery to incur intoxication, condone every evil by practical justification and condam any good to its own gratification...' (142.19-21).

While he was writing the Wake, Joyce got twelve friends to write a book of essays explaining what he was up to. Published in 1929, it was called Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. The cover has Joyce's sigla (symbol) for the twelve, a circle (based on a clock face). That's also picked up in the word 'Round' in the title.

So it was very appropriate that there were twelve of us and we were all sitting around the walls of Sweny's Pharmacy, reading the book in a circle!

Having said all that, three other women did join us after the reading had started, but after five minutes listening to us reading Finnegans Wake, they realised they'd made a mistake and left. Yes, the Shade of Joyce compelled them to go, preserving the magic Twelve!

As the reading passed around, I couldn't help flicking forward to see which page was likely to come my way. Some pages are much harder to read than others. I was lucky to get page 182, a relatively easy one describing Shem writing 'nameless shameless shamelessness about everybody he ever met.'

Kirsten, who followed me, was less lucky to have to read the long list of all the rubbish strewing Shem's house ('once current puns, quashed quotatoes, messes of mottage, unquestionable issue papers, seedy ejaculations...'). 

Kirsten reads p183

The Englishman who followed stood up to read his page, another difficult one describing Shem's preparation of an insane egg dish.

Englishman reading page 184

But I felt sorriest for the Irishman who got page 185. He had to read the filthiest passage in the whole book. It describes Shem making ink from his own excrement and, to preserve decorum, it's in Latin! There's a translation here. He did a heroic job getting through it.

We raced through the chapter at a good rate and seven of us had to read a second page. 

I was pleased to end up with the final page, which describes the coming of Anna Livia Plurabelle, 'as happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself, deloothering the fields on their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide of her, giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia.' When I was a teenager, my Father bought me a record of Cyril Cusack reading this so it's very familiar to me. I copied Cusack's phrasing and rhythms (but not his Irish accent). At the end, I got a round of applause!

After the reading, we all went over the road to have a drink in the Lincoln's Inn pub. Another Joyce coincidence! This pub is next door to Finn's Hotel, where Nora Barnacle was working as a maid in 1904 when she first went out with James Joyce. The Lincoln's Inn even has the original front door of the hotel. The words 'Finn's Hotel' are all over Joyce's early Wake notebooks, and it looks as if this was his first title for Finnegans Wake. He has hidden this original title in the Wake at 514.18:  '— .i..'. .o..l.' 

The perfect ending to a wonderful Wake weekend in Dublin.