At every stage of the development of modern literary history, Joyce was a representative figure who expressed the actual symptoms of him and our time.
—Patrick McGee
Reading Kant over the years, I felt more and more that Joyce and Kant were so spiritually compatible. They deal with the finiteness of the knowable world and the limits of rational (intellectual) cognition, as well as another world that intellect itself cannot reach but can be constantly approached by reason—the unknowable but imaginable world of ideas. Kant's philosophical "Copernican revolution" reversed the previous paradigm of knowledge centered on nature/object (ontology) and the subject of knowledge "rotating" around nature/object (ontology) into a new paradigm of cognition centered on the cognitive subject and nature/object (ontology) "rotating" around the cognitive subject. The "Copernican Revolution" in Joyce literature "inverted" the relationship between previous literary texts and the reader, who changed from a "passive consumer" of the text to an "active participant" in the transformation/reengineering of the text. For Colin MacCabe, Ulysses and Finnegan's Vigil are no longer concerned with "reproducing experience" through language, but "experiencing language" through "disintegration reproduction."
Why is Joyce's text difficult to read? For he not only had to present the multi-layered, multi-faceted, dazzling "phenomena" of life with superb narrative techniques; he also had to transform and create language, trying to make it conform to the "reality of existence" or "reality itself.". If Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland and The World in the Mirror and Edward Lear of The Book of Nonsense strongly broke through the limitations of the single language of English; Joyce creatively and completely broke the limitations of English, expanding the "unity" of language into the "polyphony" of language, thus reaching the "cosmopolitanity" of language. As a result of this linguistic transformation and reconstruction, "words" and "things", "language" and "reality", "place" and "world", "time" and "eternity" finally achieve a nearly perfect overlap in Joyce's text. "It is the world of language that creates the material world." Joyce's unique textual practice and his cross-era artistic achievements have advanced a long time in time, providing a rare model for the French thinker Lacan's assertion about the relationship between language and the world. In a sense, outside the field of philosophy, Joyce inherited Kant's intellectual "view of time" and "spatial view" of cognitive subjects, and carried out "dynamic construction" of external empirical materials, thus constituting the context of the "objectivity" of phenomenal knowledge, and opening up a different new way of thinking that Heidegger started from "this here and now" (man) in time and then thought about "existence". Intriguingly, five years after Ulysses appeared in 1922, Proust's Remembrance of the Lost Years and Heidegger's Being and Time were published in the same year in 1927. Since then, in Western literature and philosophy, "time" is no longer just the "form of cognition" of man, but has become the "form of existence" of man. "Returning to things themselves" also means "returning to phenomena themselves", because the so-called "world" is what "I" "see", which is "all" and no longer the "external appearance" of "ontology". The "phenomenon" that breaks free of the "ontology" is no longer regarded as an "objective object" but as an "intentional object", that is, the "meaning" of the world corresponds only to how "I" "see" it. The French novelist and literary critic Marcel Brion brilliantly pointed out: "If Joyce's work is as difficult for many people to read as Einstein's, it may be because both of them have discovered a new dimension of the world that cannot be understood without some kind of new guidance." ”
Ulysses is a "book of the day" that "is the complete reality of the day" (Tyndale). It describes the "longest" day of Bloom's life (eighteen hours) on June 16. The essence of daytime is presented by a language that belongs to daytime. And Finnegan's Vigil, Joyce says, is a "book of the night" that "is the complete reality of the night" (Tyndale). It is written about consciousness and dreams in the dark of night. The world of consciousness and dreams requires a language of its own. Joyce said to the sculptor Auguste Sutter: "I have used English to the end. To Beckett, he said, "I've put language to sleep." He said to Max Ismen, "I'm going to write the night, and I really don't have the means to use words in the normal connection of the text. Words written in that way do not express the situation of things at night, through different stages—perceptual, half-aware, and then unconscious. I found that according to the normal connection and structure of the text, there is no way to express it. In the morning, of course, everything is clear again... That's when I returned them to them in English as they were. I'm not trying to wipe it out forever. Joyce "restored the sense of rhythm of the creatures and the rhythm of the spirit" (Marcel Brion). "Language" approximates "being". It can be said that in Joyce's case, "language" has shed its position as "external to" the world, "external to" man's some kind of secondary existence or "instrument of reproduction"; "language" becomes the "way of existence" of "world" and "man". The playwright Beckett declared that what Joyce wrote was "not about things"; what he wrote "is the things themselves". This is where the inexplicable Joyce text is immortal, and it is precisely the root of my obsession with collecting Joyce.
Now, from the perspective of versioning and binding, take a look at my collection of Joyce's books.
Portrait of a Young Artist
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1928 (first edition by the London Egotist Press in 1916). This volume is a gift for Joyce, which reads: "To George Cosgrove, James Joyce, Paris, June 5, 1929." Unlike Ulysses and Finnegan's Vigil, which both featured joust signature limited editions, this Jórës signature is rare. This is the work of the famous American framer reframed. Green Hamadan goatskin full leather. The binding design of the book cover is inspired by the polychromatic motifs of the initials in Irish medieval manuscripts. Gilded medieval Celtic knots form a border, and the frame is decorated with colorful inlays to symbolize the impulse of the devil and the flames of hell. On the wrapper is the brown-skinned Dublin city skyline.
From the perspective of collection, if the first edition of the first brush can find the original, that is, the original book cover at the time of publication, the original book clothing at the time of publication and the excellent quality, of course, it is impossible to ask for, because it is original. However, most of the books published in the early years are often of poor quality, and some may be slightly defective. In this case, it is also valuable to repair and reload, especially works that have been reframed by famous framers.
Portrait of a Young Artist is an autobiographical novel about "growing up". "Through the evolution of an individual's language, an imaginative growth is demonstrated" (Michael Schmidt). It can be said that Stephen Didalus is Joyce's "alter ego". However, this text is contrary to the tradition of the "coming-of-age novel" and does not describe the rebellion of a young idealist spirit in a minimalist linear manner. As Stephen grew up, young artists became increasingly alienated from Ireland's rigid social, cultural and creative environment. These environments threaten, first, to restrain and then to stifle the imagination of young artists who are seeking and growing. In order to protect the "possibilities" of "self-generation", "silence, exile and cunning" became an effective means of Stephen's self-defense. This unique novel clearly demonstrates Joyce's skillful storytelling skills and artistic habits, that is, what he picks up from life or experience, once he skillfully transforms, these things will become the appropriate subject matter of his art. Joyce fully trusts the reader and makes the reader shoulder the artistic responsibility of freely connecting events and events from chapter to chapter, from scene to scene. In Hugh Kenner's view, unlike rembrandt's "static" self-portraits, created by Rembrandt who interpret the physical and physical characteristics of the same age through the hands of the same age, the subject of Joyce's "portrait" has undergone a process of growth from birth to the age of twenty in the portrait space, but in the process of painting this portrait, the "artist" has lived an extra decade. Joyce breaks down the "laws of perspective" that spatially place painters and objects in a fixed geometric relationship with each other and implement them with the help of analogies in time. In Joyce's writing, the "object" and the "viewpoint" are no longer "static", both are "moving" at the same time, and the speed of movement is not the same as each other. Thus, Portrait of a Young Artist "is perhaps the first cubicist work in the history of literature."
The Dubliners
Dubliners, London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1914, first edition; printed in 1,250 copies. Of the 1,250 volumes, 746 were pre-bound by Grant Richards And were first published in London on 15 June 1914; the remaining 504 were shipped by sea to B. Richards in New York. W. Huebsch Book, which was later published in the United States between December 15, 1916 and January 1, 1917. This volume is the work of American framers reframed using purple Hammetham goatskin. Joyce had been an alcoholic all his life and was an out-and-out drunkard. Binding elements include massive wine bottles, bicycles, house entrances, Dublin churches, and colorful rigged book covers that illustrate Joyce in everyday life and the reality of her inner conflict with the Catholic Church. The Dubliners is Joyce's collection of early short stories, which waited nine years from pen to publication. The "strange and terrifying tenderness" that pervades this episode accompanies his turbulent life. Years of decay and economic stagnation "paralyzed" Dublin in the early twentieth century as a city of hardship and despair. Poets such as Yeats launched the Irish Literary Revival Movement, hoping to restore Irish folklore through new works of art to promote national identity. Joyce deliberately avoided the movement in full swing, arguing that it was too narrow-minded, rough and narrow-minded, and self-enclosed. He firmly believed that the "truth of literature" was not to examine Ireland with the lens of the past, but to examine the modern Irish experience with "realistic" and "fearless rigor", as he did in Dubliner. He tried to give his compatriots trapped in "mental/moral paralysis" a good look at their own reality through his "carefully wiped lenses" – "we are stupid, funny, sluggish, corrupt, but we still deserve sympathy". Joyce's real intention was to reawaken the "Irish conscience" with the help of The Dubliners, thereby bringing "spiritual liberation to my country".
Inner page of the Manifesto
The Epiphanies, New York: Vincent FitzGerald & Co., first edition of the 1987 edition (manuscript of notes on the Manifestation, twenty-three of which were handwritten by Joyce himself, the rest transcribed by his brother Stanislaus, first appeared in 1965 in The Workshop of Didalus, in the order of passages edited by Robert Scholes); unbound leaves, printed fifty. This volume number is 31. The paper size in this edition is the same as that of Joyce's original manuscript. This edition contains forty-six etchings, several original watercolors, collages, and hand-tailored patterns. The famous American Interpretive Artist Susan Weil and the painter Marjorie Van interpret each passage of the Manifesto with their original art, and sign and hand number the book. This one was an idea they imagined. Open the page, it is a picture, corresponding to a passage in Joyce's "Manifestation", which looks like a leaning tower and like a mountain from a distance; but when you close the page and look closely, it is actually a different level of Joyce's head. The Manifestation is a short text fragment of forty prose poems written by Joyce between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, with themes related to childhood experiences, inner monologues, games, dreams, death, etc., while the "manifestation" (a series of interrelated moments of insight and understanding) obtained from dreams constitutes the "source" of the author's subsequent novel creation art form (after revision and polishing, thirteen are included in Stephen the Hero, twelve in Portrait of a Young Artist, and four in Ulysses. , one into "Finnegan's Vigil"). The Greek word "epiphany" originally meant "appear" or "appear", and english was translated as "the appearance of a specific vision" or "spiritual revelation". Joyce uses this phrase to mean "the essence of a previously hidden thing is revealed" or an individual "suddenly receiving some spiritual revelation." In Stephen the Hero, he borrows the protagonist Stephen Didalus to describe it as follows: "By apparition, he (Stephen) refers to some sudden spiritual manifestation, whether it appears in the vulgarity of speech or manners or at an unforgettable moment in the mind itself. He believed that the literati should record these manifestations with extra care, because they were the most delicate and nuanced and the most fleeting moments. Before using the word "manifestation," Joyce used the plural form of another Greek word, epiclesis, "epicleti" (this word means "to surrender the Holy Spirit," the prayer in the Communion liturgy of the Eastern Christian Communion, begging the Holy Spirit to come into bread and wine and become the body and blood of Christ; equivalent to the "Eucharist variant" of the Catholic Mass, Transubstantiation). Joyce in C. Coran P. Curran's letter used this word to refer to the story in his Dubliner text—"I was writing a series of 'prayers for the Holy Spirit' for a newspaper, counting ten. I've completed one of them (referring to "Sisters")... In order to expose what many people see as a city paralyzed or paralyzed soul." It is worth mentioning that some scholars have argued that "epicleti" is a misreading of Joyce's handwriting of Coran's letter, and the original word should be "epiclets", meaning "little epics". But in the face of first-hand literature, this formulation seems far-fetched, because Joyce is committed to "turning the bread of everyday life" into a miraculous literary moment through a "variation of the literary communion" approach. Joyce himself could not have made this clearer. In a letter to Stanislaus, Joyce wrote: "There is some similarity between the mystery of Mass and what I am trying to do... By transforming the bread of everyday life into something that has a lasting artistic life in itself, it brings people a kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment... For the sake of their minds, morals and spiritual upliftment. ”
Finnegan's Vigil
Finnegans Wake( also translated As Finnegan's Aftermath" and "Finnegan Awakening"), London: Faber & Faber Ltd., New York: The Viking Press, first edition in 1939. Big eight folio, raw edge. Original book red hard linen wrapped cardboard book cover. The brush was specially printed (released on the same day as the British and American Regular Edition), with a limited edition (125 copies in the United Kingdom and 300 copies in the United States), and 425 copies signed by Joyce. Book Number 2 was once included in the collection of New York painting and calligraphy collector Ward Cheney. From a collector's point of view, number 2 often means the "first volume" circulating outside, because the first volume (number 1) is either left by the author himself or kept by the publisher himself. The green water pen handwriting is the signature of Joyce himself. Using the four-part structure of "Finnegan's Vigil", the four stages of human history divided into the Italian thinker Vico's "New Science" (the ancient Egyptians divided the whole past time into three parts: "the period of god", "the period of heroes (chiefs)", "the period of man", plus Vico's "period of the return of the peoples") as the framework of writing, and the ultimate reflection on the existence and fate of human beings from "falling"/"falling" to "returning" that are constantly repeated in various periods, levels and fields. To achieve this ultimate reflection, Finnegan's Vigil pushes the "nature" or "essence" of language to its limits, constructing "perhaps the only and most outstanding narrative monument of the twentieth century, comparable to what Picasso achieved in The Girls of Avignon or Guernica" (André Brink).
This volume was bound by famous American framers using rust-colored goatskin. The back cover of the cover is colorlessly printed with the Irish folk song "Finnegan's Vigil" five-line music score as the upper and lower columns of the border, the cover and back cover in the center of the border are respectively gilded and pressed with two frames of Joyce bust outlined with lines, and the cover bust and the back cover bust are superimposed with color note skin maps. Please note the title of the book here. The framer used finnegan's Wake in the form of "Possessor" instead of Joyce removing the title "Possessor" (Finnegans Wake). Here, the framer is amusing and wrestling with Joyce. You Joyce constructed and created a new world, but in the eyes of the worldly people, what you are trying to subvert will be beaten back to the original form of the everyday life that you have become accustomed to, and finally completely dissolve it. This ingenious binding design is to tell and even warn people that the pages of the book must be opened. If you don't actually open the book and don't look intently at its title page, the reader will think that it was born out of Finnegan's Vigil rather than Joyce's Finnegan Vigil. "Finnegan's Vigil" is an Irish folk song about the alcoholic mason Finnegan who fell off a ladder while working and broke his skull, and his family and neighbors thought he was dying and carried home to bed to guard his dead. The crowd laughed and fought, and even moved, and during the fight, the wine jar was thrown to the head of the lying Finnegan, and the dead drunkard was unexpectedly dragged back to the human world by the sudden smell of whiskey. The word "wake" in the original text has the meaning of "vigil night", "awakening", "gushing", etc. Joyce creatively removed the possessor symbols from the ballad. This time, there is a richer meaning. It can be understood as a plural—the Finnegan-like masses have awakened, and the masses have come in waves like a splash of water raised from the stern of a ship. The fall and return of the Irish and humanity as a whole. First-class framers, like first-class painters, engage in deep dialogue with literary artists with their own unique art. They are not content to be merely vassals of the writer's words and ideas.
Giacomo Joyce (Manuscript Edition)
Giacomo Joyce, New York: Viking Press, first edition, January 1, 1968. Jujube red hard linen spine wrapped gray white cotton paper hard seal, the spine from top to bottom gilded printing title, author and publisher. The cover is near the upper left corner of the spine, and a frame of rounded rectangles, red framed on a white background, and a paper title label with Black reproduction of Joyce's handwriting are embedded in the slightly sunken grooves, with a gray cardboard bookcase with the same design as the cover design. The description at the front of the title page states that the edition was "distributed worldwide only by a brush, after which the body of the edition will not be reprinted." This edition contains a seventeen-page long sequence and five-page annotations by Richard Ellmann, a sixteen-page transcription of the body of a notebook in line-to-line typography; and a sixteen-page notebook manuscript page reproduction (pages 1 and 2, 15, and 16, reproduced according to the original size of the Joyce notebook manuscript page, and the rest of the notebook pages are reproduced after the size of the original manuscript is reduced). If you don't have the opportunity to collect or see the original Joyce manuscript, this edition is still worth collecting.
The autobiographical essay in this collection was written in 1914 in De trieste, Italy (then under Austrian rule), when Joyce's Portrait of a Young Artist was coming to an end and Ulysses had just begun. However, Joyce did not intend to publish it during his lifetime. The current title of the book was added only later when it was published. With the outbreak of World War I, Joyce hurriedly left Deryast for Zurich in 1915, where the discarded manuscript survived to the rescue of his brother Stanislaus.
The title of the book is James in Italian, so Giacomo Joyce means James Joyce. Joyce spent some time in Italy, making a living by teaching English. During his lectures, he had the insight to discover and influence a gifted student, Italo Svevo, author of La Coscienza di Zeno (1923), a masterpiece of modernist literature. Joyce and Svivo cherished each other and inspired each other, occupying a lofty position in the territory of modernist literature, and the friendship between the two writers by the magic of words has become a good story in the history of literature. Joyce loves Italian without saying. His second child was his daughter, who was named after Lucia in Italian. The etymological meaning of "Rukia" is "God of Light", which vaguely soothes Joyce's lifelong fear of blindness (his mother's blindness before her death). He needs the "God of Light" to bless his beloved daughter. Ill-fated (insane asylum) Lucia Joyce is talented and can dance and paint. In 1936, on the occasion of her daughter's birthday, Joyce, without Rukia's knowledge, had The Obelisk Press in Paris publish three hundred copies of her earlier initials in a "letter primer" containing twenty-three chaucer lines, A Chaucer A.B.C.
Compared with the young, limited personality period in which the protagonist of "Portrait of a Young Artist" is located, Joyce in "Giacomo Joyce" enters a more mature stage of life development. These short "text sketches" or "impressions" record Joyce's infatuation with an unknown young schoolgirl in Tiryast, express Joyce's observation and sexual desires, and depict the unfathomable feelings between a cruel and indifferent girl and a teacher, some of which are used in his later creations. Fifty brief "apparitions" can be seen as Joyce's "sensitivity" exploration and practice for his later portrayal of Bloom's character. The text takes Jim's first-person narrative. Jim's wife is also called Nora, the same name as Joyce's wife. It can be said that Jim represents Joyce himself. This character associates the later Bloom with Stephen, connecting the inner world with the outer world. The last verse of the text is a brief cynicism, ending with a symbol of the worship of the god of things: "Love me, love my umbrella." ”
Giacomo Joyce (illustrated version)
New York, 1989: Vincent FitzGerald & Co. reprinted the illustrated edition in fifty copies, numbered fifty, and numbered 20, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the original photocopies of the Viking manuscripts and the seventy-fifth anniversary of Joyce's completion. Illustrator Susan Weil is Joyce's master of interpretive art. She and publisher Vincent FitzGerald focused on publishing Joyce's text, selecting some of Joyce's short texts, interpreting the ideas of words in different artistic techniques, and presenting Joyce's "encyclopedia" world at multiple levels. The painter and publisher signed and hand-numbered. In this collection, Ms. Priscilla Spitler, a New Mexico bookbinder, usa, carefully sewn the original twelve special handmade paper prints and unbinded loose sheets on a cloth substrate, plus a gray handmade paper-wrapped cardboard book cover and a purple goatskin spine.
"Children Everywhere"
Haveth Childers Everywhere, Paris: Babou & Kahane/New York: The Fountain Press, 1930; first edition, six hundred copies printed; one hundred copies printed on the finest handmade Japanese electro-optical paper, signed by Joyce, signed by Joyce, 500 copies printed on handmade pure cloth French Vidalon paper, without Joyce's signature. This volume is a single edition of a fragment of the later fennegan night of the Vigil (i.e., the last part of the third chapter of the third part of the third part, pp. 532-554). American framers used green goatskin full leather reloading, and the details of the colorful skin figure on the back cover of the cover were outlined in gold thread. Joyce, the author's artistically inspired muse Homer and The Woman, Dublin, and the diabolical impulses are scattered throughout the back cover and spine.
The core of a reloaded book is critical. I collect Western books to have a habit of cleanliness and the supremacy of appearance. If a hundred-year-old book does look like a hundred years old, I have less interest in collecting it, because I do not want to be a repairer of the old paper, burdened by the "aging" of the book; if it looks like it has only recently come out of the printing house, I will take it all in its order, because it will be preserved for a longer time, and its "face" of not aging will undoubtedly witness the true love of all those who have handled it.
Cover of The Fox and the Grape
The Fox and the Grapes title page
The Mookse and the Gripes, Portage, Indiana: The Compulsive Printer, 1977; first edition of the limited edition, in seventy-five copies, volume 6. The three title pages consist of three illustrated print pages, with illustrator Joseph D'Ambrosio signing each frame. Perhaps, he tried to present Joyce's artistic attempt to make words superimposed on the world. This version expands an initial ornament into a page frame for the entire text version, full of visual impact. The Irish medieval primitives represented by the initial floral ornaments carry the perception of the world in which modern people live. The three-frame color silk print was co-signed by Joseph de Ambrosio and publisher Elmore Mundell on several print pages. The book cover is presented in a unique red velvet mussel shell bookcase style, with the east of the velvet box lid embedded in the middle of the Orthodox church pointed arch window-shaped gold leaf bag relief silk print, the picture is superimposed on two levels of a bunch of grapes and a close-up of the fox's face. This creative extension of Aesop's fable the Fox and the Grape in Finnegan's Night's Vigil first appears in the 1932 issue of The Tales of Shem and Sean. "And you, Bruno Nolan, take your tongue out of the ink bottle!" Since none of you speak Javanese, I have come to translate all the fables of the old fables in a relaxed and free way. (Finnegan's Vigil, Vol. 1, translated by Dai Rongrong, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2013) Joyce uses this fable to imitate the mockery of the 1054 representatives of Pope Leo IX of Rome and The Bishop of Constantinople, Serulalius, about the "filioque, and from the Son", The Theological dispute between the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son (whether the Holy Spirit is produced by the Father or by the Father and the Son). This controversy shook the principle of the "Holy Trinity" ("Trinity") of the Western Church (the Catholic Church of Rome or the Catholic Church). Since then, the Orthodox Church has parted ways with catholicism. The "fox" (one son, Shaun) symbolizes the Latin Church, and the "grape" (the other son, Shem), symbolizes the Greek church.
Stephen the Hero
Stephen Hero, New York: A New Directions Edition, 1955. The first typographical version of the manuscript manuscript (up to nine hundred and fourteen pages before scattering) was published in 1944 by New Direction Press, edited by Theodore Spencer. The first typeset base used manuscripts kept by the Harvard University Library. Twenty-five pages of manuscripts were later found in the Yale University Library. Joyce bibliographic experts John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon added the newly discovered manuscript to the original edition to introduce this new edition. In addition to the new preface, this edition reprints the long preface of Professor Spencer, the editor of the first edition in 1944, which provides a detailed introduction to the beginning and end of the discovery of the first manuscripts, the similarities and differences between the structure and writing of the comparative manuscripts and the subsequent books (i.e., the condensed "Portrait of a Young Artist"), analyzing the subject matter of the manuscripts and emphasizing their special literary value. This volume is hardcover. Light blue paper coats are printed with black font book titles and other text, goose yellow cloth wrapped cardboard book covers, and black letters on the spine.
The journey of collecting Joyce is a journey of thought that deepens and amazes the understanding and discovery of the vastness of human nature under the inexhaustible guidance of his creativity, because, as Margot Norris reveals, the true value of Joyce's labor "lies in the great effort it has made to enrich our conception of man; of course, this is the goal of all art, but here it is achieved in a particularly broad and intricate way".
Ulysses
It is a volume of Ulysses published by The Egoist Press in London on 12 October 1922. The first two brushes of this British edition were printed in two thousand copies using the same paper type in the Shakespeare Bookshop of the Charles de d'Arcantier in Dijon, with the number 680. The five hundred copies of this edition arrived in the United States, and were destroyed by the United States Customs because the censors considered the contents to be obscene, while only five hundred were bound and errata were added. The reason for this volume is the addition of an eight-page errata. Why are there so many errata? Since the British at the time judged the book to be obscene and could not be published in its native territory, Sylvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare's bookstore, had to entrust the French printer D'Arte. The typographers are French who are not proficient in English. The French only care about code words, but they don't delve into what the code is. At the time of typography, Joyce continued to revise, and the manuscript before the previous edition was scribbled in a mess, so the first edition of "Ulysses" was planted a lot. The updated eight pages are not yet a complete errata. The cover style of this edition of the Egotist Press also completely retains the original design of Shakespeare's bookstore, such as the simple and elegant white cover on a blue background that Joyce participated in designing and decided.
Joyce had many superstitions in his life, and blue was one of them, because he believed that blue could ward off evil spirits. In his early years, when he was exiled to Paris, his mother wrote to him to make a dress. He wrote back that he wanted to be dressed in blue and hoped to buy him a blue felt hat. In addition, blue was the color of the Greek flag at that time. The title and author's name in white on the cover represent islands scattered above the blue sea, as it is a work of tribute to the spirit of ancient Greece. In search of a paper with the kind of blue effect that Joyce was satisfied with, d'Arte d'Artier traveled extensively throughout Germany and the Netherlands. Shakespeare's Bookstore edition by edition was marketed through pre-sale. After the pre-sale, Beech erected a flagpole on the site of Shakespeare's Bookstore, on which a Greek flag flew. For pre-orderers who have placed a deposit, this is both a stark content statement and a consolation of the thirsty expectation of the book. This volume is a re-edition work by a binding artist, using gray Moroccan leather, a large black art seal, and a three-column bamboo spine.
This volume of Ulysses was the last brush of Shakespeare's bookstore edition in 1930, the second edition. The difference between this second edition and the first brush is that since the eighth brush in 1926, the page font has been rearranged, so the eighth brush in 1926 is also known as the Shakespeare Bookstore edition of the second edition and the first brush. Brown semi-Moroccan leather bag white linen cardboard.
Random House in New York officially published Ulysses in 1934. The Random House edition of this volume I have collected is the first edition of three brushes. The Random House edition is loose and beautiful. The book is bound in red Moroccan leather, the book cover is embossed in the relief "Art Deco" style, the second and fourth columns of the six-column bamboo spine are printed with the title and author's name of the bronzed gilded section on a black background, and the remaining columns are embossed with a single flower.
Before the first edition in the United States, there was another edition that was also worth collecting, namely Ulysses by the Odyssey Book Club in Hamburg, Germany, in 1932. The Odyssey edition produced a hardcover edition on canvas and two volumes of small narrow paperbacks, with a gray-and-white book cover and a date-red font, which was simple and atmospheric.
This Ulysses was a brush from Shakespeare's bookstore in February 1922, with thousands of copies printed. From the perspective of collecting, this part is a model of collection. Although it is the "ordinary copy" of this brush (this brush also has the author's signature luxury wide paper and fine art paper wide paper), there seems to be nothing remarkable about it. But the number 255 volume is really not small. What's important about it? After Joyce finished writing, he kept urging Beech to see the printed book on February 2. After Beech chose Dijon's D'Oldhaentier, d'Aulture went all out. On the evening of February 1, two luxurious wide paper copies were printed and bound, one numbered 901 and one numbered 902. The printing house took the two volumes overnight to the train from Dijon to Paris. Early the next morning, Beech hurried to the Paris train station to wait for the first train from Dijon. She got the numbers 901 and 902. She handed the number 901 to Joyce. Joyce was very happy because February 2, 1922, was his fortieth birthday. Number 902, Beech went back to put it in the bookstore display window, but some bookers saw the window display and scrambled to take this one for a sneak peek. Beech saw that things were not good, and was so frightened that he quickly put away the "902" in the window. In the next few days, D'Arteille decided to start printing from the "ordinary version" at the back, starting from 251. Thus, the book, number 255, is the fifth volume of the "ordinary book" that arrived in Paris on February 8, shortly after getting off the printing press. The number 255 volume was received by George Rehm, the writer of the European edition of the Chicago Tribune, who was one of the first buyers to make a reservation for Ulysses. A short book review of his book appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Feb. 13. This was the earliest newspaper review of Ulysses. Of course, later researchers did not like the book review, thinking that it was only the standard of composition of middle school students; but fairly, he still accurately predicted the immortality of this work. In his early years, Yeats, who was full of poetry, also failed to make a firm judgment, and he was said to have said to Joyce in person, "I don't know if you are a fountain or a water tank." Back at this point in time on February 13, 1922, Rem's words were as valuable as prophets.
Let's take a look at the binding number 255. Shakespeare's first edition of Ulysses is the ideal edition for framers to reload. Why? The reason why Beech was so "simple" and "fragile" was not entirely due to the rough production conditions at the time, and she was convinced from the beginning that such a multi-layered and multi-meaningful work should inspire the authors of the book to creatively re-decorate its appearance according to their own tastes and unique understandings. The one she had hidden used blue Moroccan leather to be bound in full leather, with a silver scrater and a bamboo spine.
American rare book dealer Larry O'Shaughnessy co-curated the book with renowned framer Jamie Kamph. The book cover is bound in full blue Hamadan goatskin (inspired by the one that Beech hid from). The theme of the design represents the fusion of the soul of an ancient Greek hero Ulysses with a twentieth-century Irishman, as Bernhard Fell put it: "Why is it called Ulysses?" It is the Odyssey of the day, the Odyssey in modern form... It does not describe life in chronological order. It presents the picture of the human soul in the order of freedom and idealism... Juxtaposing life, biology, psychology, and cosmopolitan geography into its great bosom. "The framer made Dublin's intercity line stretch across the bottom of the plane formed by the spine of the book cover; above the intercity line a colorless print of a horizontal inlaid stripe ornament (which is an important ornament in ancient Greek culture); the inlay stripe ornament supported three upright ancient Greek temple columns at equal intervals from left to right; and the striped ornament under the spine of the book was divided into two lines of gilded seals. Another horizontal stripe of inlays runs across the top of the cylinder, holding up the title of the book in bold gilding. Joyce, who was also tormented by blindness, and the originator of his artistic creation, the ancient Greek troubadour Homer, have two unpainted heads, one facing left and the other facing right, with gilded prints pressed into the leather surface of the book cover.
In 1935, The Limited Editions Club in New York introduced the first edition of the illustrated Ulysses edition, which was limited to 1,500 copies. I have this volume number 1221. This edition has a unique layout and exudes a distinct artistic atmosphere. The famous modernist painter Henri Matisse illustrated twenty-six frames, soft-ground etchings in six frames and Sketches of Matisse's figures. This volume is a double signature of Mattis and Joyce. Joyce used a black fountain pen; above his name, Matisse used a pencil for painting. This illustrated panel shows the whole process of Matisse's composition, from the draft to the middle revision to the final draft, presented in light yellow, light blue and white paper. This is a wonderful intellectual dialogue between Matisse and Joyce. According to the original cover, the California framer has carefully produced a brown Moroccan leather mussel shell bookcase with a relief-inspired Matisse nude dynamic figure flesh white skin pattern.
Ulysses was a 1936 first edition of John Lane The Bodley Head in London. Wide four-folio. This edition was printed according to the first edition of the Hamburg Odyssey Bookshop with two brushes, which numbered to 1,000 copies. Joyce signed a hundred copies of the luxurious copy of imitation handmade paper. The number of this volume in the collection is 27. This edition adds three appendices to the main text, distinguishing it from other editions. This is a unique edition that collectors greatly value, with a sparse and open layout, a beautiful font, a clean and inky black paper, a large burr edge of the paper, a gilded top, and the collector has praised as "the most beautiful version of all the editions of Ulysses to date (until 1936)". What is rare is that the cream-colored whole calf leather original book seal is stamped with a Homeric bow designed by British art master Eric Gill, embedding Joyce and Homer, modern spirit and ancient spirit into minimalist artistic conception.
The English novelist and literary critic Chesterton said that if great poets are obscure to ordinary people, there are two reasons for this—either the things they talk about are "too big for anyone to understand" or the things they talk about are "too small for no one to see." The same applies to Joyce, who can never be imitated by latecomers. Upon learning of Joyce's death, Katherine Ann Porter, who seems to represent an entire generation of novelists, wrote in her notebook: "Thanks to him, what else could we have done all along?" ”
Chapter 13 of Ulysses is written about the night of fireworks at the bazaar next to the church, where Bloom peeks into The scene of Getty, who sits there unmoved, which is so beautiful and delicate that it is suffocatingly delicate, and Mr. Jin Sui's translation is particularly evocative:
She glanced at him, and when her eyes met, a light shot into her heart. On that face plate, there was an incandescent strong feeling burning, a graveyard of silent strong feelings, which had made her his person... His hands, his face were moving, and she felt a tremor all over her body. She leaned back to look at the fireworks high up, clasped her hands on her knees to avoid falling on her back, and no one around saw her, only him and her... She leaned back again... She tried to lean back as far as she could to look at the fireworks, and there was a strange thing flying back and forth in the air, the same soft thing, flying and flying back and forth, black. She saw a long Roman candle-like firework rising from behind the trees into the sky, rising higher and higher... Her face turned red as she leaned back, a god-like red glow... She let him see, she saw him see... At this time, a rocket suddenly soared into the air, and with a bang, the empty bullet exploded, and then Oh! The Roman candle fireworks bloomed, like a wow, everyone shouted with excitement, and then it spewed out a blonde rain and scattered down, ah, down is the golden wire with dewdrops of green stars, oh, how wonderful, oh, how gentle, lovely, gentle!
Then, everything melted like dew in the gray sky: everything was silent.
Patiently open the jungle-like lush Joyce texts, enter his bizarre imaginative world, appreciate the dazzling "kaleidoscope" like "fireworks of language", in the place where the obscured landscape of existence illuminates and penetrates his "fireworks of language", step into the unpredictable "flow of words" and "flow of thought", once again discover the "true face of life" (Virginia Woolf), understand its big sight and see its small, because as Joyce said, "If Ulysses can't see, Then life is unlivable."