Joyce scholar Prof John Kidd has questioned claims being made for the manuscript of the "Eumaeus" episode of Ulysses, to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London next Tuesday.
An estimated price of £800,000 to £1.2 million sterling has been put on the James Joyce document.
The catalogue for the sale claims that this very early draft of the episode shows that its style - a very distinctive melange of circumlocutions, misused cliches and multiple subordinate clauses, all tending towards inextricable confusion - is a later construct overlaid on a basically simple narrative style.
If this were the case, it would have major implications for the understanding of how Joyce wrote his novel.
Prof Kidd, who is best known for his sustained attack on the Hans Walter Gabler 1984 edition of Ulysses, told The Irish Times that such portions of the manuscript as he had been able to inspect did not support the claims, which he described as exaggerated and unsubstantiated.
He maintained that these portions showed that the special style of "Eumaeus" was already well in place, and was in no sense a later accretion. He criticised some factual errors and omissions in the catalogue.
Sotheby's literature expert, Mr Peter Selley, said the catalogue's claims were if anything understated. Many leading Joyce scholars who had seen the manuscript were very excited by its contents. It was now thought that this might be the earliest extant draft of any Ulysses episode.
He cited Prof Hans Walter Gabler as one of the scholars who had been particularly interested in and impressed by the document's potential. He said Prof Kidd had not seen the manuscript and was therefore not in a position to comment on it. He accepted that the catalogue contained some errors, but said these did not affect its basic content.
Irish Joyce scholar Mr John O'Hanlon, who saw the manuscript when it was on display in Dublin on Bloomsday, said its style was recognisably that of the "Eumaeus" episode as we know it. Naturally, in later drafts the style became more elaborate and more complex and more like itself, as it were.
He described the newly discovered manuscript as extremely important and revealing as to Joyce's working methods, and one which would require and reward considerable further study.
The "Eumaeus" manuscript is being sold by a private collector who acquired it from a French diplomat and poet, HenriEtienne Hoppenot (18911977), who was the French ambassador to Switzerland from 1945 to 1952. It was probably during his time in Berne that he obtained the document.
The manuscript is unlikely to find a home in Ireland after the auction. The National Library recently acquired the "Circe" manuscript for $1.4 million, and is not expected to be a bidder on this occasion.