Certainties are dangerous things, as any racegoer will confirm. Had I been asked at any time in the past 20 years what the chances were of a major, previously unknown manuscript by James Joyce turning up, I would have replied that they were non-existent. It would not have seemed possible that such a valuable possession would have been allowed to gather dust in someone's library.
Indeed, part of the critique which I and others made of Danis Rose's 1997 "Reader's Edition" of Ulysses was based on the assumption that there were not, and could not be, any new manuscripts or authorial sources to justify the changes made.
The critique was valid, since no such new sources were known to Rose either, but the assumption was wrong. Last September, a previously unknown manuscript of the "Circe" episode of Ulysses was offered for auction at Christie's in New York. It came as a complete surprise, but in fact it should not have.
A hint was contained in a letter Joyce wrote to his patron John Quinn in 1921, at a time when Joyce was selling him episodes of the manuscript in instalments: "As a curiosity I threw in also the eighth draft of the former" (Circe). The "curiosity" of Joyce scholars does not seem to have extended to wondering what might have happened to this draft, which was not included in the sale of Quinn's manuscripts in 1924.
The document remained in the possession of Quinn's descendants - nephews, nieces, since he had no children - until it finally turned up in New York last September. It was obviously an important opportunity (in view of what happened, I no longer dare to use the word "unique") for the National Library of Ireland to acquire a manuscript that would immeasurably enrich its holdings of Joyce materials.
The library kept a low profile in the period leading up to the auction, but behind the scenes it was keenly interested and closely inspected the document. To her credit, the relevant Minister, S∅le de Valera, made the necessary funds available, and the Library purchased the manuscript at auction in New York on December 14th for $1.4 million (plus miscellaneous expenses involved in hiring an agent, etc).
If one were to wish for extra light to be thrown on any single episode of Ulysses, "Circe" would probably be the one. While not the most difficult to read, it is the most complex and seemingly chaotic, with a lot of threads left dangling. Set in the brothel quarter of Dublin, Nighttown, it is a wild, nightmarish tour de force in which the characters' fears and desires, dreams and nightmares, mingle promiscuously. Reality and fantasy become impossible to distinguish, as much for the reader as for the characters, tragedy and comedy are increasingly difficult to tell apart.
The newly acquired manuscript is a working draft, not just a straight copy of earlier material. Not very many such working drafts for Ulysses have survived; there is just one other, rather sketchy earlier draft for this episode.
The manuscript - a very handsome document in itself - is marked throughout with Xs traced across it in delicate blue crayon. These were done to indicate that a passage had been transferred to a later draft and had been, as it were, disposed of - at least for the moment. Since this is a working draft and was intended for Joyce's eyes only, the hand is rather difficult to read - but transcriptions will be provided, as well as the corresponding pages of the published text.
The text is generally written on one side only of each of the 27 pages, but on the backs of many of the pages there are passages and notes to be used on the subsequent page - the backs were effectively used as extra space for taking note of ideas as they came. An example of one such page is included in the current exhibition - to which I am acting as consultant - and it is perhaps more legible, if more disconnected, than some of the more crowded pages.
The exact place of this manuscript in the history of the writing of Ulysses remains to be determined. It is not one homogenous document, but consists of two main numbered sections, with a couple of other pages interposed between the two. The first section, which goes up approximately to the entrance of the brothel-keeper, Bella, is much more heavily revised than the second.
The text as written is obviously far more advanced than in the only other working draft to survive, but whether it directly precedes the Rosenbach fair copy, the next extant document in the process, or whether at least one other missing draft is interposed between them, cannot yet be stated with confidence. And, of course, the episode was expanded vastly later on typescripts and proofs.
More important than these essentially academic issues is the exceptional sense of closeness to a unique creative effort that this working draft gives - much more so than the rather bland Rosenbach fair copy. Here is a shaping imagination working to its fullest capacity, with ideas pouring forth in such profusion that the margin of the main text is covered with additional passages that are marked for inclusion literally all over the place.
There is a strange sense of recognition involved in seeing, on one page the pronoun "him" being crossed out and "her" substituted, marking the moment when Bloom is transformed into a woman, midway through the episode. At points such as this, one realises what all the fuss - and the $1.4 million - is about.
Joyce: the Circe Manuscript opens on Thursday and runs until mid-September at The National Library, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Admission free. Tel: 01-6030200