Trieste-Zurich-Paris

1914-1921

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

The present reprint of the critically edited reading text of UlyssesЧfirst published as the so-called СCorrected TextТ in 1986Чstands corrected, as it must, in two readings: СBullerТ at 5.560 and СThriftТ at 10.1259. This is the net outcome of the massive onslaught on the critical editing of Ulysses in the New York Review of Books of 30 June 1988 and elsewhere. Beyond that, the scholarly debate (where it takes and accepts the Critical and Synoptic Edition of 1984 on its own terms) leads, or would lead, to very few changes indeed to the reading text. The procedures of establishing that text, which is the text as it appears realized in this reprint, are grounded and documented in the apparatus of the critical edition. A textual modification in the present reprint alone would be without such a foundation, and no editorial changes have therefore been made.

The alterations I felt inclined towards, but did not introduce, are the following:

at 1.562, for СWeТre always tiredТ read СIТm always tiredТ

(as by JoyceТs instruction in an unpublished letter cited in Antony HammondТs review in The Library, 6th ser., 8 [1986], p. 387)

at 16.1804-1805, for the phrasing Сwas not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering afterТ read Сwas not quite the same as the usual blackguard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering afterТ

(an alternative editorial response to a complicated interrelationship of stages of the textТs development where John KiddТs discussion in the New York Review of Books has suggested that the edition momentarily failed to observe its stated rules of procedure)

at 17.314-315, for СMr BloomТ read СMrs BloomТ

(an emendation which, according to David HaymanТs conjecture in Sandulescu Hart, Assessing the 1984 СUlyssesТ [1986], the context demands, though Joyce never made the change)

As a whole, this critically edited text of Ulysses stands, and remains standing, as the result of its considered premises and reasoned scholarly procedures.

Hans Walter Gabler

August 1993

AFTERWORD

Praised as an epochal scholarly event and denounced as a scandal, the critical and synoptic edition of James JoyceТs Ulysses first published in 1984, together with the corrected text that was published separately in 1986, has received extraordinary publicity for a work of its kind. Its editing procedures have lifted the general public, students, literary critics, and scholarsЧthe vast majority of whom are not themselves editorsЧto a heightened awareness of textual editing. With readers now beginning to realize that editions should be scrutinized and assessed as carefully as interpretations have always been, users of the 1986 reading textЧwhich in this new printing remains available worldwideЧneed to be aware of how Hans Walter Gabler, supported by an international team of collaborators and advisors, arrived at its text and of how this edition resembles and also differs from others that might be produced. This is crucial now that the copyright protection for the first-edition text of Ulysses has expired in most of the world and will end soon in the United States, with the result that many editions are becoming available.

When dealing with a scholarly edition, readers should know something about the theoretical assumptions behind it and about the procedures that were adopted to produce it. On the face of it, accomplishing the goal of offering a text of a work that is more accurate than any that have appeared before might seem fairly simple: find out what the author wanted, clear away the errors, and you have it. But authors are rarely so cooperatively tidy: they change their minds; they destroy or discard documents once they have moved beyond them; they make changes in person, by phone, or via e-mail. Then other people get involved: a typist types, or a printer sets, something different from what the author wrote; a publisherТs editor changes the text, with or without the authorТs consent or sometimes with the authorТs active encouragement. Moreover, determining the order and relative importance of the surviving documents can be complicated. Is one edition earlier or later than another? Was the author involved at all in a particular editionТs production? Because of gaps in the available evidence and of inconsistencies or other complications in the surviving evidence, an editor needs a theoretical approach to the task and a set of procedures that follow from the assumptions.

The critical and synoptic edition of Ulysses needs to be understood in terms of the assumptions and methods of most Anglo-American editing today, because it both follows them and departs from, even challenges, them in important ways. In the method that has come to dominate Anglo-American editing, an editor studies all the relevant surviving documents for the work in question and selects one version as the copytext. The documents include any notes, drafts, manuscripts, typescripts, and proofs that are extant, plus printed versions in which the author was involved. The copytext, usually the first edition or, if available, the authorТs manuscript, is the basic text that the editor will follow for such matters as spelling, punctuation, etc., in places where the evidence is inconclusive, and for all the words except when differences between documents indicate authorТs revisions and so call for the editor to alter the copytextТs words on the basis of one of the other documents. In the terminology of editing and textual criticism, the words are called Сsubstantives,Т spelling and punctuation are matters of Сaccidentals,Т inconclusive readings are СindifferentТ ones, and the editorТs alterations of the copytext are called Сemendations.Т

The resulting text, eclectically blending authorial corrections and revisions with the system of accidentals from the copytext, was eventually epitomized as fulfilling the authorТs final intentions. This method of copytext editing producing an eclectic text offers the editor a way of dealing with gaps in the historical record and with seemingly equal choices among variant readings (when in doubt, follow the copytext). It strives as well to rescue the authorТs text from its ravagement through time at the hands of the scribes, typists, publisherТs editors, and printers who were allowed to alter, and presumably corrupt, it. But it also tends to suppress the historical determinants that originally affected the work and its production in the name of the authorТs final intentions because the eclectic edited text is an idealized construct that appears to transcend time by recreating the СpurityТ of the authorТs isolated conception. The editor is also able to disappear behind the author, since the edition will likely be presented as the authorТs (the editor fulfilled the authorТs intentions) rather than as the editorТs (the editor started with some basic premises and made many decisions and choices in order to produce the edited text).

It is easy to disappear behind the towering figure of James Joyce but difficult to adopt a more visible editorial stance that reveals the editor, as well as Joyce, at work. Yet for Hans Walter Gabler as an editor, JoyceТs methods of writing Ulysses and the surviving evidence regarding that work called for a visible stance. An astonishing array of materialsЧespecially prepublication documentsЧhas survived; they open up the whole process of JoyceТs composition of the work for the purposes of editing, but at the same time they leave tantalizing and important gaps. Joyce wrote Ulysses episode by episode, and the process is almost entirely one of growth and expansion. After compiling notes and rough drafts, Joyce brought each of the eighteen episodes to a temporary finish in a final working draft that he gave to a typist. For eight full episodes and part of a ninth, Joyce apparently made a fair copy of this draft, making some changes as he went along; for these pages the working draft has not survived. (The surviving manuscript, partly the final working draft and partly JoyceТs fair copy, is called the Rosenbach Manuscript after the museum that owns it.) Each episode was transcribed by a series of typists and printers, and some sections were set in proof as many as eight or nine times. Joyce often added to the text as he read and corrected the latest transcription, but as he corrected each transcription he seems not to have looked back to the original manuscript. In addition, as he revised and corrected the proofs in 1921 for the book publication, he was often working on two or three episodes at the same time, reading proofs for early episodes, for example, at the same time as he was drafting the later episodes of СIthacaТ and СPenelopeТ. The printers had to reset much type again and again because of the huge number of JoyceТs corrections, revisions, and additions, and they worked under very short deadlines as they approached the publication date that Joyce wantedЧFebruary 2, 1922, his fortieth birthday.