Pomes Penyeach

The 1932 Obelisk Press edition of Pomes Penyeach came at a crucial juncture in James Joyce ’s writing career and in the life and mental health of his daughter, Lucia. At the time, Joyce was internationally renowned for Ulysses and laboring over his Work in Progress; meanwhile, Lucia was descending into the nightmare of schizophrenia, becoming increasingly delusional and erratic in behavior. Joyce had already published Pomes Penyeach , a series of 13 poems written between 1904 and 1924 , with Shakespeare and Co. in 1927 . In 1931, a publisher named Caresse Crosby, having seen and admired Lucia Joyce’s designs for a musical setting of Joyce’s poems, suggested that Joyce put out a limited edition volume of Pomes Penyeach containing illuminations of the initial letters for each poem. Joyce, eager to believe that some productive work would soothe Lucia’s inner demons and lead her back onto the road to normalcy, jumped at the chance. Joyce approached Jack Kahane, a founder of Obelisk Press who had previously produced a limited edition of Joyce’s Haveth Childers Everywhere , and the two agreed to terms. With Desmond Harmsworth, Obelisk Press agreed to print a version of Pomes Penyeach that would use Lucia’s drawings and stress the handcrafted, artisanal nature of the book. Twenty-five copies were printed in the summer of 1932. In the hopes of instilling in Lucia a sense of worth and independence, Joyce convinced Kahane to give Lucia 33% of the net profits. Title page of Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce; initial letters designed and illuminated by Lucia Joyce. Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The 1932 edition consists of 13 poems printed on 9 loose folio sheets folded and placed on top of each other. The text of each poem is a facsimile of Joyce’s own cursive (oftentimes messy) handwriting printed in black ink. The pages themselves are Japan nacre, and the rough edges and uneven coloration give them the appearance of handmade papyrus. On top of each page, there is a piece of transparent tissue paper that contains the text of the poem printed in green. The loose sheets were placed in a portfolio of pale green silk, the color of an apple (pomme is French for apple). The folio sheets do not have titles for the poems (although the tissue paper sheets do); the reader’s eye is thus initially and most compellingly engaged by the illuminations, by their play with color and shape, rather than by the texts of the poems themselves. The title page reads (in Joyce’s handwriting), “Pomes Penyeach / by James Joyce / Initial Letters Designed and Illuminated by / Lucia Joyce.” In the bottom right-hand corner, there is an abstract design by Lucia. The grey and bluish design bears a resemblance to a snake’s head (this motif will recur throughout the illuminations) or perhaps a book placed on a stand, a possible allusion to the book’s status as a Bible-like illuminated manuscript. The title page stresses the collaborative aspect of the project, as well as its handmade nature: both father and daughter’s names appear, and we see the pen strokes of each in the title and design, respectively. If Joyce’s earlier collection of poems, Chamber Music , seemed a disembodied, almost ethereal entity, then Pomes Penyeach is far more concerned with place, with rootedness, with actual towns and real villages. Joyce mentions specific geographical locations – Cabra (a district in Dublin), San Sabba (a village in Trieste), Rahoon (a parish in medieval Ireland). Interestingly, the place of composition for each poem is listed at the bottom of each page. These place names give a sense both of Joyce’s cosmopolitan experience and his physical estrangement from the Ireland that so saturates his work: only one poem was written in Dublin, while Trieste is identified as the place of composition in eight poems, Zurich in three, and Paris in one. This concern with place also is reflected in the book’s captivating melding of Western and Eastern i