VOL. IX EDITED BY HOLBROOK JACKSON JUNE 1922 No. 50 T A HE TO-DAY Dinner was, in the opinion of all, a success. Our Fifth Birthday was celebrated with enthusiasm. goodly company of one hundred and twenty readers and contributors met under the Chairmanship of the Editor and enjoyed the good fare, the poetry, the music and the speeches. Among those present were: Mr. John Drinkwater, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Hodgson, Mr. W. H. Davies, Mr. Cecil Roberts, Mr. R. A. Foster-Melliar, Sir George Greenwood, Mr. Murray McClymont, M. Henry D. Davray, Mr. S. T. H. Parkes, Mr. and Mrs. Grant Richards, Mr. J. Lewis May, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Walton, Mr. R. L. Mégroz, Mr. Hugh Stokes, Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Chapman, Miss Elizabeth Crush, Mr. E. H. Visiak, Mr. and Mrs. G. Baseden Butt, Mr. Ivor Nicholson, Major Norman R. G. Brett-James, Mr. Cedric Chivers, Mr. J. B. Hobman (Editor of the Westminster Gazette), Mr. de V. Payen-Payne, Lt.-Col. Worsley Gough, Mr. Leonard Jordan, J.P., Mr. and Mrs. Adolphe Hallis, and Dr. J. P. Hill, Chief Librarian, Brooklyn Libraries, New York. The Editor announced that he had received greetings from the following absentees: Mr. W. Kean Seymour, Mr. Richard Aldington, Mr. Francis Bickley, Mr. Robert Lockie (on behalf of readers in Newcastle-on-Tyne), Mr. T. A. Stephens (wishing success to to-day, to-night and to-morrow "), and Mr. Bernard Lintot ("I stand by the twelve-cover limit, so will remain at Whitby !" *). 66 During the evening the brilliant South African pianist, Mr. Adolphe Hallis, played from Chopin to the delight of all, and Mr. Drinkwater read the following poems, all of which first appeared in To-DAY: The Bride, by Ralph Hodgson; Joy and * See End Paper, Suprême de Sole-Caprice précieux, TO-DAY, March, 1922. D To Bacchus, by W. H. Davies; Futility, by Cecil Roberts; and his own poem, To My Ghost. A report of the speeches appears on pages 69 to 79 of this issue. So many appreciative letters have been received from readers who were present that it has been decided to make the To-DAY Dinner an annual event. I T was a great pleasure to meet so many friends round the tables at the Florence Restaurant and to find that they had assembled from all parts of the Kingdom-from as far north as Dumfries and as far south as Bude and the Isle of Wight, from Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Bath, and we had in the eminent librarian, Dr. Hill, at least one friend from overseas. Next year we hope to make the announcement of the date in such good time that overseas readers contemplating a visit to these shores may have an opportunity of making arrangements to be present. Silence By R. L. MEGROZ Urge me not into speech, Which only a dream can reach Upon dark wings. When as a leaf-hid bird Trilling a lonely song Through shadowy leaves half-heard As a whispering throng, In me from leaf-dark deep Thick-cloaked in dreams Love's voice Sings from a murmurous sleep One word-Rejoice. M ULYSSES A LA JOYCE By HOLBROOK JACKSON R. JAMES JOYCE'S Ulysses is an affront and an achievement. It is not indecent. There is not a salacious line in it. It is simply naked : naked and unconscious of shame. Some of those who have read the novel either in the Little Review or in its present volume form have considered it immoral. They are wrong. It is neither moral nor immoral. Mr. Joyce writes, not as though morals had never existed, but as one who deliberately ignores moral codes and conventions. Such frankness as his would have been impossible if such frankness had not been forbidden. Everything that is never done or never mentioned is done and said by him. Compared with Joyce, Zola is respectable and George Moore merely mincing. He is the first unromantic writer of fiction, for, after all, the Realists were only Romantics striving to free themselves from Medievalism. Flaubert made a desperate effort to catch up with Cervantes. Moore has never got beyond Rousseau. Maupassant was a phallic worshipper, 66 and Zola a " rationalist," that is a Romantic who substitutes progress for sex. There is no fundamental difference between the Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels and the Idylls of the King: both have faith in the triumph of virtue: Zola, by the exposure of evil, Tennyson by the revelation of good. Joyce has no such object. He is not even out to amuse, like George Moore and the story-tellers, or to criticise, like Meredith, or satirise, like Swift. He simply records like Homer, or, indeed, Froissart. The attitude has its dangers. Mr. Joyce has faced them, or, rather, ignored them. He has been perfectly logical. He has recorded everything—everything in a single day of the life of an uninteresting and, to me, unpleasant, and, if we forget the parable of the sparrows, negligible human being. This modern Ulysses is one Bloom, the Irish-Jewish advertisement canvasser of a Dublin newspaper. To read the novel is to spend a full day in the company of this person from the time he rises in the morning and |