Atelier Aterui: "Reconciliation between Joyce and Yeats at the Noh Theatre"

Abstract

     This paper aims to reconsider the relationship between James Joyce and W. B. Yeats from the perspective of a Japanese Noh play. It is widely known that Yeats was influenced by the traditional Japanese culture and literature, especially the Noh, which gave him an inspiration for The Four Plays for Dancers. He learned the Noh drama from Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who contributed to introduce “hokku” (“tanka”) explaining that “the very best poems are unwritten or sung in silence” (The Spirit of Japanese Poetry, 16), and his temporary secretary Ezra Pound who edited Ernest Fenollosa’s translations and notes.
     James Joyce owned a copy of ‘Noh’ or Accomplishment: A Study of the Classical Stage of Japan. The book was based on Fenollosa’s manuscripts and edited with notes by Pound to be published in 1916. It was inscribed to Joyce by John Quinn, 29 June 1917, when Joyce was still looking for a publisher for his play Exiles. Joyce did not show any particular interest in the Noh play at that time. However, the word “Noh” is used at least twice in Finnegans Wake, presumably because Joyce knew much more about “Noh” when he wrote it. The Japanese avatar of St. Patrick appears several times in the novel. In Book IV, the avatar appears again with the Chinese incarnation of the Archdruid Berkeley presumably at the Noh theatre performing “Yoro” (FW 611-612).
     It is noted that Yeats learned brevity from Japanese literature while Joyce enriched his text with complexity or lengthiness from Japanese language and history.

Keywords: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, W. B. Yeats, At the Hawk’s Well, Yoro (Noh play)