(2) Japanese Lacquer; an attempt to solve the Lafcadio Hearn riddle (pasted up)
(3) Sappho Rediviva (pasted up)
(4) Rabindranath Tagore and the Neo-mystics (pasted up)
(5) The Bear That Walks Like a Man; Some aspects of the Russian novel fad (pasted up)
(6) Francis Thompson (pasted up)
(7)
I do not know that anything especial need be said concerning these articles. They are exceedingly lively bits of journalistic literary criticism, highly entertaining in their exhibition of Kilmer's pet aversions, which, after all, sprang from his manly common sense. In a letter written at about the time of these articles Joyce says: "My chief pleasure in writing is to attempt to expose the absurdity of very modern writers—materialists, feminists, Zolaists and all the rest of the foolish crew."
As interesting examples of Kilmerana, several representative lectures conclude this book. At the time Joyce entered the army his lecturing activities had become pretty extensive. He makes frequent reference to his lecture work in his correspondence of the time. In a letter written in September, 1915, he says, "I can't make a spring tour—because in February or March we're going to have another baby, I'm glad to say." Further on in this same communication, to the Reverend James J. Daly, S. J., he writes: "You see, I don't want to go into lecturing on so extensive a scale as Dr. Walsh. I have my regular work to attend to, and I'd rather not take more than three weeks off at a time. And I don't want to lecture too often. I have not Dr. Walsh's readiness. I prepare my lectures carefully, writing them out like essays, and memorizing them so thoroughly that they give, I believe, the impression that they are spoken ex-tempore." In another letter of about this time he speaks of his "new profession"—"monologue artist in one night stands." In one letter he speaks of a lecture, manuscript of which I have been unable to find, as follows:
The lecture which I especially desire to give at Campion this year is "The Poet of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Their Successors." This is, I think, a better lecture than "Swinburne and Francis Thompson." It is an attempt to show how Patmore (who was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a friend of Rossetti and a contributor to The Germ) carried the theories of the Pre-Raphaelites to their logical conclusion, that Rossetti and Christina and Morris and a lot of that bunch really paved the way for Francis Thompson and Alice Meynell and Katherine Tynan and other modern Catholic poets, by writing sympathetically, even if not always understandingly, on Catholic themes. Incidentally, I trace "The Hound of Heaven" back through "The Blessed Damozel" to "The Raven." But if you don't want that lecture I'll lecture on any other subject you may elect—the lighter lyrics of James J. Daly, for example.
In another letter he writes: "Next year I won't lecture at all; I'll just recite my poems, which take better than the lectures, anyway. I'm going on tour with Ellis Parker Butler, the 'Pigs Is Pigs' man, and we'll have a regular manager."