Uploaded June 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the great James Joyce reading his poem celebrating the birth of his first grandson and mourning the passing of his father John Joyce "Ecce Puer "
Literally translated as Behold the Young Boy, Ecce Puer celebrates the birth of Joyce's grandson, Stephen James Joyce, in February 1932, and mourns the death of his father, John Stanislaus Joyce, the previous December. The plea for forgiveness at the end of the poem springs from Joyce's guilt over failing to return from the continent to Ireland when John Joyce lay dying. The writer had drawn much of his literary inspiration from his father, crediting him, in fact, with the paternity of Ulysses: "The humour… is his: its people are his friends. It's his spittin' image," he told Louis Gillet.
From the poem's first line, ambiguity is registered. The child is born "Of the dark past", and the speaker acknowledges the grief accompanying his joy. The simple, idiomatic statement "My heart is torn" recalls the echoes of folk-song and ballad in some of the Chamber Music lyrics. The cliche is redeemed, as the poem expands the "tearing" metaphor to twist between correspondences that only underline the utter difference of life from death. The imperative "Unclose his eyes" summons the reverse - the ritual closing of the eyes of the newly dead. "Young life is breathed/ On the glass" reminds us that the dead leave no such imprint. The mist made by the child's healthy breathing evokes the moistureless glass of death.
While Joyce's dimeter lines and simple ABCB rhyme-scheme reinforce the title by suggesting a hymn, Ecce Puer remains a secular nativity. The biblical language appropriated in the last two lines of the third verse measures a human miracle, the birth of "a world that was not" in the form of an ordinary child. The last stanza seems to complete the imagery of antithesis in the heightened context of the crucifixion. Only here, it's not the Son (Christ) who feels forsaken by his father (God), but the father who has been forsaken by his son. At this point the poem becomes a desperate prayer – though one to a mortal God.
The tone and music of Ecce Puer are tender. The fact of death is never sentimentalised, neither is it allowed to overwhelm the joy and freshness of new life. The child asleep and the "old man gone" tear the heart of the grandfather-and-son in opposite directions, but, in the poem, as in the world, they co-exist on terms of uncompromise. Joyce has brought maturity of style and experience to bear on the lyricism he too easily relished in his youth. In those four quatrains, it seems that Joyce the poet is fully born.
Ecce Puer
Advertisement
Of the dark past
A child is born.
With joy and grief
My heart is torn.
Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!
Young life is breathed
On the glass;
The world that was not
Comes to pass.
A child is sleeping:
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!
All rights are treserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
Here's a virtual movie of the great James Joyce reading his poem celebrating the birth of his first grandson and mourning the passing of his father John Joyce "Ecce Puer "
Literally translated as Behold the Young Boy, Ecce Puer celebrates the birth of Joyce's grandson, Stephen James Joyce, in February 1932, and mourns the death of his father, John Stanislaus Joyce, the previous December. The plea for forgiveness at the end of the poem springs from Joyce's guilt over failing to return from the continent to Ireland when John Joyce lay dying. The writer had drawn much of his literary inspiration from his father, crediting him, in fact, with the paternity of Ulysses: "The humour… is his: its people are his friends. It's his spittin' image," he told Louis Gillet.
From the poem's first line, ambiguity is registered. The child is born "Of the dark past", and the speaker acknowledges the grief accompanying his joy. The simple, idiomatic statement "My heart is torn" recalls the echoes of folk-song and ballad in some of the Chamber Music lyrics. The cliche is redeemed, as the poem expands the "tearing" metaphor to twist between correspondences that only underline the utter difference of life from death. The imperative "Unclose his eyes" summons the reverse - the ritual closing of the eyes of the newly dead. "Young life is breathed/ On the glass" reminds us that the dead leave no such imprint. The mist made by the child's healthy breathing evokes the moistureless glass of death.
While Joyce's dimeter lines and simple ABCB rhyme-scheme reinforce the title by suggesting a hymn, Ecce Puer remains a secular nativity. The biblical language appropriated in the last two lines of the third verse measures a human miracle, the birth of "a world that was not" in the form of an ordinary child. The last stanza seems to complete the imagery of antithesis in the heightened context of the crucifixion. Only here, it's not the Son (Christ) who feels forsaken by his father (God), but the father who has been forsaken by his son. At this point the poem becomes a desperate prayer – though one to a mortal God.
The tone and music of Ecce Puer are tender. The fact of death is never sentimentalised, neither is it allowed to overwhelm the joy and freshness of new life. The child asleep and the "old man gone" tear the heart of the grandfather-and-son in opposite directions, but, in the poem, as in the world, they co-exist on terms of uncompromise. Joyce has brought maturity of style and experience to bear on the lyricism he too easily relished in his youth. In those four quatrains, it seems that Joyce the poet is fully born.
Ecce Puer
Advertisement
Of the dark past
A child is born.
With joy and grief
My heart is torn.
Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!
Young life is breathed
On the glass;
The world that was not
Comes to pass.
A child is sleeping:
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!
All rights are treserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
