Chapter 4, level 7+: FW: 102-30-35

On June 18, 1927 (he calls it “Waterloosdag”, which was June18, 1815) Joyce wrote from La Haye to Sylvia Beach (Buffalo X.B.98; Banta #117), asking “Please send transition 3 to Sykes (and 4 if it is out). . . . Is it too late to have the following change made in the final verses of transition 4

      Instead of

     Goo, the great gudgeon gulped it all!

      How was the C.O.D.

      Bum!

      to read

      Goo, the groot gudgeon gulphed it all!

      Hoo was the C.O.D.

      Bung!”

     Note that Joyce misquotes the revised level 7 to which he is proposing changes: he forgets the comma after “gudgeon”, thinks there was an exclamation point after “all”, misremembers “He” as “How”, and forgets that he had changed the period after “D” to a question mark.These misquotations were probably all inadvertent rather than themselves proposals for revision, and the only changes he thought he was making which he had not already made were “groot” for “great” (which he remembers to restore on level 8), and “gulphed” for “gulped” and the exclamation point after “all” (which are lost). Nonetheless, the text of the proposal as what he remembers level 7 to have been is what he intended to change at 7+.