Your Effulgence,

One of the lower-rung criteria one associates with the status indicated by the description ‘scholar’ is that he (the self-professed scholar [and I use the pronoun – ‘he’ – in its gender-neutral sense as there is insufficient ink in my poor-scholar’s pot for the reiterative inscription ‘he or she’ and its derivatives where the single word ‘he’ conveys what it is I intend to convey as succinctly {in two letters} as the medium of the Queen’s English permits, and thus heedless of the ink-wasting convention of using the aforesaid expression ‘he or she’ or the ghastly androgynous term ‘(s)he’ that in my own view does nothing {in the real world} to enhance the lives of the long down-trodden women of the world {and I life my hat to that doleful sorority} reeling under the onslaught of meandering male fists, to borrow Mr Joyce’s felicitous phrase]) at the very least checks the reliability of his sources of information, unlike, say, journalists for ‘The Dublin (Georgia) Daily Mail’, or some such infamous rag or tabloid, that trades in gossip, invariably resulting in the gleeful dissemination of non-facts, as if the achievement of complete ignorance among the newspaper-reading and blog-scouring (and ‘scour’ is the operative verb) public is a great, even sacred, desideratum. A ‘poor’ scholar – poor in the sense of one mildly intellectually impaired, rather than one who is church-mouse impecunious, and there are many such of these two types (and indeed some personalities of both at once, as the conditions, one financial, the other, cerebral, are not mutually exclusive or even incompatible) – who yet aspires (for whatever self-deluding thirst for grandeur) to the imperium – the high office, dignity and civic responsibility – of being a real ‘scholar’ or scholiast – will check the facts and seek to synthesise these into some thesis, no matter how misbegotten or wrongheaded: an ‘expert’ scholar, on the other hand, will consider the facts, once these data are ascertained as facts and not mere hearsay, rumour, gossip, or scandal-mongering – often malicious as is the nature of these categories of disinformation – and, exercising his (yes, there he is again) perspicacity – the very quality that best characterises a genuine scholar – and present summarily with perspicuity and, indeed sometimes, panache, to his readers, who persist as such precisely in the (in this case, false) assumption that the voice they are hearing is indeed authoritative and has exercised due caution and reserve as would be expected of even a poor scholar (in either or both of the aforementioned senses) in the production of a final, balanced, two clauses per sentence, reasoned, bracket-free, non-elliptical, non-parenthetical, and well-articulated précis.

I find therefore that the statement, boldly put, in your blog (a word that puts me – and perhaps others – in mind of a species of bog, with all of its Hiberno-Irish connotations), that ‘Denis O’Hanlon is the legal name of Danis Rose’ is a case at point. As myself being the person spoken of, the very Danis Rose in question, I can assert that the true statement is as follows, no matter how extraordinary and startling it is (facts being a stranger to and stranger than fiction):
DANIS ROSE IS THE LEGAL NAME OF DANIS ROSE.
That this should be put in question, and the question aired so triumphantly, as if thereby achieving some hitherto hidden and unseen, even unsuspected, insight into the zealously protected reclusive nature and mind of the aforementioned person, given to periodic states of courtly socklessness for reasons known only to the initiated, under the guise of ‘breaking’ news, is indicative of the state of affairs that sadly has ever persisted in the gutter press (and gutter is the epithet that most utterly expresses the case) but that now has entered through a virtual open door into the supposedly (and, I imagine, proudly so supposed) higher intellectual theatre where the blogger struts, that is, the byways of academe that run through the leafy ‘James Joyce Quarterly’. Finally, to put a final bullet in the rogue’s head, where it belongs, and thereby, in Joyce’s decisive turn of phrase, ‘to remove all doubt, guv’, I shall supply a photo-replicate of my passport (found discarded in a drawer) in material corroboration of the characteristically radical, yet corrective and illuminating assertions made above, if required.
I suggest an unpaid and extended leave of absence for the offending blogger in order to make space where he can re-acquaint himself in some school with the most basic of criteria of true judgement necessary prior to the making of public pronouncements, if indeed it is found possible to locate such a school in Europe or in America, or elsewhere in more exotic places of learning, such as in Ireland, isle of the sainted sage and half-famished scholar, or perhaps in India, where the lean-loined yogis chant their bija mantras, hum (noun, pronounced ‘huuuum’, not verb meaning to make a resonant noise in one’s throat) and the like, ever avaricious of satori. If not, there remains the rope.

Yours &c, Danis Rose

As of 10 April 2012, James Joyce manuscripts acquired by the NLI since 2000 can now be viewed via the NLI online catalogue. To access the catalogue click here.

The manuscripts will be available on our website in very high-resolution formats from 16 June 2012 – to coincide with Bloomsday and the XXIII International James Joyce Symposium.

In the meantime, a designated NLI team is in the process of developing new image- viewing software as part of the roll-out of our digital repository, which is designed to ensure that on-line images of the James Joyce manuscripts can be researched in minute detail by NLI website visitors. This will guarantee an experience as good as a personal visit to view the manuscripts at the NLI Reading Room in Dublin.

Other material from the NLI’s rich resources will also be coming on stream this year. Details to be announced in the coming months.

http://www.magpiemusing.com/2012/04/september-song.html