Joyce’s brother Stanislaus repeats the following anecdote – dating from Joyce’s time in college. Skeffington, a friend and intellectual jousting partner of Joyce, asked Joyce if he had ever been in love.
Joyce replied with an evasive shift of tense, “How would I write the most perfect love songs of our time if I were in love? A poet must always write about a past or a future emotion, never about a present one. If it is a regular, right-down, honest-to-God ’till-death-do-us-part’ affair, it will get out of hand and spoil his verse. Poetry must have a safety valve properly adjusted. A poet’s job is to write tragedies, not to be an actor in one.
