David Hayman

Limited Edition Ulysses Illustrated by Robert Motherwell

UW-Madison Libraries, recipient
David Hayman, donor

The writer and the artist

In the gentle, encouraging tone of the consummate teacher, David Hayman, an internationally recognized James Joyce scholar at the UW-Madison, coaxes an intimidated reader to open Ulysses by James Joyce. The book, which began to appear in installments in 1918, is a colossal experiment at telling the events of a single day in Dublin through the perspectives of its main characters. This modern parallel to Homer's Odyssey is considered one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.

While observing a photo shoot of the Arion Press edition (1988), a gift from Hayman to the UW-Madison Libraries, Hayman counsels, "Pick it up and read. Don't try to analyze." Indeed, it is hard to believe that this was Hayman's own experience with Joyce. As a recent college graduate, he asked a friend riding on a train what she was reading. The next day he bought a copy. It altered his life; in some respects it made Joyce his life.

Interestingly, this was the experience that his friend the abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell had as well, as a 20-year-old reading it without knowing much at the time about Joyce or what the critics were saying. Hayman calls it a "virgin reading."

This edition of Ulysses, which Hayman describes as not simply illustrated, but illuminated by Motherwell, is only one of 175 copies printed. Twenty-five were not for sale. It is the first illustrated Ulysses. "Matisse attempted to illustrate (Joyce's) Ulysses," explains Hayman, "but he ended up illustrating Homer."

Of those twenty-five numbered in Roman numerals, Hayman received number II. It was a gift to Hayman by the publisher for being the supervising editor as well as interviewer of Motherwell. And it has now become Hayman's gift to the UW-Madison.

In addition to the early, almost parallel encounters with the book, that both Hayman and Motherwell shared, Hayman literally stumbled across the Arion Press exhibit and its publisher Andrew Hoyem at Navy Pier in Chicago after "a serendipitous little detour." The two began a collaboration that introduced Hayman to Motherwell, leading not only to an intimate look into the life of an internationally known artist, but to a true friendship as well.

Hayman discovered that Motherwell had only read Ulysses once. "The artist was embarrassed that he had not read the critics and by the fact that he never reread Ulysses." That powerful first impression comes across in what Motherwell called an "illumination" of Ulysses, notes Hayman.

"It is rare to get an unmediated, fresh vision of the book. The book intimidates everybody, and no one needs to be."

Hayman's interviews with Motherwell, which were planned for publication with Ulysses, were conducted during a three-day stay at the artist's Provincetown, Massachusetts, estate in July 1988.

Hayman and Motherwell continued to talk regularly on the phone through the following years. Their last communication was in June 1991. Two days later Hayman received a call saying Motherwell had died.

Hayman has many memories from those visits with Motherwell. He remembers distinctly the reaction to Hayman's discovery of a picture that Motherwell thought he had lost. It was a water- stained sheet that looked like cardboard--heavy watercolor paper about 18 inches square. There were five or six designs on it that looked like stage sets. Motherwell was astonished. They were sketches of a proposed exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, an exhibit that became the trigger for the beginning of abstract expressionism.

On another visit, Hayman asked to buy one of the sketches for the Ulysses project. Motherwell replied that Hayman would not be able to afford it, "but I will give you one."

The artist picked one out, wrapped it up, then picked up his famous sketch of Joyce and said he was giving that to Hayman as well.

In a newspaper interview about his gift of the Arion Press book to the UW-Madison Libraries, Hayman notes the decision was easy. "I have looked at it often, and it should be where people can see it. And," he adds with a chuckle, "my wife is a member of the Friends of the Libraries."