Chamber Music

A collection of poems by James Joyce, published by Elkin Matthews in May, 1907. The collection originally comprised thirty-four love poems, but two further poems were added before publication ("All day I hear the noise of waters" and "I hear an army charging upon the land").

Although it is widely reported that the title refers to the sound of urine tinkling in a chamber pot, this is a later Joycean embellishment, lending an earthiness to a title first suggested by his brother Stanislaus and which Joyce (by the time of publication) had come to dislike: "The reason I dislike Chamber Music as a title is that it is too complacent," he admitted to Arthur Symons in 1906. "I should prefer a title which repudiated the book without altogether disparaging it."

Secure Mobipocket

213kb