Oliver St. John Gogarty, The Revolver & The Black Panther

Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878–1957) was an Irish poet, surgeon, and wit whose flamboyant life embodied the exuberance of Dublin’s literary revival. A close friend—and later caricatured rival—of James Joyce, he served as the model for Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, Gogarty was both a skilled ear surgeon and a celebrated raconteur, known for his sharp humour and classical allusions. A senator in the Free State’s first Seanad, he combined nationalism with irreverent satire. His verse and memoirs capture the spirit of a changing Ireland, though his legend endures mostly through Joyce’s immortal and merciless portrayal.

We found this absolute gem of an audio recording where Gogarty explains the backstory to the black panther in Joyce's Ulysses: "I brought over from Oxford a man called Chenevick's Trench, who was a zealot. He taught Gaelic in Oxford, and he came over, and I invited him to stay in the tower. Well, the tower was entered by a ladder which gave in on the first floor, and the walls were about 14 feet thick. And in order to get light, we left in the summer the front door open. Joyce's bed was on the right-hand side, and mine was on the left. There was a circular shelf around the tower about three feet deep. Now Joyce went over to where one or two would be on a clock dial, and he put his bed; though the walls were circular, his bed made a sort of little section, at least a little straight line under the exposing the middle of the bed to all the things that were on the shelf if they fell off. About two in the morning, Trench, whom we didn't know very well, got a frightful nightmare. There's the Black Panther and produced a Colt revolver and shot off two bullets in the dark, greatly alarming Joyce. Well, I knew it was one of these nightmares that might recur, but I took the precaution of stealing the gun, the pistol, the revolver. And surely enough, Trench awoke in another 20 minutes and screamed again. I said I can take care of the menagerie, and I deliberately shot down the fish kettle and all the other tin cans that were over. Joyce's bed. He rose solemnly, dressed himself in his faded trousers, pulled on his shirt and his white yachting cap, and his tennis shoes, took his ash plant, and left the tower and never came back. He mentions that in the last story of Ulysses about the Black Panther. But it's rather a mysterious thing until you know the story right before it."

Welcome to the journey.

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