James Joyce (1) (1882–1941)

A novel that takes place during a single day, but takes several months to read.

I finally opened Ulysses after a trip to Dublin in summer 2023. References to Joyce seemed to be everywhere: the Martello Tower still standing, video of a Fontaines D.C. performance at Kilmainham Gaol, the Museum of Literature Ireland on St. Stephen’s Green, Sweny’s pharmacy, the death mask replica at the Little Museum—all indications that the book yet resonates across time. Having read Dubliners and A show more Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man before and finally seeing the city firsthand made Ulysses less mysterious. I read the 1992 Modern Library Edition of the corrected and reset 1961 edition, based on the first American printing from 1934. (Next time around, I think I’ll give the Gabler edition a go).

I wanted to experience reading Ulysses with a fresh, open mind, without an intermediary, so I read each of the 18 episodes through before consulting secondary sources. (Alas, my curiosity and my ignorance got the best of me). I then listened to each episode of the Raidió Teilifís Éireann (Irish public media) performance recorded in 1982—Ulysses as a radio play, with over 30 actors, sound effects and street sounds, special effects for interior monologues, a beautiful, invigorating production. Hearing Ulysses read by Dubliners revealed more atmospheric and linguistic nuance than I could have picked up on my own. After each chapter, I also read the pertinent episodic analysis in Stuart Gilbert’s James Joyce’s Ulysses, which tracks the influence of Homer’s Odyssey and draws attention to phrases and symbols that recur across episodes.

The first thing that I noticed was that Ulysses is very funny. Many of the allusions and symbology went over my head, but there are passages of great beauty and deep feeling and dazzling intellect. Ulysses is a demanding read, but I think it rewards the work a reader puts into it. There are plenty of ways to appreciate Joyce’s astonishing achievement, what he was able to make words do and say. He left us a marvelous gift. Do with it as you will. show less

La vita e il caos

Un nulla fatto di vita e di caos. Quando uscirono ormai quasi cento anni fa, nel 1914, i "Dubliners" di James Joyce, quindici scene di vita cittadina, il grande Erzra Pound scrisse che non poteva esserci prosa più "flaubertiana". Pound aveva ragione: come Flaubert, anche Joyce vede la realtà da un punto di vista impersonale e perciò rappresenta le persone, i sentimenti e le vicende delle persone, come se fossero cose, fissando il fluire della vita nel disegno di show more un'immobile rievocazione.

La vita, in se stessa, indistinta e mutevole, è inafferrabile e può essere rappresentata soltanto a patto di essere precisata e mortificata. Così la rappresentazione, apparentemente oggettiva e realistica, diventa allusiva e negativa: la realtà è bensì rappresenta, ma si tratta di una realtà asfissiata, ridotta al museo di se stessa, che vale per quello che essa non è. Il narratore, in apparenza impassibile, si ritrae con angoscia e disgusto. Su questa linea Joyce raggiunge una perfezione estrema. In Flaubert, un oggetto, una cosa, possono essere ancora equivalenti indiretti di un’emozione interiore: anche se molto a malapena, la vita respira ancora. In Joyce, che dipinge situazioni morte prima di nascere, tutto è indurito e nello stesso tempo tutto è cenere. Ma i “Dubliners” segnano una svolta ancora più clamorosa. Più la rappresentazione è oggettiva, più la vita si rivela assente, ma infinita. Un puro alone, un indefinibile nulla. Ma in quel nulla c’è tutto, in quel nulla c’è il caos. show less

The writing was brilliant, so economical and perfect. The execution of a series of short stories, each about different individuals living in Dublin following a progression of ages, each person representing that stage of life, was a kind of thrill.

Only one story fell flat for me, "Grace," the second to the last story, the one about the drunk and his friends who hope to reform him. Certainly it had a lot to say about the Catholic church and its relationship to Ireland, but that is out of my show more purview.

All the stories, even the last story, "The Dead" with so much tenderness, were filled with pathos about time passing, about disappointments, about things not turning out like they should.

If this is a series of stories really about Ireland as all the commentary say it is, then it is fabulous that it is also so clearly about human longing and short-comings even for a person without knowing a darn thing about Ireland. Brilliance to be able to ring so clear about both themes.

Next up is my attempt at Ulysses, reading with a friend. I suppose I will only grasp a fraction of it. Joyce, the writer's writer, the critics dream, but hopefully like Dubliners, he will have something worthwhile for us mortal folk in that ultimate masterpiece as well. show less

Short stories, like poetry, thrive on concision and precision. From the opening paragraph, Joyce delivers:
“North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.”
Blind… quiet… Christian Brothers… free.
It continues:
“An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one show more another with brown imperturbable faces.”
Uninhabited… detached… conscious… decent lives… imperturbable faces.
I’ve never been to Dublin, let alone before the wars, but I feel I know that little area already.

Expectations vs reality

It’s a simple vignette of a boy who is young enough to play on the streets with his friends:
“The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street… We ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.”

But he’s also old enough to have his first serious, but unrealistic, crush:
“Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.”

He’s in that liminal time between childhood and puberty, at one point, literally looking down on his friends playing in the street as he thinks longingly of Mangan's sister.

Image: A journey that looks simple can be beset by hidden obstacles (Source)

He is suffocated literally and mentally by living in a home where an old priest died. Walking through “the flaring streets” amid drunkards, that heritage is clear:
“I imagined that I bore my chalice [of love] safely through a throng of foes.”
But sex is secular too. He daren’t tell of his feelings, but he watches, follows, and fantasises:
“My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”

Such images are burned in memory forever:
“The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.”

I, too, remember the weight of hope, burdened by desperate uncertainty about what to say and do.

She speaks to him! She asks if he’s going to Araby - “a splendid bazaar”.
“The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me… I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.”
Atheist though I am, I recalled 1 Corinthians 13, v11:
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Hope and passion rise in expectation of exotic and erotic delights, of Araby and Mangan's sister.

See also

• The vast and daunting reputation of Ulysses means I hadn’t read anything by Joyce until now. This is one of fifteen short stories in Dubliners, and after this, I read The Dead, which is the last and longest story in that, and which I reviewed HERE. The reality of both far exceeded my expectations, though the latter only redeemed itself at the very end.

• The aspirations, agonies, and disappointments of sexual awakening reminded of Carson McCullers’ very different example in The Member of the Wedding, which I reviewed HERE.

Short story club

I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here. show less