Dubliners

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

‘Dubliners’ was recommended to me (by my Dad, I think) as a gentle introduction to the notorious James Joyce. It still isn’t an easy book to read, not due to experimental style but to relentlessly grim observation of daily mundanity. Joyce illustrates Dublin in a series of deceptively simple vignettes, which add up to a quite devastating indictment. Alcoholism, hypocrisy, poverty, meanness, and violence are pervasive. Women are constantly taken advantage of by men; children are at the mercy of adults. Joyce is especially pitiless in his brief portraits of minor figures in each story. This one, from ‘A Mother’, is a good example:

He was a suave elderly man who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk umbrella.

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His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which rested the fine problem of his finances. He was widely respected.

That’s such a beautifully constructed description. The final sentence is an astonishingly sharp punchline in context. Throughout the stories, I was deeply impressed by Joyce’s control and skill with words. I found ‘A Painful Case’ and ‘A Mother’ especially poignant, but don’t think they stand out as such. I had to flick back through the book to check which stories the incidents I recalled took place in, as all the individual narratives seemed tightly woven together. I felt that at any point characters from one story would run into characters from another in the street, and likely start arguing. The overall effect is very depressing as well as impressive, so didn’t necessarily incline me to explore Joyce’s oeuvre further. Finally, the Penguin edition I read took the very sensible approach of placing the commentary at the end rather than the beginning. If only all reprints of classic did the same. show less

I finished the last story in this collection last night--Christmas Eve, coincidental with the story taking place on Christmas night. I have enjoyed every one of the tales in this book, the light brushstrokes with which each character and scene is painted, the reliance on simple human circumstances rather than action-heavy, moralistic plotlines. They rise from the page, leaving me with the sorts of emotions--wistfulness, annoyance, regret, joy--that I know well from real life. Beautiful.

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 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 show more 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

Dubliners may be one of those works that suffers in the reading now from how influential it has been on later authors. There were some nice turns of phrase and James Joyce has a knack for introducing a character to you in a sentence or two that shows you the entire person all at once. I could vividly see the streets and squares and neighbourhoods he describes, for all that a century separates my memories from Joyce's writing: they still contain the same Georgian buildings, the same sweep of the Liffey, even if there are no more horse-drawn cabs or people ordering penny ha'penny dishes of peas and vinegar in pubs. But none of Joyce's characters compelled me—perhaps because Joyce himself seemed determined to hold his fellow Dubs at show more arm's length. show less

I began reading my lovely new Folio edition right out of the wrapper, and at first I couldn't quite see what the point of it all was. The first few stories, despite the clear brilliance of the writing---characters fully drawn in a couple sentences, images so sharp the smells of theriverthepubthesickroom come off the page--seemed to be all middle. The end of a story felt like the end of a chapter and I looked to pick up the scrap of thread that surely must be found in the pages to follow, but it never appeared. As so often happens with collections of short fiction, I connected with some of the pieces and not so much (or not at all) with others. I skipped one entirely after two paragraphs (that almost always happens too). But, and this show more will be no surprise to anyone who has read ANYTHING by Joyce (because it will have been "The Dead", 9 times out of 10), the final selection, "The Dead" just dropped me on my keister. It's perfectly made; the words are all Right-- there's never a lightning bolt when a lightning bug is what's wanted. It begins, it proceeds, it ends--in fact it ends with a paragraph so exquisite that, had I a drop of Irish blood in me, I would have been wailing. As it was, a tear was enough. My beloved cadre of 30-something current and former English professors (@lycomayflower, @geatland and others) have sung the praises of this story in my hearing over the last 10 years or so, and they don't exaggerate.
Review written in August 2014 show less