The publication picked up two more Joyce works, but this start of a literary career was not enough to keep him in Ireland and in late 1904, he and Barnacle moved first to what is now the Croatian city of Pula before settling in the Italian seaport city of Trieste. Around this time, Joyce also had his first short story published in the Irish Homestead magazine. Joyce stayed in Ireland for a short time, long enough to meet Nora Barnacle, a hotel chambermaid who hailed from Galway and later became his wife. He returned, however, not long after upon learning that his mother had become sick. Joyce's relationship with his native country was a complex one and after graduating he left Ireland for a new life in Paris where he hoped to study medicine. Early Works: 'Dubliners' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' Largely educated by Jesuits, Joyce attended the Irish schools of Clongowes Wood College and later Belvedere College before finally landing at University College Dublin, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on modern languages. He taught himself Norwegian so he could read Henrik Ibsen's plays in the language they'd been written and spent his free time devouring Dante, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.īecause of his intelligence, Joyce's family pushed him to get an education. He liked to drink and his lack of attention to the family finances meant the Joyces never had much money.įrom an early age, Joyce showed not only exceeding intelligence but also a gift for writing and a passion for literature. His father, while a talented singer (he reportedly had one of the finest tenor voices in all of Ireland), didn't provide a stable household. He was the eldest of ten children born to John Stanislaus Joyce and his wife Marry Murray Joyce. His exploration of language and new literary forms showed not only his genius as a writer but spawned a fresh approach for novelists, one that drew heavily on Joyce's love of the stream-of-consciousness technique and the examination of big events through small happenings in everyday lives. Joyce battled eye ailments for most of his life and he died in 1941.īorn James Augustine Aloysius Joyce on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, Joyce was one of the most revered writers of the 20th century, whose landmark book, Ulysses, is often hailed as one of the finest novels ever written. The explicit content of his prose brought about landmark legal decisions on obscenity. With Ulysses, Joyce perfected his stream-of-consciousness style and became a literary celebrity. He published Portrait of the Artist in 1916 and caught the attention of Ezra Pound. It’s a Freudian family psychodrama crossed with the fall of man, taking in the history of Ireland, myths, legends, jokes, shame, desire, sin, cycles of time, death, chaos and resurrection.James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and short story writer. If you read the final words, “A way a lone a last a loved a long the”, then turn back to page one – “rivverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay …” – you are swept around again. Joyce teased that his “big long wide high deep dense prosework” Finnegans Wake, 17 years in the writing, would “keep the critics busy for 300 years”. As an unfinished novel, it has an unimprovable last line – “He remained behind gazing into the canal near the feet of the body, looking at a fragment of paper on which was …” – but today it’s one for the scholars. Stephen Hero, an earlier, more traditionally realistic treatment of the material that became Portrait of the Artist, was rescued by Joyce’s sister after he threw it on the fire. Now we always have something to talk about. The delicate fragments sparked my interest in the oversized paperback of Ulysses that loomed over the Len Deightons and Le Carrés on his bookshelf. Pomes Penyeach was my own gateway to Joyce, after my dad, never usually a spontaneous present giver, left a copy in my room when I was 12. They provide a fascinating angle on his literary development and showcase his musicality, moving from traditional romantic swoons to a fragile, sincere beauty. “I prefer the poetry” would be a madly contrarian position, but the slim volumes Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach will give you snatches of Joyce in seconds. It is still revolutionary today, as well as being knotty, funny, humane and endlessly rewarding. Each section pushes at least one new style of telling to the limits, as the narration flits from mind to mind. A young man and an older one wander Dublin, their paths repeatedly crossing, and a woman lies in bed thinking, on 16 June 1904. “Apart from everything that you could possibly imagine, nothing much happens in Ulysses,” wrote Anne Enright in her recent celebration of its centenary.
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