Description
He called on AE in the small hours to complain about the movement, and, on his first meeting with Yeats, told him "I have met you too late. You are too old".
Language, religion and nationality were seen by Joyce as nets cast on his soul. Determined to escape, he went to Paris in 1902 to study medicine and lived there in Bohemian poverty until the following year when he returned to attend his mother in her final illness.
1904 was a special year for Joyce. The first of his short stories were published (by AE in "The Irish Homestead") and he began work on his book of poems, "Chamber Music", and on the autobiographical novel which was to become "A Portrait of the Artist and a Young Man".
He also stayed briefly with Oliver St John Gogarty in the Tower in Sandycove where he later set the first chapter of Ulysses. In June of that year he met his future wife Nora Barnacle, and the couple left Dublin in October to spend the rest of their lives on the Continent.
The Joyces lived at first in Trieste, where their two children were born. The money Joyce earned from teaching did not match up to his standards of extravagance, and he became an expert borrower.
One business venture involved a trip to Dublin in 1909 to set up Ireland's first cinema, the Volta in Mary Street. He also arranged with a Dublin publisher, George Roberts of Maunsel & Co., to publish his book of stories "Dubliners", but Roberts subsequently took exception to Joyce's mercilessly realistic picture of city life and stalled publication.
When Joyce revisited Dublin in 1912 to sort things out with Roberts destroyed the entire first edition, and Joyce left Dublin forever. "Dubliners" was published by Grant Richards in 1914.
Joyce's fortune improved when he moved to Zurich in 1915. Grants from patrons - especially the generous Harriet Weaver - and official funds enabled him to devote more time to writing, and with the help of Erza Pound he had "A Portrait" published in 1916.
The early chapters of "Ulysses" appeared in "The Little Review" in America but due to the frankness of its references to bodily functions the book was banned in Britain and the USA.
Joyce took up residence in Paris in 1920 and found a publisher - Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company - for "Ulysses". The novel, which appeared on his fortieth birthday in 1922, is now regarded as one of the most significant works of modern literature.
At the time it was received with equal choruses of acclaim and hostility, while in Dublin, whose citizens, streets, shops and language formed the material of the book, it was greeted with embarrassment. It was not until 1934 that "Ulysses" could be published and sold in the United States and subsequently Britain. In Ireland, where it was never officially banned, it remained something of and underground masterpiece until the 1950's.
Joyce spent seventeen years on the last and most complex work, "Finnegans Wake", which like "Ulysses" was entirely based on his native city. Plagued by illness and failing eyesight, he shunned publicity and spent his time with his family and a few close friends, of whom Samuel Beckett was one.
"Finnegans Wake" was published in 1939; within two years Joyce died of peritonitis in Zurich, where he and his family had retreated from the terrors of war.
More than any other writer, James Joyce placed Dublin on the map of world literature. An exile for most of his life, he has become one of the world's most famous Dubliner, and is celebrated annually on 16th June, the day on which all the events of "Ulysses" take place and which is now known as Bloomsday'.