James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the
modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for
Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of
Homer's
Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously
stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection
Dubliners (1914), and the novels
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and
Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.
Joyce was born in
Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run
O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools
Clongowes and
Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances. He went on to attend
University College Dublin.
In 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated to continental Europe with his partner (and later wife)
Nora Barnacle. They lived in
Trieste,
Paris, and
Zürich. Although most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centres on Dublin and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there.
Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of
Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
Joyce's birth and baptismal certificate
On 2 February 1882, Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square,
Rathgar,
Dublin, Ireland.
Joyce's father was
John Stanislaus Joyce and his mother was Mary Jane "May" Murray. He was the eldest of ten surviving siblings; two died of
typhoid. James was baptised according to the Rites of the
Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in
Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev. John O'Mulloy. Joyce's godparents were Philip and Ellen McCann.
John Stanislaus Joyce's family came from
Fermoy in
County Cork, and had owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine Joyce, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork Alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Ellen's family claimed kinship with
Daniel O'Connell, "The Liberator".
The Joyce family's purported ancestor,
Seán Mór Seoighe (fl. 1680) was a stonemason from
Connemara.
In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by
Dublin Corporation; the family subsequently moved to the fashionable adjacent small town of
Bray, 12 miles (19 km) from Dublin. Around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, leading to his lifelong
cynophobia. He suffered from
astraphobia; a superstitious aunt had described thunderstorms as a sign of God's wrath.
In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of
Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic Church, the
Irish Home Rule Party and the
British Liberal Party and the resulting collaborative failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership. But the Vatican's role in allying with the
British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left a lasting impression on the young Joyce.
The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the
Vatican Library. In November, John Joyce was entered in
Stubbs' Gazette (a publisher of bankruptcies) and suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused mainly by his drinking and financial mismanagement.
Joyce had begun his education at
Clongowes Wood College, a
Jesuit boarding school near
Clane, County Kildare, in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the
Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits' Dublin school,
Belvedere College, in 1893. This came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest called
John Conmee who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere.
In 1895, Joyce, now aged 13, was elected to join the
Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere.
The philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life.
Education
Joyce enrolled at the recently established
University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, studying English, French and Italian. He became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. In 1900 his laudatory review of
Henrik Ibsen's
When We Dead Awaken was published in
The Fortnightly Review; it was his first publication and, after learning basic Norwegian to send a fan letter to Ibsen, he received a letter of thanks from the dramatist. Joyce wrote a number of other articles and at least two plays (since lost) during this period. Many of the friends he made at University College Dublin appeared as characters in Joyce's works. His closest colleagues included leading figures of the generation, most notably,
Tom Kettle,
Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and
Oliver St. John Gogarty. Joyce was first introduced to the Irish public by
Arthur Griffith in his newspaper,
United Irishman, in November 1901. Joyce had written an article on the
Irish Literary Theatre and his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce had it printed and distributed locally. Griffith himself wrote a piece decrying the censorship of the student James Joyce.
In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce (19) as an English- and
Irish-speaking scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace (now Inverness Road),
Clontarf, Dublin.
After graduating from UCD in 1902, Joyce left for Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned this. Richard Ellmann suggests that this may have been because he found the technical lectures in French too difficult. Joyce had already failed to pass chemistry in English in Dublin. But Joyce claimed ill health as the problem and wrote home that he was unwell and complained about the cold weather.
He stayed on for a few months, appealing for finance his family could ill-afford and reading late in the
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his father sent a telegram which read, "NOTHER [
sic] DYING COME HOME FATHER".
Joyce returned to Ireland. Fearing for her son's impiety, his mother tried unsuccessfully to get Joyce to make his confession and to take communion. She finally passed into a coma and died on 13 August, James and his brother
Stanislaus having refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside.
After her death he continued to drink heavily, and conditions at home grew quite appalling. He scraped together a living reviewing books, teaching, and singing—he was an accomplished
tenor, and won the bronze medal in the 1904
Feis Ceoil.
Career
On 7 January 1904, Joyce attempted to publish
A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with
aesthetics, only to have it rejected by the free-thinking magazine
Dana. He decided, on his twenty-second birthday, to revise the story into a novel he called
Stephen Hero. It was a fictional rendering of Joyce's youth, but he eventually grew frustrated with its direction and abandoned this work. It was never published in this form, but years later, in Trieste, Joyce completely rewrote it as
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The unfinished
Stephen Hero was published after his death.
Also in 1904, he met
Nora Barnacle, a young woman from
Galway city who was working as a chambermaid. On 16 June 1904 they had their first outing together, walking to the Dublin suburb of
Ringsend, where Nora
masturbated him. This event was commemorated by providing the date for the action of
Ulysses (as "
Bloomsday").
Joyce remained in Dublin for some time longer, drinking heavily. After one of his drinking binges, he got into a fight over a misunderstanding with a man in
St Stephen's Green;
he was picked up and dusted off by a minor acquaintance of his father, Alfred H. Hunter, who took him into his home to tend to his injuries.
Hunter was rumoured to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife and would serve as one of the models for
Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of
Ulysses.
He took up with the medical student Oliver St. John Gogarty, who informed the character for
Buck Mulligan in
Ulysses. After six nights in the
Martello Tower that Gogarty was renting in Sandycove, he left in the middle of the night following an altercation which involved another student he lived with, the unstable Dermot Chenevix Trench (Haines in
Ulysses), who fired a pistol at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed.
Joyce walked the 8 miles (13 km) back to Dublin to stay with relatives for the night, and sent a friend to the tower the next day to pack his trunk. Shortly after, the couple left Ireland to live on the continent.
1904–20: Trieste and Zürich
Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile, moving first to Zürich in Switzerland, where he ostensibly taught English at the
Berlitz Language School through an agent in England. It later became evident that the agent had been swindled; the director of the school sent Joyce on to
Trieste, which was then part of
Austria-Hungary (until the First World War), and is today part of Italy. Once again, he found there was no position for him, but with the help of Almidano Artifoni, director of the Trieste Berlitz School, he finally secured a teaching position in
Pola, then also part of Austria-Hungary (today part of
Croatia). He stayed there, teaching English mainly to Austro-Hungarian naval officers stationed at the Pola base, from October 1904 until March 1905, when the Austrians—having discovered an espionage ring in the city—expelled all
aliens. With Artifoni's help, he moved back to Trieste and began teaching English there. He remained in Trieste for most of the next ten years.
Later that year Nora gave birth to their first child, George (known as Giorgio). Joyce persuaded his brother, Stanislaus, to join him in Trieste, and secured a teaching position for him at the school. Joyce sought to augment his family's meagre income with his brother's earnings.
Stanislaus and Joyce had strained relations while they lived together in Trieste, arguing about Joyce's drinking habits and frivolity with money.
Joyce became frustrated with life in Trieste and moved to Rome in late 1906, taking employment as a clerk in a bank. He disliked Rome and returned to Trieste in early 1907. His daughter
Lucia was born later that year.
Joyce returned to Dublin in mid-1909 with George, to visit his father and work on getting
Dubliners published. He visited Nora's family in
Galway and liked Nora's mother very much.
While preparing to return to Trieste he decided to take one of his sisters, Eva, back with him to help Nora run the home. He spent a month in Trieste before returning to Dublin, this time as a representative of some cinema owners and businessmen from Trieste. With their backing he launched Ireland's first cinema, the
Volta Cinematograph, which was well-received, but fell apart after Joyce left. He returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen, in tow.
Eva became homesick for Dublin and returned there a few years later, but Eileen spent the rest of her life on the continent, eventually marrying the
Czech bank cashier Frantisek Schaurek.
Joyce returned to Dublin again briefly in mid-1912 during his years-long fight with Dublin publisher George Roberts over the publication of
Dubliners. His trip was once again fruitless, and on his return he wrote the poem "Gas from a Burner", an invective against Roberts. After this trip, he never again came closer to Dublin than London, despite many pleas from his father and invitations from his fellow Irish writer
William Butler Yeats.
One of his students in Trieste was Ettore Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym
Italo Svevo. They met in 1907 and became lasting friends and mutual critics. Schmitz was a Catholic of Jewish origin and became a primary model for Leopold Bloom; most of the details about the
Jewish faith in
Ulysses came from Schmitz's responses to queries from Joyce.
While living in Trieste, Joyce was first beset with eye problems that ultimately required over a dozen surgical operations.
Joyce concocted a number of money-making schemes during this period, including an attempt to become a cinema
magnate in Dublin. He frequently discussed but ultimately abandoned a plan to import Irish tweed to Trieste. Correspondence relating to that venture with the Irish Woollen Mills were for a long time displayed in the windows of their premises in
Dublin. Joyce's skill at borrowing money saved him from indigence. What income he had came partially from his position at the Berlitz school and partially from teaching private students.
In 1915, after most of his students in Trieste were conscripted to fight in the
Great War, Joyce moved to Zürich. Two influential private students, Baron Ambrogio Ralli and Count Francesco Sordina, petitioned officials for an exit permit for the Joyces, who in turn agreed not to take any action against the emperor of Austria-Hungary during the war.
During this period Joyce took an active interest in
socialism.
He had attended socialist meetings when he was still in Dublin and 1905, while in Trieste, he described his politics as "those of a socialist artist."
Although his practical engagement waned after 1907 due to the "endless internecine warfare" he observed in socialist organizations, many Joyce scholars such as
Richard Ellmann, Dominic Manganiello,
Robert Scholes, and George J. Watson agree that Joyce's interest in socialism and pacifistic anarchism continued for much of his life, and that both the form and content of Joyce's work reflect a sympathy for democratic and socialist ideas.
In 1918 he declared himself "against every state"
and found much succor in the individualist philosophies of
Benjamin Tucker and
Oscar Wilde's
The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
Later in the 1930s, Joyce rated his experiences with the defeated multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire as: "They called the Empire a ramshackle empire, I wish to God there were more such empires."
1920–41: Paris and Zürich
Joyce set himself to finishing
Ulysses in Paris, delighted to find that he was gradually gaining fame as an avant-garde writer. A further grant from
Harriet Shaw Weaver meant he could devote himself full-time to writing again, as well as consort with other literary figures in the city. During this time, Joyce's eyes began to give him more and more problems and he often wore an
eyepatch. He was treated by Louis Borsch in Paris, undergoing nine operations before Borsch's death in 1929.
Throughout the 1930s he travelled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and for treatments for his daughter Lucia, who, according to the Joyces, suffered from
schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by
Carl Jung at the time, who after reading
Ulysses is said to have concluded that her father had schizophrenia.
Jung said that she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that Joyce was diving and Lucia was sinking.
In Paris,
Maria and
Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during his long years of writing
Finnegans Wake. Were it not for their support (along with Harriet Shaw Weaver's constant financial support), there is a good possibility that his books might never have been finished or published. In their literary magazine
transition, the Jolases published serially various sections of
Finnegans Wake under the title
Work in Progress. Joyce returned to Zürich in late 1940, fleeing the
Nazi occupation of France. Joyce used his contacts to help some sixteen Jews escape Nazi persecution.
Joyce and religion
The issue of Joyce's relationship with religion is somewhat controversial. Early in life, he lapsed from Catholicism, according to first-hand testimonies coming from himself, his brother Stanislaus Joyce, and his wife:
My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classes of life and religious doctrines. ... Six years ago I left the Catholic church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made myself a beggar but I retained my pride. Now I make open war upon it by what I write and say and do.
When the arrangements for Joyce's burial were being made, a Catholic priest offered a religious service, which Joyce's wife, Nora, declined, saying, "I couldn't do that to him."
Leonard Strong, William T. Noon, Robert Boyle and others have argued that Joyce, later in life, reconciled with the faith he rejected earlier in life and that his parting with the faith was succeeded by a not so obvious reunion, and that
Ulysses and
Finnegans Wake are essentially Catholic expressions.
Likewise,
Hugh Kenner and
T. S. Eliot believed they saw between the lines of Joyce's work the outlook of a serious Christian and that beneath the veneer of the work lies a remnant of Catholic belief and attitude.
Kevin Sullivan maintains that, rather than reconciling with the faith, Joyce never left it.
Critics holding this view insist that Stephen, the protagonist of the semi-autobiographical
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as
Ulysses, is not Joyce.
Somewhat cryptically, in an interview after completing Ulysses, in response to the question "When did you leave the Catholic Church", Joyce answered, "That's for the Church to say."
Eamonn Hughes maintains that Joyce takes a
dialectic approach, both affirming and denying, saying that Stephen's much noted
non-serviam is qualified—"I will not serve
that which I no longer believe...", and that the
non-serviam will always be balanced by Stephen's "I am a servant..." and Molly's "yes".
He attended Catholic Mass and Orthodox Divine Liturgy, especially during Holy Week, purportedly for aesthetic reasons.
His sisters noted his Holy Week attendance and that he did not seek to dissuade them.
One friend reported that Joyce cried "secret tears" upon hearing Jesus' words on the cross and another suggested that he was a "believer at heart" because of his frequent attendance at church.
Umberto Eco compares Joyce to the ancient
episcopi vagantes (wandering bishops) in the
Middle Ages. They left a discipline, not a cultural heritage or a way of thinking. Like them, the writer retains the sense of
blasphemy held as a liturgical ritual.
Some critics and biographers have opined along the lines of
Andrew Gibson: "The modern James Joyce may have vigorously resisted the oppressive power of Catholic tradition. But there was another Joyce who asserted his allegiance to that tradition, and never left it, or wanted to leave it, behind him." Gibson argues that Joyce "remained a Catholic intellectual if not a believer" since his thinking remained influenced by his cultural background, even though he lived apart from that culture.
His relationship with religion was complex and not easily understood, even perhaps by himself. He acknowledged the debt he owed to his early Jesuit training. Joyce told the sculptor
August Suter, that from his Jesuit education, he had 'learnt to arrange things in such a way that they become easy to survey and to judge.'
Death
On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a
perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the following day. He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked a nurse to call his wife and son, before losing consciousness again. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later. Joyce was less than a month short of his 59th birthday.
His body was buried in the
Fluntern Cemetery, Zürich. The Swiss tenor
Max Meili sang
Addio terra, addio cielo from
Monteverdi's
L'Orfeo at the burial service.
Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government later declined Nora's offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. When
Joseph Walshe, secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, was informed of Joyce's death by Frank Cremins,
chargé d'affaires at
Bern, Walshe responded "Please wire details of Joyce's death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral".
Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent "honour grave," with a seated portrait statue by American artist
Milton Hebald nearby. Nora, whom he had married in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.
In October 2019 a motion was put to
Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family's wishes.
The proposal immediately became controversial, with the
Irish Times commenting: "...it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland's relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to 'celebrate', and if possible monetise, than read".
Major works
The title page of the first edition of
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by Joyce, first published in 1914.
They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.
The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by converging ideas and influences. The stories centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in
Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel
Ulysses.
The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists. Subsequent stories deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This aligns with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel
Stephen Hero. Joyce attempted to burn the original manuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, though to his subsequent relief it was rescued by his sister. A
Künstlerroman,
Portrait is a heavily autobiographical
coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of the protagonist
Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as
stream of consciousness,
interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings are evident throughout this novel.
Exiles and poetry
Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play,
Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband-and-wife relationship, the play looks back to
The Dead (the final story in
Dubliners) and forward to
Ulysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.
Joyce published a number of books of poetry. His first mature published work was the satirical broadside "The Holy Office" (1904), in which he proclaimed himself to be the superior of many prominent members of the
Celtic Revival. His first full-length poetry collection,
Chamber Music (1907; referring, Joyce joked, to the sound of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot), consisted of 36 short lyrics. This publication led to his inclusion in the
Imagist Anthology, edited by
Ezra Pound, who was a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime include "Gas from a Burner" (1912),
Pomes Penyeach (1927) and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). It was published by the
Black Sun Press in
Collected Poems (1936).
Ulysses
Announcement of the initial publication of
Ulysses.
As he was completing work on
Dubliners in 1906, Joyce considered adding another story featuring a Jewish advertising canvasser called
Leopold Bloom under the title
Ulysses. Although he did not pursue the idea further at the time, he eventually commenced work on a novel using both the title and basic premise in 1914. The writing was completed in October 1921. Three more months were devoted to working on the proofs of the book before Joyce halted work shortly before his self-imposed deadline, his 40th birthday (2 February 1922).
Thanks to Ezra Pound, serial publication of the novel in the magazine
The Little Review began in March 1918. This magazine was edited by
Margaret C. Andersonand
Jane Heap, with the intermittent financial backing of
John Quinn, a successful New York commercial lawyer with an interest in contemporary experimental art and literature.
This provoked the first accusations of obscenity with which the book would be identified for so long. Its amorphous structure with frank, intimate musings (‘stream of consciousness’) were seen to offend both church and state. The publication encountered problems with
New York Postal Authorities; serialisation ground to a halt in December 1920; the editors were convicted of publishing
obscenity in February 1921.
Although the conviction was based on the "Nausicaä" episode of
Ulysses,
The Little Review had fuelled the fires of controversy with
dada poet
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven's defence of
Ulysses in an essay "The Modest Woman."
Joyce's novel was not published in the United States until 1934.
Partly because of this controversy, Joyce found it difficult to get a publisher to accept the book, but it was published in 1922 by
Sylvia Beach from her well-known
Rive Gauche bookshop,
Shakespeare and Company. An English edition published the same year by Joyce's patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, ran into further difficulties with the United States authorities, and 500 copies that were shipped to the States were seized and possibly destroyed. The following year,
John Rodker produced a print run of 500 more intended to replace the missing copies, but these were burned by English customs at
Folkestone. A further consequence of the novel's ambiguous legal status as a banned book was that "bootleg" versions appeared, including pirate versions from the publisher
Samuel Roth. In 1928, a court injunction against Roth was obtained and he ceased publication.
With the appearance of
Ulysses, and
T.S. Eliot's poem,
The Waste Land, 1922 was a key year in the history of English-language literary modernism. In
Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and almost every other literary technique to present his characters.
The action of the novel, which takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, sets the characters and incidents of the
Odyssey of
Homer in modern Dublin and represents
Odysseus (Ulysses),
Penelope and
Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife
Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, parodically contrasted with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city, and Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe it could be rebuilt, brick by brick, using his work as a model.
In order to achieve this level of accuracy, Joyce used the 1904 edition of
Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and/or tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city. He also bombarded friends still living there with requests for information and clarification.
The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around about 8 a.m. and ending sometime after 2 a.m. the following morning. Each of the 18 chapters of the novel employs its own literary style. Each chapter also refers to a specific episode in Homer's Odyssey and has a specific colour, art or science and bodily organ associated with it. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal, schematic structure represents one of the book's major contributions to the development of 20th century modernist literature.
Other contributions include the use of
classical mythology as a framework for his book and the near-obsessive focus on external detail in a book in which much of the significant action is happening inside the minds of the characters. Nevertheless, Joyce complained that, "I may have oversystematised
Ulysses," and played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles that had been taken from Homer.
Joyce was reluctant to publish the chapter titles because he wanted his work to stand separately from the Greek form. It was only when
Stuart Gilbert published his critical work on
Ulysses in 1930 that the schema was supplied by Joyce to Gilbert. But as Terrence Killeen points out this schema was developed after the novel had been written and was not something that Joyce consulted as he wrote the novel.
Finnegans Wake
Having completed work on
Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year.
On 10 March 1923 he informed his patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final
Yes of
Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of
foolscap so that I could read them.
Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio, the Italians say. 'The wolf may lose his skin but not his vice' or 'the leopard cannot change his spots.'"
Thus was born a text that became known, first, as
Work in Progress and later
Finnegans Wake.
By 1926 Joyce had completed the first two parts of the book. In that year, he met Eugene and Maria Jolas who offered to serialise the book in their magazine
transition. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the new book, but in the 1930s, progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors, including the death of his father in 1931, concern over the mental health of his daughter
Lucia, and his own health problems, including failing eyesight. Much of the work was done with the assistance of younger admirers, including
Samuel Beckett. For some years, Joyce nursed the eccentric plan of turning over the book to his friend
James Stephens to complete, on the grounds that Stephens was born in the same hospital as Joyce exactly one week later, and shared the first name of both Joyce and of Joyce's fictional alter-ego, an example of Joyce's superstitions.
Reaction to the work was mixed, including negative comment from early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Pound and the author's brother, Stanislaus Joyce.
To counteract this hostile reception, a book of essays by supporters of the new work, including Beckett,
William Carlos Williams and others was organised and published in 1929 under the title
Denny Lyne, Paddy Bawn Brosnan, J J Nerney and Eddie Boland in action during the 1946 All Ireland Final between Kerry and Roscommon (The Kerryman)
The favoured destination for Irish emigrants was New York, and that is where the young Dowd family arrived in the mid-1850s. A second child– a daughter Bridget– was born there about 1856. Bridget, or Biddy as she became known, came into the world on Long Island, and was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s grandmother. If the Dowd family story had followed that of the majority of Irish immigrants to the United States in this period, Biddy Dowd would never have seen Ireland again, and Paddy Bawn Brosnan would never have been born. But seismic events intervened. By the 1860s the family had settled in Buffalo, where Daniel made the decision that changed all their lives forever, when on 6th September 1862 he enlisted in the Union army. (2)
In 1862 Daniel Dowd became one of the c. 200,000 Irish-born men who would serve during the American Civil War. He was joined in the ranks by thousands of Kerrymen; there is little doubt that it was this conflict that saw more Kerrymen fight, and more Kerrymen die, than any other war in history. The Dingle native had decided not to join just any unit. Instead he enlisted in the 155th New York Infantry, one of the regiments that would form part of Corcoran’s Irish Legion. Its leader Brigadier-General Michael Corcoran from Carrowkeel, Co. Sligo was a noted Fenian, and many supporters of the cause of Ireland specifically chose to join his brigade. Whether Daniel was one of them, or simply wanted to serve close to his fellow Irishmen, remains unknown. (3)
Daniel was mustered in as a private in Company I of the 155th New York at Newport News, Virginia on 19th November 1862. He was recorded as a 29 year old laborer who was 5 feet 5 inches in height, with a fair complexion, gray eyes and light hair. His surname was one that caused considerable confusion for recorders at the time. Sometimes recorded as Doud or Doody, Daniel was placed on the regimental roster as ‘Daniel Dout.’ It wasn’t long before he got his first taste of action in the Civil War, as in January his regiment was engaged the Battle of Deserted House, Virginia. Though only a mere skirmish in comparison to what the Legion would endure in 1864, it nonetheless must have had quite an impact on Daniel and the men of the 155th. (4)
Private Daniel Dowd spent the next year in Virginia with his unit. On 17th December 1863 he found himself guarding a railroad bridge, part of a detachment of some 50 men of the Legion that were protecting the Orange & Alexandria line at Sangster’s Station. At a little after 6pm that evening they were set upon by a body of Confederate cavalry, who threatened to overrun them as they sought to burn the bridge. The Rebels attacked on a number of occasions, eventually getting around the flanks and rear of the Irishmen, succeeding in setting fire to their tents and forcing them into a retreat. Cut off, the detachment would normally have looked to their telegraph operator to call for reinforcements, but he was apparently so drunk he was unable to use his equipment. General Corcoran and the remainder of the Legion only learned of the attack around 8.30pm, when a local Unionist came to inform them of events. The relief force eventually re-established a connection with the detachment, but although the bridge was saved, a number of men had been captured. Among them was Dingle-native Daniel Dowd. (5)
We have scant details of Daniel’s life as a prisoner-of-war, but initially he was likely held near Richmond. At some point in the spring or early summer of 1864 he was moved to the recently opened– and soon to be notorious– Camp Sumter, Georgia. Better known as Andersonville, between February 1864 and the close of the war almost 13,000 prisoners lost their lives in the unsheltered compound. Disease, much of it caused by malnutrition, was rife. On 3rd July 1864 Daniel was admitted to the camp hospital suffering from Chronic Diarrhoea. He must have been in an extremely severe state at the time, as he did not live through the day. Following the conflict his grave was identified, and today forms part of Andersonville National Cemetery, where he rests in Grave 2809. (6)
Shorn of her main support, the now widowed Mary decided to leave America behind and retrace her steps to Dingle, presumably to be close to family who could provide assistance. She returned to her home town with Edward and Biddy in tow; Edward must have had little or no-memory of Kerry, while Biddy was experiencing Ireland for the very first time. In 1869 Mary, now 45-years-old, went in search of a U.S. widow’s pension based on Daniel’s service to help support the children. Now living on the Strand, Dingle, she compiled information about her marriage and her children’s birth to send to Washington D.C. as part of her application. Unfortunately, the variant spellings of her husband’s name came back to haunt her. In the marriage record, Daniel’s surname had been written as ‘Doody’, sufficiently different from the ‘Dout’ recorded on the regimental roster to raise suspicions that this was not the same man. To compound matters there was also no available documentation relating to Biddy’s birth. Although the Commissioner of Emigration had written to every Catholic parish in Long Island in order to locate it, he met with no success. The combination of these two issues, together with the difficulty in dealing with the Washington authorities at such a remove, meant that Mary’s pension wasn’t granted. Her failure to provide the additional evidence requested meant that her claim was classified as ‘abandoned.’ Mary never fully gave up fully on the process; the last entry in her file is a letter she had written in the 1890s. Addressed from Waterside, Dingle on 4th July 1892, it was sent to the Secretary of the Claim Agent Office at the White House in Washington D.C.:
As was common at the time, Mary was illiterate– the letter was written for her by her solicitor McGillycuddy, and she made her mark with an ‘X’. It seems unlikely she ever received any monies as a result of it. Her American-born daughter Biddy grew to adulthood in Ireland. Her home had become Dingle, Co. Kerry rather than Buffalo, New York entirely as a result of her father’s death in a Prisoner of War camp more than 6,000 km from Ireland. Daniel’s fateful Civil War service also meant his daughter married and started a family in Ireland rather than America. Biddy’s husband was a fisherman, Patrick Johnson, and together the couple had seven children. One of them, Ellie, was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s mother. Biddy died in 1945 and is buried in St. James’s Church in Dingle. Unlike her father’s resting place in Andersonville, it is not marked with a headstone. (8)
The American Civil War had a long-lasting, inter-generational impact on tens of thousands of Irish people, both in Ireland and the United States. Had it not been for the Confederate decision to launch an attack at Sangster’s Station in Virginia in 1863, or Daniel’s incarceration in Georgia in 1864, it is unlikely that Paddy Bawn Brosnan would ever have been born. The story of the footballing legend’s family is evidence of the often unrecognised impact of what was the largest conflict in Kerry people’s history. One wonders did Paddy Bawn reflect on his own grandmother’s New York story as he made his own journey across the Atlantic to take part in that historic sporting occasion only two years after her death in 1947.
*This post would not have been possible without the extensive research of Mossy and Maeve Donegan. They not only ordered his Great-Great-Grandmother’s unsuccessful pension application from Washington D.C. but also obtained Daniel’s service record. All the family history relating to the Brosnans in Dingle and Paddy Bawn’s connection to Biddy was provided by them, and I am grateful they shared their story with us.
**Thanks to Donal Nolan and The Kerryman for permission to use the image of the 1946 Final, which originally appeared on the Terrace Talk website here. Also thanks to Kay Caball for Donal’s contact details.
***Thanks to Conn Crowley for a clarification with respect to the attendance at the Polo Grounds Final.
(1) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application, Miller 1988: 570; (2) Daniel Dowd Service Record; (3) Daniel Dowd Service Record, 155th New York Roster; (4) Ibid., New York Civil War Muster Roll; (5) Official Records: 982-984, Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application, Daniel Dowd Service Record, U.S. Register of Deaths of Volunteers, Records of Federal POWs Confined at Andersonville; (7) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application; (8) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application;
References & Further Reading
Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application 180,808.
Daniel Dowd Service Record.
Roster of the 155th New York Infantry.
Daniel Dowd Find A Grave Entry.
New York State Archives, Cultural Education Center, Albany, New York; New York Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts, 1861-1900; Archive Collection #: 13775-83; Box #: 607; Roll #: 263 [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com].
Selected Records of the War Department Commissary General of Prisoners Relating to Federal Prisoners of War Confined at Andersonville, GA, 1864-65; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1303, 6 rolls); Records of the Commissary General of Prisoners, Record Group 249; National Archives, Washington, D.C. [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com].
Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, compiled 1861–1865. ARC ID: 656639. Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s–1917. Record Group 94. National Archives at Washington, D.C. [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com].
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion Series 1, Volume 29, Part 1. December 17, 183 – Skirmish at Sangster’s Station, Va. Reports.
Miller, Kerby A. 1988. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America
