James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland.
He was the eldest child of the 10 children of John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray.
James had to put up with an alcoholic father, whose neglected affairs and constant money borrowing habit left them in the clutches of poverty.
Family
The Joyce siblings who had survived infancy were Margaret, Stanislaus, Charlie, George, Eileen, Mary, Eva, Florence and Mabel. James’s mother was a gentle woman from Longford. She was the daughter of a wine merchant. James shared a deep emotional bond with his mother. The same was not the case with his father. He associated his mother with warmth, home, fire and the Catholic faith.
Education
At the age of six, James was sent to Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school. It was supposed to be the best preparatory school in Ireland. The three years spent at the school were valuable and he was happy, though he did feel homesick sometimes. The three years that James spent here were valuable. At Clongowes, James sang, took piano lessons, played cricket and became a good swimmer.
He was a model student, always ahead in his class whivvch earned him the respect of his fellow students. He had begun to memorize the long passages of verse and prose by Milton, Byron, Newman and others. This practice, which he continued throughout his life, coupled with the study of classical figures and the mastering of languages, led to the cultivation of his gift for a mimetic style.
At Clongowes, he also became a devout. He wrote hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary and participated as boat-bearer in a procession to the little altar in the wood. His prayers and fantasies were filled with death and incantations against it.
Shortly after the Parnell Affair (a political adultery scandal), John Joyce lost his job at the Collector General’s office. The family began to descent into poverty. James was withdravvwn from Clongowes and the family moved to Blackrock.
Belvedere College
James Joyce entered the Jesuit Belvedere College, Dublin, in 1893, which was staffed by the Jesuit priests. He proved to be an excellent student here too. The years were eventful ones as he concentrated on extra-curricular activities, read widely especially the books not recommended by the Jesuits. He was also an active member of the college’s Literary and Historical Society. Here, he presented a paper on "Drama and Life". The year after he joined, James also won one of the top prizes, which was 20 pounds in cash.
His interest in literature and early success confirmed his resolution to become a writer. He was persuaded and supported by his family, friends and teachers.
However, it was during this time that James, as a young boy, begun to stray. He began patronizing local prostitutes. And during this stage he was chosen Prefect of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary at school, an honor meant to recognize both academic achievements and moral character. A sermon delivered by a priest had a strong effect on James. He started suffering from sexual guilt and self-hatred. Over the years, the works of modern authors like Merdith and Byron influenced him and he acquired a critical attitude towards institutions like church.
James’s poverty-stricken family had some relief from their financial troubles when he won scholastic prizes. In 1897, James made his highest score and won a scholarship of 30 pounds a year for two years, standing 13th in a group of 49. James lent all his money to his impoverished family, took them to the theatre and for dinner and bought them gifts. But the money was soon gone and the family was in trouble again.
University College
He was now permanently disaffected from Catholicism. With views that totally cut him off from religion and the church, James entered the Royal University in Dublin, also known as the University College.
The famous convert John Henry Newman had founded the University College in 1854 to provide a liberal Catholic education in contrast to the rigid and the predominantly secular Trinity College. James was no longer the docile student that he had once been. When James entered the college, modern thoughts were still condemned. The instructors at the college were still backward and the student body was afraid of the political upheaval it might cause by any action.
At the University College, he was inattentive during lectures, frequently late for them and often absent. He also used to play practical jokes. He stopped washing his body and enjoyed the lice on it.
He became a rebel; often going in the opposite direction than the one he was asked to go. He even refused to put his signature on the pages containing a protest against production of Yeats's The Countess Cathleen.
James Joyce passed his final examinations with second-class honors in Latin and obtained a degree in BA on October 31, 1902. By the time he left University College, James had met a number of literary geniuses like Yeats and George Russell. He had to think of his future. In order to support his passion for writing, James decided to pursue a career in medicine. But this idea was soon abandoned. He left for Paris with the hope to earn a living by writing book reviews for newspapers. He tried various occupations there. In April 1903, James was re-called home, as his mother was ailing. Her illness and eventual death took a severe toll on James who then began to drink heavily.
College Friends
He had many friends at the University College. His long list included J F Byrne, George Clancy, Francis Skeffington, Vincent Cosgrave, Constantine P Curran and Thomas Kettle. They were an interesting bunch. While Clancy represented athletic Irish nationalism; Skeffington modern liberal nationalism; Cosgrave cynical atheism, and Kettle symbolized the Europeanization of Ireland.
He was, however, close to J F Byrne. The two friends used to talk for long hours in the night. Byrne was James’ supporter in his rejection to Catholicism and his new aim as a priest of eternal imagination.
A local branch of the Gaelic League, which encouraged the study of the Irish language and the playing of Irish sports, was founded by James’ friend George Clancy, who was later be immortalized by James as Davin in A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. This league organized military training for Nationalists.
Nora
James taught in a suburban Dublin school at the beginning of 1904. It was during this time that he met Nora, a chambermaid at the Finn’s Hotel in Dublin. It was here that she met James Joyce. It seems that the writer was totally besotted by Nora as she made him wait on their first date.
Nora was a simple, proud, outspoken girl from Galway who had recently come to Dublin. She possessed many of the qualities James needed in a woman : trust, faithfulness and tenderness.
He loved her and thought that her love for him was much greater than his could ever be. For Nora, James was "simpleminded Jim". She used to cook him puddings and according to James she had a noble disposition, which was incapable of any deceits. She was a woman of essence who played a major role in shaping up James’ life.
Nora and James’ Early Travels
James and Nora left Dublin in October 1904. He became a teacher in the Berlitz School, Pola, Austria Hungary, working at the same time on his novel and short stories. In 1905 they moved to Trieste, where James’ brother Stanislaus joined them and where their children, Giorgio and Lucia, were born. However, the children were not born out of wedlock. But soon James began to feel like a father and a husband. It was here that he completed nine short stories which were to later compiled into a book titled Dubliners.
During their travel James and Nora were diligent tourists, visiting sights, buying postcards and sending them to friends. This was despite the eye problems that James was having. James and Nora were married in July of 1931, nearly 27 years after they met first. He married her in order to avoid legal problems with his inheritance. The ceremony was preformed in a London registry office on July 4, a date so chosen mainly because it was James’ father’s birthday and to him the marriage served as a symbolic penance for the common law arrangement of which his father never approved.
Lucia suffered from a mental illness and the marriage gave Nora a new edge to fight for James’ attention for their daughter. But Lucia’s illness increased and she developed extreme hostility towards her own mother. During the years that followed, Nora and James’ relationbvvship deteriorated. She started finding James’ company boring. And on April 10, 1951 Nora died of uremic poisoning.
His Children
As his children, Giorgio and Lucia began growing up. They started suffering from adolescent crisis. They had to put up with frequent moving, to several different countries, the interrupted education and feeling of rootlessness. James never disciplined them the way a parent does.
By 1920, Lucia’s schizophrenia had become apparent. It continued to grow in spite of the medication she received. Giorgio too became victim of haphazard schooling, and as a result the doors of pursuing a career soon closed on him. He tried his hands at singing but failed.
Lucia’s growing madness had begun to trouble James. As a result he too became prone to insomnia, fits of dark depression and fainting. He took his daughter from one physician to another, psychiatrist Carl Jung being one of them. James loved Lucia dearly and was severely depressed by her deteriorating condition. James and Lucia had strangely similar psyches.
Meanwhile, Giorgio got married and soon a son was born. They named him Stephen James. This was a bright spot in James’ life. He created a wonderful piece of poem of completely controlled passion – an image of reconciliation with his own father, his son, his grandson and to an extend himself.
His Literary Career
Joyce’s first book was a collection of romantic poems titled Chamber Music, published in 1907. In the same year he added several stories to his collection of The Dubliners, including the all time masterpiece, The Dead. It was here that he conceived the idea for a story, which was to become an all time literary hit, Ulysses.
With completion of The Dubliners began his efforts to get it published. In 1909 he visited Ireland twice to try and publish his stories. But his efforts were in vain. He was frustrated when Grant Richards, who had originally accepted the manuscript in 1906, asked Joyce for changes in the manuscript. Richards finally rejected the book.
Maunsel and Co. finally accepted the manuscript. However, this too did not work out, as the publisher was timid. Under the British laws, anything obscene that was published was liable to be sued. The manuscript was destroyed in 1912. Grant Richards finally reconsidered the book the following year and it was published. No objections were raised and it was ultimately a success.
Joyce’s literary legacy is vast. The number of years that he spent planning and revising his manuscripts is commendable. He had an absolute authorial control in which every word was made an essential part of the total work. His works are a rare combination of technical genius and humanity, thus reaching out to the reader. Even today James is an icon of the artist who went through several ups and downs in life.
He had to put up with watching his well-deserved success going to less talented, ego-driven writers; the grounds of obscenity were baseless. He had persevered through everything,
painstakingly fashioning his works word by word, till he brought the world around to acknowledge his literary genius.
Patrons Of His Art
Joyce would never had made it as a writer had it not been for the help he got from the few people who believed in his work. Though he had soon begun to earn an international reputation as a writer, especially after The Dubliners, he was financially unstable. An anonymous admirer began sending him 50 pounds every three months through a London solicitor. The gift as well as the help from Harriet Shaw Weaver enabled Joyce to concentrate on writing Ulysses.
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound, an American poet, helped A Portrait Of The Artist as a Young Man to take shape. He was a modernist in his own right who also encouraged young and budding artists. He had included one of Joyce’s lyrics in his anthology Des Imagistes. Joyce also sent him a copy of The Dubliners and the first chapter of A Portrait Of The Artist as a Young Man.
It was Pound who convinced a literary and philosophical journal, The Egoist, to serialize the novel. Soon Joyce was also freed from his financial worries. When the episodes of the Portrait... began to appear in The Egoist, the then Editor, Harriet Shaw Weaver gave him grants. By 1930, the grants had amounted to more than 3,000 pounds per annum.
Sylvia Beach
She was also a patron who helped James move forward towards achieving his literary goals. She was the owner of a bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. When Joyce met her, he immediately struck a friendship with her. Sylvia on the other hand, was attracted by his air of quiet dedication and by the gentleman’s cane, which he used to carry.
She gave him her immediate sympathy, admiration and understanding, provided him with books and attended to the practical details of his life. She ultimatvvely became the publisher of Ulysses and Pomes Penyeach. It was through her that James had the pleasure of meeting literary geniuses like T S Eliot, Valery Larbaud, Ernest Hemingway and many others.
Eye Trouble
The year following the publication of Ulysses, Joyce’s eye problems worsened. He was suffering from iritis, acute conjunctivitis and incipient glaucoma. By June 1923, he had had three eye operations, including two iridectomies on his left eye, and by November 1925, he had a total of eight eye operations.
In spite of frequent surgeries by Dr Louis Borsch, Dr Alfred Vogt and other ophthalmologists in Paris and Zurich, Joyce’s eyesight deteriorated till he was nearly blind. Because of his bad eyes, Joyce wrote nothing in the year after Ulysses was published.
The Death of A Great Writer
James’s health had begun to deteriorate. He was old and sick. In Zurich, he collapsed and an X-ray revealed that the stomach pains were due to an ulcer, which had perforated in the duodenum. On January 11, 1941, he entered the Schwesterhaus vom Roten Kreuz where an operation was performed, which appeared to have been successful. However, there was a relapse the next day and he had to be given blood transfusion.
He died two days later on January 13, 1941. He was buried on a dark, snowy day in the Fluntern Cemetery high above metropolitan Zurich.
James Augustine Joyce was an Irish novelist known for his artistic style and experimental use of the English language. After failing at business, Joyce tried his hands at various professions including politics and tax collecting.
But writing is what he excelled in. The originality of Joyce’s style and the influence he had on other writers makes him one of the most important writers of the 20th century. His importance is evident in the considerable amount of scholarly interest taken in his work.
Despite suffering from chronic glaucoma, Joyce continued to write. His most read works are The Dubliners and Ulysses.
February 2, 1882
James Joyce was born in Dublin.
1884
Joyce’s younger brother Stanislaus Joyce, was born
1888
Joyce entered Clongowes Wood College in September.
1891
Wrote Et Tu, Healy about the Parnell Affair.
1893
Enrolled in the Belvedere College.
1895
Enrolled in the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
1898
Matriculated at the University College, Dublin.
1899
Presented a paper entitled Drama and Life to the University’s Literary and Historical Society.
1900
Published an article When We Dead Awaken in the Fortnightly Review.
1902
Graduated from University College, Dublin and left for Paris to study medicine.
1903
Published 21 book reviews in the Daily Express. His mother’s illness compelled him to return to Dublin. His mother died later in the year.
1904
Met Nora Barnacle. They left for Europe in October.
1905
Joyce started teaching in the Berlitz School, Trieste. Nora gave birth to their son Giorgio in Trieste on July 27.
1906
Joyce and his family moved to Rome.
1907
Returned to Trieste. Lucia, their daughter was born. Joyce finished the final story of The Dubliners, The Dead. Chamber Music was published.
1914
The Dubliners was published in June.
1916 A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man was published.
1917
James stricken with glaucoma and underwent eye surgery in August.
1918
The Little Review in the United States published episodes of Ulysses in serial form.
1919
Joyce and his family returned to Trieste following the end of the war.
1922
Sylvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare and Company, published Ulysses.
1923
Began work on Finnegans Wake.
1931
Married Nora on July 4. Father, John Joyce, passed away on December 29.
1932
Joyce and Nora’s grandson, Stephen James Joyce was born to Giorgio and his wife Helen. Daughter Lucia suffered a mental breakdown.
1933
The ban on Ulysses was lifted in America.
1934
Random House published the first American edition of Ulysses.
1939
Finnegans Wake was published.
1941
Joyce died in Zurich on 13 January from a perforated ulcer.
Chamber Music
This was James Joyce’s first book to be published. It is a sequence of 36 poems, heavily romantic and traditional in style. These poems were slight lyrics in the Jacobean mode, which he admired, meant to be sung by a lover. The title of the book was a crude inspiration to Joyce. The title was inspired by the sound of urine in a prostitute’s chamber pot.
Ulysses
Joyce began Ulysses in 1914, portions of the work appeared in The Egoist in England and The Little Review in the US. The post office had confiscated three issues containing Joyce’s excerpts on the grounds of obscenity. Joyce was also fined $100 for that.
This novel is based on the events taking place on a single day in Dublin, on June 16, 1904. The three central characters – Stephen Dedalus, who was also the hero of James’s earlier work A portrait Of The Artist as a young Man, Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser and his wife, Molly Bloom. The last chapter of the book is a unique one as it experiments in stream of conscious technique. A single sentence runs in 40 odd pages, throughout the chapter, uninterrupted by full stops.
By the use of interior monologue Joyce reveals the innermost thoughts and feelings of these characters as they live hour-by-hour, passing from a public bath, a funeral, library, maternity hospital and a brothel. It begins by taking up the story of Stephen Dedalus where the previous novel had left him suffering the guilt of his mother’s deathbed scene, the focus then shifts to Leopold Bloom, a Jewish salesman in his late 30s with a sensuous wife, Molly.
The 30s experimental narrative technique is the most creative part of the book. There are interpolated episodes in play form. The entire book is crammed with humor varying from highly intellectual ones to vulgar slapstick jokes. Ulysses has a somewhat mythic structure and a richness of narrative style.
Ulysses immediately came under attack by conservative critics, some of whom denounced Joyce as degenerate and/or insane, and became a rallying cry for writers and readers who recognized not only its technical brilliance but also its depth and richness of humanity.
It also became notorious as obscene. Although, to most of those who sought it out for prurient reasons, it was also unreadable. Despite being banned in America, Ulysses was frequently smuggled into the country, as it was one of the best-known banned books.
Dubliners
This is an important piece of work, which is innovative and a forerunner of experimental style that Joyce later used. The effect of the outside world taking its toll on the adolescents in the form of moral decay is the central theme of this. The three stories in section one could be identified with young people who not long ago were playing childhood games and dealing with childhood crushes.
Section two of the Dubliners deals with the graduation experience and the changes caused by a momentous event. Such thoughts have been brought to life in form of Eveline, which deals with fear of change and After The Race, in which the character Jimmy is excited by his future dreams.
The third section of the book gives the reader the glimpses of life where a decision made in haste can have far reaching consequences. Similarly, the fourth section has characters who are bound by the conventions and norms of the society they are barely aware of.
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is about the family of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and his wife, a daughter and two sons. The setting for this book is also Dublin. The beauty of this work is that the character, time and place seldom remain fixed. Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker appears in many guises signaled by the initials "HCE" like "Haveth Childers Everywhere" or "Here Comes Everybody".
This figure merges with Tim Finnegan, an Irish comic sang hero, who rises at his own wake. The main female figure, usually called Anna Livia Plurabelle, or ALP, is most frequently identified with rivers, although she too has a variety of mythic and historical guises. The sons Shem and Shaun represent an artistic personality and a successful public personality respectively and the daughter Issy merges into virtually any woman.
The book was partly based on Freud’s dream psychology, Bruno’s theory of the complementary but conflicting nature of opposites, and the cyclic theory of history of Giambattista Vico. The experimental use of language with witty combinations of pun and foreign words with allusions to historical, psychological and religious cosmology are a pleasure to read. The characters of the book are portrayed in various forms like a vegetable or an animal. Wake’s structure follows the three stages of history as laid out by Vico : the Divine, the Heroic and the Human, followed by period of flux, after which the cycle begins all over again: the last sentence in the work runs into the first
A Portrait Of The Artist as a Young Man
This is one of Joyce’s most widely read works. It was published in 1916 and is a semi-autobiographical tale of his alter ego. It is about Stephen Dedalus and his journey from early youth to manhood.
Each chapter reflects the character’s age and sensibility at each point in his development. There are rich and detailed descriptions of Stephen’s outer and inner life. The character is seen passing through phases of religious doubts, sexual awakening, family conflicts and various issues, that build his character.
The book finally concludes by the determination of Stephen Dedalus to follow his artistic conscience, no matter what the outcome may be. Stephen’s personal vision becomes that of an artist. He is tormented by the distracting influences. The character now acquires a villanelle shade.
Ezra Pound called the book ‘a well written’ one in the review published in The Egoist and also emphasized the rarity of such a work in English.
•On Human Nature
People live together in the same house all their lives and at the end they are as far apart as ever.
•On Love
When I hear the word ‘love’ I fell like puking.
•On People
You know people never value anything unless they have to steal it. Even an alley cat would rather shake an old bone out of the garbage than come up and eat a nicely prepared chop from your saucer.
•To Harriet Shaw Weaver Speaking About His Emptiness
I have not read a work of literature for several years. My head is full of pebbles and rubbish and broken matches and lots of glass. The task I set myself technically in writing a book from eighteen different points of view and in as many styles all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen.
•Ezra Pound reviewing A Portrait…
Joyce produces the nearest thing to Flaubertian prose that we now have in English. I doubt if a comparison of Mr. Joyce to other English writers or Irish writers would help much to define him.
•Sir Archibald Bodkin, Director of Public Prosecutions on Ulysses
Mr Leavis must be a crank or worse. If the last 40 pages of this book can be called literature there must be a whole lot of it going to waste every day in the airing courts of Broadmoor.
•Edmund Wilson, a critic, on Joyce’s work
Joyce has attempted in Ulysses to render as exhaustively, as precisely and as directly as it is possible in words to do, what our participation in life is like, or rather, what it seems to us like as from moment to moment we live.
•John M Woolsey, United States District Judge
I am quite aware that owing to some of its scenes Ulysses is a rather strong draught to ask some sensitive, though normal, persons to take. But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac. Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.
•Joyce’s sister May when A Portrait of An Artist... was published
When A Portrait was published, it really embarrassed us a lot to see the family details given in public.
•Nora to sister Kathleen, talking about Joyce
He’s a weakling, Kathleen. I always have to be after his tail. I wish I were married to a man like my father. Being married to a writer is a very hard life.
•Nora to Joyce in one of her letters
I would go anywhere in the world if I could be sure that I could be alone with your dear self without family and without friends.
•Joyce on the comment of his Aunt Josephine Murray that Ulysses was not worth reading
If Ulysses isn't fit to read, life isn't fit to live.
•Joyce’s mother to her son
I only wish I was near you to look after and comfort you. My dear Jim if you are disappointed in my letter and if as usual I fail to understand what you would wish to explain, believe me it is not from any wont of longing desire to do so, but as you so often said I am stupid and cannot grasp the great thoughts which are yours.
•Stanislaus on his elder brother Joyce
I hate to see Jim limp and pale, with shadows under his watery eyevvs, loose wet lips and dark hair. He likes the novelty of the role of dissipated genius…running after every chit with a petticoat and making foolish jokes to them in a high weak voice. He is trying to commit a sin against the Holy Ghost for the purpose of getting outside the utmost rim of Catholicism.
The turning point for Joyce was the year of 1906-07 when he wrote The Dead, a story in The Dubliners, conceived Ulysses and rewrote the character of Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait… His struggle for getting The Dubliners published began, which continued for a few more years to come. His long struggle soon ended when The Dubliners was finally published on June 15, 1914.
James’s contract with Richards for The Dubliners stated that royalties be paid after the sale of 500 copies. However, the sales stood at 499. Soon the sales began to dwindle. He was again disheartened to know that the publishers refused to bring out A Portrait…
It was during this time that he met Miss Harriet Shaw Weaver who took over the editorship of The Egoist from Miss Marsden. She offered to publish the book herself. Meanwhile, a New York publisher, who had been struck by the excellence of The Dubliners, read A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man in June 1916 and wrote to Miss Weaver offering to publish it. This book had already proved to be a profit earner to Joyce even more than Chamber Music or The Dubliners.
The Egoist, thanks to Harriet Shaw Weaver and her generosity, serialized A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man. Joyce was given 25 pounds for the serialization and also a £54 advance on royalties by the publisher who would publish the book. Thus his efforts had finally begun to bear fruits.
