Joyce, James

NOVELIST, SHORT STORY WRITER, POET, LITERARY CRITIC (IRELAND)
BORN 2 Feb 1882, Dublin: 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar - DIED 13 Jan 1941, Zürich
BIRTH NAME Joyce, James Augustine Aloysius
GRAVE LOCATION Zürich: Friedhof Fluntern, Zürichbergstrasse (Gruppe L, FG 80398 / Grab Nr. 1449)

James Joyce was the son of of John Stanislaus Joyce (1849-1931), a poor gentleman. His mother was a talented pianist who was very much focussed on the Roman Catholic Church. He was educated by Jesuits and then in Dublin. In 1898 he entered University in Dublin. In 1900 he published an essay on Ibsen.

After he graduated he went to Paris in 1902. There he worked as a journalist and a teacher. He returned to England after a year because his mother was dying. In 1904 he left Dublin again, this time with the chambermaid Nora Barnacle.

He lived with Nora in Trieste and they were very poor. In 1905 they had a son, Giorgio. In 1907 a daughter was born, Lucia. In Trieste he wrote a large part of "Dubliners" (1914) and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916). He fell in love with Anny Schleimer, the daughter of a banker from Austria. But he and Nora stayed together.

A cinema project in Dublin in 1909 failed and in 1912 he was in Ireland for the last time. When the First World War broke out he went to Zürich, where he met Lenin and Tristan Tzara. He started "Ulysses" that was first published in France in 1922 because it was banned in England. The banning of Ulysses immediately turned him into a well known person.

Joyce had several eye operations and sometimes he was totally blind. In 1923 he was in Paris when he started "Finnegans Wake". Although part of it was published in 1924, he worked on it for sixteen years and only completed it in 1938. In 1931 he and Nora were finally married. During his years in Paris his patroness Harriet Weaver enabled him to live a comfortable life.

His daughter Lucia had been in love with Saumel Becket, buthe didn't love her back. She broke down and in 1934 she was a patient of Carl Jung who diagnosed her with schizophrenia. Jung thought it was related to her father. Joyce was bitter about this and used Jung's concepts of Animus and Anima in "Finnegans Wake".

"Finnegans Wake" wasn't well received and this was a heavy blow to Joyce. He returned to Switzerland after the Germans invaded France. There he died in 1941.

Related persons
• knew Barney, Natalie Clifford
• visited Stein, Gertrude

Events
11/7/1920First meeting between James Joyce and Sylvia Beach. The next day he started visiting her bookshop Shakespeare & Company in Paris frequently. Later she would publish the first uncensored version of his book "Ullyses". 

Images

The grave of James Joyce at the Fluntern Cemetery, Zürich.
Picture by Androom (18 Aug 2005)

 

The grave of James Joyce at the Fluntern Cemetery, Zürich.
Picture by Androom (18 Aug 2005)

 

The statue of James Joyce in Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Picture by Androom (26 Aug 2022)

 

Sources
• Sicherman, Barbara, Carol Hurd Green [editors], Notable American Women, volume 4, The Modern Period, Belknap Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetss, 1980
• Daiches, David (ed.), The Penguin Companion to Literature 1, Penguin Books, 1971


Juch, Hermann

Published: 01 Jan 2006
Last update: 30 Sep 2022