阅读詹姆斯·乔伊斯 James Joyce在小说之家的作品!!! | |||
爱尔兰作家 ，诗人 。1882 年2月2日生于都伯林信奉天主教的家庭，1941 年1月13日卒于瑞士苏黎世 。先后就读于都柏林大学克朗格斯伍德学院、贝尔沃迪尔学院和大学学院，很早就显露出音乐、宗教哲学及语言文学方面的才能，并开始诗歌、散文习作。他谙熟欧洲大陆作家作品，受易卜生影响尤深，并渐渐表现出对人类精神世界特殊的感悟及对家庭笃信的宗教和自己生活环境中的习俗、传统的叛逆。1902年大学毕业后，曾与当时的爱尔兰文艺复兴运动有所接触，不久即成为其对立面。同年，迫于经济压力及为摆脱家庭宗教和自身狭隘环境的束缚，自行流亡到欧洲大陆，先后在法国、瑞士、意大利过着流离的生活，广泛地吸取欧洲大陆和世界文化的精华。1905年以后，携妻子儿女在意大利的里亚斯特定居，带病坚持文学创作詹姆斯•乔伊斯是二十世纪最伟大的作家之一，他的作品及“意识流”思想对全世界产生了巨大的影响。本文回顾了乔伊斯的生平，作品及其进入中国的过程与途径，中国文学界对他的研究以及鲁迅对他的一些看法。
一、生平与作品
1882年2月2日，乔伊斯（James Joyce）出生在爱尔兰的都柏林。他的父亲对民族主义有坚定的信念，母亲则是虔诚的天主教徒。乔伊斯出生的时候，爱尔兰这个风光绮丽的岛国是英国的殖民地，战乱不断，民不聊生。他有一大群弟弟妹妹，但他父亲偏爱这个才华横溢的长子，“不论这一家人有没有足够的东西吃，也给他钱去买外国书籍。”他从小就在教会学校接受天主教教育，学习成绩出众，并初步表现出非凡的文学才能。1898年乔伊斯进入都柏林大学专攻哲学和语言，1902年6月，乔伊斯毕业于都柏林大学学院，获得了现代语学士学位。10月2日，他登记到圣西希莉亚医学院修课。可是，在这里只念到11月初就因为经济困难而放弃了学业。1904年，他偕女友诺拉私奔欧洲大陆，从此义无返顾地开始了长及一生的流亡生涯，中间仅仅点缀着短期的回乡探亲，1911年后便再也不曾踏上爱尔兰的土地。他一生颠沛流离，辗转于的里雅斯特、罗马、巴黎等地，多以教授英语和为报刊撰稿糊口，又饱受眼疾折磨，到晚年几乎完全失明；但他对文学矢志不渝，勤奋写作，终成一代巨匠。1939年巴黎沦陷，12月他带着家眷疏散到法国南部。1940年12月17日，乔伊斯夫妇把患精神分裂病的女儿露西亚留在法国的一家医院，狼狈不堪地逃到瑞士的苏黎世。第二年的1月10日，乔伊斯因腹部痉挛住院，查明是十二指肠溃疡穿孔，在13日凌晨去世，终年59岁。
乔伊斯的文学生涯始于他1904年开始创作的短篇小说集《都柏林人》。在写给出版商理查兹的一封信中，他明确地表述了这本书的创作原则：“我的宗旨是要为我国的道德和精神史写下自己的一章。”这实际上也成了他一生文学追求的目标。在乔伊斯眼中，处于大英帝国和天主教会双重压迫和钳制下的爱尔兰是一个不可救药的国家，而都柏林则是它“瘫痪的中心”，在这个城市里每时每地都上演着麻木、苦闷、沦落的一幕幕活剧。
詹姆斯•乔依斯于1904年1月7日，在他母亲逝世之后4个月起在都柏林开始创作长篇小说《青年艺术家画像》，1914年完稿于意大利的里雅斯特，历时10年。长篇小说《青年艺术家的画像》有强烈的自传色彩，主要描写都柏林青年斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯如何试图摆脱妨碍他的发展的各种影响——家庭束缚、宗教传统和狭隘的民族主义情绪，去追求艺术与美的真谛。乔伊斯通过斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯的故事，实际上提出了艺术家与社会、与生活的关系问题，并且饶有趣味地揭示了这样一个事实：斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯本人恰恰就是他力图逃避的都柏林世界所造就的，都柏林无形中报复了反叛的青年艺术家。
长篇小说《尤利西斯》是一个平凡的小人物一生中平凡一天的记录，即主人公广告经纪人利奥波德•布卢姆在1904年6月16日一天的活动。乔伊斯在本书中将象征主义与自然主义铸于一炉，借用古希腊史诗《奥德修纪》的框架，把布卢姆一天18小时在都柏林的游荡比作希腊史诗英雄尤利西斯10年的海上漂泊，使《尤利西斯》具有了现代史诗的概括性。《尤利西斯》以三个人物为主，除代表庸人主义的布卢姆外，还有他的妻子、代表肉欲主义的莫莉以及代表虚无主义的青年斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯。小说通过这三个人一天的生活，把他们的全部历史、全部精神生活和内心世界表现得淋漓尽致。
长篇小说《芬尼根守夜人》以都柏林近郊一家酒店老板的潜意识和梦幻为线索，是一部用梦幻的语言写成的梦幻的作品。乔伊斯借用意大利18世纪思想家维柯关于世界在四种不同社会形态中循环的观点，在此框架中展开庞杂的内容。书中暗喻《圣经》、莎士比亚、古代宗教、近代历史、都柏林地方志等，大量借用外国词语甚至自造词汇，通过夸张的联想，喻示爱尔兰乃至全人类的历史、全宇宙的运动。
除上述三部作品，乔伊斯还著有诗集《室内乐集》和剧本《流亡者》。
在乔伊斯的一生中，民族主义思想是贯彻始终的。早在1912年8月22日，刚届而立之年的乔伊斯就在致妻子诺拉的信中写道：“我是也许终于在这个不幸的民族的灵魂中铸造了一颗良心的这一代作家之一。”1936年，乔伊斯边读着英国版《尤利西斯》的校样边对弗里斯•莫勒说：他为了这一天，“已斗了二十年”。 乔伊斯从1914年着手写《尤利西斯》，但直到1918年美国的《小评论》才开始连载。最早的单行本是1922年在法国由莎士比亚书屋出版的。德（1927）、法（1929）、日（1932年出四分册，1935年出第五分册）译本相继问世后，美国版（兰登书屋，1934）也出版。然而对乔伊斯来说，最重要的是《尤利西斯》在英国本土的出版。也难怪他对丹麦诗人、小说家汤姆•克里斯滕森说：“现在，英国和我之间展开的战争结束了，而我是胜利者。”他指的是，尽管《尤利西斯》里对1901年去世的维多利亚女王及太子（当时［1904］在位的国王爱德华七世）均有不少贬词，英国最终不得不承认这本书，让它一字不删地出版。
乔伊斯在作品中所表现出来的对民族对国家的热爱，深深感动着爱尔兰人民。而爱尔兰人是这么崇拜乔伊斯的，甚至把《尤利西斯》中描写主人公利奥波德•布卢姆一天全部活动的六月十六日定为“布卢姆日”，该节日后来成为了仅次于国庆日（三月十七日圣巴特里克节）的大节日。
二、乔伊斯进入中国文学界的视野
“意识流”这一术语最早是由美国哲学家兼心理学家威廉•詹姆斯于20世纪初提出来的，随后便被借用到了文学领域。而乔伊斯就是意识流文学作品的开山鼻祖，其长篇小说《尤利西斯》成为了意识流作品的代表作，是二十世纪最伟大的小说之一。
20世纪中国文学曾受到西方意识流理论和创作的影响，并在此基础上形成和发展起来了中国的意识流文学。“意识流”这一概念进入中国语境经由两条路线：一条由西方先“流”到日本，再由日本“流”到中国；另一条则由西方直接“流”到中国。在时间上，前者稍早于后者。因此，我们在考察意识流进入中国之前，首先应当检查意识流是如何进入日本文化语境的。最早把乔伊斯介绍到日本的是当时活跃在日本和欧美的著名诗人野口米次郎（1875－1947）。他于1918年3月，在著名杂志《学灯》发表了介绍乔伊斯《年轻艺术家的肖像》的文章《一个画家的肖像》。他称赞“这部小说是用英语写成的近代名作”。 另外，较早留下了关于乔伊斯记载的是芥川龙之介。他刊登在《三S》（《サンエス》1920年3月号）杂志上的文章《〈我鬼窟日录〉摘抄》谈到他曾购买丸善书店发行的《年轻艺术家的肖像》。并在1920年9月发表于《人间》杂志的《〈杂笔〉中的“孩子”》中这样谈到乔伊斯：“乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》无论如何看都是对儿童感受的直接述写。或者也许可以说是具有那种只要有一点感受就写下来的心情吧。但是无论怎样珍品就是珍品，像他这样写文章的找不到第二个。我想，读一读是有好处的。（8月20日）”
正因为如此，他后来还亲自翻译了《年轻艺术家的肖像》的一部分。
中日两国一衣带水，交往密切，日本文坛对西方意识流文学的关注和译介很快就被中国知识界注意到了。不过，日本人最初对意识流的介绍和把握并不准确。1933年由高明翻译的早稻田教授吉江乔松撰写的《西洋文学概论》便将普鲁斯特与乔伊斯归为超现实主义流派。朱云影在《现代》（第3卷第1期）上写了一则《日本通信》：“‘新心理派’以伊藤整等为代表，虽然出了几种同人杂志，理论宣传得颇热闹，但是作品简直没有，倒是翻译的朱易士（James Joyce）的《尤利西斯》（Ulysses）非常畅销，正宗白鸟曾推森欧外翻译的《即兴诗人》为明治时代的最大杰作，那么这里也不妨认为《尤利西斯》为新心理派的杰作了。 ”
乔伊斯及其《尤利西斯》就这样经由日本来到了中国。
高明撰写的《一九三三年的欧美文坛》中有这样一段：“朱伊士在‘Transition’杂志上连载了‘Work in Progress’。在尝试着英语革命的点上，被人注目着。有时候把字连在一起，有时候利用句子所有的联想：看他的意思像是在表现上开一新境地。他也许是说，‘新的感觉需要新的字眼’吧？在那里同时附着新字辞解；因为在那文章里，不加解释，是没有理解的可能的。”文中“Work in Progress”指的是乔伊斯的最后一部小说《为芬尼根守灵》，该书1927年起在杂志上连载，1939年出版。在文章末尾作者注明道，本文“系根据1934年日本中央公论年报写成”。这又一次证明乔伊斯是辗转日本来到中国的。
三、中国文学界与乔伊斯作品
在《尤利西斯》出版的当年，在剑桥留学的著名诗人徐志摩就读到了这部作品，并在他的《康桥西野暮色》前言中称赞它是一部独一无二的作品。他以诗人特有的激情奔放的语言歌颂该书最后没有标点的一章："那真是纯粹的'ｐｒｏｓｅ'，像牛酪一样润滑，像教堂里石坛一样光澄……一大股清丽浩瀚的文章排傲面前，像一大匹白罗披泄，一大卷瀑布倒挂，丝毫不露痕迹，真大手笔！"
1922 年,茅盾先生在《小说月报》第13 卷11 号上撰短文介绍詹姆斯•乔伊斯的新作《尤利西斯》:新近乔安司(James Joyce) 的“Ulysses”单行本问世,又显示了两方面的不一致。乔安司是一个准“大主义”的美国新作家。“Ulysses”先在《小评论》上分期登过: 那时就有些“流俗的”读者写信到这自号“不求同于流俗之嗜好”的《小评论》编辑部责问,并且也有谩骂的话。然而同时有一部分的青年却热心地赞美这书。英国的青年对于乔安司亦有好感: 这大概是威尔士赞“A Portraitof the Artist as a YoungMan”(亦乔氏著作,略早于Ulysses)的结果。可是大批评家培那(Arnold Bennett) 新近做了一篇论文, 对于Ulysses 很不满意了。他请出传统的“小说规律”来,指责Ulysses 里面的散漫的断句的写法为不合体裁了。虽然他也说:“此书最好的几节文字是不朽,”但贬多于褒,终不能说他是赞许这部”。
30年代现代主义在中国掀起第二次高潮,大背景下零散的乔伊斯介绍文字略见增加,值得一提的是出现两篇不长的专论,乔氏的短篇“Counterpart”也首次完整地翻译过来。两篇专论立足点全然不同,因此所描述的乔氏亦判然有别。第一篇评述是费鉴照撰写的《爱尔兰作家乔欧斯》。⑧此文不曾预设乔是进步的或者颓废的,持论比较客观。费文介绍了《杜白林人》和《画像》,重点放在《游离散思》(即Ulysses) 上。费文尝试解读乔,少数地方略见切入,但总体不成功(篇幅短是一个原因) ,围着乔伊斯转一圈而已。此文认为《尤》“是一部包罗近代世界的一切———政治,宗教,实际,人道主义等等的作品”,有很多优点,但认为不能说该书是一种“新的”,而且有明显的缺点: 一是“重局部而忽略整个的谐和”,二是“注重人的肉体方面,而忽略精神方面”。虽然以今天的角度看,费所说的缺点属于误读,但费是读过原著来尝试批评的。费文的缺点是下功夫不够,将乔当作一般作家来阅读,说到底是缺乏真正的兴趣。
另一篇专论是周立波1935 年5 月6 日在《申报•自由谈》上揭载的《詹姆斯乔易斯》。文章前半部分比较客观地介绍了乔氏在现代文学史上的地位,乔的生活道路,其创作的流变与发展;主要的评述基本符合事实,但认为《画像》“没有独创的地方”。文章的后半部分问题却很大。周看乔伊斯的出发点,与苏联出版的《英国文学史纲》里的观点完全一致,连所用的基本贬词(如“颓废”) 也完全相同。从中可以看出他受苏联文学批评的影响。苏联在1935年首译《尤》,只选译第一至第十节,刊苏联《世界文学》杂志,因此可以认为,立波写此文跟苏联选译《尤》有关,其资料来源来自苏联,并没有立波自己的意见,立波本人也未读过原著,lv 因此连误读亦无从说起,误读的源头在苏联。周立波与早期茅盾、徐志摩、费鉴照、赵景深、赵家璧、杨昌溪等人的评述或译述有很大不同,从影响源方面看,后者的基本观点是西方的,前者则是苏联的,前者武断主观,后者的批评充满迟疑和困惑,批评对象把握不住,语焉不详之处甚多;前者则是清楚明白的持否定态度。周立波此文的观点在40 年代后半、以及50 —60 年代逐步演成压倒一切的主调。
傅东华译的《复本》(即Counterpart) 当为乔氏小说的首次汉译。译文前有译者以否定的笔调写的约四五百言的简介,译文本身有傅一贯的流畅,内容大致查看下来亦无甚大不妥。在那一期的《文学》(2 卷3 期) 上还刊出中年乔伊斯的相片一帧和漫画一幅。
中国另一次对乔氏作品的翻译,是一份影响似乎不太大、只出了10 期的文学刊物《西洋文学》。这份创刊于1940 年的刊物为乔伊斯作品在中国再次试探性登陆做出过重要贡献。该刊在1941年推出“乔易斯特辑”,内有乔易斯像、乔的诗选、短篇《一件惨事》和《友律色斯》(Ulysses) 插话三节,还有翻译的爱德蒙•威尔逊( Ed2mund Wilson) 的《乔易斯论》。该刊还在“书评栏”里发了署名兴华的书论,介绍1939 年才问世的《斐尼根的醒来》。据该刊主要编辑之一张芝联介绍,该杂志内容“百分之九十都是译文”,从它推出的托尔斯泰特辑、叶芝特辑和乔伊斯特辑来看,从它发表译作的译者队伍来看,这个短命的杂志其实在当时算得上一份高品味译文杂志,它与朱光潜主编的《文学杂志》、徐志摩等主编的《新月》一样,同具一份学人的高雅格调,惜乎它在中国文学史上、在翻译文学史上以及现代文学期刊史上并未受到应有的重视。
1949 年后至1978 年30 年间,连上面这种“杂碎”似的介绍几乎都见不到了,即便是偶尔提到,乔伊斯也像是一具散发着恶臭的腐尸。
１９５０年１１月，朱光潜先生在路易•哈拉普的《艺术的社会起源》译后补记里也表达了同样的态度。朱先生虽没有直接评论本书，但否定了哈拉普视《尤利西斯》是运用传统的一个最好说明，而且是几个世纪文学发展最高峰的观点。１９６４年袁可嘉在《文学研究集刊》第一期上发表的《英美意识流小说述评》，对《尤利西斯》也持批判态度。
1978 年创刊的《外国文艺》享有一份光荣,即该刊在1980 年第4 期上发了3 篇乔伊斯短篇小说,即《死者》(王智量【 智量】译) 、《阿拉比》和《小人物》(宗白译) 。3 个短篇选目出手不凡,其中前2篇是世界文学的短篇精品。这大概是新时期发表的对乔氏作品最早的译介。
该书初版半个世纪之后的１９７９年，钱钟书先生在所著的《管锥编》（第一册的３９４页）中用《尤利西斯》第十五章的词句（乔伊斯将ｙｅｓ和ｎｏ 改造为ｎｅｓ，ｙｏ）解释了《史记》中的话。１９８１年，袁可嘉等人选编的《外国现代作品选》第二册关于意识流的部分收入了《尤利西斯》第二章的中译，并附有袁本人的短评，对于该书的文学价值和地位重新给予了肯定。
资深翻译家黄雨石先生默默工作,他译的《青年艺术家的画像》已由外国文学出版社1983 年出版。这是大陆出版的第一部乔氏作品单行本,亦是大陆译介乔伊斯的第一部完整的长篇小说。1984 年10 月,孙梁译的《都柏林人》7 个短篇加上宗白等人人的其他8篇译作,,由上海译文出版社以《都柏林人》之名出版。
80 年代最早的《尤》选译,是金 译的第二章,收入袁可嘉等主编的《外国现代派作品选》第二册(上) ;5 年后《世界文学》揭载金译《尤》的第二、六、十章和第十八章片断; 越年,百花出版社推出《尤》的选译本,并且增加了第十五章的片断译文。这些是中国第二次《尤》的选译,是在研读的基础上选译的,量与质均较高。
九十年代中叶，意识流开山之作、长篇巨著《尤利西斯》有了两部全译本：萧乾、文洁若合译的由南京译林出版社于一九九四年出版；金盽所译的则由人民文学出版社出版（1994年至1996年）。
《尤利西斯》一问世就是一部令一般读者头疼、也让批评家伤神的作品，即使在今天这种情况也未得到丝毫的改善。在英语国家它被视为一部公认的"天书"，翻译这样一部作品显然是异常困难的。目前国内的译本，较著名的有译林出版社萧乾、文洁若夫妇的合译本（文化艺术出版社２００２．６推出该版修订本）和人民文学出版社金堤先生的译本（天津百花文艺出版社１９８７年出版过他的节译本）；此外还有京华出版社"世界十大经典名著"中收入的纪江红的译本，呼和浩特远方出版社的"世界禁书文库"中李进的译本，内蒙古人民出版社的"外国私家藏书"李虹的译本，还有内蒙古儿童出版社和内蒙古文化出版社章影光的译本等。尽管在《尤利西斯》中译本出来以后报刊上介绍和研究乔伊斯的文章越来越多，但相关的研究专著国内目前还比较欠缺，仅有上海外国语大学李维屏教授的《乔伊斯的美学思想和小说艺术》（上海外语教育出版社，２０００）。已出版的有关乔伊斯的介绍和传记类作品有：袁鹤年译格罗斯著《乔伊斯》（三联书店，１９８６），何及锋、柳萌译科斯特洛著《乔伊斯》（中国社会科学出版社，１９９０），陈恕的《〈尤利西斯〉导读》（译林出版社，１９９４），贺明华译布伦南•马多克斯的《乔伊斯与诺拉》（百花文艺出版社，１９９７），林玉珍译彼得•寇斯提罗的《乔伊斯传--解读〈尤利西斯〉》（海南出版社，１９９９），袁德成的《詹姆斯•乔伊斯--现代尤利西斯》》（四川人民出版社，１９９９），周柳宁译诺里斯、弗林特合著的《乔伊斯》（外语教学与研究出版社，２０００），白裕承译的伽斯特•安德森的《乔伊斯》（天津百花出版社，２００１）和剑桥大学出版社编著的《詹姆斯•乔伊斯》（上海外语教育出版社，２００１）等十多种。
目前，北京师范大学刘象愚教授翻译多年的《尤利西斯》已经完成初稿。早在1985年，刘象愚就翻译过《尤利西斯》第三章《斯蒂芬在海滩》，发表于当年3月印行的《外国现代派小说概观》上，他曾表示，像这样一部宏伟、壮观、包容浩瀚，或者换言之晦涩、艰奥、光怪陆离的作品，再有一个中译本也是不嫌多的。已经问世的两个译本各有长短，他的译文当尽量弥补不足。 刘译《尤利西斯》将收入由中国社科院外文所研究员王逢振和刘象愚主编的《乔伊斯全集》。全集收入《都柏林人》《尤利西斯》《一个青年艺术家的画像》《芬尼根的守灵夜》等乔伊斯全部长篇小说，和诗歌、剧本、日记、评论，以及他人评乔伊斯作品的评论集， 预计将在今年年底出版。
四、鲁迅与乔伊斯
鲁迅与乔伊斯有着很多相似之处，无论其背景、经历还是精神品格，以至创作方法。但鲁迅似乎从没有谈到过乔伊斯，这使人略感遗憾：鲁迅十分关注现代主义文艺思潮，举凡当时流行的新流派，他几乎都作过涉猎和评介，自己在创作中也运用了与乔伊斯“意识流”或“心理主义文学”相似的手法，可是对于当时已经名声大噪的乔伊斯，却没有作什么评说，这不免令人困惑。是不是没有注意到呢？也不是。其实，也许因为民族的命运有相似之处（爱尔兰曾长期受英国统治），鲁迅对爱尔兰文学给予了特别的关注，也关注过乔伊斯。
早在留学日本时期，鲁迅就涉猎英国、爱尔兰文学，当时，爱尔兰还没有脱离英国，爱尔兰文学常被作为英国文学的一部分看，鲁迅所涉猎的英国文学通常包含爱尔兰文学。他曾搜读《英国文学史》，他与周作人合译的《域外小说集》已收有O•王尔德的《快乐王子》。后来他又陆续阅读了勃兰兑斯的《十九世纪文学主潮》，德林克瓦特的《文学大纲》，其中对爱尔兰文学都有述及。作品方面，至少读过王尔德、史文朋、萧伯纳、巴雷、威尔斯、高斯等人的作品。
1927年11月，鲁迅刚到上海才一个多月，就在内山书店买了一本日本学者野口米次郎的随笔集《爱尔兰情调》，这本书是集中评述爱尔兰文学的。之后，他在短短的一个星期内（从11月25日到30日）接连买了户川秋骨的《英国文学笔记》和英国《布鲁克英国文学史》及日本佐治秀寿的《英国小说史》，一个月后又购买了斋藤勇的《以思潮为中心的英国文学史》，显示这一时期他对英国、爱尔兰文学的特别关注。这以后不久，鲁迅就开始编辑《奔流》月刊和《朝花》周刊，这两个刊物都大量介绍了英国和爱尔兰文学。
1929年6月，鲁迅从野口那本《爱尔兰情调》中选译了《爱尔兰文学之回顾》一文刊登在《奔流》二卷二期上，并在《编校后记》中特别指出：野口的文章“很简明扼要，于爱尔兰文学运动的来因去果，是说得了了分明的；中国前几年，于Yeats，Synge等人的事情和作品，曾经屡有绍介了，现在这一篇，也许更可以帮助一点理解罢。”野口这篇文章简要评介了爱尔兰文艺复兴运动的发展，评述到的人主要有叶芝、沁孤、萧伯纳、弗格森等著名作家，但没有提到乔伊斯。
到1933年，鲁迅又一次出现集中购买有关英国文学书籍的现象（这可能跟当时萧伯纳来华有关），接连买了平田秃木的《英国文学漫步》、中川芳太郎的《英国文学风物志》。到这时为止，鲁迅谈到过的爱尔兰作家除上面提到的以外，还有格列高里夫人、A.E.（拉塞尔）等等。
进入1934年，乔伊斯的名字终于在鲁迅笔下出现了：1月4日，他在内山书店买了一本专论乔伊斯的书《以乔伊斯为中心的文学运动》，这是日本的文学史家春山行夫写的一本评述当时欧洲文学发展的专著，1933年由东京第一书房出版。
春山行夫把乔伊斯视为引领欧洲文学新潮流的代表性人物，因为乔伊斯这时已在巴黎住了十几年，而《尤利西斯》是首先在美国发表的，以至当茅盾先生最初在《小说月报》上介绍他的时候，也误以为他是美国人。由此也更可见，这时乔伊斯已经不是仅仅以爱尔兰作家的身份，而是以“国际性”作家身份亮相于世界文坛，已经具有很大的名声和影响力了。春山行夫这本书，评述了众多英联邦（尤其是爱尔兰）重要作家，包括叶芝、萧伯纳、王尔德、A.E.（拉塞尔）等21人与乔伊斯的关系，每人设专章评述，很是详明。跟别人不同的是，他认为当时盛行的“爱尔兰文艺复兴运动”是以乔伊斯为中心而不是叶芝，不少欧洲当代的重要作家都受到了乔伊斯的影响，甚至俄国的陀思妥耶夫斯基的细腻心理描写方法也与此有关。
但不知为什么，一向具有先锋意识，密切关注世界文学新思潮、新流派，并几乎评介过所有现代主义文艺流派的鲁迅，“跟踪”爱尔兰文学并读了春山行夫的书之后，却并没有对乔伊斯发表评论。《尤利西斯》1922年一发表，茅盾就在《小说月报》上作了介绍；同年，留学英国的徐志摩也在剑桥盛赞该书；之后，赵景深1929年在《文学周报》上，高明1933年、赵家璧1934年在《现代》月刊上，周立波1935年在《申报•自由谈》上分别作了越来越详细的介绍。鲁迅是这些报刊的长期读者，也一直收藏着这些报刊，可以肯定：他是看到过这些介绍的。
这主要有两种可能：一是因为没有读到乔伊斯本人的作品，出于谨慎，暂不发表看法；二是因为茅盾1922年介绍说，乔伊斯是“一个准‘大大主义’的美国新作家”。“大大主义”即“达达主义”，鲁迅曾评为“装鬼脸”，不甚欣赏。但在看到作品之前，他也不会轻率发表意见，是还想看一看究竟吧。
詹姆斯·乔伊斯 - 大事纪年表
一八八二年 三月二日生于都柏林南郊拉斯马因兹一个信天主教的家庭中。
其父约翰·乔伊斯（1849一1931）是税务专员，与妻子米莉·简（1859一1903）
共生有四男六女，乔伊斯为长子。
一八八六年（4岁）英首相葛莱斯顿的《自治法案》未获通过。
一八八八年（6岁）九月一日入基德尔县沙林斯市的克朗戈伍斯森林公学，校
长是天主教耶稣会会长康米神父。乔伊斯是学生中年龄最小的。
一八九0年（8岁）爱尔兰民族主义领袖巴涅尔失去自治联盟主席职。
一八九一年（9岁）因父亲失业，乔伊斯于六月间退学。同年十月， 巴涅尔去
世，乔伊斯出于对巴涅尔的同情，写了一首讽刺诗《希利，你也这样！》。希利是
爱尔兰自治运动和土地改革运动中的领袖，本与巴涅尔关系密切，但在关键时刻却
与巴涅尔决裂。
一八九三年（11岁）经康米神父介绍，乔伊斯于四月六日入了贝尔维迪尔公学
三年级。这座学校也是耶稣会所创办的，他一度想当神父。十九世纪以来，在都柏
林形成了以叶芝、格雷戈里夫人及辛格为中心的爱尔兰文艺复兴运动，他直接间接
受影响。通过友人，他也受到爱尔兰民族独立运动的影响。然而给予他更强烈影响
的是，十九世纪末出现在欧洲文学中的自由思想。中学毕业前，他就对宗教信仰产
生了怀疑。
一八九七年（15岁）获全爱尔兰最佳作文奖。
一八九八年（16岁）九月入皇家大学都柏林学院，专攻哲学和语言。在校期
间博览群书，为了读他最钦佩的作家易卜生的原著，学了丹表文和挪威文。
一九00年（18岁）一月二十日，在学院的文学及历史协会发表讲演，题目是《
戏剧与人生》。四月一日，英国文学杂志《半月评论》发表他的关于易卜生作品《
当我们死而复醒时》（1899）的评论：《易卜生的新戏剧》。此文获得年过七旬的
易卜生的称许，使乔伊斯深受鼓舞，从而坚定了他走上文学道路的决心。
一九0一年（19岁）十月，写《喧嚣的时代》一文，批评爱尔兰文艺剧院的
狭隘的民族主义，自费出版。
一九0二年（20岁）夏天，结识叶芝和剧作家格雷戈里夫人。十月获学士学位，
入圣塞西莉亚医学院，因交不起学费而缀学。十二月初赴巴黎，下旬回都柏林。
一九0三年（21岁）一月十七日再度离开都柏林，二十三日抵巴黎， 靠写书
评和教英语糊口。四月十日，接到母亲病危的电报回国。八月十三日，母亲去世。
在都柏林结交奥利弗·戈加蒂。
一九0四年（22岁）开始写自传体小说《艺术家年轻时的写照》， 二月二日决
定把它改写为长篇小说。三月至六月底，在多基一座私立的克里夫顿学校代课。六
月十日，散步途中结识诺拉·巴那克尔，一见钟情。十六日（布卢姆日）傍晚，两
人首次幽会。这个期间写了后来收入《都柏林人》的一些短篇，发表在当地报刊上。
用斯蒂芬·迪达勒斯的笔名，在八月十三日的《爱尔兰家园报》上发表短篇《姐妹
》。九月九日，与戈加蒂一道住进沙湾的圆形炮塔。同住的还有戈加蒂的友人萨缨
尔·特连奇（牛津大学学生）。十九日，因不喜欢戈加蒂，遂离开炮塔，回到父亲
的家。十月上旬偕诺拉赴大陆，联系好在瑞士教英语的职务。途经巴黎，十一日抵
苏黎世。然而教职落了空，十一月初改赴波拉的伯利兹语言学校任教。波拉在的里
雅斯特（当时属于奥地利）以南一百五十英里外。
一九0五年（23岁）三月，转到的里雅斯特的伯利兹语言学校任教。 七月，因
教职有了空缺，把胞弟斯坦尼斯劳斯叫了来。同月，长子乔治亚出生。十二月三日，
将《都柏林人》原稿十二篇（后补加三篇）寄给出版家理查兹。
一九0六年（24岁）七月底赴罗马，在银行任通讯员。九月三十日在致斯坦尼
斯劳斯的信中谈到短篇小说《尤利西斯》的设想。 主人公是住在都柏林的一个犹
太人。但他当时并未把这个短篇写出。四月以来，就改写短篇小说集《都柏林人》
的问题与理查兹鱼雁往还。九月三十日收到拒绝出版的信。
一九0七年（25岁）三月五日辞去银行的工作，七月回的里雅斯特，仍在原校
任教。五月，早年写的抒情诗集《室内音乐》出版。 七月，长女露西亚·安娜出
生。他辞去教职，个别教授英语。
一九0八年（26岁）三月，将辛格的《骑马下海人》（1904年上演的悲剧）译
成意大利文。五月底，患虹膜炎。
一九0九年（27岁）为了交涉《都柏林人》出版事宜，七月回到都柏林，住在
父亲家，并与蒙塞尔出版社签订《都柏林人》出版合同。九月里回到的里雅斯特。
十月又返回都柏林，在四个企业家赞助下，十二月间开设沃尔特电影院。
一九一0年（28岁）一月二日，在妹妹艾琳的陪伴下，回到的里雅斯特。七
月，把闹亏损的沃尔特电影院出让给人。
一九一一年（29岁）二月九日，蒙塞尔出版社来信，要求将涉及爱德华七世的
记述一概删除。大约在这个时候，他把《斯蒂芬英雄》的原稿丢进火炉，幸而妹妹
艾琳在场，给抢了出来。
一九一二年（30岁）七月最后一次回爱尔兰。与蒙塞尔出版社的谈判破裂。九
月十一日活字版被拆掉。当夜，乔伊斯携全家人离开都柏林。在回到的里雅斯特的
路上，他针对出版家罗伯茨写了一首讽刺诗《火口喷出来的瓦斯》。
一九一三年（31岁）在列沃帖拉高等商业学校（的里雅斯特大学的前身）教书
的同时，继续个别教授英语。十二月十五日，经叶芝介绍，艾琳拉·庞德来信叫他
寄作品去。
一九一四年（32岁）经庞德的介绍，自二月二日起，至次年九月号为止，在《
唯我主义者》杂志上分二十五次连载《艺术家年轻时的写照》。一月二十九日，理
查兹同意出版《都柏林人》，该书于六月十五日问世。当月，开始写《尤利西斯》
第三章。
一九一五年（33岁）六月下旬移居苏黎世。继续个别教授英语。经庞德、叶
芝等人奔走，获得皇家文学基金的津贴。
一九一六年（34岁）经《唯我主义者》主编哈丽特·维沃尔鼎力协助，《都柏
林人》以及《艺术家年轻时的写照》在美国出版。
一九一七年（35岁）二月，青光眼复发。二月十二日，《写照》的英国版由伦
敦的唯我主义者出版社出版。八月十八日，右眼动手术。
一九一八年（36岁）经庞德介绍，在美国《小评论》杂志三月号上开始连载
《尤利西斯》。五月，剧本《流亡者》的英国版《格兰特·理查兹》和美国版（休
布修）同时问世。与友人克劳德·赛克斯共同创立英国演员剧团，夏季到洛桑、日
内瓦等城市巡回演出王尔德的《名叫欧纳斯特的重要性》，并于九月间在苏黎世公
演萧伯纳的《华伦夫人的职业》以及另外一些英国戏剧。
一九一九年（37岁）自五月起，哈丽特·维沃尔开始在经济上资助乔伊斯，一
直延续到他去世后办理丧事为止。八月七日，《流亡者》在慕尼黑上演。十月中旬
返回的里雅斯特，又到列沃帖拉高等商业学校教书。
一九二0年（38岁）在庞德的劝说下，决定移居巴黎，七月八日抵巴黎。 十一
日结识莎士比亚书屋的西尔薇亚·毕奇。八月十五日，诗人T·S·艾略特等二人来
访。十二月二十日完成《尤利西斯》第十五章。
一九二一年（39岁）《小评论》杂志因连载《尤利西斯》，在纽约被控告刊载
猥亵作品被判有罪。四月十日，与西尔薇亚·毕奇签订《尤利西斯》出版合同，征
集一千部的预约。预约者有叶芝、庞德、纪德、海明威等。五月间在友人家与马塞
尔·普鲁斯特晤面。十月二十九日，《尤利西斯》的原稿完成。
一九二二年（40岁）在生日（2月2日）那天收到《尤利西斯》的样本。八月携
妻赴伦敦，初次见到哈丽特·维沃尔。因目疾恶化，急忙回巴黎。开始构思《芬尼
根守灵夜》。
一九二三年（41岁）三月十日，着手写《芬尼根守灵夜》。
一九二四年（42岁）三月，《艺术家年轻时的写照》的法译本出版，改名《迪
达勒斯》。《尤利西斯》法译的一部分刊载在《交流》杂志上。四月，《大西洋两
岸评论》刊载《芬尼根守灵夜》开头部分。当年，维吉尼亚·吴尔夫出版小册子《
本涅特先生和布朗太太》，对乔伊斯的作品表示支持。哈佛·葛曼所著《詹姆斯·
乔伊斯最初的四十年》出版。
一九二五年（43岁）二月十九日，纽约的涅瓦弗德剧场上演《流亡者》。在《克
莱帖里昂》七月号上发表《芬尼根守灵夜》第五章。
一九二六年（44岁）二月十四、十五日，伦敦的摄政剧场上演《流亡者》。
一九二七年（45岁）抒情诗集《一分钱一首的诗》由莎士比亚书屋出版。《尤
利西斯》的德译本问世。
一九二九年（47岁）二月，《尤利西斯》法译本出版。四月二十五日，儿子乔
治亚作为男低音歌手首次登台演唱。女儿露西亚神经出现异常症状。
一九三0年（48岁）《尤利西斯》德译本出版第三版。十二月下旬， 受乔伊斯
本人之托，哈佛·葛曼着手写其传记。斯图尔特·吉尔伯特的《詹姆斯·乔伊斯的
〈尤利西斯〉》由费伯与费伯出版社出版，他强调了此作的古典主义性格与象征性。
（此书的修订本出版于1952年。）
一九三一年（49岁）四月，携妻女赴伦敦。七月四日是父亲约翰的生日， 乔
伊斯选定这一天在伦敦与诺拉正式结婚。自从一九0四年不顾父亲的反对与诺拉私
奔，已过了二十七年。十二月二十九日，其父亲在都柏林逝世。
一九三二年（50岁）二月十五日，孙儿斯蒂芬·詹姆斯·乔伊斯出生。《尤利
西斯》日译本由岩波书店出版。乔伊斯本人认为属盗印，但按日本版权法，外国作
品只享有版权十年。
一九三三年（51岁）十二月六日，纽约的乌尔赛法官宣判《尤利西斯》并非
猥亵作品。
一九三四年（52岁）一月，为了确保版权，纽约的兰登书屋抢先出版一百部
《尤利西斯》。弗兰克·勃真所著《詹姆斯·乔伊斯与〈尤利西斯〉的创造》由伦
敦格雷森与格雷森出版社出版（修订本于一九六七年由美国印第安纳大学出版社出
版）。
一九三五年（53岁）七月，女儿露西亚的神经病发作，致使乔伊斯做了一星
期恶梦，不断地为幻觉困扰。
一九三六年（54岁）七月，将露西亚以前写的《乔叟入门》作为她的生日（6
月26日）礼物出版。十二月，《诗集》出版。
一九三七年（55岁）十月，《年轻内向的斯特列拉》在伦敦出版。
一九三八年（56岁）十一月十三日，《芬尼根守灵夜》完成。乔伊斯动员友人
们做校对，年底校完。
一九三九年（57岁）五月四日，《芬尼根守灵夜》在伦敦和纽约同时出版。
一九四0年（58岁）十二月十七日，迁居到苏黎世。哈佛·葛曼的《詹姆斯·乔
伊斯》出版。
一九四一年（59岁）一月十日，因腹部痉挛住院，查明系十二指肠溃疡穿孔，
十三日凌晨去世。十五日葬于苏黎世的弗林贴隆坟地。《伦敦泰晤士报》刊载了一
篇对乔伊斯缺乏理解的悼文。T·S·艾略特立即写文章表示抗议，并在《地平线》
杂志三月号上发表《告鱼书》一文，进一步反击。维吉尼亚·吴尔夫接到讣告，感
慨系之。（她于同年3月28日也自杀身死。）这一年，哈利·莱文撰写了《詹姆斯·
乔伊斯》一书，肯定了乔伊斯在欧洲文学史上的地位。
Joyce was born to a lower-middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College, Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zürich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond 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.”
1882–1904: Dublin
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was the eldest of ten surviving children; two of his siblings died of typhoid. His father's family, originally from Fermoy in Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's father and paternal grandfather both married into wealthy families. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector (i.e., a collector of local property taxes) 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, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from keraunophobia, as his deeply religious aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of God's wrath.
Joyce at age six, 1888
In 1891, Joyce wrote a poem, Et Tu Healy on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic church and at the resulting failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that same year, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs Gazette (an official register 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 John's drinking and general financial mismanagement.
James Joyce began his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane in County Kildare, which he entered 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 school on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits', Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893. The offer reflected, at least in part, the hope that he would prove to have a vocation and join the Order. Joyce, however, apparently rejected Catholicism by the age of 16, although the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to influence him strongly throughout his life. L. A. G. 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 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 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 assenting and denying, saying that Steven’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 enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, studying English, French, and Italian. He also became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. In 1900 his review of Ibsen's New Drama was published in Fortnightly Review; it was his first publication and he received a note of thanks from the Norwegian dramatist himself. 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 would appear as characters in Joyce's written works.
In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce (19) as a scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace, Clontarf, Dublin.
Bust of James Joyce in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin
After graduating from UCD in 1903, Joyce left for Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned this after finding the technical lectures in French too difficult. 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 telegraph 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 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 a living reviewing books, teaching and singing—he was an accomplished tenor, and won the bronze medal in the 1904 Feis Ceoil.
On 7 January 1904 he attempted to publish A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected from 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.
The same year he met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Connemara, County Galway who was working as a chambermaid. On 16 June 1904, they first stepped out together, an event which would be commemorated by providing the date for the action of Ulysses.
Joyce remained in Dublin for some time longer, drinking heavily. After one of these drinking binges, he got into a fight over a misunderstanding with a man in Phoenix Park; he was picked up and dusted off by a minor acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who brought him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter was rumored to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, and would serve as one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the main protagonist of Ulysses. He took up with medical student Oliver St John Gogarty, who formed the basis for the character Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. After staying in Gogarty's Martello Tower for six nights he left in the middle of the night following an altercation which involved Gogarty shooting a pistol at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. He walked all the way 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 thereafter he eloped to the continent with Nora.
[edit]1904–20: Trieste and Zürich
Joyce in 1915
Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile, moving first to Zürich, where he had supposedly acquired a post to teach English at the Berlitz Language School through an agent in England. It turned out that the English agent had been swindled, but the director of the school sent him on to Trieste, which was part of Austria-Hungary until World War I (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 would remain in Trieste for most of the next ten years.
Joyce's statue in Trieste
Later that year Nora gave birth to their first child, George. Joyce then managed to talk his brother, Stanislaus, into joining him in Trieste, and secured him a position teaching at the school. James's ostensible reasons were desire for Stanislaus's company and the hope of offering him a more interesting life than that of his simple clerking job in Dublin. In truth, though, James hoped to augment his family's meagre income with his brother's earnings. Stanislaus and James had strained relations throughout the time they lived together in Trieste, with most arguments centering on James's drinking habits and frivolity with money.
With the chronic wanderlust of James's early years, he became frustrated with life in Trieste and moved to Rome in late 1906, having secured employment in a bank. He intensely disliked Rome, and moved back to Trieste in early 1907. His daughter Lucia was born in the summer of the same year.
Joyce returned to Dublin in mid-1909 with George, in order to visit his father and work on getting Dubliners published. He visited Nora's family in Galway, meeting them for the first time (a successful visit, to his relief). 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 only a month in Trieste before returning to Dublin, this time as a representative of some cinema owners hoping to set up a regular cinema in Dublin. The venture was successful (but quickly fell apart in Joyce's absence), and he returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen, in tow. Eva became very homesick for Dublin and returned there a few years later, but Eileen spent the rest of her life on the continent, eventually marrying Czech bank cashier Frantisek Schaurek.
Joyce returned to Dublin again briefly in mid-1912 during his years-long fight with his 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" as 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 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 the 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 surgeries.
Joyce concocted a number of money-making schemes during this period, including an attempt to become a cinema magnate in Dublin. He also frequently discussed but ultimately abandoned a plan to import Irish tweeds to Trieste. Correspondence relating to that venture with the Irish Woollen Mills are displayed in the windows of their premises on Aston's Quay in Dublin. His 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.
The so-called James-Joyce-Kanzel (plateau) at the confluence of the Sihl an Limmat rivers in Zürich where Joyce loved to relax
In 1915, after most of his students were conscripted in Trieste for World War I, he moved to Zürich. Two influential private students, Baron Ambriogo Railli 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. There, he met one of his most enduring and important friends, Frank Budgen, whose opinion Joyce constantly sought through the writing of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. It was also here where Ezra Pound brought him to the attention of English feminist and publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who would become Joyce's patron, providing him thousands of pounds over the next 25 years and relieving him of the burden of teaching in order to focus on his writing. While in Zürich he wrote Exiles, published A Portrait..., and began serious work on Ulysses. Zürich during the war was home to exiles and artists from across Europe, and its bohemian, multilingual atmosphere suited him. Nevertheless, after four years he was restless, and after the war he returned to Trieste as he had originally planned. He found the city had changed, and some of his old friends noted his maturing from teacher to full-time artist. His relations with his brother (who had been interned in an Austrian prison camp for most of the war due to his pro-Italian politics) were more strained than ever. Joyce headed to Paris in 1920 at an invitation from Ezra Pound, supposedly for a week, but he ended up living there for the next twenty years.
[edit]1920–41: Paris and Zürich
In Paris, 1924. Portrait by Patrick Tuohy.
Joyce set himself to finally finishing Ulysses in Paris, delighted to find that he was gradually gaining fame as an avant-garde writer. A further grant from Miss 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 era, Joyce's eyes began to give him more and more problems. He was treated by Dr Louis Borsch in Paris, receiving nine surgeries from him until Borsch's death in 1929. Throughout the 1930s he traveled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and treatments for Lucia, who, according to the Joyces, suffered from schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung at the time, who after reading Ulysses, concluded that her father had schizophrenia. Jung said she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that he was diving and she was falling.
Grave of James Joyce in Zürich-Fluntern
In Paris, Maria and Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during his long years of writing Finnegans Wake. Were it not for their unwavering 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 now legendary literary magazine "transition," the Jolases published serially various sections of Joyce's novel under the title Work in Progress. He returned to Zürich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of France. On 11 January 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. While at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked for a nurse to call his wife and son before losing consciousness again. They were still on their way, when he died, 15 minutes later. He is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery within earshot of the lions in the Zürich Zoo. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government subsequently declined Nora's offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. Nora, whom Joyce had finally married in London in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried now by his side, as is their son George, who died in 1976. Ellmann reports that when the arrangements for Joyce's burial were being made, a Catholic priest tried to convince Nora that there should be a funeral Mass. She replied, "I couldn't do that to him." Swiss tenor Max Meili sang Addio terra, addio cielo from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the funeral service.
[edit]Major works
[edit]Dubliners
Main article: Dubliners
The title page of the first edition of Dubliners
Joyce's Irish experiences constitute an essential element of his writings, and provide all of the settings for his fiction and much of its subject matter. His early volume of short stories, Dubliners, is a penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society. The stories incorporate epiphanies, a word used particularly by Joyce, by which he meant a sudden consciousness of the "soul" of a thing. The final and most famous story in the collection, "The Dead", was directed by John Huston as his last feature film in 1987.
[edit]A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Main article: 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 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. Joseph Strick directed a film of the book in 1977 starring Luke Johnston, Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna and John Gielgud.
[edit]Exiles and poetry
Main articles: Pomes Penyeach and Chamber Music (book)
Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of World War I 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 also 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 (referring, Joyce explained, 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 includes "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).
[edit]Ulysses
Main article: Ulysses (novel)
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 1918. This magazine was edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, with the backing of John Quinn, a New York attorney with an interest in contemporary experimental art and literature. Unfortunately, this publication encountered censorship problems in the United States; serialization was halted in 1920 when the editors were convicted of publishing obscenity. The novel was not published in the United States until 1933.
At least 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 a number of "bootleg" versions appeared, most notably a number of pirate versions from the publisher Samuel Roth. In 1928, a court injunction against Roth was obtained and he ceased publication.
With the appearance of both 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 virtually every other established 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.
Joyce talking with publishers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier at Shakespeare & Co., Paris, 1920
The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around 8 a.m. and ending some time after 2 a.m. the following morning. Each chapter employs its own literary style, and parodies a specific episode in Homer's Odyssey. Furthermore, each chapter is associated with a specific colour, art or science, and bodily organ. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal schematic structure renders the book a major contribution to the development of 20th-century modernist literature. The use of classical mythology as an organizing framework, the near-obsessive focus on external detail, and the occurrence of significant action within the minds of characters have also contributed to the development of literary modernism. 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.
[edit]Finnegans Wake
Main article: Finnegans Wake
Joyce as depicted on the Irish £10 banknote, issued 1993–2002
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 a patron, Harriet 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 (this is one example of Joyce's numerous 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. In order 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 Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. At his 47th birthday party at the Jolases' home, Joyce revealed the final title of the work and Finnegans Wake was published in book form on 4 May 1939. Later, further negative comments surfaced from doctor and author Hervey Cleckley, who questioned the significance others had placed on the work. In his book, The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley, M.D. refers to Finnegans Wake as "a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital."
Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandoned all conventions of plot and character construction and is written in a peculiar and obscure language, based mainly on complex multi-level puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. This has led many readers and critics to apply Joyce's oft-quoted description in the Wake of Ulysses as his "usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles" to the Wake itself. However, readers have been able to reach a consensus about the central cast of characters and general plot.
Much of the wordplay in the book stems from the use of multilingual puns which draw on a wide range of languages. The role played by Beckett and other assistants included collating words from these languages on cards for Joyce to use and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, of writing the text from the author's dictation.
The view of history propounded in this text is very strongly influenced by Giambattista Vico, and the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola are important to the interplay of the "characters". Vico propounded a cyclical view of history, in which civilisation rose from chaos, passed through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapsed back into chaos. The most obvious example of the influence of Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening and closing words of the book. Finnegans Wake opens with the words "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." ("vicus" is a pun on Vico) and ends "A way a lone a last a loved a long the". In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the book into one great cycle. Indeed, Joyce said that the ideal reader of the Wake would suffer from "ideal insomnia" and, on completing the book, would turn to page one and start again, and so on in an endless cycle of reading.
[edit]Legacy
Statue of James Joyce on North Earl Street, Dublin
Joyce's work has been subject to intense scrutiny by scholars of all types. He has also been an important influence on writers and scholars as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Flann O'Brien, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Salman Rushdie, Robert Anton Wilson, John Updike, and Joseph Campbell. Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement".
Some scholars, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, have mixed feelings on his work, often championing some of his fiction while condemning other works. In Nabokov's opinion, Ulysses was brilliant, Finnegans Wake horrible—an attitude Jorge Luis Borges shared. In recent years, literary theory has embraced Joyce's innovation and ambition.[citation needed]
Joyce's influence is also evident in fields other than literature. The phrase "Three Quarks for Muster Mark" in Joyce's Finnegans Wake is often called the source of the physicists' word "quark", the name of one of the main kinds of elementary particles, proposed by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has written a book on the use of language in Ulysses, and the American philosopher Donald Davidson has written similarly on Finnegans Wake in comparison with Lewis Carroll. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used Joyce's writings to explain his concept of the sinthome. According to Lacan, Joyce's writing is the supplementary cord which kept Joyce from psychosis.
The work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide.
In 1999, Time Magazine named Joyce one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, and stated; "Joyce ... revolutionized 20th century fiction". In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses No. 1, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man No. 3, and Finnegans Wake No. 77, on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
[edit]Works
Chamber Music (1907, poems)
Dubliners (1914, short-story collection)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916, novel)
Exiles (1918, play)
Ulysses (1922, novel)
Pomes Penyeach (1927, poems)
Collected Poems (1936, poems)
Finnegans Wake (1939, novel)
Posthumous publications
Stephen Hero (precursor to A Portrait; written 1904–06, published 1944)
Giacomo Joyce (written 1907, published 1968)
Letters of James Joyce Vol. 1 (Ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957)
The Critical Writings of James Joyce (Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellman, 1959)
Letters of James Joyce Vol. 2 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)
Letters of James Joyce Vol. 3 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)