James Joyce and the remaking of Modern Ireland

The gentleman she encountered was not what one might have imagined a notorious pornographer to be. Mr. Joyce was a pleasant, well dressed, even old-fashioned in his manners, his conversation, and his love of playing the piano and singing.[i] This contrast between Joyce as he appeared to those who knew or met him and the often-scabrous public reputation current among the wider public, lies at the heart of Irish attitudes to the author of Ulysses.

Now on the centenary of 16 June 1904, we can look back over the whole course of Joyce’s public reputation in Ireland, and assess what it tells us about the nature and development of modern Irish culture, indeed of modern Ireland itself. In surveying how public attitudes to Joyce developed and evolved over his lifetime, and in the decades since, I am writing not only about his critical reception, but also about something more essential to ideas about Ireland and Irish culture. I would like to argue that this approach reveals changes in the outlook of the Irish, and that developing ideas about Joyce were in themselves an important factor in the actual development of modern Ireland.

I

James Joyce’s public life began early. In June 1888, at the age of six, he appeared on stage at a public concert in Bray. As a schoolboy, Joyce was occasionally in the public eye again: a photograph of him with his school mates was published in a smart society magazine in 1894 – the year incidentally that he was first introduced to Homeric matters through the pages of Charles Lamb’s Adventures of Ulysses, which he had to study for his Intermediate Examination.

Recognised as a bright boy, Joyce scored well in his public exams. In those days the results of the Intermediate exams were published, with all the names of the children and their schools, at full length in the newspapers. Joyce’s results brought clerical representatives from another school calling on his family to entice him (and his scholarships) away from his Jesuit mentors. But he stayed with them, not only through his school years, but also through University College.

At college, Joyce also received some public attention. He was doing the Modern Languages course, sneeringly described by those destined for medicine and law, the great peaks of Catholic middle class ambition in those days, as “the Ladies’ Course.” His appearance on stage in an amateur production was noted in the press. He startled his fellow students by publishing a booklet with his friend Frank Skeffington, in which he launched an attack on the ideals of W. B. Yeats. Joyce’s own tastes were revealed to the wider world when he achieved the reclamé of having an article on Ibsen accepted by a leading London journal. His mind was already moving beyond mere academic success in the narrow world of Dublin.

Despite this achievement, and the accomplished papers he read before the college debating society, he was mocked as the “Mad Hatter” and, worse still, was reputed to be a poet. In 1904, after failing to pursue the medical career that would have ensured the respect of his peers, Joyce disappeared from Dublin. There were rumours among his acquaintances that he had absconded with a chambermaid. This did not suggest the behaviour of a gentleman. So while his contemporaries began to lay down the foundations of their professional or public careers, Joyce was out of sight and out of mind.

II

For years there was silence, broken only by the appearance in 1907 of a slim, apparently unexceptional, volume of poems. Tom Kettle, another college friend, whose reputation was on the rise, reviewed this in the Freeman’s Journal, though the National Library did not buy it. D. J. O’Donoghue noted Joyce’s existence in 1912 with an entry in the second edition of his Poets of Ireland. He was included in John Cooke’s influential anthology The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (1909). So far then Joyce was seen as something of a waster, a poetaster, a man who had failed to fulfil the hopes many, including his father and family had held for him.

However, the publication of Dubliners in London on 15 June1914 rippled the waters. It sold only 26 copies by December of that year, and only 7 more by June 1916. How many of these were sold in Ireland? The National Library copy has an accession date stamp of 30 September 1914. So this was one of the first 26, as the library was not a copyright library. (Trinity College, which was a copyright deposit library, did not obtain a copy.) The condition of the book suggests that those interested in Joyce read it with eager attention.

The Irish Book Lover did not like it. “Dublin, like other large cities, shelters many peculiar types of men and women, good, bad and indifferent; in fact some, whose knowledge of it is extensive and peculiar, would say more than its fair share. Of some of these Mr. Joyce here gives us pen portraits of great power, and although one naturally shrinks from such characters as are depicted in ‘An Encounter’ or ‘Two Gallants,’ and finds their descriptions not quite suited ‘virginibus pueresque,’ one cannot deny the existence of their prototypes, whilst wishing that the author had directed his undoubted talents in other and pleasanter directions.”[ii]

Despite the support and praise of some advanced spirits these short stories cannot be said to have added to Joyce’s slight local reputation. What made the difference was the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at the end of December 1916 in New York and in London in February 1917. Again the praise of Ezra Pound and others of his kind was warm. But what transformed Joyce’s literary standing was a review by H. G. Wells, then at the height of his reputation and influence as writer rather than a political prophet. The novel was, he claimed: “By far the most living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing. The technique is startling…. A most memorable novel.” This review marks the true beginning of Joyce’s wider reputation – from this date that his books began to collect a real readership. This review was still being quoted on the cover of the Penguin edition into the late 1960s.

Yet the notion that Joyce’s stance was anti-clerical was noted and reacted to in Ireland. Here, at a time when Ireland and the Irish, and why they could not think like British people, were under much discussion after the 1916 Rising, was a psychological key to the mystery of the Irish character that everyone could understand: he was evidence of their priest-ridden condition. The book was noticed in the Irish Booklover in April 1917. The critic had read the book at a sitting and admitted Joyce’s undoubted talents and powers of description and dialogue. Joyce’s literary powers were very able; but he doubted if it would be fit for female reading. It was not art. The reaction of the pious in Ireland was confirmed, and would remain entrenched for many years.

The National Library’s first copy of A Portrait of the Artist has an accession date of 20 March 1917. This copy was so heavily read it had to be rebound on 13 April 1928. These dates mean it was bought at once and heavily read, at least by those who used the National Library. If some readers enjoyed the book, many others still felt disgust rather than enthusiasm. The Jesuit bibliographer Fr Stephen Brown, in Ireland in Fiction (1919), wrote of Joyce exceeding the decent bounds of public discourse. This attitude would have been shared by many of those around University College.

Exiles waspublished in London 25 May 1918. The National Library copy is dated 26 June 1918. It is still in its original boards – so it was less heavily read than Dubliners or A Portrait. The call number assigned to it suggests it was the third title by Joyce purchased by the library. In May 1918 Pearson’s Magazine – a popular middle market magazine – carried an article on Joyce by his Irish friend Padraic Colum, where for the first time attention was drawn in detail to the Catholic traditions and culture that shaped Joyce’s works.

Ulysses when it came out in February 1922 was recognised as the work of an accepted talent. There were reviews in The Dublin Magazine and in the Irish Review. Copies of the book, which was expensive by any standards, were imported from Paris and sold in Dublin. P.S. O’Hegarty (later Joyce’s first bibliographer) ordered an initial six for his influential Dawson Street shop. In 1923 Joseph Hone wrote in the London Mercury that when he first read A Portrait “it seemed to me that the book announced the passing of that literary Ireland in which everyone was well bred except a few politicians …For us in Ireland Mr Joyce’s significance lies in this, that he is the first man of literary genius, expressing himself in perfect freedom, that Catholic Ireland has produced in modern times.”[iii] Ironically, Hone had been involved in the initial rejection of Dubliners by an Irish publishing firm in which he was a partner. The Irish literary world, of which Hone was an important figure, was waking up at last to Joyce.

By now Ulysses was read widely enough in literary Dublin for it to be parodied by M. J. MacManus (later literary editor of the Irish Press), in A Jackdaw in Dublin (1925). Like most parodies, this arose out of a genuine admiration of the writer: “Mr Joyce is…inimitable.” His piece did not pretend “to be more than a pale and colourless imitation of the author of Ulysses in one of his myriad moods.” The episodes of the novel were familiar enough to ordinary Dubliners for “Man about Town”, a columnist in the Dublin Evening Mail,to write about the description of Barney Kiernan’s public house in October 1922. The book was also alluded to in a cartoon in Dublin Opinion, in which a prisoner pleaded to be given hard labour rather than read the book through!

The 1921 trial of the Little Review in America for publishing Ulysses as a serial, had caused a scandal, but also revealed that Joyce’s real censorship problems were likely to lie with America and Britain, rather than Ireland. Though a customs’ exclusion order would seem to have been in effect for a time, Ulysses was never banned by The Censorship Board, though opportunities to do so would have arisen naturally when the book was published in the open market in Hamburg in 1932, New York in 1934, and in London in 1937. This did not mean that harsh words did not appear in print about him. In 1926, in a submission to the Committee of Inquiry into Evil Literature, the Irish Vigilance Association objects to the sale in Dublin of books by Joyce, Lawrence and Warwick Deeping. [iv] It is clear even from this that Joyce’s works were sold and read in Dublin. Many Irish readers would have bought Joyce’s earlier work in the attractive blue cloth editions of Cape’s Traveller’s Library, through which many young readers of that day became acquainted with a wide swathe of advanced modern writing.

As for Ulysses, Miss Beach sent a presentation copy to the copyright deposit library in Trinity College Dublin. This was later followed by a copy of the Egoist Press/John Rodker edition, which was sent on by the copyright agent in London, for the book, though printed in France, was technically published in the United Kingdom.

Joyce had for the great world beyond Ireland, and in Ireland itself, emerged from a cloud of unknowing into the full light of an international reputation. Many others, sensitive to national prestige, now felt the acute mixture of embarrassment and pride that Joyce’s parents must have felt for their talented offspring at the concert in Bray. The portrait of Joyce’s father, now an acknowledged masterpiece of the young painter Patrick Tuohy, was exhibited in Dublin in the summer of 1924 at the Tailteann Games, and reproduced in The Dublin Magazine.

Some account of Joyce would have to be rendered by the new Ireland, which achieved its dominion status that same year. Saorstat Eireann Irish Free State Official Handbook, an elegant volume edited for the Irish government by veteran nationalist Bulmer Hobson a decade later, placed him, controversial though he was, with Moore and Yeats among the distinguished Irish writers of his day. “ [T]he list of eminent Irish men and women writing fiction to-day is a remarkable one. Critics differ in their estimates of the genius of Mr. George Moore and Mr. James Joyce, but they are at least two writers who have had an enormous influence on the English novel in our time.”[v] It is hard to square this equable statement with myth of “rejection” in Ireland maintained by Joyce. There were limits, however. In 1922 the National Library, now under new management so to speak, and having to make cuts in purchases, did not buy Ulysses. Nor did it make up the omission in 1937 when an unlimited English edition was published. In October 1936 a copy of the 1936 Ulysses limited edition from The Bodley Head in London, was presented to TCD library under copyright legislation.

In time the imported copies from Paris began to be outnumbered by American and British editions, and during the 1930s something of a cult of Joyce existed among the students at UCD. This was headed by Charles Donnelly, and included Donagh MacDonagh, Denis Devlin, Brian Coffey, Niall Sheridan, Liam Redmond and Brian O’Nolan.[vi] In TCD, too, the book was circulating at this time.

When Finnegans Wake appeared, it received in Ireland, as elsewhere, a puzzled reception, though the critical readings by “Andrew Cass” (pen name of the civil servant John Garvin) and others suggested that local imaginations was awakening to its echoes. Joyce and his new work also appeared in 1939 on the cover of Time Magazine , which was widely read by members of the Irish establishment, and would have emphasised, for the governing middle class, the international respect in which Joyce was held.

Joyce’s death in 1941 came as a surprise. The notices that appeared in the newspapers displayed a range of reactions: warm tributes from friends in the liberal Irish Times, cautious respect in the Republican Irish Press, pious reports in the clericalist Irish Independent. More considered pieces appeared in the Dublin Magazine and The Bell. The latter, an imitation of Horizon in some ways, but more wide ranging in its social criticism, then beginning its period of greatest influence under Sean O’Faolain, published a piece by Elizabeth Bowen, and later another by Frank O’Connor.

A key element in the development of Joyce’s reputation in Ireland at this time was the Emergency. These years of isolation, as they seemed to be, were in fact filled with heady artistic activity, often by foreigners seeking refuge in Ireland. Such cliques as the White Stag group and their associates, among whom European literature and psychiatry were in vogue, created, for the first time in centuries, cultural activity in Ireland motivated by outsiders. For such people Joyce was an heroic figure.

After the war many of the young students who had been Joyce enthusiasts before the war emerged as writers. In 1945 Arland Ussher, the philosopher, published his essay on Joyce, which would appear in book form in Three Great Irishmen. This was a sign that the appreciation of Joyce had gone beyond mere reviews to cultivated critiques. It was at this time that other Irish writers, such as Patricia Hutchins, Prof. W. B. Stanford and Eileen MacCarvill were beginning their biographical and critical investigations.

The new director of the National Library, Patrick Henchy, was an enthusiast for Joyce. In 1951 the Library obtained its first copy of Ulysses, a Bodley Head printing of 1947. The library now began seriously collecting Joycean material. Henchy was only too pleased in the early 1950s to assist Richard Ellmann with his research on details of Joyce’s Dublin background.

III

An important landmark was the marking of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Bloomsday in June 1954. A small party of writers including Patrick Kavanagh, Brian O’Nolan, John Ryan and Anthony Cronin, all associated with Ryan’s literary journal Envoy, set out on an abortive attempt to recreate the episodes of the novel. Ryan had already marked the 10^th anniversary of Joyce’s death with a special issue in 1951.

But the real turning point was the appearance of Richard Ellmann's biography in 1959. The age of innocence was over. Now everyone knew what we were all supposed to think about Mr Joyce. The following year The Bodley Head in London reissued Ulysses in a redesigned compact edition – a triumph of book design – that sold well in Dublin.

The publication in 1946 of The Essential Joyce, a compact anthology edited by Harry Levin, brought Joyce’s writings into the hands of many readers for the first time. But this was a mere prelude to the paperback revolution: Joyce was first published in a mass-market paperback in 1948 by Signet in New York. Joyce’s Irish readers soon benefited from paperback revolution in Britain: in 1956 Penguin issued Dubliners, followed in 1960 by A Portrait and Ulysses in 1969. Smaller firms published editions of Stephen Hero and Exiles. Joyce was now available to all. His works could be picked up in the corner shop with the evening newspaper.

The Catholic viewpoint on Joyce also changed. Though in 1937 a favourable reference to Joyce appeared in the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano – and it is difficult to see what higher approbation Irish Catholics could have wished for - the Catholic Bulletin and other journals published vitriolic attacks upon Joyce. Now, especially in America, and then in Ireland, this tone changed. Articles appeared in Studies, and even in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. Fr Eddie O’Doherty, a psychologist in UCD, was involved in several Joycean investigations. He was perhaps (like the Jesuit John Kelly, an influential literary critic of the day) a new kind of Irish priest.

Likewise a new kind of Irish academic meant a new kind of writing in the universities about Joyce. The early careers of Augustine Martin and Denis Donoghue reflected the changing Irish university scene in the 1960s. The new academics were now orientated towards American practice. American universities had expanded since the end of the war. More students meant more professors; more professors meant more research; the Joyce industry was born.

The opening in 1962 of the James Joyce Tower provided a focus for many public Joycean activities. This was followed by the creation of the James Joyce International Symposium, a much more academic affair, which held conferences in Dublin and elsewhere on a regular basis. These two trends, the Irish and the American, came together in the Dublin Joyce Centenary celebration in 1982.

By now the public authorities from the government down to Bord Fáilte were only too happy to facilitate the celebration of Joyce, even offering delegates an extravagant reception in Dublin Castle. Eminent literary figures were flown in at great expense. (It cost the Irish government an unexpected £6000 to fly Jorge Luis Borges and his companion Marie Kodama from Argentina to Dublin via Paris.)

The transmission of Sean Ó Mordha’s television documentary on Joyce crowned that year of full acceptance. Middleclass Ireland was now fully acceptant of Mr Joyce’s masterpieces. Many had realised that Joyce was good for business. Since the late 1950s Joyce had been made a feature of tourist promotions by Bord Fáilte. The figures for hidden exports rose year upon year.

Since then, a further Dublin symposium in 1992 and the purchase by the National Library of two lots of Joyce papers, including important Ulysses manuscripts, which are the centrepiece of a Bloomsday Centenary exhibition, have only further consolidated the local reputation of Joyce. By June 2004 the public Joyce had come a long way from June 1888.

IV

Over the years the widening appreciation of Joyce’s works within Ireland has not been the result of increasing liberalisation. That liberalisation itself has been the result of the increasing interest in Joyce (among other issues). Joyce confronted Irish society with sexual, social and political images of itself that ran counter to received nationalist opinion and needed to be digested and integrated. At first his insights were rejected, but slowly the climate changed.

These changes came not so much in Joyce’s own lifetime, but in the decades since his death. The ideas and ambitions of a new generation, of a new kind of Irish academic from the 1960s onwards, built much of their work and teaching around the explication of Joyce and Joyce’s Ireland. His roots in the religious, social and political cultures of Ireland are being exposed to fuller investigation. As a result, Irish peoples’ image of themselves has been changed by their encounter with Joyce, so that the more open, more tolerant society that has emerged (for all its continuing faults) can be seen as the result of the national encounter with Joyce.

This is true, too, for the Catholic Church. Joyce’s animus, detected by H. G. Wells and the Catholic Bulletin in their different ways, was directed as the operations of the authoritarian hierarchy created by Cardinal Cullen. One of the products of that institution has been the present scandal of sexual abuse. This, as Joyce knew from personal experience, was not a new thing. He was outraged to discover that Nora Barnacle, when he met her in 1904, had been the victim not only of physical abuse by an uncle, but also sexual abuse by one of the parish clergy in Galway. Though Joyce has enabled the modernisation of Irish society, there is still, as we now know, some way to go.

As regards Irish literature, Joyce has now become numbered among the classics. In 1936 Joyce told that young Irish lady, with a resigned note of faint regret, but no bitterness, “my book Ulysses wasn’t liked in Ireland. I was sorry about that, I wanted it to be liked and understood there more than anything else.” Perhaps now, on the centenary of the day that book memorialised, the author’s wish may have come to pass. His work has played an important part in creating the mentalitiés of modern Ireland, in which more writers, artists and thinkers thrive than ever before. But the leading, living edge of literature looks elsewhere for its inspiration.

For at least another generation Joyce will still have some role to play in the making of Irish culture, but it will no longer be the one that he has played up to now. When his alter ego Stephen Dedalus, with all the self-importance of the young student, wrote of forging the conscience of his race, Joyce little apprehended just what would be the outcome of what he wrote. Now, however, Joyce has become not what young people react to, but what they react against. The pieties of their elders before this monument of accepted culture will often disgust them, as the pieties of 1904 disgusted Joyce. And rightly so. For such is the process of life, and literature.

Peter Costello is the author of several Joycean books, including "John Stanislaus Joyce" (Fourth Estate / St.Martin’s Press) with John Wyse Jackson.

Notes:

 [i]     Doreen Delahoyde, “But Its Nice to Look Back”, in They Go, the Irish    (London, 1944), pp. 106-108.

[ii]      Irish Book Lover, vol. 6, no. 4. November 1914, pp. 60-61.

[iii]    London Mercury, 9 January 1923.

[iv]     Michael Adams, Censorship; The Irish Experience (Dublin, 1968), p. 27.

[v]      Saorstat Eireann Irish Free State Official Handbook (Dublin, 1932), p. 280.

[vi]     Vivien Mercier quoted in Seon Givens (ed.), James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism (New York,[1948] 1963 ed.), p. 296.