Irish writer, novelist and polylingual wordsmith, an intellectual literary genius who developed an original style and revolutionized the plot and character of fiction.
As a young man, Joyce’s genius was recognized by Dublin literary circles. He mastered an encyclopedic knowledge of world literature, music, art and philosophy. As Joyce achieved literary notoriety, he and his family became the toast of the Parisian artistic community with the publication of his masterwork, “Ulysses” in 1922. Originally the stream of consciousness account of a day in the lives of Dubliner Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly was turned down by reputable publishers. The scandalous content, language, and unorthodox “stream of consciousness” literary style was too strong for the sensibilities of the day. Today, “Ulysses” is considered the greatest work of fiction of the twentieth century.
Joyce grew up in Dublin as one of 13 children, ten of whom survived. Originally born into wealth, his dad had an annual income and a good job as a tax collector. Drinking too much, spending too much and too many mortgages led to his dad loosing his job at 42 to never work again. Moving to 16 houses in the Dublin area clearly led to his articulate knowledge of every house, store and park.) He was educated at the Jesuit school and from a very early age displayed his precocious intellect. With a talent for languages, Joyce taught himself Dano-Norwegian in his teen years. In 1902, he went to Paris to study medicine. Blessed with a beautiful tenor voice, he began lessons for a concert career but when he returned to Dublin, he concentrated on his writing career.
On 16 June 1904, Joyce walked with Nora Barnacle, the daughter of a Galway baker, around the streets of Dublin. He had met her in a chance encounter six days earlier along Nassau Street near Trinity College. Four months later, Joyce and Barnacle left Dublin and moved to Trieste to start a new life. In the early 1900s, they lived a lifestyle that was then unconventional, without the benefit of marriage. Joyce made this choice in order to escape the effects of his conservative Irish upbringing within the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. Working as an English teacher in Trieste, Joyce tried to provide for his family. During World War I, he moved his family to Zurich, in 1915. The following year his autobiographical first novel, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” was published. After the war, the family was again uprooted, this time to Paris to enjoy the artistic avant-garde environment.
On 2 February 1922, his literary masterpiece, “Ulysses” was published on his 40th birthday by American bookseller Sylvia Beach. Until 1934, the book was considered obscene contraband material and confiscated by U.S. customs officers. A slow and painstaking writer, Joyce had worked 16 years to produce his polylingual piece, “Finnegans Wake,” 1939. Joyce scholars considered the book one of the least-read and best-known masterpiece of world literature. The author had invented a new language combining the world’s ancient and modern languages, making it a difficult journey to travel. When German invasion of Paris became imminent, Joyce and Nora left the city in September 1939, leaving behind their possessions and papers in their flat at 34 rue des Vignes. Joyce and his family made their way to neutral Zurich, Switzerland after much bureaucratic paperwork from the French, Swiss and Nazi government.
Nora Barnacle was not only Joyce’s companion but his artistic and literary muse. Her letters were the inspiration of his brilliant literary style. Her unrefined and earthy presence captivated the writer in creating his sensual model for his most famous female character, Molly Bloom. Nora was instrumental to Joyce’s sexual fantasies. When they were apart, she sent him obscene letters to which he could masturbate. Under the pressure of his American daughter-in-law, Joyce relented and married Nora in a civil ceremony in 1931. In their poverty-stricken existence in Trieste the couple produced their two children, Giorgio in 1905 and Lucia in 1907. Joyce was a devoted family man, a kind and caring individual who loved to visit the opera house and concert halls. He and Nora both had considerable agony and pain when Lucia was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the early 1930s. Cherishing his daughter, Joyce wanted to see her as gifted and eccentric and he was reluctant to accept the truth of her mental illness. Finally her actions became increasingly dangerous, such as lighting the flat’s curtains on fire and throwing furniture at her mother. When she had one of her frequent stays in the hospital, Joyce visited his daughter every Sunday. After 1936, she was never outside of a mental institution.
Suffering from poor eyesight all of his life, Joyce wrote in large script and still had difficulty reading his writing. By 1930, he had undergone almost 25 ophthalmic operations. He suffered from stomach problems but refused to have see a physician, worrying that the diagnosis would be cancer. On the evening of 10 January 1941, Joyce fell ill with stomach cramps. At 2:00 A.M. he was administered the drug morphine to calm the pain and sent to the hospital in the early dawn. He had a perforated duodenal ulcer and a Swiss surgeon conducted the unsuccessful operation. On 13 January 1941, at 2:15 A.M., before his wife and son arrived at the hospital, Joyce died of peritonitis. His gravesite at Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich has become a shrine for Joycean pilgrims.
In 1982, more than 600 professional and amateur Joyce scholars from around the world converged on Dublin to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the author’s birthday.
Link to Wikipedia biography