1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,000 This programme contains very strong language 2 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:08,240 And after I was only a week in the comfort, he died. 3 00:00:08,240 --> 00:00:11,360 He was buried where his people came from. 4 00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:18,200 Oh, the day I heard that. 5 00:00:18,200 --> 00:00:20,120 That he was dead. 6 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:29,840 The film of James Joyce's story 7 00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:33,000 The Dead has a special meaning for me. 8 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:36,760 The role of Gretta Conroy was a wonderful part to play. 9 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:39,720 The screenplay was written by my brother, Tony, 10 00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:43,040 and the movie was directed by my father, John Huston. 11 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:46,360 It was his cherished ambition to 12 00:00:46,360 --> 00:00:50,000 film an adaptation of Joyce's story for many years, 13 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:51,840 and this was the last of the many 14 00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:55,920 classic movies that he made during his lifetime. 15 00:00:55,920 --> 00:01:00,960 I'd heard of the book Ulysses, and I read it, and it was just 16 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:06,080 an enormous influence it played on my life. 17 00:01:06,080 --> 00:01:09,760 Having read Ulysses, I proceeded to read everything else that 18 00:01:09,760 --> 00:01:14,800 he'd written. And among that material was The Dead, 19 00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:20,320 and of course, it's one of the most extraordinary 20 00:01:20,320 --> 00:01:23,720 short stories 21 00:01:23,720 --> 00:01:26,000 in the English language. 22 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:28,560 One, two, three. 23 00:01:29,720 --> 00:01:34,280 My father was far from alone in his admiration of James Joyce 24 00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:36,760 and his belief in Joyce's greatness as a writer. 25 00:01:38,160 --> 00:01:40,480 Joyce questions everything. 26 00:01:40,480 --> 00:01:43,080 He wants to know more about everything. 27 00:01:43,080 --> 00:01:47,280 And in that respect, I think he is the poet of revelation. 28 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:50,800 I think in Ireland he's viewed as an heroic figure. 29 00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:53,160 And I don't think anybody now in 30 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:57,440 Ireland would take offence at anything he said. 31 00:01:57,440 --> 00:01:59,640 It all turned out to be true. 32 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:01,760 You probably get to know Joyce most... 33 00:02:01,760 --> 00:02:04,040 You know, you see his image in pubs. 34 00:02:04,040 --> 00:02:07,600 This is one of the complications of Ireland's projection on the world 35 00:02:07,600 --> 00:02:10,440 is it's synonymous with good times and booze, 36 00:02:10,440 --> 00:02:11,960 and I suppose Joyce has been 37 00:02:11,960 --> 00:02:14,240 subsumed into that in quite a big way, 38 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:16,400 which is probably quite appropriate. 39 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:18,720 Growing up in Ireland, you just 40 00:02:18,720 --> 00:02:22,640 can't not be aware of Joyce as a figure, as a spectre. 41 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:24,240 He's everywhere, right? 42 00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:26,720 I think he was cold 43 00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:29,440 in the way that many great artists are cold. 44 00:02:29,440 --> 00:02:32,880 I think he was entirely self absorbed. 45 00:02:32,880 --> 00:02:36,320 If you're too celebrated or celebrated early in Ireland, 46 00:02:36,320 --> 00:02:39,880 clearly you're doing something wrong and you're going nowhere. 47 00:02:39,880 --> 00:02:42,720 It's like you should be annoying Ireland in some way. 48 00:02:44,200 --> 00:02:49,160 He asked himself the question once - does a writer have to be ruthless? 49 00:02:49,160 --> 00:02:52,600 The answer is yes. 50 00:03:00,040 --> 00:03:05,080 James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in 1882 in Rathgar, 51 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:09,480 a suburb on the south side of Dublin. 52 00:03:09,480 --> 00:03:11,960 He was the oldest of ten surviving 53 00:03:11,960 --> 00:03:15,840 children born to John Stanislaus Joyce and May Murray. 54 00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:17,960 His mother seems to have been a 55 00:03:17,960 --> 00:03:20,880 submissive and deeply religious woman. 56 00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:23,560 She must also have been very tolerant, 57 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:27,440 since her husband was an alcoholic and a spendthrift. 58 00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:31,000 He managed to run through a large inheritance and did not hold down a 59 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:33,880 regular job for the last 40 years of his life. 60 00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:38,360 As John Joyce's income fell, 61 00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:41,960 his family changed houses often to escape their creditors. 62 00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:43,200 In theory, this was a kind of 63 00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:45,960 Catholic middle class family who desperately wanted to 64 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:50,400 be respectable, but they couldn't keep up that sort of pretence. 65 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:54,160 You know, the tradesmen were always coming, looking to be paid, 66 00:03:54,160 --> 00:03:57,520 and were not being paid. They were hiding from the rent collectors. 67 00:03:57,520 --> 00:04:01,840 But John was determined that his son would be educated at Ireland's elite 68 00:04:01,840 --> 00:04:06,680 schools. Those run by Jesuits and not by the Christian Brothers. 69 00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:09,880 The Jesuits, in terms of Catholic education, 70 00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:12,080 were for the Catholic elite, 71 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:15,600 and the Christian Brothers were for the lower middle classes, 72 00:04:15,600 --> 00:04:18,440 and the difference between one and the other was enormous. 73 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:22,880 James first attended Clongowes Wood College, 74 00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:27,280 but had to leave when his father couldn't pay the school fees. 75 00:04:27,280 --> 00:04:31,160 However, he was soon offered free tuition at Belvedere College in the 76 00:04:31,160 --> 00:04:32,520 heart of Dublin. 77 00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:38,520 I think the Jesuit education gave him a sense of himself as different. 78 00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:42,160 Joyce grew up during a period of 79 00:04:42,160 --> 00:04:44,840 political uncertainty in Ireland that had 80 00:04:44,840 --> 00:04:46,440 developed in the decades that 81 00:04:46,440 --> 00:04:50,040 followed the fall and death of Charles Stewart Parnell, 82 00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:52,520 the uncrowned king of Ireland, 83 00:04:52,520 --> 00:04:55,360 who had brought the country to the verge of independence. 84 00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:00,840 But Parnell had been named as an adulterer 85 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:03,280 in a sensational divorce case, 86 00:05:03,280 --> 00:05:06,520 and the political party he led had split in two. 87 00:05:09,920 --> 00:05:13,480 Joyce's own home was split by this division, 88 00:05:13,480 --> 00:05:15,880 which he wrote about in his first novel. 89 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:23,000 Joyce's novel was dramatized by Hugh Leonard in his play, Stephen D. 90 00:05:23,680 --> 00:05:27,880 In one of its scenes, Stephen Dedalus is seven years old, 91 00:05:27,880 --> 00:05:30,920 and has been allowed to join the adults for Christmas dinner. 92 00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:36,800 Parnell's the only figure that Joyce doesn't mock. 93 00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:38,680 This sense of him as a martyr. 94 00:05:38,680 --> 00:05:40,640 The sense of him as a sexual martyr. 95 00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:44,680 The sense of him as someone who had suffered deeply at the hands of the 96 00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:48,520 worst elements in both Irish and English society. 97 00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:51,880 An argument breaks out about the 98 00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:55,560 role of the Catholic Church in the fall of Parnell. 99 00:05:55,560 --> 00:05:59,800 And were we to desert Parnell at the bidding of the English people? 100 00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:01,360 He was no longer worthy to lead. 101 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:03,120 He was a public sinner. 102 00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:06,120 Yeah. We are all sinners, Mrs Reardon, and black sinners. 103 00:06:06,120 --> 00:06:08,520 The row plants the first doubts in his mind 104 00:06:08,520 --> 00:06:11,160 about the authority of the Catholic Church. 105 00:06:13,520 --> 00:06:16,240 Joyce was a brilliant student 106 00:06:16,240 --> 00:06:19,640 who won awards and scholarships from an early age, 107 00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:21,640 and whose writing was first published 108 00:06:21,640 --> 00:06:23,560 when he was just nine years old. 109 00:06:27,200 --> 00:06:31,440 His family is living in abject poverty, but when he's 12, 110 00:06:31,440 --> 00:06:35,520 Joyce wins a top prize in Ireland's national exams, 111 00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:37,560 a windfall for the family, 112 00:06:37,560 --> 00:06:41,200 and his father says Joyce can spend it as he chooses. 113 00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:43,920 He thinks it will teach his son the value of money. 114 00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:49,440 But Joyce uses it to visit expensive restaurants and pay for trips to the 115 00:06:49,440 --> 00:06:51,400 theatre. Within a few weeks, 116 00:06:51,400 --> 00:06:54,680 the money is gone and the family is poverty stricken once again. 117 00:06:56,040 --> 00:07:01,080 Like his father, Joyce loved telling stories, singing and drinking. 118 00:07:02,120 --> 00:07:04,960 When he had money, he spent it with abandon. 119 00:07:04,960 --> 00:07:09,240 When he had none, he borrowed shamelessly from his friends. 120 00:07:09,240 --> 00:07:13,520 Joyce was not only precocious in his academic achievements, 121 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:17,080 he also became sexually active while he was still very young. 122 00:07:18,080 --> 00:07:23,160 Respectability is such a powerful force in Victorian society that if 123 00:07:24,320 --> 00:07:27,080 you're going to follow your sexual desires, 124 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:29,160 it means that you're going to place 125 00:07:29,160 --> 00:07:31,640 yourself outside of that society very, 126 00:07:31,640 --> 00:07:33,640 very fast and Joyce seems, 127 00:07:33,640 --> 00:07:36,440 from what we can tell from his own versions of himself, 128 00:07:36,440 --> 00:07:38,320 to be actually pretty comfortable 129 00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:41,960 early on with making that breach between 130 00:07:41,960 --> 00:07:44,600 himself and the society around him. 131 00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:46,760 He frequented the prostitutes who 132 00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:49,440 operated in the Monto district of Dublin, 133 00:07:49,440 --> 00:07:53,720 on the north side of the River Liffey, close to his school. 134 00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:57,960 Everything would begin to change for Joyce on the day he came across a 135 00:07:57,960 --> 00:08:01,840 young woman recently arrived in Dublin from Galway. 136 00:08:01,840 --> 00:08:03,680 Her name was Nora Barnacle. 137 00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:09,400 Nora caught Joyce's eye as he was walking in the centre of Dublin. 138 00:08:09,400 --> 00:08:12,920 Nora claimed she mistook him for a Swedish sailor, 139 00:08:12,920 --> 00:08:17,840 with his electric blue eyes, yachting cap, and plimsolls. 140 00:08:17,840 --> 00:08:21,640 But when he began to speak, she realised her mistake. 141 00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:23,880 "I knew him at once for just another 142 00:08:23,880 --> 00:08:26,600 "Dublin jackeen chatting up a country girl." 143 00:08:27,880 --> 00:08:32,840 She represented a part of Ireland that he, the Dubliner, did not know, 144 00:08:32,840 --> 00:08:34,960 and in fact feared. 145 00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:39,560 They met again six days later, on June 16, 1904. 146 00:08:39,560 --> 00:08:41,280 Nora and Joyce walked along the 147 00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:43,800 River Liffey until they reached a secluded 148 00:08:43,800 --> 00:08:46,520 spot, where they became intimate. 149 00:08:46,520 --> 00:08:49,760 Some years later, he recalled that day. 150 00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:53,880 "It was you who slid your hand down inside my trousers and frigged me 151 00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:57,360 "slowly until I came off through your fingers, 152 00:08:57,360 --> 00:09:00,720 "all the time bending over me and gazing at me out of your quiet, 153 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:02,920 "saint-like eyes." 154 00:09:02,920 --> 00:09:07,600 She literally took him in hand and literally made a man of him. 155 00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:12,080 In many ways, this was most important day of his life, 156 00:09:12,080 --> 00:09:14,760 and it would become known as Bloomsday, 157 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:17,040 the day on which he set all the 158 00:09:17,040 --> 00:09:20,560 action of his most famous novel, Ulysses. 159 00:09:20,560 --> 00:09:24,240 Nora might have seemed an unlikely match for Joyce. 160 00:09:24,240 --> 00:09:28,120 She'd been born in a Galway workhouse to illiterate parents. 161 00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:32,520 Her father was a drunkard. 162 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:36,720 Her upbringing was chaotic, and her education was rudimentary. 163 00:09:36,720 --> 00:09:39,920 She'd run away from home after a severe beating, 164 00:09:39,920 --> 00:09:43,840 and was working as a chambermaid when she met Joyce. 165 00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:46,480 He sees a woman who is not a prostitute, 166 00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:48,600 but who has sexual desires, 167 00:09:48,600 --> 00:09:51,800 and sexual desires that are probably as strong as his own. 168 00:09:53,720 --> 00:09:56,960 From the beginning, they trusted one another. 169 00:09:56,960 --> 00:09:58,840 Within a few weeks, 170 00:09:58,840 --> 00:10:02,240 they'd agreed to leave Ireland together and seek a new life abroad. 171 00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:06,120 They eventually settled in Trieste, 172 00:10:06,120 --> 00:10:08,520 at that time part of Austria-Hungary, 173 00:10:08,520 --> 00:10:11,440 where Joyce obtained a post teaching English, 174 00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:15,120 and where he believed he would become not just an Irish writer, 175 00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:17,800 but a world-famous writer. 176 00:10:17,800 --> 00:10:19,400 For the trams of Trieste, 177 00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:22,560 even they can only add to the appeal of a city caught in the varying 178 00:10:22,560 --> 00:10:24,840 fashions of various occupiers. 179 00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:27,640 Of course, the Romans were here, but later, 180 00:10:27,640 --> 00:10:30,600 Austrian rule must surely have given Trieste this taste of Vienna. 181 00:10:32,080 --> 00:10:34,200 Trieste at that time was the most 182 00:10:34,200 --> 00:10:36,840 important port in the Habsburg Empire. 183 00:10:36,840 --> 00:10:39,360 It was a cosmopolitan city, and had 184 00:10:39,360 --> 00:10:43,240 become a hub of languages, music, art, and literature. 185 00:10:49,440 --> 00:10:52,080 "They call it a ramshackle empire. 186 00:10:52,080 --> 00:10:54,520 "I wish to God there were more such empires." 187 00:10:54,520 --> 00:10:56,200 It's not Dublin. 188 00:10:56,200 --> 00:10:58,000 It's completely unlike Dublin, 189 00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:02,440 and yet there's something about it that immediately was Dublinesque. 190 00:11:02,440 --> 00:11:04,680 I can see why Joyce loved it. 191 00:11:04,680 --> 00:11:06,520 He would have loved it for the 192 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:09,960 mixture of types and of races and of languages. 193 00:11:09,960 --> 00:11:13,400 Things really do change once he leaves Ireland. 194 00:11:13,400 --> 00:11:18,440 To get away from that world of craw thumping, of petty jealousy, 195 00:11:18,680 --> 00:11:21,600 into a world where he could begin to miss Dublin. 196 00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:26,520 That instead of resenting it, wanting to leave it, 197 00:11:26,520 --> 00:11:31,520 he could think about it in a way which was more sonorous and kinder. 198 00:11:32,880 --> 00:11:37,880 Almost exactly a year after they first met, Nora gave birth to a son, 199 00:11:38,160 --> 00:11:43,240 Giorgio. Two years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Lucia. 200 00:11:44,920 --> 00:11:48,320 It is clear from the erotic letters they exchanged 201 00:11:48,320 --> 00:11:52,080 that they enjoyed an intense physical relationship at that time. 202 00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:57,600 "My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and 203 00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:00,520 "tenderness mirrored in your eyes. 204 00:12:00,520 --> 00:12:02,800 "Or to fling you down on that soft 205 00:12:02,800 --> 00:12:05,400 "belly of yours and fuck you up behind 206 00:12:05,400 --> 00:12:07,880 "like a hog riding a sow, 207 00:12:07,880 --> 00:12:11,880 "glorying in the open shame of your upturned dress and white girlish 208 00:12:11,880 --> 00:12:15,800 "drawers and the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair." 209 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:21,800 Nora seldom read Joyce's work and claimed she would rather he'd been a 210 00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:24,320 professional singer than a writer. 211 00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:27,960 But she gave him the support that he needed, and Joyce, in turn, 212 00:12:27,960 --> 00:12:31,640 remained committed to Nora for the rest of his life. 213 00:12:31,640 --> 00:12:35,440 You would never think seeing her separately, and seeing James Joyce, 214 00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:38,720 that these two would be a marriage, but they were. 215 00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:40,120 And a great one. 216 00:12:41,440 --> 00:12:45,640 Nora had much to endure during their years in Trieste. 217 00:12:45,640 --> 00:12:49,840 They were often penniless and had to move from one miserable apartment to 218 00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:54,480 another. Joyce was also subject to great physical pain, 219 00:12:54,480 --> 00:12:57,200 due to recurring eye and stomach problems. 220 00:12:58,680 --> 00:13:02,680 But this was a period of exceptional creativity for him. 221 00:13:02,680 --> 00:13:06,760 During these years, he completed his first collection of poems, 222 00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:10,840 his first novel, and his first and only play. 223 00:13:10,840 --> 00:13:12,880 He also published his first 224 00:13:12,880 --> 00:13:16,040 collection of short stories, Dubliners. 225 00:13:16,040 --> 00:13:18,960 You don't get Joyce's great work 226 00:13:18,960 --> 00:13:22,400 without the formation of a consciousness 227 00:13:22,400 --> 00:13:24,640 that is utterly free of two things. 228 00:13:24,640 --> 00:13:27,880 One is shame, and the other is snobbery. 229 00:13:27,880 --> 00:13:31,760 And Nora liberates him, finally, from both of those things. 230 00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:38,360 Dubliners, his collection of 15 stories, 231 00:13:38,360 --> 00:13:42,320 each of which represents a different aspect of Dublin life in the opening 232 00:13:42,320 --> 00:13:44,760 years of the 20th century. 233 00:13:44,760 --> 00:13:47,800 By the time we get to the end of that collection of short stories, 234 00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:51,440 you've been taught something about a place that is so visceral. 235 00:13:51,440 --> 00:13:54,040 You know, he caught it, you know. 236 00:13:54,040 --> 00:13:56,440 I never... When I read it, I'd never been to Dublin, 237 00:13:56,440 --> 00:13:59,360 and I certainly hadn't been to Dublin in that time, and never will, 238 00:13:59,360 --> 00:14:01,240 but I feel like I knew it. 239 00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:03,320 According to Joyce, 240 00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:07,720 Dubliners is written in a style of scrupulous meanness, 241 00:14:07,720 --> 00:14:11,720 to convey a sense of material hardship and emotional repression. 242 00:14:13,200 --> 00:14:16,160 When people in Dublin go on about our Jimmy Joyce, 243 00:14:16,160 --> 00:14:18,440 I never know the Jimmy Joyce they're talking about, 244 00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:20,280 because if you look at the work, 245 00:14:20,280 --> 00:14:24,160 he may have loved Dublin, but he disliked it intensely, 246 00:14:24,160 --> 00:14:27,280 and you can certainly see that in Dubliners, for instance. 247 00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:31,840 I mean, the portrait of Dublin in Dubliners is bleak, 248 00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:35,320 cold, grey, and grimy. 249 00:14:35,320 --> 00:14:37,600 The 15 stories are built around a 250 00:14:37,600 --> 00:14:40,760 series of what Joyce termed epiphanies, 251 00:14:40,760 --> 00:14:43,960 moments of profound insight and revelation. 252 00:14:45,880 --> 00:14:48,720 Well, it is the one I can understand. 253 00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:51,360 Just the stories are extraordinary. 254 00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:55,760 The Dead is the final and most accomplished story in Dubliners, 255 00:14:55,760 --> 00:14:59,480 and it takes place on the feast of the Epiphany. 256 00:14:59,480 --> 00:15:02,720 I don't think art is a competitive field, 257 00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:04,840 but there is a case to be put for 258 00:15:04,840 --> 00:15:07,600 The Dead as possibly the greatest short 259 00:15:07,600 --> 00:15:09,840 story ever written. 260 00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:12,960 Its inspiration came from Nora Barnacle. 261 00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:15,720 She told Joyce that as a girl in Galway, 262 00:15:15,720 --> 00:15:19,240 she'd fallen in love with a boy who died while still very young. 263 00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:22,640 I don't know why The Dead is so good. 264 00:15:22,640 --> 00:15:24,720 Everything about it is good. 265 00:15:24,720 --> 00:15:28,720 I thought it was the most devastatingly beautiful 266 00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:31,440 short story I'd ever read. 267 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:37,840 The language is so poetic and at the same time so grounded. 268 00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:39,920 It just spoke to my soul. 269 00:15:42,720 --> 00:15:46,960 The Dead has been adapted as a one-act play, as an opera, 270 00:15:46,960 --> 00:15:49,160 as a Broadway musical, and of course, 271 00:15:49,160 --> 00:15:51,440 as the movie directed by my father, 272 00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:55,360 John Huston. The movie of The Dead was so close to the original, 273 00:15:55,360 --> 00:15:59,840 it was so faithful, it is one of the few true kind of 274 00:15:59,840 --> 00:16:03,160 proper acts of homage that you see to Joyce. 275 00:16:03,160 --> 00:16:07,200 The lead character in Joyce's story is Gabriel Conroy, 276 00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,000 who leads a carefully measured life. 277 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:12,840 Oops, you'll never guess what he has me wearing now. 278 00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:15,240 Galoshes. That's the latest. 279 00:16:15,240 --> 00:16:17,480 He and his wife Gretta attend a 280 00:16:17,480 --> 00:16:20,040 Christmas party given by two elderly aunts 281 00:16:20,040 --> 00:16:22,640 who are music teachers in Dublin. 282 00:16:22,640 --> 00:16:25,000 The next thing he'll buy me will be a diving suit. 283 00:16:26,440 --> 00:16:31,280 In the story, we realise, of course, he's falling apart. 284 00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:33,640 He doesn't know who he is as a person, 285 00:16:33,640 --> 00:16:36,320 he doesn't know who he is as an Irish person. 286 00:16:36,320 --> 00:16:38,800 To tell you the truth, I'm sick of my own country. 287 00:16:38,800 --> 00:16:40,040 I'm sick of it. Why? 288 00:16:41,240 --> 00:16:42,600 Superb. 289 00:16:44,520 --> 00:16:47,400 Why? 290 00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:50,000 Of course you've no answer. 291 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:53,840 He's challenged at every point and then as his... 292 00:16:53,840 --> 00:16:55,640 The only thing he really knows is 293 00:16:55,640 --> 00:16:58,320 his relationship with Gretta, his wife. 294 00:16:58,320 --> 00:16:59,760 What row had you with Molly Ivers? 295 00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:01,920 No, no row. Why, did she say we had? 296 00:17:01,920 --> 00:17:04,840 No, I noticed you carrying on, that's all. 297 00:17:04,840 --> 00:17:07,240 I'm trying to get that Mr Darcy to sing. 298 00:17:07,240 --> 00:17:08,960 He's full of conceit, isn't he? 299 00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:10,560 There was no row. She wanted me to 300 00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:13,040 go on a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't. 301 00:17:13,040 --> 00:17:14,440 Oh, Gabriel, do go. 302 00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:16,720 I'd love to see Galway again. 303 00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:18,240 Well, you can go if you like. 304 00:17:19,240 --> 00:17:22,680 I think there our great things in John Houston's film. 305 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:25,840 I think that the central performances of Donald McCann and 306 00:17:25,840 --> 00:17:27,760 Anjelica Huston are glorious. 307 00:17:28,880 --> 00:17:33,960 # Oh don't you remember. # 308 00:17:35,880 --> 00:17:38,120 At the end of the evening, 309 00:17:38,120 --> 00:17:42,760 Gabriel watches Gretta as she stands at the top of the stairs and listens 310 00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:44,800 to a haunting ballad, 311 00:17:44,800 --> 00:17:46,560 The Lass of Aughrim. 312 00:17:46,560 --> 00:17:50,520 It's remarkable how then it becomes 313 00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:54,480 a story about her, because you thought it was a story about him. 314 00:17:55,880 --> 00:18:00,240 And he's able to do that with great economy, 315 00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:02,600 but also with great sympathy. 316 00:18:02,600 --> 00:18:07,720 # When we both met together. # 317 00:18:10,840 --> 00:18:14,080 The real revolutionary in the story is Gretta. 318 00:18:14,080 --> 00:18:18,360 She has come from the working class, come from the peasant class. 319 00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:21,400 She has infiltrated the Dublin bourgeoisie 320 00:18:21,400 --> 00:18:23,600 at its deepest, at its hardest. 321 00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:29,720 # My babe lies cold within my arms. # 322 00:18:32,880 --> 00:18:37,800 And by the end of the movie, she's done a complete flip. 323 00:18:37,800 --> 00:18:42,320 He can't show vulnerability, and the moment that she shows vulnerability, 324 00:18:42,320 --> 00:18:43,760 she's the conqueror. 325 00:18:44,920 --> 00:18:47,480 Later, in their hotel, 326 00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:49,760 Gretta becomes upset and tells Gabriel 327 00:18:49,760 --> 00:18:51,880 that the ballad was one a young boy 328 00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:54,240 called Michael Furey used to sing to her. 329 00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:58,760 I used to go out walking with him when I was in Galway. 330 00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:00,600 And perhaps that was why you wanted 331 00:19:00,600 --> 00:19:03,280 to go with Galway with that Ivers woman. What for? 332 00:19:03,280 --> 00:19:05,080 How do I know? To see him, perhaps. 333 00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:09,560 He's dead. 334 00:19:09,560 --> 00:19:14,120 All of his expectations of her have somehow reversed, 335 00:19:14,120 --> 00:19:16,840 and she's become like a wild creature. 336 00:19:16,840 --> 00:19:20,040 She's become a wild swan again. 337 00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:24,000 I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta. 338 00:19:26,120 --> 00:19:28,160 I was great with him at the time. 339 00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:34,240 What was it he died of so young? 340 00:19:35,520 --> 00:19:36,960 Consumption, was it? 341 00:19:38,520 --> 00:19:40,600 I think he died from me. 342 00:19:40,600 --> 00:19:45,600 She then articulates the truth about her life in the most 343 00:19:46,640 --> 00:19:51,000 perceptive and courageous way. 344 00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:53,880 Did you not tell him to go back? 345 00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:56,920 I implored of him to go home at once 346 00:19:56,920 --> 00:19:59,040 and told him he'd get his death in the rain. 347 00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:03,960 But he said did not want to live. 348 00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:08,040 He realises that he can't... He can't control her. 349 00:20:08,040 --> 00:20:12,920 He can only observe her as the free creature that she is. 350 00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:15,040 So it's like he has to release her. 351 00:20:18,040 --> 00:20:22,800 Then, of course, it ends with the most astonishing prose that I don't 352 00:20:22,800 --> 00:20:25,080 think an Irish writer has ever come out with, 353 00:20:25,080 --> 00:20:27,480 in those concluding paragraphs, 354 00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:30,440 with this vision of Ireland as a 355 00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:35,040 place snowbound and possibly paralysed, 356 00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:37,880 but also with this potential for life, 357 00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:41,480 stirring brilliantly underneath this gorgeous, 358 00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:44,400 teeming imagery that he presents to you at the end. 359 00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:46,160 Snow is falling. 360 00:20:47,960 --> 00:20:52,000 Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried. 361 00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:58,480 Falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling 362 00:20:58,640 --> 00:21:02,560 like the descent of their last end 363 00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:05,720 upon all the living and the dead. 364 00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:15,080 The story is about a man's being revealed to himself. 365 00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:20,240 While we're watching that happen, I think, we're revealed to ourselves. 366 00:21:20,600 --> 00:21:25,440 What we think we are and what we are, really, is... 367 00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:29,480 Are two different things. 368 00:21:29,480 --> 00:21:31,360 A total labour of love. 369 00:21:31,360 --> 00:21:34,800 It was... There was nothing but love involved. 370 00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:38,880 Love for Ireland, love for the life we'd led there, 371 00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:41,880 love of Irish character. 372 00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:43,320 Oof. 373 00:21:46,280 --> 00:21:48,960 And then deep understanding of... 374 00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:57,520 ..the kind of humanity that Joyce writes about in The Dead. 375 00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:00,400 And the best thing you can say about The Dead is that it is as great a 376 00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:02,320 film as Joyce's story is a story. 377 00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:08,320 Dubliners was accepted for publication in 1905. 378 00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:12,360 However, the printer refused to set all of the stories. 379 00:22:12,360 --> 00:22:14,320 Three years later, the book was 380 00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:16,960 again due to be published, but once again, 381 00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:19,080 the printers refused to set the type. 382 00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:27,800 But you can't really find anything in the stories to say 383 00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:30,200 "Well, that's actually not publishable," 384 00:22:30,200 --> 00:22:33,440 you know, because they're not filthy, 385 00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:38,120 but there's a general sense that this way of writing about Ireland, 386 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:40,840 this way of writing about Dublin, is somehow offensive. 387 00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:46,400 When Dubliners finally appeared, it received critical praise, 388 00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:47,880 but failed to sell. 389 00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:52,200 A pathetic number of Dubliners were sold. 390 00:22:52,200 --> 00:22:55,240 After all the trouble of trying to get it done, then not a penny. 391 00:22:57,120 --> 00:23:00,880 It did not make him the fortune he'd hoped, but by then, 392 00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:03,520 Joyce had already completed his first novel. 393 00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:09,240 He had written the first version of 394 00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:11,920 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 395 00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:15,600 as a short essay for a literary journal in Dublin. 396 00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:19,800 When it was rejected, he decided to develop the essay into a novel. 397 00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:25,880 He began his final attempt at 398 00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:29,160 writing this novel in September 1907, 399 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:33,840 but after the first three chapters, he found it impossible to continue. 400 00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:38,440 He did not resume work on his book for the next six years. 401 00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:40,560 At that point, he received an 402 00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:43,880 unexpected letter from a total stranger. 403 00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:46,680 It came from the American Ezra Pound, 404 00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:49,720 who'd been told about Joyce by the poet WB Yeats. 405 00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:53,400 It was Pound's enthusiasm that 406 00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:55,840 convinced Joyce to complete his novel. 407 00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:02,920 The complete novel was finally published in New York in 1916. 408 00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:05,600 The Irish reviews were scathing. 409 00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:07,400 One claimed that Joyce, 410 00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:11,640 "Drags his readers after him into the slime of foul sewers." 411 00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:18,720 "Out here, Dedalus. 412 00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:21,360 "You are a lazy little schemer." 413 00:24:21,360 --> 00:24:23,360 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 414 00:24:23,360 --> 00:24:26,440 charts the development of Stephen Dedalus 415 00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:30,160 from a child into a gifted but self-absorbed young man, 416 00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:32,400 who is about to leave Ireland. 417 00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:35,560 It seems his character has much in common with Joyce. 418 00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:39,000 In the course of the novel, 419 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:41,240 we witness the loss of Stephen's 420 00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:44,800 religious faith as he comes to define God as, 421 00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:46,520 "A shout in the street." 422 00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:52,560 The portrait is built around a number of set pieces. 423 00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:55,840 In one of these, Stephen takes part in a religious retreat. 424 00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:00,560 When I was, say, seven or eight, 425 00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:03,400 you would start going to the boys' confraternity, 426 00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:05,280 and they would lower the lights in 427 00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:08,280 the big cathedral and the booming voice 428 00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:10,280 of the priest would say, 429 00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:15,080 "Death comes soon and judgment will follow, 430 00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:20,120 "so now, dear boys, examine your conscience and find out your sins." 431 00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:22,920 And there would be silence. 432 00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:25,720 In hell, all laws are overturned. 433 00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:32,240 There is no thought of family, country, its ties or relationships. 434 00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:34,920 On the third day of the retreat, 435 00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:39,320 the priest's sermon focuses on the horrors of hell and describes its 436 00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:42,600 torments in such relentless and visceral detail 437 00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:46,080 that he terrifies Stephen into submission. 438 00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:47,760 Why did you sin? 439 00:25:49,360 --> 00:25:52,800 Why did you lend an ear to the temptings of friends? 440 00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:56,920 Why did you not shun the occasion of sin? 441 00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:03,840 Why did you not give up that lured habit, 442 00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:05,240 that impure habit? 443 00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:09,360 Stephen stops frequenting prostitutes, 444 00:26:09,360 --> 00:26:11,400 makes a full confession, 445 00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:13,640 and is granted absolution. 446 00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,720 It seems that he has been reconciled with mother church. 447 00:26:18,360 --> 00:26:21,040 And you will promise God now 448 00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:25,720 that you will never offend him again by that wicked sin. 449 00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:30,440 Yes, Father. That wretched, wretched sin. 450 00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:34,200 But the priest's sermon also focused on the rebellion of the 451 00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:37,840 intellect, which Lucifer raised against God, 452 00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,400 and the fallen angel's call of defiance 453 00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:42,640 is the same as the young artist. 454 00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:44,240 Non serviam. 455 00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:45,920 I will not serve. 456 00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,440 "Six years ago, I left the Catholic Church. 457 00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:54,920 "By doing this, I made myself a beggar, but I retained my pride. 458 00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,800 "Now I make open war upon the Church 459 00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:00,320 "by what I write and say and do." 460 00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:05,360 Despite that, Catholicism seeps into every aspect of Stephen's life. 461 00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:11,000 Above all, it shapes his perception of himself as an artist. 462 00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:13,800 "A priest of the eternal imagination, 463 00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:16,280 "transmuting the daily bread of experience 464 00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:19,040 "into the radiant body of ever living life." 465 00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,680 I thought this is the way to lead one's life, 466 00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:25,960 or in particular, my life. 467 00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,600 I want to be... I want to be an artist like this. 468 00:27:28,600 --> 00:27:33,600 The idea of the priestly idea of the modernist writer appealed to me. 469 00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:36,000 By the end of the novel, 470 00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,760 Stephen is ready to leave Ireland, 471 00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,960 and embrace a life of silence, exile, and cunning. 472 00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,240 He wants to spread his creative 473 00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,040 wings and fly past the nets of family, 474 00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:51,600 church, and nationality that hold back his soul. 475 00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:07,080 Joyce completed the first draft of 476 00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,760 the first episode of his new novel on 477 00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:13,520 the same day that the school where he'd been teaching closed. 478 00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,240 Trieste was part of the Habsburg Empire. 479 00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:19,000 However, most of the inhabitants were Italian, 480 00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,280 and Italy had just declared war on Austria-Hungary. 481 00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,520 Ireland was still part of the British state, 482 00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:28,680 and therefore was also at war. 483 00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,480 Joyce was classified as an enemy alien, 484 00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:36,120 but he managed to escape from Trieste 485 00:28:36,120 --> 00:28:38,680 with the help of some well-connected friends. 486 00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:43,600 He and his family arrived in Zurich at the end of June, 1915. 487 00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:47,040 Zurich was kind of a non-place. 488 00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:48,920 It was also safe. 489 00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:53,000 Like all artists, you know, he spent his time fleeing danger. 490 00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:57,200 He'd intended that Ulysses would be another short story, 491 00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,640 but it grew in his imagination. 492 00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:03,560 He mapped out a structure that would correspond to Homer's epic poem, 493 00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,240 the Odyssey, and found parallels 494 00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:09,720 between modern Dublin and ancient Greece. 495 00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:14,720 I often wonder if you came into a publishing house to pitch Ulysses, 496 00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:19,000 and say, "Well, it's going 497 00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:23,600 "to be Homer, but it's going to be, you know, Dublin in a single day." 498 00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,280 If people would have just said, 499 00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:29,680 "Get him out of here. We're not publishing that." 500 00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,600 You know, you have to... You sort of have to execute it 501 00:29:32,600 --> 00:29:34,200 for anyone to believe in it. 502 00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:41,040 The rest of Europe may have seemed hell-bent on 503 00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,480 destruction, but Switzerland was not at war. 504 00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:49,280 Joyce and his family lived in many different addresses in Zurich, 505 00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:51,440 as was their habit. 506 00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,360 But thanks to the influence of the WB Yeats, 507 00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:58,040 Joyce now received a stipend from the British Council. 508 00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:00,960 He also caught the attention of Harriet Shaw Weaver, 509 00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:02,400 a wealthy English woman. 510 00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:06,040 Over the next 25 years, 511 00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,080 she would provide him with enough money to ensure that he could devote 512 00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:10,720 himself to writing. 513 00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:16,000 On the 10th of October, 1916, 514 00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:20,480 Joyce wrote to Harriet Weaver to say he was busy writing a new book. 515 00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:23,000 "I am working at it as well as I can. 516 00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:27,960 "It is called Ulysses and the action takes place in Dublin in 1904. 517 00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:30,040 "I've almost finished the first part, 518 00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,000 "and have written out part of the middle and end. 519 00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:35,120 "I hope to finish it in 1918." 520 00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:40,200 Joyce fell far short of that deadline, 521 00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:42,600 but he began to publish episodes from the book 522 00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:44,360 before it had been completed. 523 00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:51,960 It soon became clear that Joyce's ambitions and skills as a writer had 524 00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:54,200 gone far beyond his previous work. 525 00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:59,880 He invented a form of English for himself. 526 00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:03,160 No sentence in Ulysses is straightforward unless he means it 527 00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:05,320 to be, unless he means it to be cliche. 528 00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:06,920 That was his great revolution. 529 00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:15,160 In July of 1920, Joyce and his family moved to Paris. 530 00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,360 It was meant to be a brief visit, 531 00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:20,520 but he stayed there for the next 20 years. 532 00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:23,720 It was in Paris that he completed Ulysses, 533 00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:27,200 and it was there that his book was published by Sylvia Beach, 534 00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,160 another of his female benefactors. 535 00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:32,000 Some people asked me, 536 00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:35,000 "Were you disappointed when you met James Joyce?" 537 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:40,040 And I always say, "Never at all, for he was anything but disappointing." 538 00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:47,200 There were attempts to censor Joyce's book even before it had been 539 00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:51,000 published. In 1920, The Little Review 540 00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:53,960 had featured the Nausicaa episode, 541 00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:56,320 which includes references to masturbation 542 00:31:56,320 --> 00:31:59,880 and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice 543 00:31:59,880 --> 00:32:04,000 took legal action to keep the book out of the USA. 544 00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:08,800 At a trial in 1921, the magazine was declared obscene, 545 00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:11,240 and Ulysses was banned. 546 00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,800 He used to tell me about what was going on in New York, 547 00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:19,520 and he was following this case where Ulysses was being suppressed, 548 00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,440 and finally he came one day, to show me this Little Review, and he said, 549 00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,040 "You see, this is now being completely suppressed, 550 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:27,760 "and my boo-ook," 551 00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,480 as he pronounced it, "will never come out." 552 00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,240 So he sat there with his head in his hands, and 553 00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:39,200 I said to him, "Would you like me to publish Ulysses?" 554 00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:45,800 In the final months before publication, 555 00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:50,320 Joyce exhausted himself by rewriting numerous passages in the book. 556 00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:54,160 He was determined that every detail should be authentic. 557 00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,800 In November, 1921, he writes to his aunt Josephine. 558 00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:05,640 He wants to know if it's possible 559 00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:08,680 for an ordinary person to climb over the 560 00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,480 area railings of number seven Eccles Street, 561 00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:13,560 whether from the path or steps, 562 00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:16,240 lower himself from the lowest part of the railings, 563 00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,640 till his feet are within two or three inches of the ground and drop 564 00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:22,800 unhurt. He needs to know because he 565 00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:25,280 is revising one of the episodes in his 566 00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:27,440 novel, in which someone enters his 567 00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:30,040 house in Eccles Street by this method, 568 00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:33,160 and Joyce wants to make quite sure it is possible. 569 00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,880 Finally, on the 2nd of February, 1922, 570 00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,640 two copies of Ulysses were sent by 571 00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:47,080 train from printers in Dijon to Paris. 572 00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,520 Joyce received the books on the morning of his 40th birthday. 573 00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:56,000 Those that could obtain a copy soon found that the novel posed something 574 00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:58,360 of an existential challenge. 575 00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:00,560 Ulysses is a difficult book, 576 00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:03,200 and it's a challenge for many readers. 577 00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:06,320 I think we don't usually get too far in a conversation before I say, 578 00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:09,800 "I've read Ulysses," because I'm still quite proud of it. 579 00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:12,880 Of having actually got through it. 580 00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,240 I think reading Ulysses is a bit like, you know, 581 00:34:16,240 --> 00:34:19,240 being punched in the head, repeatedly, 582 00:34:19,240 --> 00:34:22,680 and then finding after a time that you quite enjoy that. 583 00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:34,200 The novel begins at eight in the morning of June the 16th, 1904, 584 00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:38,440 with three young men who are living in a Martello tower in Sandy Cove, 585 00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,040 a small coastal village south of Dublin. 586 00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:46,880 There's no plot. 587 00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:49,400 Days don't have plots. 588 00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:51,040 Life doesn't have a plot. 589 00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:53,280 And all the better for it. 590 00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:55,520 At the end of Joyce's first novel, 591 00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:58,440 Stephen Dedalus was about to leave for Paris. 592 00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:00,520 In this one, he's returned to Ireland. 593 00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:07,160 The novel also follows the path of an older man, Leopold Bloom, 594 00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:10,760 as he goes about his business on that June day. 595 00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:15,280 Bloom is the son of a Hungarian Jew, and an Irish Protestant. 596 00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:18,440 He converted to Catholicism to marry his wife, Molly. 597 00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:21,920 In this TV production, 598 00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:23,960 Milo O'Shea gave what some 599 00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:28,200 consider to be a definitive reading of the character. 600 00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,360 I think the fact that Bloom is Jewish 601 00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:32,440 is at the very heart of Ulysses. 602 00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,320 I think it's so important. 603 00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,560 I think it was a very deliberate, very careful, 604 00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,440 very clever choice on Joyce's part. 605 00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,760 I belong to a race too that's hated and persecuted. 606 00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:44,960 At this moment, this instant. 607 00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:47,600 Robbed, plundered, insulted, persecuted. 608 00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,560 Taking what belongs to us by right, at this moment. 609 00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:55,520 Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? 610 00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:57,280 I'm talking about injustice. 611 00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:59,320 Stand up to it, then, with force, like men. 612 00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:00,840 But that's no good. 613 00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:02,520 Force, hatred. 614 00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:04,320 History and all that. 615 00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:06,680 No, that's not the life of men and women. 616 00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:08,440 Hatred, insult. 617 00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,880 Everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that's really life. 618 00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:13,720 What is? Love. 619 00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:18,400 Having this complex identity for Bloom 620 00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,840 allows Joyce to really wrangle with 621 00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:26,880 all the themes of nationalism and identity and belonging. 622 00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:29,760 And the saviour was a Jew and his father was a Jew, your God. 623 00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:32,280 That'll do now. Whose God? 624 00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:34,960 ..was a Jew and 625 00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:38,080 your God was a Jew. And Christ was a Jew, like me. 626 00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:41,520 I'll brain that bloody Jew man for using the holy name. 627 00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:43,960 Bejesus, I'll crucify him! 628 00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:45,800 I think he's saying just because we 629 00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,240 don't have a big Jewish community does 630 00:36:48,240 --> 00:36:50,600 not mean that we are not anti-Semitic 631 00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:52,680 or have not been in the past. 632 00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:55,560 And also, that moment is kind of chilling as well, 633 00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,400 when you read it in the light of everything that followed. 634 00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,200 See now. 635 00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:11,520 There all the time without you. 636 00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,560 Ulysses may be based on a classical text, 637 00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:16,440 but everything that happens to 638 00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:19,240 Stephen and Bloom is rooted in the everyday 639 00:37:19,240 --> 00:37:22,240 experiences that make up the lives of ordinary people. 640 00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:27,400 And through his use of a stream of consciousness technique, 641 00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:31,600 Joyce is not only able to tell us what the characters are doing, 642 00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:33,760 but what they are thinking. 643 00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:36,360 Funny, my watch stopped at half past four. 644 00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:37,880 What's happened? 645 00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:41,920 Such a bad headache now. 646 00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:45,040 Oh, exhausted, that female has me. 647 00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,080 But will she come here tomorrow? 648 00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:49,680 Murderers do. Write a message for her? 649 00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,400 For Joyce, language was a lens. 650 00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:58,280 It distorted, it clarified, and it was very highly polished. 651 00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:01,160 What emerges as a portrayal of 652 00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:03,600 Dublin that is both comprehensive and 653 00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,800 precise. Joyce claimed that 654 00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:09,680 if Dublin one day suddenly disappeared from the Earth, 655 00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:12,360 "It could be reconstructed out of my book." 656 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:20,040 Joyce had originally intended that there would be 17 episodes in his 657 00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:24,320 novel, all of them devoted to Bloom and Stephen. 658 00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:27,440 But he added an 18th and final episode, 659 00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:31,760 in which the only voice we hear is that of Bloom's wife, Molly. 660 00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:34,320 She's waited for her husband's return 661 00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:36,640 like Penelope in the Odyssey. 662 00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:38,960 But unlike Homer's faithful wife, 663 00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:42,200 she has committed adultery that afternoon. 664 00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:44,960 Breakfast in bed. 665 00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:48,040 He has an idea about me and Boylan. 666 00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:52,520 Molly's final speech is written in eight paragraphs, 667 00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:56,360 without any dialogue, and without any punctuation. 668 00:38:56,360 --> 00:39:00,200 Men. I'd rather die 20 time over than marry another of their sex. 669 00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:03,920 As we follow her speeding train of thought, sometimes bawdy, 670 00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:06,280 sometimes fastidious, 671 00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:10,840 we gather that she's both a sensuous and an intelligent woman. 672 00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,840 Joyce had no problem getting into the minds of whoever, 673 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,680 because the book was the world and the world was his mind, 674 00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:18,680 that he could do whatever he wanted, 675 00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,200 including getting into the mind of Molly. 676 00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:23,600 The day I got him to propose to me. 677 00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,880 Yes, I said, I was a flower of the mountain, yes. 678 00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:28,840 Every writer 679 00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,520 needs one governing thing, one 680 00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:35,800 governing emotion in their sensibility, 681 00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:37,800 that no matter what, you can see it 682 00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:42,520 appearing in their work, and for Joyce, that idea 683 00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:46,920 of adultery, of unfaithfulness, of being a man, 684 00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:49,680 and being weakened by the fact that 685 00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:52,760 the woman who you desire, who you want, 686 00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,920 is actually with somebody else, really animates him, 687 00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:57,560 really gets him going. 688 00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:03,240 Much of Molly's thoughts are related to her personal sexual history, 689 00:40:03,240 --> 00:40:06,360 impulses and fantasies. 690 00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:08,200 The explicit detail of her words 691 00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:10,760 greatly contributed to the novel's shock 692 00:40:10,760 --> 00:40:12,720 impact when it was first published. 693 00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:18,160 "It begins and ends with the female word yes. 694 00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:22,080 "It turns like the huge Earth ball, slowly, surely, and evenly, 695 00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:24,440 "round and round, spinning, 696 00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:26,880 "its four cardinal points being the 697 00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,280 "female breasts, arse, womb, and cunt." 698 00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:32,160 To say yes, my mountain flower. 699 00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,760 First I put my hands around him. Yes. 700 00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:38,480 I find the language itself tremendously sensual. 701 00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:42,360 I drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts so perfumed, yes. 702 00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:47,360 And physical and funny and overwhelming. 703 00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:50,040 His heart was going like mad. 704 00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:54,440 And yes, I said, yes, I will. Yes! 705 00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:59,440 TS Eliot described the publication of Joyce's book as having the 706 00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,560 importance of a scientific discovery. 707 00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:07,600 It's incredible. You would look at the whole and think the certitude, 708 00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:12,840 that he absolutely knew where he was going, which is hard, you know. 709 00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,760 It's hard to see the end before you begin. 710 00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,680 It may be the hardest thing for a writer, 711 00:41:19,680 --> 00:41:22,520 and I don't think anyone did it better. 712 00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:27,520 But not everyone has appreciated Joyce's novel. 713 00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:34,240 By 1922, Ireland had achieved political independence, 714 00:41:34,240 --> 00:41:38,680 but the new Irish state was imbued with a deeply conservative Catholic 715 00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:42,560 ethos. Ulysses was never banned in Ireland, 716 00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:45,400 but Joyce was often portrayed as a pornographer. 717 00:41:47,240 --> 00:41:49,880 His aunt Josephine in Dublin steadfastly 718 00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:52,200 refused to read Ulysses because 719 00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:54,960 she believed it to be a dirty book. 720 00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,040 "If Ulysses isn't fit to read," Joyce said, 721 00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,080 "then life isn't fit to live." 722 00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:04,720 In 1931, Joyce's father died. 723 00:42:06,240 --> 00:42:08,080 "No man could be worthy of such 724 00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:10,400 "intense love as my father had for me." 725 00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:17,440 Soon afterwards, his first and only grandchild was born. 726 00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:21,880 Joyce wrote a poem to mark the occasion of Stephen Joyce's birth. 727 00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:25,240 A child is sleeping. 728 00:42:25,240 --> 00:42:27,720 An old man gone. 729 00:42:27,720 --> 00:42:30,320 Oh, father forsaken. 730 00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,240 Forgive your son. 731 00:42:45,240 --> 00:42:47,520 made him a literary celebrity. 732 00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:50,200 He became a leader of the avant-garde, 733 00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:54,120 and he enjoyed to the full the cafe society of Paris. 734 00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:56,720 There were few royalties from Ulysses, 735 00:42:56,720 --> 00:42:59,360 because it was banned for many years. 736 00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:04,080 But Joyce continued to enjoy the patronage of Harriet Weaver. 737 00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:09,120 He has enormously powerful, wealthy, and patient allies. 738 00:43:09,720 --> 00:43:12,760 I mean, this was a golden time in the life of Paris, 739 00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:15,240 and he was at the very centre of this and, I mean, 740 00:43:15,240 --> 00:43:17,760 I think this gave him great pleasure. 741 00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:19,680 Within a few years, 742 00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:23,320 Joyce had gone from being an impoverished language teacher in a 743 00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,400 backwater of Europe to becoming a 744 00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,640 respected writer with an international reputation. 745 00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:34,480 When Joyce goes to the restaurant, it's, you know, the full canonicals. 746 00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:36,720 He lives a sort of, 747 00:43:36,720 --> 00:43:39,560 you know, grand bourgeois life for a lot of the time, 748 00:43:39,560 --> 00:43:42,960 and when he's not doing that, it's because he's spent all the money. 749 00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:45,440 He has his father's improvidence. 750 00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:49,480 The young Irishman Samuel Beckett will wait another 30 years for fame 751 00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:53,000 as author of the controversial drama Waiting for Godot. 752 00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:56,880 At the moment, he is serving as secretary to his renowned and still 753 00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,880 more controversial compatriot, James Joyce. 754 00:43:59,880 --> 00:44:01,920 Joyce's novel Ulysses is damned by 755 00:44:01,920 --> 00:44:04,360 censors on both sides of the Atlantic, 756 00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:08,680 but finds an enthusiastic publisher and public in Paris. 757 00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:10,800 In 1933, 758 00:44:10,800 --> 00:44:12,480 Random House arranged for a copy of 759 00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:16,320 the book they'd imported to be seized by customs. 760 00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,400 The publisher then contested the seizure. 761 00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:23,840 The US court of appeals ruled that the book was not pornographic. 762 00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:25,720 It was a landmark decision that 763 00:44:25,720 --> 00:44:28,000 would help to change attitudes on the 764 00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,200 censorship of art throughout the world. 765 00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:41,080 Joyce's celebrity could not protect him from his worsening health. 766 00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:44,560 He suffered from a constant stream of eye problems, 767 00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:47,200 went through a number of complex surgeries, 768 00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:51,320 and spent long stretches when he was virtually blind. 769 00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:53,640 At times, he had to write with large 770 00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:57,520 red crayons so that he could read his own words. 771 00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,720 There was something else that weighed on his mind during these 772 00:45:00,720 --> 00:45:04,960 years. And that was the mental health of his daughter, Lucia. 773 00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,120 Lucia had been a sickly child, 774 00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:11,840 and her earliest memories were of domestic chaos. 775 00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,680 Her relationship with her father was intense, and sometimes tortured. 776 00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,040 Do you know an author who isn't manipulative? 777 00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,360 That's what we do. We sit in our rooms and we manipulate language, 778 00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:28,920 we manipulate character, we manipulate the material we're given, 779 00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:31,640 we manipulate our families and friends. 780 00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:33,280 We're cannibals, essentially. 781 00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:38,040 Lucia had a strained relationship with Nora, 782 00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:40,440 and on Joyce's 50th birthday, 783 00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:42,720 she attacked her mother. 784 00:45:42,720 --> 00:45:46,440 Lucia was admitted to a clinic and for the next few years, 785 00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:48,800 moved between hospitals and home. 786 00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,640 Carl Jung diagnosed schizophrenia, 787 00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:54,120 but Joyce did not want to accept this verdict. 788 00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,440 "I am in a minority of one, in my opinion, 789 00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,800 "as everybody else apparently thinks Lucia is crazy. 790 00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:06,240 "But her mind is as clear and as unsparing as lightning. 791 00:46:06,240 --> 00:46:10,320 "She is a fantastic being, speaking a curious language of her own. 792 00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:12,160 "I understand it. 793 00:46:12,160 --> 00:46:13,840 "Or most of it." 794 00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:18,640 He came to love Lucia, probably more than anyone. 795 00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,880 And he felt 796 00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,360 that his madness, 797 00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:27,280 that he had somehow escaped the worst of, 798 00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:30,200 and in some etheric way, 799 00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,240 he had transmitted it to his daughter. 800 00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:39,680 When she was 28, Lucia entered an asylum in France. 801 00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:42,600 She would never live outside an institution again. 802 00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,560 Joyce was so exhausted by the time he finished Ulysses 803 00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:52,960 that he was unable to write prose for over a year. 804 00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:56,000 However, in March, 1923, 805 00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:59,840 he wrote to Harriet Weaver that he'd just completed two pages of a new 806 00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:03,880 book. This would eventually become Finnigan's Wake. 807 00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:05,720 Joyce, after Ulysses, 808 00:47:05,720 --> 00:47:07,960 has gone into a certain zone where 809 00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:10,560 he does what a shaman does in society, 810 00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:13,640 which is sort of a shaman makes himself crazy. 811 00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:18,680 He goes out onto the extreme, has visions and talks in tongues, 812 00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:21,280 and deranges himself. 813 00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:25,400 The Wake was his final book, 814 00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,760 and it took Joyce 17 years to complete. 815 00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,160 The novel is often considered to be one of the most difficult books to 816 00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:34,880 read in any language. 817 00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:36,040 Like a lot of people, I got a 818 00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:37,920 hundred pages into Finnegan's Wake and 819 00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:39,720 couldn't find my way out. 820 00:47:39,720 --> 00:47:41,480 The opening line of the book is a 821 00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:43,920 fragment of the sentence which is left 822 00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:46,560 unfinished in the book's closing line, 823 00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:49,200 making the work a never ending cycle. 824 00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:51,240 You can't really read it. 825 00:47:51,240 --> 00:47:54,440 It has to be spoken and has to be spoken by someone Irish and someone 826 00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:56,320 probably a Dubliner. 827 00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:14,640 The book concerns the Earwicker family, 828 00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:17,240 but there is no conventional plot. 829 00:48:17,240 --> 00:48:22,200 Joyce builds layer upon layer of multilingual puns, wordplays, 830 00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:24,360 and literary allusions upon a 831 00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:27,400 foundation of standard or Hiberno English. 832 00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:32,360 I still don't know how to read it. 833 00:48:32,360 --> 00:48:36,760 The critical reaction, when the book appeared, was largely negative. 834 00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:40,440 Ulysses may have been a demanding read, but for many, 835 00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,080 Finnigan's Wake was a step too far. 836 00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:45,960 I consider Finnigan's Wake to be a great disaster, 837 00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:47,840 with equal emphasis on both words. 838 00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:50,560 It is great but it's also disastrous. 839 00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:52,600 As TS Eliot in his gnomic way said, 840 00:48:52,600 --> 00:48:54,480 "One book like this is enough." 841 00:48:56,600 --> 00:48:59,640 "I might easily have written the story in the traditional manner. 842 00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,120 "Every novelist knows the recipe. 843 00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:03,680 "It's not very difficult to follow a 844 00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:07,640 "simple chronological scheme which the critics will understand. 845 00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:11,440 "But I, after all, am trying to tell a story in a new way." 846 00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:16,760 Perhaps Finnigan's Wake disappointed some readers 847 00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:20,200 because they felt it was not the book Joyce should have written. 848 00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:23,440 People are slightly moral about what writers should or shouldn't do, 849 00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:25,040 and you can see the progression in Joyce 850 00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:27,760 so simply from Dubliners through to Finnigan's Wake. 851 00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:30,720 You say, "Oh, should he have done that now?" 852 00:49:30,720 --> 00:49:33,160 So, should he have done Finnigan's Wake? 853 00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:35,480 It's really, really hard to read and you say, 854 00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:38,440 "Well the connection with the readership is obviously broken there 855 00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:40,360 "or he didn't need to sell a book." 856 00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:44,600 He had plenty of money. But I think that he was going so far out on the 857 00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:48,560 limb that was nowhere else for him to go. 858 00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:52,600 But the reason that he's so good was that he was following his 859 00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:57,000 own preoccupation with such integrity. 860 00:49:57,000 --> 00:50:01,160 The Wake maybe more often written about than read, 861 00:50:01,160 --> 00:50:04,240 but it has come to assume an iconic role in English literature. 862 00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:09,680 The book has bequeathed new words to the English language, 863 00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:14,080 and nuclear physicists have even found that its linguistic patterning 864 00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,720 corresponds to complex fractals, 865 00:50:16,720 --> 00:50:18,520 the geometric figures that that 866 00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:21,760 feature in the structures of everything 867 00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:25,200 from snowflakes to the galaxies of stars. 868 00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,800 I love that it exists, you know. It had to exist. 869 00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:31,520 It's incredibly important that it exists. 870 00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:35,000 Someone had to do it and there's no-one else except for Joyce who 871 00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:38,040 could have pulled it off and had the, you know, 872 00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:43,080 persistence and the intelligence and the vision to do it. 873 00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,280 Some things need to be done just because they need to be done. 874 00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:50,480 By the time he finished the Wake, Joyce had, 875 00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:52,640 in the words of one friend, 876 00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:57,040 "Consumed almost all of his substance, physical and spiritual, 877 00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:59,560 "moral and material." 878 00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:03,200 Perhaps the years of illness coupled with excessive drinking and 879 00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:06,280 creative struggle had taken their toll, 880 00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:08,880 and there were other urgent issues to be addressed. 881 00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,880 Germany's wild attack becomes more savage every hour. 882 00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:16,240 Down swoop their bombers on undefended towns, 883 00:51:16,240 --> 00:51:18,280 down upon women and children. 884 00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:20,720 On May the 10th, 1940, 885 00:51:20,720 --> 00:51:25,320 the German Wehrmacht launched a blitzkrieg across a wide front. 886 00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:30,040 The armies of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were soon defeated, 887 00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,600 and German forces were able to enter Paris. 888 00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,360 Joyce was still a British citizen, 889 00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:41,600 and Great Britain was at war with Nazi Germany. 890 00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:46,200 He also represented everything in art that the Nazis despised. 891 00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:50,480 Beyond that, his daughter Lucia was in a psychiatric hospital, 892 00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:53,600 while his grandson Stephen was half Jewish, 893 00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:57,920 and Joyce knew how the Nazis dealt with mental patients and with Jews. 894 00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:08,880 Joyce decided to seek refuge once again in Switzerland. 895 00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:12,080 But crossing the Swiss border this time proved more difficult. 896 00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:30,360 By the end of his life, Joyce was once again short of money. 897 00:52:34,240 --> 00:52:38,240 Eventually, he managed to cross the Swiss border with Nora, 898 00:52:38,240 --> 00:52:39,560 Giorgio and Stephen. 899 00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:45,240 Joyce arrived in Geneva in December 1940, 900 00:52:45,240 --> 00:52:47,400 travelling on to Zurich a few days later. 901 00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:51,120 He arrived there broken and sick, 902 00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:54,600 and wrote with relief to thank the mayor of Zurich for his help in 903 00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:56,760 facilitating his family's entry. 904 00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:31,720 Less than a month after he arrived in Switzerland, 905 00:53:31,720 --> 00:53:35,000 Joyce was overcome with stomach pains. 906 00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:38,960 He was admitted to hospital, and an X-ray revealed a perforated ulcer. 907 00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:45,440 At first, it seemed that an operation had been successful, 908 00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:47,160 and he worried who would pay for it. 909 00:53:49,240 --> 00:53:52,000 The next day, he lapsed into a coma. 910 00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:58,080 At one o'clock in the morning of January the 13th, 1941, he woke, 911 00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,120 and asked a nurse to call Nora at once. 912 00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:06,200 But before she could arrive at the hospital, Joyce was dead. 913 00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,160 Joyce was the great escapologist. 914 00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:20,560 In the Portrait of the Artist, 915 00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:23,000 he said, "I've got to fly the nets 916 00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:26,120 "of nationality, religion, of family." 917 00:54:26,120 --> 00:54:27,880 He gets away. 918 00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:32,200 He gets away from Ireland, he gets away from Dublin, 919 00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:35,320 he gets away from his family, he gets away from Catholicism, 920 00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:37,920 he gets away from the First World War, 921 00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:41,200 but he doesn't really get away from the second. 922 00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:43,400 In the end, history catches up with him. 923 00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,360 I mean, it's a very sad idea that 924 00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:50,320 this great man who was taken from us so 925 00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:52,600 young had achieved so much. 926 00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:54,600 I mean, it is really, really almost 927 00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:58,160 sickening to think that he published Ulysses when he was 40. 928 00:54:59,480 --> 00:55:03,320 Joyce was still regarded by many in Ireland as a pornographer 929 00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:05,520 and religious apostate. 930 00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:07,320 Nora's request to repatriate the 931 00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:11,080 body to Ireland was refused by the Irish government. 932 00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:13,600 When Joyce was buried in Zurich, 933 00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:17,560 the Irish Consul was instructed not to attend the funeral. 934 00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:20,120 A Catholic priest had approached Nora, 935 00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:24,200 offering to provide a religious service, but she refused. 936 00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:26,080 "I couldn't do that to Jim," she said. 937 00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:32,760 When his daughter Lucia heard of his death, she said, 938 00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:35,400 "What's he doing under the ground, that idiot? 939 00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:37,920 "When will he decide to come out? 940 00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:39,840 "He's watching us all the time." 941 00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:52,960 Perhaps Lucia's instincts were right, because since his death, 942 00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:55,840 Joyce's presence has continued to be felt. 943 00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:58,760 Not just in works of literature, but 944 00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:01,920 also in art, in music, and in cinema. 945 00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:05,440 When I think of his reputation in the 1970s in Dublin, 946 00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:09,520 and how his own family were ashamed that they were related to him, 947 00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:12,960 you cannot imagine what it would have been like 50, 70, 948 00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:14,960 80 years ago previously to that. 949 00:56:14,960 --> 00:56:16,600 I mean, it was just impossible for 950 00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:18,320 someone to have lived in that Dublin. 951 00:56:23,120 --> 00:56:26,560 What amazed me about Joyce is how much he changed over the 952 00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:28,440 span of his career. 953 00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,800 To me, it's like the Beatles going from their first album through the 954 00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:35,920 White album. Like a relatively short span of time where every possibility 955 00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:37,680 is used, exhausted, 956 00:56:37,680 --> 00:56:42,720 and then chucked away, and something else has taken its place. 957 00:56:43,200 --> 00:56:48,240 He was someone who could look deep into the human mind, 958 00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:59,080 Bloomsday, the day on which he first walked out with Norma Barnacle and 959 00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:01,720 the day on which he set Ulysses, 960 00:57:01,720 --> 00:57:04,840 is celebrated wherever Joyce's work is read, 961 00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,720 which means all over the world. 962 00:57:07,720 --> 00:57:12,520 In Ireland, the country that once abhorred Joyce and his works, 963 00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,600 the day has become something of a national festival. 964 00:57:17,360 --> 00:57:22,440 With an Irish writer, if she or he is any good, 965 00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:26,040 make no mistake, he's also a European writer. 966 00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:30,040 There is an opinion that the 967 00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:33,680 presence of Joyce especially cast a dark 968 00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:35,880 shadow on all other fiction that 969 00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:39,080 came after him in Ireland, but you know, 970 00:57:39,080 --> 00:57:42,720 my response is, you know, look what happens in the shadows. 971 00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:44,560 Badness. 972 00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:46,960 Wonderful, wicked badness. 973 00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:53,560 Without Joyce's work, no modern literary canon can be complete. 974 00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,520 He's read everywhere, taught everywhere, 975 00:57:56,520 --> 00:57:59,200 and his influence is felt everywhere, 976 00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:02,240 even by those who've never read his books. 977 00:58:02,240 --> 00:58:05,520 The Irish provenance of his work is indisputable, 978 00:58:05,520 --> 00:58:07,360 but its compass is the world.