This week, in the newspapers and on the T.V., much is made of “Ulysses” by James Joyce 1882-1941. I did no like it, though, I admit, I am not a good judge as I skimmed it only. The colloquial type speech is that of ordinary Dubliners.
On the other hand, Joyce, being a classical scholar, the script contains hidden meanings. Once when I was reading a biography of Bloody Mary, Queen of Scots, (an angel compared to her sister Elisabeth I) a mention was of a tutor for her, a brilliant man from Spain, employed by her father Henry VIII. That tutor’s name occurs as in Ulysses – a really well crafted book.
Joyce’s Ireland was the Ireland of my childhood, essentially agricultural, and ruled from Westminster. Great English families, titled and powerful ones, in their Irish estates, employed local people in trade e.g. Barley for Guinness’ brewery. High taxes were levied by London. The English army had barracks all over Ireland’s thirty-two counties. The English navy was stationed in all Irish harbours. An arsenal, run from Portsmouth, as Spike Island in Cork Harbour, and my late husband worked in the English dockyard there.
After the repeal of the Penal Laws in 1829, Irish people could acquire education and there own land; shops were opened; and Irish trade resumed. But still emigration was rife.
Joyce was the eldest of a large family. His father was a drinker and they became poorer and poorer. His education was in a fee-paying boarding school. Due to “who you know”, his education was free. He was of course a natural genius. “Many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste it’s sweetness in the desert air”.
Ireland in Joyce’s time was part of the English Empire and was ruled like India and South Africa. Joyce was anti-nationalist, not usual for an Irishman at the beginning of the twentieth century. Part of Ireland remains in the English Empire in the six counties of Ulster’s nine.
Joyce, born a catholic, was educated by the Jesuits, but he became anti-religious.
Rose Lynch
17-jun-2004
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