Joyce on Joyce

‘To me an Irish safety pin is more important than an English epic.’ (Remark to Claud Sykes; quoted in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce[1959], 1965 Edn. p.436.)

‘It is to be safe from the rabid and soul-destroying political atmosphere in Ireland that I live here[,] for in such an atmosphere it is very difficult to create good work, while in the atmosphere which “Father Murphy” creates it is impossible. At a very early stage I came to the conclusion that to stay in Ireland would be to rot, and I never had any intention of rotting, or at least if I had to, I intended to rot in my own way, and I think most people will agree that I have done that.’ (Joyce to Arthur Power; quoted in Stan Gébler Davies, James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist, Davis-Poynter 1975, p.245.)

‘Ireland is what she is and therefore I am what I am because of the relations that have existed between England and Ireland. Tell me why you think I ought to wish to change the conditions that gave Ireland and me a shape and a destiny?’ (Joyce to Frank Budgen; quoted in Davies, op. cit., 1975, p.p.245-46.)

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‘The Irish nation’s insistence on developing its own culture by itself is not so much the demand of a young nation that wants to make good in the European concert as the demand of a very old nation to renew under forms the glories of a past civilisation.’ (Critical Writings, Viking 1959, p.157; quoted in Robert O’Driscoll, ed., The Celtic Consciousness [papers of 1978 symposium at Toronto] Dublin: Dolmen Press; Edinburgh: Canongate Publ. 1982, cp.8.)

‘You are Irishmen and you must write in your own tradition. Borrowed styles are no good. You must write what is in your blood and not what is in your brain. [...] For myself, I always write abut Dublin because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.’

(Recorded in Arthur Power, ‘James Joyce - The Irishman’,The Irish Times, 30 Dec. 1944; rep. in From an Old Waterford House, London n.d., p.63-64; quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.520; also in Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, 1978, p.130, and Bair, ‘No-Man’s-Land, Hellespont or Vacuum, Samuel Beckett’s Irishness’, Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1982, p.105.)

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‘A nation which had never advanced so far as a miracle play affords no literary model to the artist, and he must look abroad.’ (Quoted in D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, London: Routledge 1982; 1991 Edn., p.245.)]

‘If Ulysses is not fit to read, life is not fit to live’ (Joyce to Kathleen Murray, on hearing of her mother’s estimate of the novel; interview with Kathleen Murray, quoted in Patricia Hutchins, James Joyce’s World, p.139; cited in Ellmann, James Joyce, 1959; 1965 Edn., p.551.)

‘Ireland is what she is and therefore I am what I am because of the relations that have existed between England and Ireland. Tell me why you think I ought to wish to change the conditions that gave Ireland and me a shape and a destiny?’ (Joyce to Frank Budgen; quoted in Davies, op. cit., 1975, p.p.245-46.)

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‘The problem of my race is so complicated that one needs all the resources of an elastic art in order to convey it without simplification. Therefore I feel constrained to attempting it by means of the scenes and characters of my poor invention’ [i.e., by fiction rather than discourse [La problème de ma race est tellement compliqué qu’on a besoin de tous les moyens d’un art elastique pour l’esquisser — sans le resoudre. Je suis de l’avis qu’une pronounciation personelle n’est plus permise. Je suis contraint à la faire moyennant les scènes et les personnage de ma pauvre invention].’ (Letters, Vol. I, p.118.)

Note that Joyce followed this with a letter in English (3 Sept. 1918) incorporating a response to a novel sent by Mme. Guillermet and offering this point [inter al.] ‘I do not like the epostolary form in which you have written it. It is seductive but has the inevitable drawback that one can see only from one angle. The inclusion also in some of the letters of literal transcripts from “l’autre” is a device, necessary no doubt, which dissatisfies. [...]’ (p.119.) Guillermet - a journalist on the Journal de Genève, has criticism Joyce’s ‘manque de goût [lack of taste] ’ (Idem.)

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