0:00:02 > 0:00:05This programme contains very strong language
0:00:05 > 0:00:07And after I was only a week in the comfort, he died.
0:00:07 > 0:00:10He was buried where his people came from.
0:00:13 > 0:00:17Oh, the day I heard that.
0:00:17 > 0:00:19That he was dead.
0:00:26 > 0:00:29The film of James Joyce's story
0:00:29 > 0:00:32The Dead has a special meaning for me.
0:00:32 > 0:00:36The role of Gretta Conroy was a wonderful part to play.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39The screenplay was written by my brother, Tony,
0:00:39 > 0:00:42and the movie was directed by my father, John Huston.
0:00:43 > 0:00:45It was his cherished ambition to
0:00:45 > 0:00:49film an adaptation of Joyce's story for many years,
0:00:49 > 0:00:51and this was the last of the many
0:00:51 > 0:00:55classic movies that he made during his lifetime.
0:00:55 > 0:01:02I'd heard of the book Ulysses, and I read it, and it was just
0:01:02 > 0:01:05an enormous influence it played on my life.
0:01:05 > 0:01:09Having read Ulysses, I proceeded to read everything else that
0:01:09 > 0:01:14he'd written. And among that material was The Dead,
0:01:14 > 0:01:19and of course, it's one of the most extraordinary
0:01:19 > 0:01:23short stories
0:01:23 > 0:01:25in the English language.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28One, two, three.
0:01:29 > 0:01:33My father was far from alone in his admiration of James Joyce
0:01:33 > 0:01:36and his belief in Joyce's greatness as a writer.
0:01:37 > 0:01:39Joyce questions everything.
0:01:39 > 0:01:42He wants to know more about everything.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46And in that respect, I think he is the poet of revelation.
0:01:46 > 0:01:50I think in Ireland he's viewed as an heroic figure.
0:01:50 > 0:01:52And I don't think anybody now in
0:01:52 > 0:01:56Ireland would take offence at anything he said.
0:01:56 > 0:01:59It all turned out to be true.
0:01:59 > 0:02:01You probably get to know Joyce most...
0:02:01 > 0:02:03You know, you see his image in pubs.
0:02:03 > 0:02:07This is one of the complications of Ireland's projection on the world
0:02:07 > 0:02:09is it's synonymous with good times and booze,
0:02:09 > 0:02:11and I suppose Joyce has been
0:02:11 > 0:02:13subsumed into that in quite a big way,
0:02:13 > 0:02:15which is probably quite appropriate.
0:02:15 > 0:02:18Growing up in Ireland, you just
0:02:18 > 0:02:22can't not be aware of Joyce as a figure, as a spectre.
0:02:22 > 0:02:23He's everywhere, right?
0:02:23 > 0:02:26I think he was cold
0:02:26 > 0:02:28in the way that many great artists are cold.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32I think he was entirely self absorbed.
0:02:32 > 0:02:35If you're too celebrated or celebrated early in Ireland,
0:02:35 > 0:02:39clearly you're doing something wrong and you're going nowhere.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42It's like you should be annoying Ireland in some way.
0:02:43 > 0:02:48He asked himself the question once - does a writer have to be ruthless?
0:02:48 > 0:02:52The answer is yes.
0:02:59 > 0:03:06James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in 1882 in Rathgar,
0:03:06 > 0:03:08a suburb on the south side of Dublin.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11He was the oldest of ten surviving
0:03:11 > 0:03:15children born to John Stanislaus Joyce and May Murray.
0:03:15 > 0:03:17His mother seems to have been a
0:03:17 > 0:03:20submissive and deeply religious woman.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23She must also have been very tolerant,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26since her husband was an alcoholic and a spendthrift.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30He managed to run through a large inheritance and did not hold down a
0:03:30 > 0:03:33regular job for the last 40 years of his life.
0:03:35 > 0:03:37As John Joyce's income fell,
0:03:37 > 0:03:41his family changed houses often to escape their creditors.
0:03:41 > 0:03:42In theory, this was a kind of
0:03:42 > 0:03:45Catholic middle class family who desperately wanted to
0:03:45 > 0:03:49be respectable, but they couldn't keep up that sort of pretence.
0:03:49 > 0:03:53You know, the tradesmen were always coming, looking to be paid,
0:03:53 > 0:03:57and were not being paid. They were hiding from the rent collectors.
0:03:57 > 0:04:01But John was determined that his son would be educated at Ireland's elite
0:04:01 > 0:04:06schools. Those run by Jesuits and not by the Christian Brothers.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09The Jesuits, in terms of Catholic education,
0:04:09 > 0:04:11were for the Catholic elite,
0:04:11 > 0:04:15and the Christian Brothers were for the lower middle classes,
0:04:15 > 0:04:17and the difference between one and the other was enormous.
0:04:19 > 0:04:22James first attended Clongowes Wood College,
0:04:22 > 0:04:26but had to leave when his father couldn't pay the school fees.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30However, he was soon offered free tuition at Belvedere College in the
0:04:30 > 0:04:32heart of Dublin.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38I think the Jesuit education gave him a sense of himself as different.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41Joyce grew up during a period of
0:04:41 > 0:04:44political uncertainty in Ireland that had
0:04:44 > 0:04:45developed in the decades that
0:04:45 > 0:04:49followed the fall and death of Charles Stewart Parnell,
0:04:49 > 0:04:51the uncrowned king of Ireland,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54who had brought the country to the verge of independence.
0:04:57 > 0:05:00But Parnell had been named as an adulterer
0:05:00 > 0:05:02in a sensational divorce case,
0:05:02 > 0:05:06and the political party he led had split in two.
0:05:09 > 0:05:12Joyce's own home was split by this division,
0:05:12 > 0:05:15which he wrote about in his first novel.
0:05:17 > 0:05:23Joyce's novel was dramatized by Hugh Leonard in his play, Stephen D.
0:05:23 > 0:05:27In one of its scenes, Stephen Dedalus is seven years old,
0:05:27 > 0:05:30and has been allowed to join the adults for Christmas dinner.
0:05:31 > 0:05:36Parnell's the only figure that Joyce doesn't mock.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38This sense of him as a martyr.
0:05:38 > 0:05:40The sense of him as a sexual martyr.
0:05:40 > 0:05:44The sense of him as someone who had suffered deeply at the hands of the
0:05:44 > 0:05:48worst elements in both Irish and English society.
0:05:49 > 0:05:51An argument breaks out about the
0:05:51 > 0:05:55role of the Catholic Church in the fall of Parnell.
0:05:55 > 0:05:59And were we to desert Parnell at the bidding of the English people?
0:05:59 > 0:06:00He was no longer worthy to lead.
0:06:00 > 0:06:02He was a public sinner.
0:06:02 > 0:06:05- Yeah.- We are all sinners, Mrs Reardon, and black sinners.
0:06:05 > 0:06:07The row plants the first doubts in his mind
0:06:07 > 0:06:10about the authority of the Catholic Church.
0:06:13 > 0:06:15Joyce was a brilliant student
0:06:15 > 0:06:19who won awards and scholarships from an early age,
0:06:19 > 0:06:21and whose writing was first published
0:06:21 > 0:06:23when he was just nine years old.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30His family is living in abject poverty, but when he's 12,
0:06:30 > 0:06:35Joyce wins a top prize in Ireland's national exams,
0:06:35 > 0:06:37a windfall for the family,
0:06:37 > 0:06:40and his father says Joyce can spend it as he chooses.
0:06:40 > 0:06:43He thinks it will teach his son the value of money.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48But Joyce uses it to visit expensive restaurants and pay for trips to the
0:06:48 > 0:06:50theatre. Within a few weeks,
0:06:50 > 0:06:54the money is gone and the family is poverty stricken once again.
0:06:55 > 0:07:01Like his father, Joyce loved telling stories, singing and drinking.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04When he had money, he spent it with abandon.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08When he had none, he borrowed shamelessly from his friends.
0:07:08 > 0:07:12Joyce was not only precocious in his academic achievements,
0:07:12 > 0:07:16he also became sexually active while he was still very young.
0:07:17 > 0:07:23Respectability is such a powerful force in Victorian society that if
0:07:23 > 0:07:26you're going to follow your sexual desires,
0:07:26 > 0:07:28it means that you're going to place
0:07:28 > 0:07:31yourself outside of that society very,
0:07:31 > 0:07:33very fast and Joyce seems,
0:07:33 > 0:07:35from what we can tell from his own versions of himself,
0:07:35 > 0:07:37to be actually pretty comfortable
0:07:37 > 0:07:41early on with making that breach between
0:07:41 > 0:07:44himself and the society around him.
0:07:44 > 0:07:46He frequented the prostitutes who
0:07:46 > 0:07:48operated in the Monto district of Dublin,
0:07:48 > 0:07:53on the north side of the River Liffey, close to his school.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57Everything would begin to change for Joyce on the day he came across a
0:07:57 > 0:08:01young woman recently arrived in Dublin from Galway.
0:08:01 > 0:08:03Her name was Nora Barnacle.
0:08:04 > 0:08:08Nora caught Joyce's eye as he was walking in the centre of Dublin.
0:08:08 > 0:08:12Nora claimed she mistook him for a Swedish sailor,
0:08:12 > 0:08:17with his electric blue eyes, yachting cap, and plimsolls.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21But when he began to speak, she realised her mistake.
0:08:21 > 0:08:23"I knew him at once for just another
0:08:23 > 0:08:26"Dublin jackeen chatting up a country girl."
0:08:27 > 0:08:32She represented a part of Ireland that he, the Dubliner, did not know,
0:08:32 > 0:08:34and in fact feared.
0:08:34 > 0:08:39They met again six days later, on June 16, 1904.
0:08:39 > 0:08:40Nora and Joyce walked along the
0:08:40 > 0:08:43River Liffey until they reached a secluded
0:08:43 > 0:08:45spot, where they became intimate.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49Some years later, he recalled that day.
0:08:49 > 0:08:53"It was you who slid your hand down inside my trousers and frigged me
0:08:53 > 0:08:56"slowly until I came off through your fingers,
0:08:56 > 0:09:00"all the time bending over me and gazing at me out of your quiet,
0:09:00 > 0:09:02"saint-like eyes."
0:09:02 > 0:09:07She literally took him in hand and literally made a man of him.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11In many ways, this was most important day of his life,
0:09:11 > 0:09:14and it would become known as Bloomsday,
0:09:14 > 0:09:16the day on which he set all the
0:09:16 > 0:09:20action of his most famous novel, Ulysses.
0:09:20 > 0:09:23Nora might have seemed an unlikely match for Joyce.
0:09:23 > 0:09:27She'd been born in a Galway workhouse to illiterate parents.
0:09:29 > 0:09:32Her father was a drunkard.
0:09:32 > 0:09:36Her upbringing was chaotic, and her education was rudimentary.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39She'd run away from home after a severe beating,
0:09:39 > 0:09:43and was working as a chambermaid when she met Joyce.
0:09:43 > 0:09:45He sees a woman who is not a prostitute,
0:09:45 > 0:09:48but who has sexual desires,
0:09:48 > 0:09:51and sexual desires that are probably as strong as his own.
0:09:53 > 0:09:56From the beginning, they trusted one another.
0:09:56 > 0:09:58Within a few weeks,
0:09:58 > 0:10:01they'd agreed to leave Ireland together and seek a new life abroad.
0:10:03 > 0:10:05They eventually settled in Trieste,
0:10:05 > 0:10:07at that time part of Austria-Hungary,
0:10:07 > 0:10:10where Joyce obtained a post teaching English,
0:10:10 > 0:10:14and where he believed he would become not just an Irish writer,
0:10:14 > 0:10:17but a world-famous writer.
0:10:17 > 0:10:18For the trams of Trieste,
0:10:18 > 0:10:22even they can only add to the appeal of a city caught in the varying
0:10:22 > 0:10:24fashions of various occupiers.
0:10:24 > 0:10:27Of course, the Romans were here, but later,
0:10:27 > 0:10:30Austrian rule must surely have given Trieste this taste of Vienna.
0:10:31 > 0:10:33Trieste at that time was the most
0:10:33 > 0:10:36important port in the Habsburg Empire.
0:10:36 > 0:10:38It was a cosmopolitan city, and had
0:10:38 > 0:10:42become a hub of languages, music, art, and literature.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51"They call it a ramshackle empire.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54"I wish to God there were more such empires."
0:10:54 > 0:10:55It's not Dublin.
0:10:55 > 0:10:57It's completely unlike Dublin,
0:10:57 > 0:11:01and yet there's something about it that immediately was Dublinesque.
0:11:01 > 0:11:04I can see why Joyce loved it.
0:11:04 > 0:11:06He would have loved it for the
0:11:06 > 0:11:09mixture of types and of races and of languages.
0:11:09 > 0:11:12Things really do change once he leaves Ireland.
0:11:12 > 0:11:18To get away from that world of craw thumping, of petty jealousy,
0:11:18 > 0:11:21into a world where he could begin to miss Dublin.
0:11:22 > 0:11:25That instead of resenting it, wanting to leave it,
0:11:25 > 0:11:32he could think about it in a way which was more sonorous and kinder.
0:11:32 > 0:11:37Almost exactly a year after they first met, Nora gave birth to a son,
0:11:37 > 0:11:44Giorgio. Two years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Lucia.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47It is clear from the erotic letters they exchanged
0:11:47 > 0:11:51that they enjoyed an intense physical relationship at that time.
0:11:52 > 0:11:57"My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and
0:11:57 > 0:12:00"tenderness mirrored in your eyes.
0:12:00 > 0:12:02"Or to fling you down on that soft
0:12:02 > 0:12:04"belly of yours and fuck you up behind
0:12:04 > 0:12:07"like a hog riding a sow,
0:12:07 > 0:12:11"glorying in the open shame of your upturned dress and white girlish
0:12:11 > 0:12:15"drawers and the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair."
0:12:16 > 0:12:21Nora seldom read Joyce's work and claimed she would rather he'd been a
0:12:21 > 0:12:23professional singer than a writer.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27But she gave him the support that he needed, and Joyce, in turn,
0:12:27 > 0:12:31remained committed to Nora for the rest of his life.
0:12:31 > 0:12:34You would never think seeing her separately, and seeing James Joyce,
0:12:34 > 0:12:38that these two would be a marriage, but they were.
0:12:38 > 0:12:39And a great one.
0:12:40 > 0:12:45Nora had much to endure during their years in Trieste.
0:12:45 > 0:12:49They were often penniless and had to move from one miserable apartment to
0:12:49 > 0:12:53another. Joyce was also subject to great physical pain,
0:12:53 > 0:12:56due to recurring eye and stomach problems.
0:12:58 > 0:13:02But this was a period of exceptional creativity for him.
0:13:02 > 0:13:06During these years, he completed his first collection of poems,
0:13:06 > 0:13:10his first novel, and his first and only play.
0:13:10 > 0:13:12He also published his first
0:13:12 > 0:13:15collection of short stories, Dubliners.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18You don't get Joyce's great work
0:13:18 > 0:13:21without the formation of a consciousness
0:13:21 > 0:13:24that is utterly free of two things.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27One is shame, and the other is snobbery.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31And Nora liberates him, finally, from both of those things.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37Dubliners, his collection of 15 stories,
0:13:37 > 0:13:41each of which represents a different aspect of Dublin life in the opening
0:13:41 > 0:13:44years of the 20th century.
0:13:44 > 0:13:47By the time we get to the end of that collection of short stories,
0:13:47 > 0:13:50you've been taught something about a place that is so visceral.
0:13:50 > 0:13:53You know, he caught it, you know.
0:13:53 > 0:13:55I never... When I read it, I'd never been to Dublin,
0:13:55 > 0:13:58and I certainly hadn't been to Dublin in that time, and never will,
0:13:58 > 0:14:00but I feel like I knew it.
0:14:00 > 0:14:02According to Joyce,
0:14:02 > 0:14:07Dubliners is written in a style of scrupulous meanness,
0:14:07 > 0:14:11to convey a sense of material hardship and emotional repression.
0:14:12 > 0:14:15When people in Dublin go on about our Jimmy Joyce,
0:14:15 > 0:14:17I never know the Jimmy Joyce they're talking about,
0:14:17 > 0:14:19because if you look at the work,
0:14:19 > 0:14:23he may have loved Dublin, but he disliked it intensely,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26and you can certainly see that in Dubliners, for instance.
0:14:26 > 0:14:31I mean, the portrait of Dublin in Dubliners is bleak,
0:14:31 > 0:14:34cold, grey, and grimy.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37The 15 stories are built around a
0:14:37 > 0:14:40series of what Joyce termed epiphanies,
0:14:40 > 0:14:43moments of profound insight and revelation.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48Well, it is the one I can understand.
0:14:48 > 0:14:50Just the stories are extraordinary.
0:14:50 > 0:14:55The Dead is the final and most accomplished story in Dubliners,
0:14:55 > 0:14:58and it takes place on the feast of the Epiphany.
0:14:58 > 0:15:02I don't think art is a competitive field,
0:15:02 > 0:15:04but there is a case to be put for
0:15:04 > 0:15:07The Dead as possibly the greatest short
0:15:07 > 0:15:09story ever written.
0:15:09 > 0:15:12Its inspiration came from Nora Barnacle.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15She told Joyce that as a girl in Galway,
0:15:15 > 0:15:18she'd fallen in love with a boy who died while still very young.
0:15:19 > 0:15:22I don't know why The Dead is so good.
0:15:22 > 0:15:24Everything about it is good.
0:15:24 > 0:15:28I thought it was the most devastatingly beautiful
0:15:28 > 0:15:30short story I'd ever read.
0:15:32 > 0:15:37The language is so poetic and at the same time so grounded.
0:15:37 > 0:15:39It just spoke to my soul.
0:15:42 > 0:15:46The Dead has been adapted as a one-act play, as an opera,
0:15:46 > 0:15:48as a Broadway musical, and of course,
0:15:48 > 0:15:50as the movie directed by my father,
0:15:50 > 0:15:54- John Huston.- The movie of The Dead was so close to the original,
0:15:54 > 0:15:59it was so faithful, it is one of the few true kind of
0:15:59 > 0:16:02proper acts of homage that you see to Joyce.
0:16:02 > 0:16:06The lead character in Joyce's story is Gabriel Conroy,
0:16:06 > 0:16:09who leads a carefully measured life.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12Oops, you'll never guess what he has me wearing now.
0:16:12 > 0:16:14Galoshes. That's the latest.
0:16:14 > 0:16:16He and his wife Gretta attend a
0:16:16 > 0:16:19Christmas party given by two elderly aunts
0:16:19 > 0:16:22who are music teachers in Dublin.
0:16:22 > 0:16:24The next thing he'll buy me will be a diving suit.
0:16:25 > 0:16:30In the story, we realise, of course, he's falling apart.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33He doesn't know who he is as a person,
0:16:33 > 0:16:35he doesn't know who he is as an Irish person.
0:16:35 > 0:16:38To tell you the truth, I'm sick of my own country.
0:16:38 > 0:16:39- I'm sick of it.- Why?
0:16:40 > 0:16:42Superb.
0:16:44 > 0:16:46Why?
0:16:46 > 0:16:49Of course you've no answer.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53He's challenged at every point and then as his...
0:16:53 > 0:16:55The only thing he really knows is
0:16:55 > 0:16:57his relationship with Gretta, his wife.
0:16:57 > 0:16:59What row had you with Molly Ivers?
0:16:59 > 0:17:01No, no row. Why, did she say we had?
0:17:01 > 0:17:04No, I noticed you carrying on, that's all.
0:17:04 > 0:17:06I'm trying to get that Mr Darcy to sing.
0:17:06 > 0:17:08He's full of conceit, isn't he?
0:17:08 > 0:17:10There was no row. She wanted me to
0:17:10 > 0:17:12go on a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't.
0:17:12 > 0:17:13Oh, Gabriel, do go.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16I'd love to see Galway again.
0:17:16 > 0:17:17Well, you can go if you like.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22I think there our great things in John Houston's film.
0:17:22 > 0:17:25I think that the central performances of Donald McCann and
0:17:25 > 0:17:27Anjelica Huston are glorious.
0:17:28 > 0:17:35# Oh don't you remember. #
0:17:35 > 0:17:37At the end of the evening,
0:17:37 > 0:17:42Gabriel watches Gretta as she stands at the top of the stairs and listens
0:17:42 > 0:17:44to a haunting ballad,
0:17:44 > 0:17:46The Lass of Aughrim.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49It's remarkable how then it becomes
0:17:49 > 0:17:53a story about her, because you thought it was a story about him.
0:17:55 > 0:17:59And he's able to do that with great economy,
0:17:59 > 0:18:02but also with great sympathy.
0:18:02 > 0:18:10# When we both met together. #
0:18:10 > 0:18:13The real revolutionary in the story is Gretta.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17She has come from the working class, come from the peasant class.
0:18:17 > 0:18:20She has infiltrated the Dublin bourgeoisie
0:18:20 > 0:18:23at its deepest, at its hardest.
0:18:24 > 0:18:32# My babe lies cold within my arms. #
0:18:32 > 0:18:37And by the end of the movie, she's done a complete flip.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41He can't show vulnerability, and the moment that she shows vulnerability,
0:18:41 > 0:18:43she's the conqueror.
0:18:44 > 0:18:46Later, in their hotel,
0:18:46 > 0:18:49Gretta becomes upset and tells Gabriel
0:18:49 > 0:18:51that the ballad was one a young boy
0:18:51 > 0:18:53called Michael Furey used to sing to her.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58I used to go out walking with him when I was in Galway.
0:18:58 > 0:19:00And perhaps that was why you wanted
0:19:00 > 0:19:02- to go with Galway with that Ivers woman.- What for?
0:19:02 > 0:19:04How do I know? To see him, perhaps.
0:19:06 > 0:19:09He's dead.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13All of his expectations of her have somehow reversed,
0:19:13 > 0:19:16and she's become like a wild creature.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19She's become a wild swan again.
0:19:19 > 0:19:23I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta.
0:19:25 > 0:19:27I was great with him at the time.
0:19:32 > 0:19:33What was it he died of so young?
0:19:35 > 0:19:36Consumption, was it?
0:19:38 > 0:19:40I think he died from me.
0:19:40 > 0:19:46She then articulates the truth about her life in the most
0:19:46 > 0:19:50perceptive and courageous way.
0:19:50 > 0:19:53Did you not tell him to go back?
0:19:53 > 0:19:56I implored of him to go home at once
0:19:56 > 0:19:58and told him he'd get his death in the rain.
0:20:00 > 0:20:03But he said did not want to live.
0:20:03 > 0:20:07He realises that he can't... He can't control her.
0:20:07 > 0:20:12He can only observe her as the free creature that she is.
0:20:12 > 0:20:14So it's like he has to release her.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22Then, of course, it ends with the most astonishing prose that I don't
0:20:22 > 0:20:24think an Irish writer has ever come out with,
0:20:24 > 0:20:27in those concluding paragraphs,
0:20:27 > 0:20:29with this vision of Ireland as a
0:20:29 > 0:20:34place snowbound and possibly paralysed,
0:20:34 > 0:20:37but also with this potential for life,
0:20:37 > 0:20:40stirring brilliantly underneath this gorgeous,
0:20:40 > 0:20:43teeming imagery that he presents to you at the end.
0:20:43 > 0:20:45Snow is falling.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried.
0:20:52 > 0:20:58Falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling
0:20:58 > 0:21:02like the descent of their last end
0:21:02 > 0:21:05upon all the living and the dead.
0:21:09 > 0:21:14The story is about a man's being revealed to himself.
0:21:14 > 0:21:20While we're watching that happen, I think, we're revealed to ourselves.
0:21:20 > 0:21:24What we think we are and what we are, really, is...
0:21:26 > 0:21:28Are two different things.
0:21:28 > 0:21:30A total labour of love.
0:21:30 > 0:21:34It was... There was nothing but love involved.
0:21:34 > 0:21:38Love for Ireland, love for the life we'd led there,
0:21:38 > 0:21:41love of Irish character.
0:21:41 > 0:21:42Oof.
0:21:45 > 0:21:48And then deep understanding of...
0:21:52 > 0:21:56..the kind of humanity that Joyce writes about in The Dead.
0:21:56 > 0:21:59And the best thing you can say about The Dead is that it is as great a
0:21:59 > 0:22:01film as Joyce's story is a story.
0:22:03 > 0:22:07Dubliners was accepted for publication in 1905.
0:22:07 > 0:22:11However, the printer refused to set all of the stories.
0:22:11 > 0:22:13Three years later, the book was
0:22:13 > 0:22:16again due to be published, but once again,
0:22:16 > 0:22:18the printers refused to set the type.
0:22:24 > 0:22:27But you can't really find anything in the stories to say
0:22:27 > 0:22:29"Well, that's actually not publishable,"
0:22:29 > 0:22:32you know, because they're not filthy,
0:22:32 > 0:22:37but there's a general sense that this way of writing about Ireland,
0:22:37 > 0:22:40this way of writing about Dublin, is somehow offensive.
0:22:41 > 0:22:45When Dubliners finally appeared, it received critical praise,
0:22:45 > 0:22:47but failed to sell.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51A pathetic number of Dubliners were sold.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54After all the trouble of trying to get it done, then not a penny.
0:22:56 > 0:23:00It did not make him the fortune he'd hoped, but by then,
0:23:00 > 0:23:03Joyce had already completed his first novel.
0:23:06 > 0:23:08He had written the first version of
0:23:08 > 0:23:11A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
0:23:11 > 0:23:15as a short essay for a literary journal in Dublin.
0:23:15 > 0:23:19When it was rejected, he decided to develop the essay into a novel.
0:23:22 > 0:23:25He began his final attempt at
0:23:25 > 0:23:28writing this novel in September 1907,
0:23:28 > 0:23:33but after the first three chapters, he found it impossible to continue.
0:23:33 > 0:23:37He did not resume work on his book for the next six years.
0:23:37 > 0:23:40At that point, he received an
0:23:40 > 0:23:43unexpected letter from a total stranger.
0:23:43 > 0:23:46It came from the American Ezra Pound,
0:23:46 > 0:23:49who'd been told about Joyce by the poet WB Yeats.
0:23:50 > 0:23:52It was Pound's enthusiasm that
0:23:52 > 0:23:55convinced Joyce to complete his novel.
0:23:57 > 0:24:02The complete novel was finally published in New York in 1916.
0:24:02 > 0:24:05The Irish reviews were scathing.
0:24:05 > 0:24:06One claimed that Joyce,
0:24:06 > 0:24:11"Drags his readers after him into the slime of foul sewers."
0:24:15 > 0:24:18"Out here, Dedalus.
0:24:18 > 0:24:20"You are a lazy little schemer."
0:24:20 > 0:24:22A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
0:24:22 > 0:24:25charts the development of Stephen Dedalus
0:24:25 > 0:24:29from a child into a gifted but self-absorbed young man,
0:24:29 > 0:24:31who is about to leave Ireland.
0:24:31 > 0:24:35It seems his character has much in common with Joyce.
0:24:36 > 0:24:38In the course of the novel,
0:24:38 > 0:24:40we witness the loss of Stephen's
0:24:40 > 0:24:44religious faith as he comes to define God as,
0:24:44 > 0:24:46"A shout in the street."
0:24:47 > 0:24:52The portrait is built around a number of set pieces.
0:24:52 > 0:24:55In one of these, Stephen takes part in a religious retreat.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00When I was, say, seven or eight,
0:25:00 > 0:25:02you would start going to the boys' confraternity,
0:25:02 > 0:25:04and they would lower the lights in
0:25:04 > 0:25:07the big cathedral and the booming voice
0:25:07 > 0:25:09of the priest would say,
0:25:09 > 0:25:14"Death comes soon and judgment will follow,
0:25:14 > 0:25:20"so now, dear boys, examine your conscience and find out your sins."
0:25:20 > 0:25:22And there would be silence.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25In hell, all laws are overturned.
0:25:26 > 0:25:31There is no thought of family, country, its ties or relationships.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34On the third day of the retreat,
0:25:34 > 0:25:38the priest's sermon focuses on the horrors of hell and describes its
0:25:38 > 0:25:42torments in such relentless and visceral detail
0:25:42 > 0:25:45that he terrifies Stephen into submission.
0:25:45 > 0:25:47Why did you sin?
0:25:48 > 0:25:52Why did you lend an ear to the temptings of friends?
0:25:53 > 0:25:56Why did you not shun the occasion of sin?
0:25:58 > 0:26:03Why did you not give up that lured habit,
0:26:03 > 0:26:04that impure habit?
0:26:06 > 0:26:08Stephen stops frequenting prostitutes,
0:26:08 > 0:26:10makes a full confession,
0:26:10 > 0:26:13and is granted absolution.
0:26:13 > 0:26:16It seems that he has been reconciled with mother church.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20And you will promise God now
0:26:20 > 0:26:25that you will never offend him again by that wicked sin.
0:26:25 > 0:26:29- Yes, Father.- That wretched, wretched sin.
0:26:29 > 0:26:33But the priest's sermon also focused on the rebellion of the
0:26:33 > 0:26:37intellect, which Lucifer raised against God,
0:26:37 > 0:26:39and the fallen angel's call of defiance
0:26:39 > 0:26:42is the same as the young artist.
0:26:42 > 0:26:43Non serviam.
0:26:43 > 0:26:45I will not serve.
0:26:46 > 0:26:49"Six years ago, I left the Catholic Church.
0:26:49 > 0:26:54"By doing this, I made myself a beggar, but I retained my pride.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57"Now I make open war upon the Church
0:26:57 > 0:26:59"by what I write and say and do."
0:26:59 > 0:27:05Despite that, Catholicism seeps into every aspect of Stephen's life.
0:27:05 > 0:27:10Above all, it shapes his perception of himself as an artist.
0:27:10 > 0:27:13"A priest of the eternal imagination,
0:27:13 > 0:27:15"transmuting the daily bread of experience
0:27:15 > 0:27:18"into the radiant body of ever living life."
0:27:20 > 0:27:23I thought this is the way to lead one's life,
0:27:23 > 0:27:25or in particular, my life.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28I want to be... I want to be an artist like this.
0:27:28 > 0:27:33The idea of the priestly idea of the modernist writer appealed to me.
0:27:33 > 0:27:35By the end of the novel,
0:27:35 > 0:27:38Stephen is ready to leave Ireland,
0:27:38 > 0:27:42and embrace a life of silence, exile, and cunning.
0:27:42 > 0:27:44He wants to spread his creative
0:27:44 > 0:27:47wings and fly past the nets of family,
0:27:47 > 0:27:51church, and nationality that hold back his soul.
0:28:04 > 0:28:06Joyce completed the first draft of
0:28:06 > 0:28:09the first episode of his new novel on
0:28:09 > 0:28:12the same day that the school where he'd been teaching closed.
0:28:12 > 0:28:15Trieste was part of the Habsburg Empire.
0:28:15 > 0:28:18However, most of the inhabitants were Italian,
0:28:18 > 0:28:21and Italy had just declared war on Austria-Hungary.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26Ireland was still part of the British state,
0:28:26 > 0:28:28and therefore was also at war.
0:28:29 > 0:28:32Joyce was classified as an enemy alien,
0:28:32 > 0:28:35but he managed to escape from Trieste
0:28:35 > 0:28:38with the help of some well-connected friends.
0:28:38 > 0:28:43He and his family arrived in Zurich at the end of June, 1915.
0:28:44 > 0:28:46Zurich was kind of a non-place.
0:28:46 > 0:28:48It was also safe.
0:28:48 > 0:28:52Like all artists, you know, he spent his time fleeing danger.
0:28:52 > 0:28:56He'd intended that Ulysses would be another short story,
0:28:56 > 0:28:59but it grew in his imagination.
0:28:59 > 0:29:03He mapped out a structure that would correspond to Homer's epic poem,
0:29:03 > 0:29:05the Odyssey, and found parallels
0:29:05 > 0:29:09between modern Dublin and ancient Greece.
0:29:09 > 0:29:15I often wonder if you came into a publishing house to pitch Ulysses,
0:29:15 > 0:29:18and say, "Well, it's going
0:29:18 > 0:29:23"to be Homer, but it's going to be, you know, Dublin in a single day."
0:29:23 > 0:29:25If people would have just said,
0:29:25 > 0:29:29"Get him out of here. We're not publishing that."
0:29:29 > 0:29:32You know, you have to... You sort of have to execute it
0:29:32 > 0:29:33for anyone to believe in it.
0:29:37 > 0:29:40The rest of Europe may have seemed hell-bent on
0:29:40 > 0:29:42destruction, but Switzerland was not at war.
0:29:44 > 0:29:48Joyce and his family lived in many different addresses in Zurich,
0:29:48 > 0:29:50as was their habit.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53But thanks to the influence of the WB Yeats,
0:29:53 > 0:29:57Joyce now received a stipend from the British Council.
0:29:57 > 0:30:00He also caught the attention of Harriet Shaw Weaver,
0:30:00 > 0:30:01a wealthy English woman.
0:30:03 > 0:30:05Over the next 25 years,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08she would provide him with enough money to ensure that he could devote
0:30:08 > 0:30:10himself to writing.
0:30:12 > 0:30:15On the 10th of October, 1916,
0:30:15 > 0:30:19Joyce wrote to Harriet Weaver to say he was busy writing a new book.
0:30:19 > 0:30:22"I am working at it as well as I can.
0:30:22 > 0:30:27"It is called Ulysses and the action takes place in Dublin in 1904.
0:30:27 > 0:30:29"I've almost finished the first part,
0:30:29 > 0:30:32"and have written out part of the middle and end.
0:30:32 > 0:30:34"I hope to finish it in 1918."
0:30:36 > 0:30:39Joyce fell far short of that deadline,
0:30:39 > 0:30:42but he began to publish episodes from the book
0:30:42 > 0:30:43before it had been completed.
0:30:46 > 0:30:51It soon became clear that Joyce's ambitions and skills as a writer had
0:30:51 > 0:30:53gone far beyond his previous work.
0:30:55 > 0:30:59He invented a form of English for himself.
0:30:59 > 0:31:02No sentence in Ulysses is straightforward unless he means it
0:31:02 > 0:31:04to be, unless he means it to be cliche.
0:31:04 > 0:31:06That was his great revolution.
0:31:09 > 0:31:14In July of 1920, Joyce and his family moved to Paris.
0:31:14 > 0:31:16It was meant to be a brief visit,
0:31:16 > 0:31:19but he stayed there for the next 20 years.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23It was in Paris that he completed Ulysses,
0:31:23 > 0:31:26and it was there that his book was published by Sylvia Beach,
0:31:26 > 0:31:29another of his female benefactors.
0:31:29 > 0:31:31Some people asked me,
0:31:31 > 0:31:34"Were you disappointed when you met James Joyce?"
0:31:34 > 0:31:39And I always say, "Never at all, for he was anything but disappointing."
0:31:43 > 0:31:46There were attempts to censor Joyce's book even before it had been
0:31:46 > 0:31:50published. In 1920, The Little Review
0:31:50 > 0:31:53had featured the Nausicaa episode,
0:31:53 > 0:31:55which includes references to masturbation
0:31:55 > 0:31:59and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
0:31:59 > 0:32:03took legal action to keep the book out of the USA.
0:32:03 > 0:32:08At a trial in 1921, the magazine was declared obscene,
0:32:08 > 0:32:10and Ulysses was banned.
0:32:10 > 0:32:14He used to tell me about what was going on in New York,
0:32:14 > 0:32:19and he was following this case where Ulysses was being suppressed,
0:32:19 > 0:32:22and finally he came one day, to show me this Little Review, and he said,
0:32:22 > 0:32:25"You see, this is now being completely suppressed,
0:32:25 > 0:32:27"and my boo-ook,"
0:32:27 > 0:32:29as he pronounced it, "will never come out."
0:32:29 > 0:32:33So he sat there with his head in his hands, and
0:32:33 > 0:32:38I said to him, "Would you like me to publish Ulysses?"
0:32:38 > 0:32:40And he said, "I would."
0:32:42 > 0:32:45In the final months before publication,
0:32:45 > 0:32:49Joyce exhausted himself by rewriting numerous passages in the book.
0:32:49 > 0:32:53He was determined that every detail should be authentic.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01In November, 1921, he writes to his aunt Josephine.
0:33:02 > 0:33:05He wants to know if it's possible
0:33:05 > 0:33:08for an ordinary person to climb over the
0:33:08 > 0:33:11area railings of number seven Eccles Street,
0:33:11 > 0:33:13whether from the path or steps,
0:33:13 > 0:33:15lower himself from the lowest part of the railings,
0:33:15 > 0:33:19till his feet are within two or three inches of the ground and drop
0:33:19 > 0:33:22unhurt. He needs to know because he
0:33:22 > 0:33:24is revising one of the episodes in his
0:33:24 > 0:33:26novel, in which someone enters his
0:33:26 > 0:33:29house in Eccles Street by this method,
0:33:29 > 0:33:32and Joyce wants to make quite sure it is possible.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40Finally, on the 2nd of February, 1922,
0:33:40 > 0:33:43two copies of Ulysses were sent by
0:33:43 > 0:33:46train from printers in Dijon to Paris.
0:33:46 > 0:33:51Joyce received the books on the morning of his 40th birthday.
0:33:51 > 0:33:55Those that could obtain a copy soon found that the novel posed something
0:33:55 > 0:33:57of an existential challenge.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00Ulysses is a difficult book,
0:34:00 > 0:34:02and it's a challenge for many readers.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05I think we don't usually get too far in a conversation before I say,
0:34:05 > 0:34:09"I've read Ulysses," because I'm still quite proud of it.
0:34:09 > 0:34:12Of having actually got through it.
0:34:12 > 0:34:15I think reading Ulysses is a bit like, you know,
0:34:15 > 0:34:18being punched in the head, repeatedly,
0:34:18 > 0:34:22and then finding after a time that you quite enjoy that.
0:34:28 > 0:34:33The novel begins at eight in the morning of June the 16th, 1904,
0:34:33 > 0:34:37with three young men who are living in a Martello tower in Sandy Cove,
0:34:37 > 0:34:40a small coastal village south of Dublin.
0:34:44 > 0:34:46There's no plot.
0:34:46 > 0:34:48Days don't have plots.
0:34:48 > 0:34:50Life doesn't have a plot.
0:34:50 > 0:34:52And all the better for it.
0:34:52 > 0:34:54At the end of Joyce's first novel,
0:34:54 > 0:34:57Stephen Dedalus was about to leave for Paris.
0:34:57 > 0:35:00In this one, he's returned to Ireland.
0:35:01 > 0:35:06The novel also follows the path of an older man, Leopold Bloom,
0:35:06 > 0:35:10as he goes about his business on that June day.
0:35:10 > 0:35:14Bloom is the son of a Hungarian Jew, and an Irish Protestant.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18He converted to Catholicism to marry his wife, Molly.
0:35:19 > 0:35:21In this TV production,
0:35:21 > 0:35:23Milo O'Shea gave what some
0:35:23 > 0:35:27consider to be a definitive reading of the character.
0:35:27 > 0:35:29I think the fact that Bloom is Jewish
0:35:29 > 0:35:31is at the very heart of Ulysses.
0:35:31 > 0:35:33I think it's so important.
0:35:33 > 0:35:36I think it was a very deliberate, very careful,
0:35:36 > 0:35:38very clever choice on Joyce's part.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42I belong to a race too that's hated and persecuted.
0:35:42 > 0:35:44At this moment, this instant.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47Robbed, plundered, insulted, persecuted.
0:35:48 > 0:35:52Taking what belongs to us by right, at this moment.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55Are you talking about the new Jerusalem?
0:35:55 > 0:35:56I'm talking about injustice.
0:35:56 > 0:35:58Stand up to it, then, with force, like men.
0:35:58 > 0:36:00But that's no good.
0:36:00 > 0:36:02Force, hatred.
0:36:02 > 0:36:03History and all that.
0:36:03 > 0:36:06No, that's not the life of men and women.
0:36:06 > 0:36:07Hatred, insult.
0:36:07 > 0:36:11Everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that's really life.
0:36:11 > 0:36:13- What is?- Love.
0:36:14 > 0:36:17Having this complex identity for Bloom
0:36:17 > 0:36:21allows Joyce to really wrangle with
0:36:21 > 0:36:26all the themes of nationalism and identity and belonging.
0:36:26 > 0:36:29And the saviour was a Jew and his father was a Jew, your God.
0:36:29 > 0:36:31- That'll do now.- Whose God?
0:36:31 > 0:36:34..was a Jew and
0:36:34 > 0:36:37your God was a Jew. And Christ was a Jew, like me.
0:36:37 > 0:36:41I'll brain that bloody Jew man for using the holy name.
0:36:41 > 0:36:43Bejesus, I'll crucify him!
0:36:43 > 0:36:45I think he's saying just because we
0:36:45 > 0:36:47don't have a big Jewish community does
0:36:47 > 0:36:50not mean that we are not anti-Semitic
0:36:50 > 0:36:52or have not been in the past.
0:36:52 > 0:36:55And also, that moment is kind of chilling as well,
0:36:55 > 0:36:57when you read it in the light of everything that followed.
0:37:03 > 0:37:05See now.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10There all the time without you.
0:37:10 > 0:37:14Ulysses may be based on a classical text,
0:37:14 > 0:37:15but everything that happens to
0:37:15 > 0:37:18Stephen and Bloom is rooted in the everyday
0:37:18 > 0:37:21experiences that make up the lives of ordinary people.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26And through his use of a stream of consciousness technique,
0:37:26 > 0:37:31Joyce is not only able to tell us what the characters are doing,
0:37:31 > 0:37:33but what they are thinking.
0:37:33 > 0:37:35Funny, my watch stopped at half past four.
0:37:35 > 0:37:37What's happened?
0:37:38 > 0:37:41Such a bad headache now.
0:37:41 > 0:37:44Oh, exhausted, that female has me.
0:37:44 > 0:37:46But will she come here tomorrow?
0:37:46 > 0:37:49Murderers do. Write a message for her?
0:37:51 > 0:37:53For Joyce, language was a lens.
0:37:53 > 0:37:57It distorted, it clarified, and it was very highly polished.
0:37:58 > 0:38:00What emerges as a portrayal of
0:38:00 > 0:38:03Dublin that is both comprehensive and
0:38:03 > 0:38:06precise. Joyce claimed that
0:38:06 > 0:38:09if Dublin one day suddenly disappeared from the Earth,
0:38:09 > 0:38:11"It could be reconstructed out of my book."
0:38:14 > 0:38:19Joyce had originally intended that there would be 17 episodes in his
0:38:19 > 0:38:23novel, all of them devoted to Bloom and Stephen.
0:38:23 > 0:38:26But he added an 18th and final episode,
0:38:26 > 0:38:31in which the only voice we hear is that of Bloom's wife, Molly.
0:38:31 > 0:38:33She's waited for her husband's return
0:38:33 > 0:38:36like Penelope in the Odyssey.
0:38:36 > 0:38:38But unlike Homer's faithful wife,
0:38:38 > 0:38:41she has committed adultery that afternoon.
0:38:41 > 0:38:44Breakfast in bed.
0:38:44 > 0:38:47He has an idea about me and Boylan.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51Molly's final speech is written in eight paragraphs,
0:38:51 > 0:38:55without any dialogue, and without any punctuation.
0:38:55 > 0:38:59Men. I'd rather die 20 time over than marry another of their sex.
0:38:59 > 0:39:03As we follow her speeding train of thought, sometimes bawdy,
0:39:03 > 0:39:05sometimes fastidious,
0:39:05 > 0:39:10we gather that she's both a sensuous and an intelligent woman.
0:39:10 > 0:39:13Joyce had no problem getting into the minds of whoever,
0:39:13 > 0:39:16because the book was the world and the world was his mind,
0:39:16 > 0:39:18that he could do whatever he wanted,
0:39:18 > 0:39:20including getting into the mind of Molly.
0:39:20 > 0:39:23The day I got him to propose to me.
0:39:23 > 0:39:26Yes, I said, I was a flower of the mountain, yes.
0:39:26 > 0:39:28Every writer
0:39:28 > 0:39:31needs one governing thing, one
0:39:31 > 0:39:35governing emotion in their sensibility,
0:39:35 > 0:39:37that no matter what, you can see it
0:39:37 > 0:39:42appearing in their work, and for Joyce, that idea
0:39:42 > 0:39:46of adultery, of unfaithfulness, of being a man,
0:39:46 > 0:39:49and being weakened by the fact that
0:39:49 > 0:39:52the woman who you desire, who you want,
0:39:52 > 0:39:55is actually with somebody else, really animates him,
0:39:55 > 0:39:57really gets him going.
0:39:58 > 0:40:02Much of Molly's thoughts are related to her personal sexual history,
0:40:02 > 0:40:05impulses and fantasies.
0:40:05 > 0:40:07The explicit detail of her words
0:40:07 > 0:40:10greatly contributed to the novel's shock
0:40:10 > 0:40:12impact when it was first published.
0:40:13 > 0:40:17"It begins and ends with the female word yes.
0:40:17 > 0:40:21"It turns like the huge Earth ball, slowly, surely, and evenly,
0:40:21 > 0:40:23"round and round, spinning,
0:40:23 > 0:40:26"its four cardinal points being the
0:40:26 > 0:40:29"female breasts, arse, womb, and cunt."
0:40:29 > 0:40:31To say yes, my mountain flower.
0:40:31 > 0:40:34First I put my hands around him. Yes.
0:40:34 > 0:40:37I find the language itself tremendously sensual.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41I drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts so perfumed, yes.
0:40:41 > 0:40:47And physical and funny and overwhelming.
0:40:47 > 0:40:49His heart was going like mad.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53And yes, I said, yes, I will. Yes!
0:40:53 > 0:40:58TS Eliot described the publication of Joyce's book as having the
0:40:58 > 0:41:02importance of a scientific discovery.
0:41:02 > 0:41:07It's incredible. You would look at the whole and think the certitude,
0:41:07 > 0:41:12that he absolutely knew where he was going, which is hard, you know.
0:41:12 > 0:41:16It's hard to see the end before you begin.
0:41:16 > 0:41:19It may be the hardest thing for a writer,
0:41:19 > 0:41:22and I don't think anyone did it better.
0:41:23 > 0:41:27But not everyone has appreciated Joyce's novel.
0:41:28 > 0:41:33By 1922, Ireland had achieved political independence,
0:41:33 > 0:41:38but the new Irish state was imbued with a deeply conservative Catholic
0:41:38 > 0:41:42ethos. Ulysses was never banned in Ireland,
0:41:42 > 0:41:44but Joyce was often portrayed as a pornographer.
0:41:46 > 0:41:49His aunt Josephine in Dublin steadfastly
0:41:49 > 0:41:51refused to read Ulysses because
0:41:51 > 0:41:54she believed it to be a dirty book.
0:41:54 > 0:41:57"If Ulysses isn't fit to read," Joyce said,
0:41:57 > 0:41:59"then life isn't fit to live."
0:42:01 > 0:42:04In 1931, Joyce's father died.
0:42:05 > 0:42:07"No man could be worthy of such
0:42:07 > 0:42:09"intense love as my father had for me."
0:42:12 > 0:42:16Soon afterwards, his first and only grandchild was born.
0:42:16 > 0:42:21Joyce wrote a poem to mark the occasion of Stephen Joyce's birth.
0:42:22 > 0:42:24A child is sleeping.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27An old man gone.
0:42:27 > 0:42:29Oh, father forsaken.
0:42:29 > 0:42:31Forgive your son.
0:42:41 > 0:42:44Joyce's reputation as a banned writer
0:42:44 > 0:42:46made him a literary celebrity.
0:42:46 > 0:42:49He became a leader of the avant-garde,
0:42:49 > 0:42:53and he enjoyed to the full the cafe society of Paris.
0:42:53 > 0:42:56There were few royalties from Ulysses,
0:42:56 > 0:42:58because it was banned for many years.
0:42:58 > 0:43:03But Joyce continued to enjoy the patronage of Harriet Weaver.
0:43:03 > 0:43:09He has enormously powerful, wealthy, and patient allies.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12I mean, this was a golden time in the life of Paris,
0:43:12 > 0:43:14and he was at the very centre of this and, I mean,
0:43:14 > 0:43:17I think this gave him great pleasure.
0:43:17 > 0:43:19Within a few years,
0:43:19 > 0:43:22Joyce had gone from being an impoverished language teacher in a
0:43:22 > 0:43:24backwater of Europe to becoming a
0:43:24 > 0:43:28respected writer with an international reputation.
0:43:29 > 0:43:34When Joyce goes to the restaurant, it's, you know, the full canonicals.
0:43:34 > 0:43:36He lives a sort of,
0:43:36 > 0:43:39you know, grand bourgeois life for a lot of the time,
0:43:39 > 0:43:42and when he's not doing that, it's because he's spent all the money.
0:43:42 > 0:43:44He has his father's improvidence.
0:43:44 > 0:43:48The young Irishman Samuel Beckett will wait another 30 years for fame
0:43:48 > 0:43:52as author of the controversial drama Waiting for Godot.
0:43:52 > 0:43:56At the moment, he is serving as secretary to his renowned and still
0:43:56 > 0:43:59more controversial compatriot, James Joyce.
0:43:59 > 0:44:01Joyce's novel Ulysses is damned by
0:44:01 > 0:44:03censors on both sides of the Atlantic,
0:44:03 > 0:44:08but finds an enthusiastic publisher and public in Paris.
0:44:08 > 0:44:10In 1933,
0:44:10 > 0:44:11Random House arranged for a copy of
0:44:11 > 0:44:15the book they'd imported to be seized by customs.
0:44:15 > 0:44:18The publisher then contested the seizure.
0:44:18 > 0:44:23The US court of appeals ruled that the book was not pornographic.
0:44:23 > 0:44:25It was a landmark decision that
0:44:25 > 0:44:27would help to change attitudes on the
0:44:27 > 0:44:29censorship of art throughout the world.
0:44:36 > 0:44:40Joyce's celebrity could not protect him from his worsening health.
0:44:40 > 0:44:44He suffered from a constant stream of eye problems,
0:44:44 > 0:44:46went through a number of complex surgeries,
0:44:46 > 0:44:50and spent long stretches when he was virtually blind.
0:44:50 > 0:44:53At times, he had to write with large
0:44:53 > 0:44:56red crayons so that he could read his own words.
0:44:56 > 0:45:00There was something else that weighed on his mind during these
0:45:00 > 0:45:04years. And that was the mental health of his daughter, Lucia.
0:45:05 > 0:45:08Lucia had been a sickly child,
0:45:08 > 0:45:11and her earliest memories were of domestic chaos.
0:45:12 > 0:45:17Her relationship with her father was intense, and sometimes tortured.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21Do you know an author who isn't manipulative?
0:45:21 > 0:45:24That's what we do. We sit in our rooms and we manipulate language,
0:45:24 > 0:45:28we manipulate character, we manipulate the material we're given,
0:45:28 > 0:45:31we manipulate our families and friends.
0:45:31 > 0:45:32We're cannibals, essentially.
0:45:34 > 0:45:37Lucia had a strained relationship with Nora,
0:45:37 > 0:45:39and on Joyce's 50th birthday,
0:45:39 > 0:45:42she attacked her mother.
0:45:42 > 0:45:45Lucia was admitted to a clinic and for the next few years,
0:45:45 > 0:45:48moved between hospitals and home.
0:45:48 > 0:45:51Carl Jung diagnosed schizophrenia,
0:45:51 > 0:45:53but Joyce did not want to accept this verdict.
0:45:55 > 0:45:57"I am in a minority of one, in my opinion,
0:45:57 > 0:46:01"as everybody else apparently thinks Lucia is crazy.
0:46:01 > 0:46:05"But her mind is as clear and as unsparing as lightning.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09"She is a fantastic being, speaking a curious language of her own.
0:46:09 > 0:46:11"I understand it.
0:46:11 > 0:46:13"Or most of it."
0:46:14 > 0:46:18He came to love Lucia, probably more than anyone.
0:46:18 > 0:46:20And he felt
0:46:20 > 0:46:22that his madness,
0:46:22 > 0:46:26that he had somehow escaped the worst of,
0:46:26 > 0:46:29and in some etheric way,
0:46:29 > 0:46:32he had transmitted it to his daughter.
0:46:34 > 0:46:39When she was 28, Lucia entered an asylum in France.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42She would never live outside an institution again.
0:46:44 > 0:46:49Joyce was so exhausted by the time he finished Ulysses
0:46:49 > 0:46:52that he was unable to write prose for over a year.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55However, in March, 1923,
0:46:55 > 0:46:59he wrote to Harriet Weaver that he'd just completed two pages of a new
0:46:59 > 0:47:03book. This would eventually become Finnigan's Wake.
0:47:03 > 0:47:05Joyce, after Ulysses,
0:47:05 > 0:47:07has gone into a certain zone where
0:47:07 > 0:47:10he does what a shaman does in society,
0:47:10 > 0:47:13which is sort of a shaman makes himself crazy.
0:47:13 > 0:47:18He goes out onto the extreme, has visions and talks in tongues,
0:47:18 > 0:47:20and deranges himself.
0:47:22 > 0:47:24The Wake was his final book,
0:47:24 > 0:47:28and it took Joyce 17 years to complete.
0:47:28 > 0:47:31The novel is often considered to be one of the most difficult books to
0:47:31 > 0:47:34read in any language.
0:47:34 > 0:47:35Like a lot of people, I got a
0:47:35 > 0:47:37hundred pages into Finnegan's Wake and
0:47:37 > 0:47:39couldn't find my way out.
0:47:39 > 0:47:41The opening line of the book is a
0:47:41 > 0:47:43fragment of the sentence which is left
0:47:43 > 0:47:45unfinished in the book's closing line,
0:47:45 > 0:47:48making the work a never ending cycle.
0:47:48 > 0:47:50You can't really read it.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53It has to be spoken and has to be spoken by someone Irish and someone
0:47:53 > 0:47:55probably a Dubliner.
0:48:11 > 0:48:14The book concerns the Earwicker family,
0:48:14 > 0:48:16but there is no conventional plot.
0:48:16 > 0:48:21Joyce builds layer upon layer of multilingual puns, wordplays,
0:48:21 > 0:48:23and literary allusions upon a
0:48:23 > 0:48:26foundation of standard or Hiberno English.
0:48:28 > 0:48:31I still don't know how to read it.
0:48:31 > 0:48:36The critical reaction, when the book appeared, was largely negative.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39Ulysses may have been a demanding read, but for many,
0:48:39 > 0:48:42Finnigan's Wake was a step too far.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45I consider Finnigan's Wake to be a great disaster,
0:48:45 > 0:48:47with equal emphasis on both words.
0:48:47 > 0:48:50It is great but it's also disastrous.
0:48:50 > 0:48:52As TS Eliot in his gnomic way said,
0:48:52 > 0:48:54"One book like this is enough."
0:48:56 > 0:48:59"I might easily have written the story in the traditional manner.
0:48:59 > 0:49:01"Every novelist knows the recipe.
0:49:01 > 0:49:03"It's not very difficult to follow a
0:49:03 > 0:49:07"simple chronological scheme which the critics will understand.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10"But I, after all, am trying to tell a story in a new way."
0:49:12 > 0:49:16Perhaps Finnigan's Wake disappointed some readers
0:49:16 > 0:49:19because they felt it was not the book Joyce should have written.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22People are slightly moral about what writers should or shouldn't do,
0:49:22 > 0:49:24and you can see the progression in Joyce
0:49:24 > 0:49:27so simply from Dubliners through to Finnigan's Wake.
0:49:27 > 0:49:30You say, "Oh, should he have done that now?"
0:49:30 > 0:49:32So, should he have done Finnigan's Wake?
0:49:32 > 0:49:34It's really, really hard to read and you say,
0:49:34 > 0:49:37"Well the connection with the readership is obviously broken there
0:49:37 > 0:49:39"or he didn't need to sell a book."
0:49:39 > 0:49:44He had plenty of money. But I think that he was going so far out on the
0:49:44 > 0:49:48limb that was nowhere else for him to go.
0:49:48 > 0:49:52But the reason that he's so good was that he was following his
0:49:52 > 0:49:56own preoccupation with such integrity.
0:49:56 > 0:50:00The Wake maybe more often written about than read,
0:50:00 > 0:50:03but it has come to assume an iconic role in English literature.
0:50:05 > 0:50:09The book has bequeathed new words to the English language,
0:50:09 > 0:50:13and nuclear physicists have even found that its linguistic patterning
0:50:13 > 0:50:16corresponds to complex fractals,
0:50:16 > 0:50:17the geometric figures that that
0:50:17 > 0:50:21feature in the structures of everything
0:50:21 > 0:50:24from snowflakes to the galaxies of stars.
0:50:24 > 0:50:28I love that it exists, you know. It had to exist.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31It's incredibly important that it exists.
0:50:31 > 0:50:34Someone had to do it and there's no-one else except for Joyce who
0:50:34 > 0:50:37could have pulled it off and had the, you know,
0:50:37 > 0:50:42persistence and the intelligence and the vision to do it.
0:50:42 > 0:50:45Some things need to be done just because they need to be done.
0:50:47 > 0:50:50By the time he finished the Wake, Joyce had,
0:50:50 > 0:50:52in the words of one friend,
0:50:52 > 0:50:56"Consumed almost all of his substance, physical and spiritual,
0:50:56 > 0:50:58"moral and material."
0:50:58 > 0:51:02Perhaps the years of illness coupled with excessive drinking and
0:51:02 > 0:51:05creative struggle had taken their toll,
0:51:05 > 0:51:08and there were other urgent issues to be addressed.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13Germany's wild attack becomes more savage every hour.
0:51:13 > 0:51:15Down swoop their bombers on undefended towns,
0:51:15 > 0:51:17down upon women and children.
0:51:17 > 0:51:20On May the 10th, 1940,
0:51:20 > 0:51:24the German Wehrmacht launched a blitzkrieg across a wide front.
0:51:24 > 0:51:29The armies of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands were soon defeated,
0:51:29 > 0:51:32and German forces were able to enter Paris.
0:51:35 > 0:51:37Joyce was still a British citizen,
0:51:37 > 0:51:41and Great Britain was at war with Nazi Germany.
0:51:41 > 0:51:45He also represented everything in art that the Nazis despised.
0:51:45 > 0:51:49Beyond that, his daughter Lucia was in a psychiatric hospital,
0:51:49 > 0:51:53while his grandson Stephen was half Jewish,
0:51:53 > 0:51:57and Joyce knew how the Nazis dealt with mental patients and with Jews.
0:52:03 > 0:52:08Joyce decided to seek refuge once again in Switzerland.
0:52:08 > 0:52:11But crossing the Swiss border this time proved more difficult.
0:52:25 > 0:52:29By the end of his life, Joyce was once again short of money.
0:52:33 > 0:52:37Eventually, he managed to cross the Swiss border with Nora,
0:52:37 > 0:52:39Giorgio and Stephen.
0:52:40 > 0:52:44Joyce arrived in Geneva in December 1940,
0:52:44 > 0:52:46travelling on to Zurich a few days later.
0:52:48 > 0:52:50He arrived there broken and sick,
0:52:50 > 0:52:54and wrote with relief to thank the mayor of Zurich for his help in
0:52:54 > 0:52:56facilitating his family's entry.
0:53:27 > 0:53:31Less than a month after he arrived in Switzerland,
0:53:31 > 0:53:34Joyce was overcome with stomach pains.
0:53:34 > 0:53:38He was admitted to hospital, and an X-ray revealed a perforated ulcer.
0:53:40 > 0:53:44At first, it seemed that an operation had been successful,
0:53:44 > 0:53:46and he worried who would pay for it.
0:53:48 > 0:53:51The next day, he lapsed into a coma.
0:53:52 > 0:53:58At one o'clock in the morning of January the 13th, 1941, he woke,
0:53:58 > 0:54:00and asked a nurse to call Nora at once.
0:54:01 > 0:54:05But before she could arrive at the hospital, Joyce was dead.
0:54:15 > 0:54:17Joyce was the great escapologist.
0:54:17 > 0:54:20In the Portrait of the Artist,
0:54:20 > 0:54:22he said, "I've got to fly the nets
0:54:22 > 0:54:25"of nationality, religion, of family."
0:54:25 > 0:54:27He gets away.
0:54:28 > 0:54:31He gets away from Ireland, he gets away from Dublin,
0:54:31 > 0:54:34he gets away from his family, he gets away from Catholicism,
0:54:34 > 0:54:37he gets away from the First World War,
0:54:37 > 0:54:40but he doesn't really get away from the second.
0:54:40 > 0:54:42In the end, history catches up with him.
0:54:44 > 0:54:46I mean, it's a very sad idea that
0:54:46 > 0:54:49this great man who was taken from us so
0:54:49 > 0:54:52young had achieved so much.
0:54:52 > 0:54:54I mean, it is really, really almost
0:54:54 > 0:54:57sickening to think that he published Ulysses when he was 40.
0:54:58 > 0:55:02Joyce was still regarded by many in Ireland as a pornographer
0:55:02 > 0:55:05and religious apostate.
0:55:05 > 0:55:06Nora's request to repatriate the
0:55:06 > 0:55:10body to Ireland was refused by the Irish government.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13When Joyce was buried in Zurich,
0:55:13 > 0:55:17the Irish Consul was instructed not to attend the funeral.
0:55:17 > 0:55:19A Catholic priest had approached Nora,
0:55:19 > 0:55:23offering to provide a religious service, but she refused.
0:55:23 > 0:55:25"I couldn't do that to Jim," she said.
0:55:28 > 0:55:32When his daughter Lucia heard of his death, she said,
0:55:32 > 0:55:34"What's he doing under the ground, that idiot?
0:55:34 > 0:55:37"When will he decide to come out?
0:55:37 > 0:55:39"He's watching us all the time."
0:55:47 > 0:55:52Perhaps Lucia's instincts were right, because since his death,
0:55:52 > 0:55:55Joyce's presence has continued to be felt.
0:55:55 > 0:55:58Not just in works of literature, but
0:55:58 > 0:56:01also in art, in music, and in cinema.
0:56:01 > 0:56:04When I think of his reputation in the 1970s in Dublin,
0:56:04 > 0:56:08and how his own family were ashamed that they were related to him,
0:56:08 > 0:56:12you cannot imagine what it would have been like 50, 70,
0:56:12 > 0:56:1480 years ago previously to that.
0:56:14 > 0:56:16I mean, it was just impossible for
0:56:16 > 0:56:17someone to have lived in that Dublin.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26What amazed me about Joyce is how much he changed over the
0:56:26 > 0:56:27span of his career.
0:56:27 > 0:56:31To me, it's like the Beatles going from their first album through the
0:56:31 > 0:56:35White album. Like a relatively short span of time where every possibility
0:56:35 > 0:56:37is used, exhausted,
0:56:37 > 0:56:42and then chucked away, and something else has taken its place.
0:56:42 > 0:56:47He was someone who could look deep into the human mind,
0:56:47 > 0:56:52into all our nasty little secrets, and still find us wonderful.
0:56:53 > 0:56:58Bloomsday, the day on which he first walked out with Norma Barnacle and
0:56:58 > 0:57:01the day on which he set Ulysses,
0:57:01 > 0:57:04is celebrated wherever Joyce's work is read,
0:57:04 > 0:57:07which means all over the world.
0:57:07 > 0:57:11In Ireland, the country that once abhorred Joyce and his works,
0:57:11 > 0:57:15the day has become something of a national festival.
0:57:16 > 0:57:22With an Irish writer, if she or he is any good,
0:57:22 > 0:57:25make no mistake, he's also a European writer.
0:57:27 > 0:57:29There is an opinion that the
0:57:29 > 0:57:33presence of Joyce especially cast a dark
0:57:33 > 0:57:35shadow on all other fiction that
0:57:35 > 0:57:38came after him in Ireland, but you know,
0:57:38 > 0:57:42my response is, you know, look what happens in the shadows.
0:57:42 > 0:57:44Badness.
0:57:44 > 0:57:46Wonderful, wicked badness.
0:57:47 > 0:57:53Without Joyce's work, no modern literary canon can be complete.
0:57:53 > 0:57:55He's read everywhere, taught everywhere,
0:57:55 > 0:57:58and his influence is felt everywhere,
0:57:58 > 0:58:01even by those who've never read his books.
0:58:01 > 0:58:05The Irish provenance of his work is indisputable,
0:58:05 > 0:58:06but its compass is the world.