Anna Livia Plurabelle

Letter from James Joyce to Italo Svevo from Paris, 20th February 1924

Joyce writes to Italo Svevo about the eighth chapter of Finnegans Wake entitled Anna Livia Plurabelle: “Speaking of names: I have given the Lady’s name to the protagonist of the book I am writing. Please beg her, however, not to wield either white weapons or those of fire, for she is the Irish Pyrrha (or rather Dubliner) whose hair is the river on which (her name is Anna Liffey) stands the seventh city of Christianity, the other six being Bassovizza [sic], Clapham Junction, Rena Vecia, Limehouse, St. Odorico in the Valley of Tears and St. James in Monte di Pietà”. Clapham Junction and Limehouse are popular neighbourhoods in London, as Rena Vecia and San Giacomo are in Trieste, while Basovizza and S. Odorico are villages in the surrounding area”.

Livia Veneziani Svevo

Giovanni Comisso, who was present at the evening organized by the Pen Club in Paris in honour of Italo Svevo in March 1928, relates the following words that James Joyce is said to have uttered on that occasion: “They say that I portrayed Svevo, but I also immortalised Mrs. Svevo’s hair. They were long, red hair. My daughter who saw them loose used to tell me about them. Near Dublin there is a river that runs through many dye-works and its waters are as reddish as that table; so I liked to talk about these two things that are similar in the book I am writing” (G. Comisso, A Parigi con Svevo e Joyce, “La Fiera Letteraria”, 25^th March 1928).

Anna Livia Liffey

In the letter, which Joyce dictates to his daughter Lucia due to the infirmity of his eyes, we read: “Reassure your Lady as to the figure of Anna Livia. Of her I removed only her hair, and that only on loan to adorn the ripple of my city, the Anna Liffey, which would be the longest river in the world if there were not the canal that comes from afar to marry the great divo, Antonio Taumaturgo, and then changed his mind and returned as he came”.