James Joyce in Trieste
When James Joyce arrived in Trieste on October 20th, 1904, he was just 22 years old, unknown and penniless, and in search of a job as an English teacher. When he left the city for good in July 1920, he was one of the major figures of the Parisian “Roaring Twenties”. Between these two “James Joyces” are the years the writer spent in Trieste.
In Trieste Joyce wrote most of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his play Exiles, Giacomo Joyce, some of the poems of Pomes Penyeach and his articles for “Il Piccolo della sera”. He also began writing Ulysses. And if on the one hand Dublin is the pivot and centre of his masterpiece, Trieste was its incubator and its cradle.
Joyce was profoundly influenced as an artist and as a writer by the social and cultural forces of the city, and this influence is discernible in the characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom, both of whom display the ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, and even physical hybridism which Joyce knew in Trieste and which makes them into outsiders in Dublin, as the text often infers. The Blooms, instead, would have fitted in Trieste. They would have been at home, as were James, Nora, Giorgio and Lucia Joyce.
Display cases
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 2. ed., London, The Egoist Ltd., 1917
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The Joyces in Trieste
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Lucia Joyce in a class photo at the Scuola popolare in via Parini (ca. 1912-1915)> Buffalo (...) OPEN
Trieste in Ulysses
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A photograph from the 1904 Trieste police archive, which shows the spot where the corpse of (...) OPEN
Letter from Stanislaus Joyce to Italo Svevo
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Letter from Stanislaus Joyce to Italo Svevo, Trieste, 18th January 1927 “Dear Mr Schmitz, […] I (...) OPEN
“A portrait of the artist as an old man”
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Postcard from James Joyce to Italo Svevo, Galway, 26 July 1912. The picture postcard, sent from (...) OPEN
Baby Tuckoo
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“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming (...) OPEN
Heartfelt condolences
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Letter from James Joyce to Livia Veneziani Schmitz, written in another hand under dictation, Paris, 24th (...) OPEN
Berlitz School’s “Il Poliglotta”
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“Il Poliglotta. Giornale mensile dedicato alle gentili Alunne ed egregi Alunni della Berlitz School”, year I, (...) OPEN
Life of James Joyce
And trieste, ah trieste ate I my liver!
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake