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[ Aetat. 25 ] J O Y C E xvThe Backgrounds of 'The Dead'The silent cock shall crow at last. The west shall shake the east awake.Walk while ye have the night for morn, lightbreakfastbringer. . . .—Finnegans Wake {473)The stay in Rome had seemed purposeless, but during it Joyce becameaware of the change in his attitude towards Ireland and so towards theworld. He embodied his new perceptions in 'The Dead.' The story, whichwas the culmination of a long waiting history, began to take shape inRome, but was not set down until he left the city. The pressure of hints,sudden insights, and old memories rose in his mind until, like KingMidas's barber, he was compelled to speech.Although the story dealt mainly with three generations of his family inDublin, it drew also upon an incident in Galway. There Michael ('Sonny')Bodkin courted Nora Barnacle; but he contracted tuberculosis and had tobe confined to bed. Shortly afterwards, Bodkin seems to have stolen outof his sickroom, in spite of the rainy weather, to sing to her. He diedsoon after. When Nora met Joyce she was firstattracted to him, as shetold a sister, because he resembled Sonny Bodkin. 1Joyce's habit of ferreting out details had made him conduct minuteinterrogations of Nora even before their departure from Dublin. He wasdisconcerted by the fact that young men before him had interested her.He did not much like to know that her heart was still moved, even inpity, by the recollection of the boy who had loved her. The notion ofbeing in some sense in rivalry with a dead man buried in the little cemeteryat Rahoon was one that came easily, and gallingly, to a man ofJoyce's jealous disposition. It was one source of his complaint to his AuntJosephine Murray that Nora persisted in regarding him as quite similarto other men she had known.** See p. 214.243