And A Very Good Time It Was: A Short Life of ... - The Modern Word

difficult as George was of military age and Lucia had to be retrieved from a hospital in nowoccupied
France. If his surviving letters are any indication, Joyce also spent just as much time
trying to get his Jewish friends passage to England or Ireland. Permission was granted for
George, but Lucia could not be released to her family. In late December, 1940, then, Joyce and
Nora left for Zurich with George and his son Stephen.
On January 7, 1941, he wrote to Stanislaus, who due to the war was forced to move from
Trieste to Florence. He gave his brother the names of a few people who might be able to help him
there. It was Joyce’s last letter. Two evenings later he was seized with stomach cramps and taken
to a doctor in the middle of the night, diagnosed with a perforated duodenal ulcer. He was
operated on and seemed to be recovering when he slipped into a coma. Early in the morning of
January 13, 1941, he woke to ask for his Nora and George, and then relapsed. He died an hour
later, at 2:15. When approached about a Catholic burial, Nora refused, saying, “I couldn’t do that
to him.” 227 He was buried on January 15. As the coffin was lowered and Nora saw his face for the
last time, through the glass in the coffin lid, she cried out, “Jim, how beautiful you are!” 228
Upon hearing of her father’s death Lucia said, “What is he doing under the ground, that idiot?
When will he decide to come out? He’s watching us all the time.” 229 And indeed he is. As Richard
Ellmann remarks early in his biography, “We are still learning to be James Joyce’s
contemporaries, to understand our interpreter.” 230 By simply showing us the world, Joyce has
shown us ourselves. As for the complexities of his work, his remark to Budgen that “the ideas are
always simple” 231 is indicative of what he still means to us now: the combination of his work, his
life, and his letters gives us a sublime example of what it is to be a son, a husband, a father, a
writer (or member of any other profession) and, in the end, a human being.
Notes
These notes refer back, first of all, to Joyce’s books and the three volumes of his Letters, and the Selected
Letters. Since Joyce’s letters were occasionally pretty lengthy, the page numbers refer to where the quoted
passage occurs, not the page where the letter begins, as Ellmann does. In some cases reference to the
Selected Letters and a volume of the collected letters is given, as the Selected Letters, while including many
letters omitted entirely from the collected letters, also restores the occasional omitted passage from others.
References to Dubliners and Portrait are from the Viking Corrected Texts, to Ulysses from the 1961
Random House Corrected Text. The 1939 edition of Finnegans Wake is used.
1 Robert McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together
2 Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of “Work in Progress,” 14.
3 Peter Costello, James Joyce: The Years of Growth, 49.
4 See Costello, 72-3; also Costello’s book-length history, Clongowes Wood College: A History.
5 C. P. Curran, July 14, 1937. Letters I, 393.
6 Richard Ellmann, Jame Joyce (revised ed.), 28; from an interview with Mrs. Eileen Schaurek, 1953.
7 Costello, 93.
8 Ellmann., 33.
9 Ellmann., 21.
10 Costello, 122.
11 Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, 45.
12 Costello, 119 and 129.
13 John McCourt, The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 14.
14 Edna O’Brien, James Joyce, 30.
15 Costello, 151.
16 Costello, 150.
17 O’Brien, 11.
18 Costello, 190.
19 Portrait, 171.