James Joyce 1882-1941, Irish novelist Biography James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882, the eldest of ten surviving children. Photo taken at 2. 1888-1898 He attended Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College. 1898 He enrolled at University College, Dublin, where he studied modern languages. 1902 Graduated from university & went to Paris, ostensibly to study medicine. 1903 Returned from Paris. Death of his mother. Paris 1902 1
1904 Met Nora Barnacle. Stayed briefly at the Martello Tower. Published three stories under the name Stephen Daedalus, & began Stephen Hero. Left for Trieste and Pola with Nora. In August 1904 the first of Joyce s short stories was published in the Irish Homestead magazine, followed by two others, but in October Joyce and Nora left Ireland going first to Pola (now Pula, Croatia) where Joyce got a job teaching English at a Berlitz school. Six months after their arrival in Pola, they went to Trieste where they spent most of the next ten years. Joyce and Nora learned the local Triestino dialect of Italian, and Italian remained the family s home language for many years. Joyce wrote and published articles in Italian in the Piccolo della Sera newspaper and even gave lectures on English literature. 1914 proved a crucial year for Joyce. With Ezra Pound s assistance, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce s first novel, began to appear in serial form in Harriet Weaver s Egoist magazine in London. His collection of short stories, Dubliners, on which he had been working since 1904, was finally published, and he also wrote his only play, Exiles. Having cleared his desk, Joyce could then start in earnest on the novel he had been thinking about since 1907: Ulysses. 2
With the start of WWI Joyce and Nora, along with their two children, Georgio and Lucia, were forced to leave Trieste and arrived in Zurich where they lived for the duration of the war. The family had little money, relying on subventions from friends and family, people like Harriet Weaver in London and Nora s uncle in Galway. They often ended up living in cramped, squalid accommodation as Joyce persisted in writing Ulysses. In fact, Joyce never really had a room or an office of his own in which to do his writing, and far from trying to block out the world around him while he wrote, Joyce included things going on around him as part of the book. So characteristics of friends of his in Trieste, Zurich and Paris are given to characters in the book, and, most notably, Nora s characteristic language and writing becomes the voice of Molly Bloom in the novel. 1918 Parts of Ulysses were serialized in America and England. 1919-1920 Returned to Trieste, then moved to Paris. 1921 Ulysses banned in America. 1922 Ulysses published by Shakespeare and Company, Paris. In July 1920, Joyce met Sylvia Beach, an American expatriate living in Paris who owned and ran the bookshop Shakespeare & Co. In 1921, after the American ban, Beach offered to publish Ulysses and finally, on 2nd February 1922, Joyce s fortieth birthday, the first edition of Ulysses was published. Beach continued to publish Ulysses through 1930. 3
1923 Started writing Work in Progress (later Finnegans Wake). 1927 Pomes Penyeach published. After Beach gave up the rights to Ulysses in 1930, much of Joyce s business was taken over by Paul Léon, a Russian Jewish émigré living in Paris. As a close friend of Joyce and Joyce s family, Léon also became Joyce s business advisor, looking after his correspondence and dealing with his literary and legal affairs. The Léons apartment became a centre for Joyce studies, and Léon and others met Joyce there to discuss translations of Ulysses and the early serial publications of what became Finnegans Wake. 1931 Married Nora finally. Joyce s last and perhaps most challenging work, Finnegans Wake was published on 4 May 1939. It was immediately listed as the book of the week in the UK and the USA. 4
Joyce died at the age of fifty-nine, on 13 January 1941, at 2 a.m., in Zurich. He is buried in Fluntern cemetary, Zurich. Stream of Consciousness 意识流 是西方现代文学艺术中, 特别是小说和电影中广为应用的写作技巧 本世纪 20 年代起, 意识流技巧在小说领域取得了十分引人注目的成就, 但是并未形成一个文学流派 这是因为运用意识流方法写作的作家并没有共同的组织和纲领, 也没有发表宣言, 而是一些不同国家的作者, 如爱尔兰的詹姆斯 乔伊斯, 法国的马赛尔 普鲁斯特, 英国的弗吉利亚 伍尔芙和美国的威廉 福克纳等人, 于第一次世界大战前后运用新的概念与方法创作小说 他们的作品着力展示人物的内心世界采用迥异于传统文学的心理描写方法, 开创了现代小说的新纪元 这些作品在当时虽然受到某些责难, 但并未引起重视, 直到第二次世界大战以后才得到承认和广为流传 20 世纪 60 年代以后, 创作这类小说的作家越来越多, 这种方法在一定程度上已成为现代小说的一种传统创作手法 The Dead 男主角嘉布瑞尔 (Gabriel) 年约四十岁, 带了太太葛芮塔 (Gretta) 去姨妈家参加圣诞派对 嘉布瑞尔的母亲已过世, 姨妈很喜欢他这个外甥 这场派对是年度盛事, 大家唱歌跳舞欢聚一堂 嘉布瑞尔得在晚宴上讲话, 但他并不是太自在, 一直在担心会不会讲得不好 派对过后, 嘉布瑞尔与太太两人回到旅馆 下马车时葛芮塔轻靠在嘉布瑞尔的臂上, 就好像两人在派对中跳舞那样 ; 当时嘉布瑞尔觉得既骄傲又快乐, 因为优雅的葛芮塔是他的, 这时嘉布瑞尔更加感受到对于她的爱意与欲念, 彷佛两人已逃离了日常生活与责任, 把孩子和俗务放在一旁, 以炽热的心逃向新生活 但是进了房里, 葛芮塔似乎有些心不在焉, 对他的心意全然没有反应, 不知在想些什么, 令他有些懊恼 几经寻问之后, 葛芮塔才哭着说 : 她正想着派对上听到的一首歌, 这首歌使她想起很久以前认识的一个男孩子, 这男孩有又大又黑的眼睛, 常唱这首歌 5
嘉布瑞尔开始感到不舒服, 甚至愤怒 他进一步追问那男孩是否她的爱人, 葛芮塔只说 我常和他一起散步, 那时和他很好, 再追问之下, 她说男孩身体纤弱, 早就死了, 死的时候才十七岁 为什么死的? 葛芮塔回答 : 我猜他是为我而死的, 听到这样的答案, 嘉布瑞尔一时觉得被什么东西扑了上来, 只能用理智勉强挺住 渐渐地, 葛芮塔哭着睡着了 嘉布瑞尔体会到他太太所真正爱的是这个早已死去的男孩, 一个为她而死的男孩 他自己在葛芮塔的生命中, 其实无足轻重, 而他也从来未像那十七岁男孩那般地对待过任何一个女人 ; 嘉布瑞尔只能静静地看着睡着的葛芮塔, 彷佛两人突然像陌生人一样 死者 的结尾 玻璃上叮叮几声轻响使他翻过身来朝着窗子 外面又下雪了 他困倦地望着银白和灰暗的雪花在街灯映照下纷然倒坠 是该他动身往西走一趟的时候了 对, 报纸上说得对 : 全爱尔兰普遍降雪 它落在中部平原的遍地黑土上, 落到不见树木的荒丘上, 轻轻落入艾嶙沼泽, 再往西, 还轻轻落进善农河汹涌澎拜的浊浪中 它也落到山头上埋着迈可 富瑞的那个墓园的每个角落 它稠密地飘积在弯弯曲曲的十字架和歪歪斜斜的墓碑上, 飘积在小小园门的一排栅栏尖顶上和贫瘠的荆棘地上 他听着雪花寂然无声地穿过广宇, 就像它们的最后归宿一样, 寂然无声地落向一切生者与死者, 他的灵魂慢慢地昏沉入梦 ( 赵少伟译文 ) 6