Joyce said of his novel Ulysses, "I have put so many puzzles and mysteries in it that scholars will argue for years what I mean, which is the only way to ensure my immortality."
James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin. His father, John Stanislaus (1849 – 1931), was a notorious civil servant. His mother is a talented pianist. As a child, he enrolled at Clongowes Wood College, a prestigious Jesuit college, but his education did not last long due to financial difficulties. Although he is a loved child, he has a grumpy nature. His father says “Jim reads whatever he wants” and cuts down on his private spending, buying books for his son with that money.
Richard Ellmann, who is considered an authority on Irish Literature in his book The Life and Works of James Joyce, writes that he is a student who has a strong memory, can memorize poems, loves to sing, takes piano lessons, enjoys playing in theater plays, and is also a good runner.
Richard Ellmann also writes in his book that James Joyce is someone who cares about his appearance, loves to pose, wears different hats, and different suits, and does not neglect to change his hair and beard.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.
He studies philosophy and modern languages at University College Dublin. In 1900, while still a university student, a lengthy article on a play by Ibsen was published in Fortnightly Review and caught Ibsen's attention. After graduating from university in 1902, he went to Paris with the intention of becoming a doctor but returned to Ireland the following year after losing his mother. In 1904 he met his wife, Nora Barnacle (1884 – 1951), and they left Dublin together. Joyce works at language schools in Pula and Trieste. He works as a bank teller in Rome.
Joyce wrote The Dubliners from 1904 to 1907. After completing The Dubliners, it was rejected fifteen times before it was published in 1914. “Who is more imbecile, them or me?” he revolts. The book, which consists of fifteen stories, can be perceived as a novel because all the stories are written with a common theme and a fictional sequence. This is Dublin's novel rather than the people and characters in the stories. Anyway, Joyce said that he aimed to give sections from the spiritual history of his country and that's why he took Dublin.
Published in 1916, Exiles is a successful theatrical work that reflects all the characteristics of Joyce and carries traces of the author's own life. However, it is not one of the works that made Joyce accepted by the world as a great writer. The work, written by Joyce while under the influence of the great Norwegian playwright Ibsen, is a work built on guilt and skepticism, which intensely highlights the characters' internal reckoning. This dedication to the beginning of the single play really sums up what Joyce's world is like: "I dedicate the first true work of my life to my own soul."
Joyce gradually begins to lose his sight. In the mid-1920s, he could no longer see in one eye. But Joyce's bad temper evolves into a creative stubbornness because no eye doctor can stop him. Looking at what he has written with his red eyes, he continues to write between the lines and in the margins with great passion and stubbornness.
His autobiographical novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", which he modified and narrated, was published in 1916. The novel is an autobiography about a young artist's journey from the strict discipline of the Jesuits to self-discovery and becoming a true adult, going back to the childhood of James Joyce. Free thought and independence are identified with the liberation of his native Ireland.
He begins to write Ulysses in 1917, and before the work was completed, it was removed from publication in the United States while serialized in Little Review, following a complaint by the New York Anti-Habits Association. After the war ended, he settled first in Trieste and then in Paris, where he would live for twenty years. Ulysses was published in English in Paris in 1922. Joyce said of Ulysses, "I have put so many puzzles and mysteries in it that scholars will argue for years what I mean, which is the only way to ensure my immortality."
Ulysses is actually the name of the hero of Homer's Odessa, and many parallels are drawn in the book with this novel of Homer. The novel Ulysses, written by James Joyce with the stream-of-consciousness technique, is in first place among the most difficult books to read. To make the text more understandable, footnotes are included, but you can spend as much time reading the footnotes as you can to read the text.
Although Ulysses received very good reactions and congratulations from the readers when it was published, there are many critics of it. For example, while his brother thought that Joyce's writing was nonsense, the great English writer of the time, H G Wells, wrote to Joyce, "Take me as the typical average reader. Will I take great pleasure in this work? No,” he says to Joyce.
After James Joyce wrote Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, which was published in 1939 after more than seventeen years of effort, caused great controversy when it was presented to the literary world. Considered one of the most difficult works written in English, this work, which broke the mold of almost any subject, expression, and character, so to speak, has been the subject of academics and critics since its first piece was published and continues to create the agenda in the field of literature with countless books written on it.
James Joyce describes Nora Barnacle as the most beautiful and simple spirit in the world. He is against marriage, so (perhaps) he only marries in 1931. When Nora and the children wait in Trieste when he returns to Dublin, Joyce falls into despair and pessimism. His aversion to Dublin is reflected in his letters as his longing for Nora. He writes passionately about the desire he feels, some of his letters are full of surprising sentences, pushing the limits.
In August 1936, he tells his story in a letter to his four-year-old grandson, Stephen, from the town of Villers-sur-Mer, on the Normandy coast, in northwest France. Inspired by French folk tales, this story deals with the theme of selling one's soul to the devil. The letter first appeared in the book Letters of James Joyce, published by Stuart Gilbert in 1957. Later, several publishers illustrated the tale described in the letter and turned it into a children's book.
Joyce, who suffered from ulcer bleeding in 1941, died on January 13 at the age of fifty-eight. He is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery near the Zurich Zoo. Swiss tenor Max Meili reads Addio terra, addio cielo (Farewell earth, farewell sky) from Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo at the head of his body.