James Joyce was born in Dublin to a big middle-class family impoverished by his father’s drinking and poor financial sense. Academically brilliant, Joyce attended university in Dublin, but felt claustrophobic in the intimate city, finally leaving Ireland and settling in multicultural Trieste in 1904. He wrote all fifteen of the stories in Dubliners between 1904 and 1907. It was finally published – after many rejections – in 1914.
ANONYMOUS
Joyce’s protagonists are young and old: women, men and boys. Most of the stories are narrated by an anonymous third person that gives detailed accounts in a detached voice. The stories have similar themes: tradition, routine, and the yearning for escape. In the early 20th century Dublin was the second city in the British Empire. It was a hotbed of Irish nationalism, which was pulled in different directions by the country’s traditional Catholic heritage, and its desire for modernisation. Throughout Dubliners, Joyce places religion as a counterpoint to liberalism.
RELIGION
In the first tale, The Sisters, a boy narrates the story of Father Flynn, who has a stroke and dies. But the story also suggests that the priest was mentally unstable. The idea of a life wasted through ritual, and an uncomfortable unspoken truth, is suggested by the story.
“Nannie went to the sideboard and brought out a decanter of sherry and some wine glasses. […] she poured out the sherry into the glasses and passed them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but I declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them.”
“[...] mentre Nannie andava alla credenza e tirava fuori una caraffa di sherry e alcuni bicchieri da vino. Li mise sul tavolo e ci invitò a prendere un bicchierino. Mi offrì con insistenza anche dei biscotti alla crema, ma li rifiutai perché pensavo che avrei fatto troppo rumore mangiandoli”.
MARRIAGE
Joyce’s characters can seem immoral – or are they just survivors? In The Boarding House Mrs. Mooney traps Mr. Doran into marrying her daughter, with whom he has had a brief affair. Here, marriage offers promise and profit on the one hand, and entrapment and loss on the other. But Mr. Doran feels obliged to honour the union.
“Going down the stairs his glasses became so dimmed with moisture that he had to take them off and polish them. He longed to ascend through the roof and fly away to another country where he would never hear of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by step.”
“Mentre scendeva le scale gli occhiali gli si appannarono talmente che dovette toglierseli e pulirli. Moriva dal desiderio di salire in cielo attraverso il tetto e di volare via verso un altro paese dove non avrebbe mai più sentito parlare dei suoi guai, eppure una forza lo spingeva dabbasso scalino per scalino”.
LOVE LOST
One of the saddest stories is that of Eveline, a young woman who has a difficult choice: stay at home like a good daughter, or leave Dublin for Buenos Aires with her lover, Frank. Eveline agrees to leave, but her hopes for a new life and the ‘freedom’ of marriage end on Dublin’s docks in a terrible attack of doubt.
“All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing... It was impossible. Her hands clutched at the iron in frenzy.”
“Tutti i mari del mondo le si rovesciarono intorno al cuore. La stava attirando dentro di essi: l’avrebbe affogata. Si aggrappò con entrambe le mani alla ringhiera di ferro”.
THE DEAD
The monotony of Dublin life leads Dubliners to live in a suspended state between life and death. In the most famous story The Dead, Gabriel Conroy writes a newspaper column and considers himself superior to everyone else. Yet at a Christmas party his confidence is undermined by his wife’s confession that she still loves Michael Furey, a young revolutionary who died for her. Conroy watches the snow fall over Dublin, lamenting the absence of passion in his own life.
“[…] snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills […] It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.”
“[...] c’era neve in tutta l’Irlanda. Cadeva dovunque sulla scura pianura centrale, sullecolline senza alberi [...] Cadeva anche dovunque nel cimitero isolato sulla collina dove Michael Furey era sepolto”.
In film
The Dead is the longest story in Dubliners and has been most adapted for theatre and film. Joyce himself made a play out of it in 1918 called Exiles, but it wasn’t successful. In 1967, it was staged again by Hugh Leonard, and then made into a film by John Huston in 1987. It even became a Tony-winning Broadway musical in 1999. In 2012 a dramatisation of a selection of some of the other stories was created for the Dublin Theatre Festival, but reviews were mixed. Perhaps Joyce’s genius is that each tale is so evocative and complex that it is difficult to capture off the page.