They must read awful in the cold light of day. Today I stopped short often in the street with an exclamation whenever I thought of the letters I wrote you last night and the night before. There is some star too near the earth for I am still in a fever-fit of animal desire. May we all find a soul mate whose farts we would know anywhere.ģ December 1909: 44 Fontenoy Street, Dublin These letters, or excerpts of them, have been floating around the Internet for some time now, but they merit multiple joyous re-readings. This correspondence was first published in 1975 in the Selected Letters of James Joyce, now out of print. I n the absent spaces, we can hear Nora’s enthusiastic, just-as-naughty replies, and the longing of a man who wants nothing more than to be home. Read in full, they are also quite charming. The letters below were written when Joyce returned to Dublin alone for the first time, in 1909, in an attempt to get Dubliners published. Although the couple did not officially marry until 1931, their unconventional relationship was passionate till the end. There, to Joyce’s surprise and gratitude, Barnacle slipped her hand down his trousers and “made me a man.” By October, the couple had eloped to Zurich. Joyce took Barnacle east, past the docks and the harbor, to the deserted area of Dublin known as Ringswald. I hope you will be kind enough to make one with me-if you have not forgotten me!” A few days later, on what was likely June 16, 1904-the date on which Joyce would later set Ulysses -they had their first proper date, though it was far from proper. I would like to make an appointment but it might not suit you.
I looked for a long time at a head of reddish-brown hair and decided it was not yours. Joyce proposed a date, and Barnacle agreed, but though Joyce went to the appointed place at the appointed time, she never showed. He wrote to her, “I may be blind. Sometimes she said Joyce wore a sailor’s cap, and other times she said he wore a big white sombrero and a long overcoat that hung down to his feet. Nora would later tell the story of their first meeting often, though she often told it differently.
On Nassau Street in Dublin, on June 10, 1904, twenty-two-year-old James Joyce saw (as clearly as he could see, since he was not wearing his glasses, and his vision was poor) the twenty-year-old Nora Barnacle, then a young chambermaid, sauntering by.
0 kommentar(er)
