James Joyce

This is a site for ReJoycing. For all things Joycean.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

What Would James Joyce Do?

Joyce rather aptly stated that, “Nations have their ego, just like individuals.” He was well aware of the power of the nation and what troubles this power can bring. We have closed our doors now, down to an unhealthy hatred of the Other. What joys we have been given from Europe: the writers, artists, fantastically spirited orators,workers, leaders, musicians and well…just superb people who enrich our worlds. Like Stephen, we’ve stared into the omphalos and forgotten the world out there and how it can bring unity and strength. Not only Europe, but our connections with the world.

Like Joyce, “I feel like a man in a house who hears a row in the street and voices he knows shouting but can’t get up to see what the hell is going on. It has put me off the story I was going to write.” I’m frightened by what I’ve seen and heard in the past few days. I’ve come here to hide from the xenophobia and the racism. I am watching the ‘row in the street’ from afar – close friends shouting at each other and left in tears. Children asking if their grandmother will be ‘sent away.’ Colleagues heckled on station platforms to ‘leave’. Is this really what the vast swathes of England wanted? Really?

I agree with Joyce. People felt that they were leaving the ‘European concert’, to create a new culture. But is it more about deep rooted divisions caused by the ‘glories’ of the past? If we are part of the heart of the world, we will reach a universal state. At the heart of ‘Ulysses’ is love and acceptance. Many would argue that it is a state of equanimity, but really it’s about being part of something unified, full of hope for the future. I would rather be riding with the heart of the world quite frankly.

Like Joyce in ‘Ulysses’ we’ve gone back to creating a microcosm. Our tiny borders laced with ineradicable egoism and blinkered narcissism. However, unlike Stephen Hero, we are not acknowledging our ‘honest egoism’ - at least he admitted that he ‘could not take to heart the distress of the nation, the soul of which was antipathetic to his own.’ Now we only have chameleons; those who, like Bloom, chew the cud of reminiscence, of a past that didn’t really exist in the first place. We are neither ‘merry or mournful’ - we just hope (for our children’s sake more than anything) that this mess is simply, like Joyce’s history, a nightmare from which we will awake.