|
James Joyce's Paris
Photos and
descriptions by Marylin Bender
April 2000
|
|
James Joyce spent nearly 20 years in Paris,
the longest and most productive stretch of his life
in exile from
Ireland. At the urging of Ezra Pound
he arrived in July 1920
with the goal of finishing Ulysses
which was published by Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare
and Company,
a bookstore on the rue de l�Od�on in 1922.
Numerous references to Paris are embedded in Finnegans Wake,
published in May 1939. Eight months later,
the Joyces left the city
gripped by fear of advancing German armies.
|
|
|
The Hotel Lenox
9 rue de l�Universit�
The
Joyce family�s first temporary lodgings in Paris,
recommended by
Ezra Pound in the
fashionable 7th arrondissement on the
Left Bank.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
The
Hotel Lut�tia
& Brasserie
45 Boulevard Raspail, 6th
arrondissement
This grand Left Bank hotel was Joyce�s last residence in
Paris from October 1939 to February 1, 1940. He liked to dine in its
Brasserie restaurant. After the German takeover in June, the hotel
housed part of the Nazi command. From April to August 1945, (as the
plaque commemorates) it served as a welcome center for survivors of
the concentration camps.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Square James Joyce
The French
honor writers and artists by naming streets after them. In 1999, Joyce
was recognized with this little garden near the Biblioth�que
Nationale in the 13th arrondissement. It is bordered by
streets named after Abel Gance, the film director, George Balanchine,
the ballet master and Val�ry Larbaud, the novelist and great friend
of Joyce.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
billboard for Jardin James Joyce
on Abel Gance Boulevard
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Victoria Palace Hotel
6 rue Blaise Desgoffe, 6th arrondissement.
The Joyces lived here from August 1923
to October 1924 when he had begun writing Finnegans Wake.
The initials V.P.H.
appear in the Wake (99.13; 284.n4; 286.11)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
 |
THE FAMOUS CORK-LINED ROOM OF MARCEL PROUST
reconstruction in the Mus�e Carnavalet, Paris
Joyce and Proust met on May 18, 1922 but there are a number of
conflicting versions of what occurred and little evidence of their
assessment of each other's work. "What he envied Proust were
his material circumstances: 'Proust can write; he has a comfortable
place at the Etoile, floored with cork and with cork on the walls to
keep it quiet. And, I, writing in this place, people coming in and
out. I wonder how I can finish Ulysses." (Ellmann, pg. 509).
When Proust died on November 18, 1922, Joyce attended his
funeral. Furthermore, cork had a special significance for
Joyce: his father was from County Cork. Always the punster, Joyce
once mounted a portrait of his father in a cork frame. |
|
|