James Joyce
Why did you leave your father’s home? To seek misfortune
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Square James Joyce, 13th arrondissement |
Now we come to the greatest of them all, the greatest Irishman since Jesus Christ (as we say in Dublin). But what can I say of him that I did not say already in my previous site, www.offbeat-paris.net? Let’s see what can I do. Jimmie Joyce (Dublin, 1882-Zurich, 1941) was fond of the bottle and good conversation, he was a scurrilous rascal, a chancer, he was a dreamer unconcerned with common practicalities, and he was generous with other people’s money – in a word, he was the quintessential Irishman. Of all the characters that have crossed the Paris firmament, Jimmie is the one that generates the most empathy. From 1904 until his death in 1941, he never dared set foot in Ireland – not even for the death of his father - and in his correspondence he frequently proclaimed he had a grudge against the place.
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8, avenue Floquet |
But Joyce and Paris did not always get along either. Like W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge, he stayed in the Hôtel Corneille beside the Odéon theatre (6th arrondissement) when he first arrived in Paris on December 10, 1902 to study medicine. But Joyce only lasted 12 days in Paris before his parents sent him money and told him to come home for Christmas. Although he was back again at the Hôtel Corneille on January 23, 1903, there are indications that Joyce had difficulty adapting to life in Paris. In a letter, Synge comments on Joyce’s “rather indolent” and hungry existence. Joyce himself wrote at this time that “Paris amuses me very much, but I quite understand why there is no poetry in French literature, for to create poetry out of French life is impossible.”
Joyce left Paris again – penniless - on April 11, 1904 after receiving a telegram from Dublin that read ‘Mother dying come home father’, and then passed through the French capital again, briefly, with Nora Barnacle on his way to a job that did not exist in Zurich in October 1904. After living in Pola, Trieste and Zurich, Joyce arrived back in Paris on July 8, 1920. Joyce originally planned simply to stay in the French capital for a few days before establishing himself in London. But destiny decided otherwise. As Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellmann puts it: “He came to Paris to stay a week and remained for twenty years.”
In that time, by some counts Joyce changed address 19 times (including numerous short stays in hotels). Here is a list of those addresses, including the periods of Joyce’s stay:
| Hôtel Elysée, 9 rue de Beaune, 7th arrondissement (July 1920) |
| 5, rue de l’Assomption, 16th arr. (mid-July-Nov. 1, 1920) |
| 9 rue de l'Université, 7th arr. (July 1920, Nov.-Dec. 1920, Oct. 1921-Oct. 1922) |
| 5 Boulevard Raspail, 6th arr. (Dec. 1920-end May 1921) |
| 71 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, 5th arr. (June-end Sept. 1921) |
| 26 Avenue Charles Floquet, 7th arr. (Nov. 1, 1922-June 1923) |
| Victoria Palace Hotel, 6 rue Blaise Desgoffe, 6th arr. (Aug. 1923-Sept. 1924) |
| 8 Avenue Charles Floquet, 7th arr. (Sept. 1924-June 1925) |
| 2 Square Robiac, 192 rue de Grenelle, 7th arr. (June 1925-March 31, 1931) |
| Hôtel Powers, 52 rue Francois Premier, 8th arr. (April 1931) |
| La Résidence, 41 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, 8th arr. (Sept.-Dec. 1931) |
| 2 Avenue St. Philibert, 16th arr. (Dec. 1931-June 1932) |
| The Lancaster, 7 rue de Berri, 8th arr. (October 1932) |
| Hôtel Belmont et de Bassano, 28-30 rue de Bassano, 8th arr. (Oct.-Nov. 1932) |
| Hôtel Lord Byron, 5 rue Châteaubriand, 8th arr. (Dec. 1932) |
| 42 rue Galilée, 16th arr. (Dec. 1932-June 1934) |
| 7 rue Edmond Valentin, 7th arr. (July 1934-April 1939) |
| 34 rue des Vignes, 16th arr. (April 1939-end Sept. 1939) |
| Hôtel Lutetia, 43 Boulevard Raspail, 6th arr. (Oct.-Dec. 1939) |
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rue Valentin |
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JJ stepping out in rue Valentin |
As can be seen from this list, Joyce remained faithful to the same areas – the most expensive in Paris – throughout his time there. Bar a four-month stay in the fifth arrondissement (when French writer Valéry Larbaud lent him his house), Joyce was very much a “Westsider”, moving between the 6th, 7th, 8th and 16th arondissements. He was able to do this largely thanks to the largesse and indulgence of a rich English widow called Harriet Shaw Weaver, who gave Joyce the modern equivalent of more than GBP1 million over several years. And yet, nowhere is Joyce’s passage commemorated. The longest he stayed put in one place was at 7, rue Edmond Valentin, but the only plaque at this address honours one Ricardo Güilades, an obscure Argentinean writer. Nothing either outside 8, ave. Floquet, while on a house directly opposite is a slab to commemorate the French writer Paul Morand who lived there from 1927 to 1976.
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9, rue de l'Université |
Of all these addresses, perhaps the most interesting is 9, rue de l’Université. For want of anything better, Joyce had recourse to furnished rooms there on three occasions. First time round, he found the place to his liking. But by his third and final stay, he was calling it “this damned brothel”. Joyce, his wife and two children lived three in one room, one in the other. In the larger room, Joyce kept a series of potted phoenix palms, which he said reminded him of the Phoenix Park back in Dublin. Ellmann describes thus the visit of one eye doctor to rue de l’Université in May 1922: [The young doctor] was astonished by the disorder: trunks half empty, clothes hanging everywhere, toilet accessories spread on chairs, tables, and mantelpiece. Wrapped in a blanket and squatting on the floor was a man with dark glasses who proved to be Joyce, and facing him in the same posture was Nora. Between them stood a stewpan with a chicken carcass, and beside it a half empty bottle of wine.”
Like J.M. Synge before him, Joyce had a bad experience at the Café d’Harcourt on the Place de la Sorbonne (5th arrondissement, café no longer exists). There, he suffered an attack of iritis in July 1921. Enough!
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