James Joyce and the United Irishman , Paris 1902-3

Abstract

James Joyce and the United Irishman, Paris 1902-3 Frank Callanan (bio) —O, don't ask me such questions, Madden. You can use these phrases of the platform but I can't. —But surely you have some political opinions, man! —I am going to have to think them out. I am an artist, don't you see? (SH 56) —Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. —No, says the Citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P.1 (U 12.1538-9) The National Library in Dublin holds a school exercise book for mathematics manufactured by the Papeterie-Imprimerie F. Bénard and purchased from its outlet at 10 Galerie de l'Odéon. It is inscribed at the head of its once pink front cover: Priez de rendre à James Joyce Rue Corneille Paris This is what was formerly referred to as Joyce's Paris notebook, at a time when there were believed to be separate Paris and Pola notebooks, and is now designated as Joyce's Paris-Pola commonplace book, or early commonplace book, 1903-1912 (NLI MS. 36,639/02/A).2 The notebook contains at pages 16-17 a dense untitled list in Joyce's hand of Irish books, and a further shorter list at page 30. The immediate occasion for this article is the identification of the source of Joyce's two lists that are taken from the 7 March and 4 April 1903 [End Page 51] numbers of the United Irishman, the Dublin weekly newspaper edited by Arthur Griffith and published 1899-1906. Joyce, who had graduated from University College in September 1902, was in Paris from 3 to 22 December of that year. After an extended Christmas in Dublin, he was back in Paris, at the Hotel Corneille on the Rue Corneille, flanking the Théâtre de l'Odeon and just off the Jardin du Luxembourg, from 17 January to 10 April 1903.3 His eventual return to Dublin was sudden and unexpected, brought about by the illness of his mother. May Joyce died on 13 August 1903. On 8 October 1904, Joyce left Dublin with Nora Barnacle to begin what transpired to be a life-long exile from Ireland. The United Irishman published a list of Irish books in two parts, the first on 7 March 1903 entitled 'A Rural Library', the second almost a month later on 4 April 1903 entitled 'An Irish Rural Library, II'. The list was a revised version of one published by the United Irishman three years previously, that Griffith in 1903 stated to have been compiled by William Rooney, his friend and collaborator who had died in the interim. The first of the 1903 lists consisted of books in English, and the second comprised books in Irish. An intended third list being 'a short supplementary list of books in English or Irish or general subjects suitable for an Irish rural library' never appeared. The identification of a source for the lists in the Paris notebook resolves an issue in Joyce scholarship. It moreover provides unequivocal direct evidence that Joyce was reading the mid-period United Irishman, and that he was not drawn to the paper solely on account of its political content. Stanislaus Joyce in his memoir of his brother wrote that Joycean had declared that 'the United Irishman was the only paper in Dublin worth reading, and in fact, he used to read it every week'.4 Joycean scholarship has in general been slow to explore the implications, in part because Stanislaus's recollection relates to Joyce's qualified support for the programme of Sinn Fein (established in 1907), and the first reference in Joyce's correspondence to the United Irishman is in a letter to Stanislaus from Trieste in March 1905.5 More generally, the import of his interest in this newspaper has been overlooked as the consequence of a lack of curiosity as to Joyce's intellectual relation to Irish nationalism in 1902-4 that was premised on the assumption that he was then indifferent to Irish politics, and allegiance to a narrative that was always suspect in which his feelings towards Ireland underwent a sentimental and political transformation in the...