Trieste
Trieste is the capital city of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region in northeast Italy. It’s a port city, situated on a thin strip of land between the Adriatic coast and the border of Slovenia. It is where the Irish writer James Joyce lived and worked between the years 1904 to 1920. Having read his main works – Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses – I was excited to visit for the first time and see where his writing took place.
I’ve read Ulysses twice, twenty years apart, and enjoyed it, with the second reading making more sense. Whether that was due to age and experience I can’t say. It uses what is described a stream-of-consciousness technique, which makes for challenging reading. I was intrigued by this so was drawn to it. I’ve always taken an interest in the more abstract areas of music, art and literature, so taking on Ulysses was I suppose a rite of passage back then. I feel I’m due to read the novel again so I suspect I will return to it later in the year. I also have a copy of James Joyce, the 1959 biography by Ellman (new edition 1982 in paperback with corrections 1983), and that’s a hefty read as well. I’ve looked at Finnegans Wake, but due to the experimental nature of the novel, this book makes little sense to me, and is the only novel I can think of which I have given up on for now. I always finish books I start. Whether that’s a wise strategy I don’t know, but Finnegans Wake is the one exception.
I note that a new film has been released this summer of Homer’s ancient Greek story, The Odyssey, directed by Sir Christopher Nolan, but at the time of writing I’ve yet to watch it. Joyce based the structure and framework of his novel Ulysses on The Odyssey and it is recommended reading if interested in the book. The edition I have is the translation by T.E. Lawrence, a reprint of the 1935 English edition and published as a Wordsworth Classic in 1992. There are a number of versions of this work, and there are reports of a large increase in sales for the 2017 translation by Emily Wilson since the film was released. This is the version Nolan has mentioned was a source. I’m thinking of grabbing a copy of Wilson’s translation and rereading this year.
My own copy of Ulysses (published in 1922) has what I often say is my favourite book cover. It is a Penguin Modern Classic edition reprinted in 1977. The cover is completely black with simply James Joyce Ulysses in white lettering, which occupies the top half of the cover. The bottom half is left blank other than the publishers black and white Penguin logo in the bottom right hand corner, placed inside a red oval. In today’s age with the focus on having the ‘right’ book cover, it makes for a striking image. The closest I have seen in recent years is The Secret History by Donna Tartt which I read at the beginning of this year. However, my edition has a gold medallion in the centre and a strapline from The Times at the foot, so it’s not as bare as the Joyce cover.
Looking at my bookshelves I also see a book by David Norris and Carl Flint called Introducing Joyce. Published in 1994 by Totem books and reprinted in 1997, this is part of a series covering a number of topics. I see you can obtain this on Amazon Kindle. It provides a summary of Joyce and his work, through both text and illustrations. Online it is now described as a Graphic Guide, with every page providing some illustration complete with speech bubbles in the style of a comic. It’s very much a simplified overview, but I found it very useful in getting a handle on the main points of what is a complex body of literature.
Back to Trieste, the cafes Joyce frequented are still open and there is a statute of him in the centre of the city positioned at pavement level, strolling with a journal under his arm. I’ve used a photograph I took to go with this blog and that can be viewed on my website. There is a museum, with a section dedicated to Joyce which has been well put together, with information in both Italian and English. I had to smile at a white wall that simply displayed a quote in a green coloured font from Finnegans Wake – “And trieste, ah trieste ate I my liver!” I will leave you to look up the meaning of this if you are sufficiently curious to know more. It’s not an exaggeration to say the novel is full of such obscure lines all with their own meanings, hence the reason I’ve never been able to make sense of it.
Among many of the takeaways from my visit, was the point made that in Ulysses Joyce’s – a single day set in Dublin, Ireland on June 16th 1904 – the characters do not fit into the environment they find themselves in. They are outsiders. However, they would have felt at home and fitted in perfectly with the life in Trieste as Joyce experienced it while drafting the novel there.
Other areas of the museum are dedicated to writers with connections to the city and Italy. On the day I was there, there were second-hand book stalls outside which was nice to see. Having passed several second-hand bookshops on the way, I got the impression this is a literary city for want of a better expression, which still maintains an air of the importance of books and of reading to the human psyche. It’s a beautiful city and I wish I could have stayed longer. The centre is very clean and well maintained, with a combination of both open spaces and more narrow streets. I saw the giant coin, a 16-ton, stainless-steel monument of Empress Maria Theresa Thaler. Located in Piazza del Ponterosso, this 4-meter-wide sculpture installed in 2023 honours her transforming Trieste into a major Habsburg port. I also managed to visit the Museo Revoltella, the Galleria d’arte moderna, which was displaying an exhibition of Trieste artists ranging from the end of the 19th century to the early 1970’s. There are a number of different floors, but I only had time to view the modern art on display before heading off.
If you haven’t read Joyce, then I would recommend starting with Dubliners (short stories) and then A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ulysses is a challenging read and I like to think of it as a book that will choose you, rather than you choosing it. You will know your own mind and reading habits and if it’s for you, you will know.