Dare cross Joyce?

In ‘Eveline’, a short story in Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’, the protagonist aspiration of  taking a trip to Buenos Aires with her lover is meant as a metaphor for wanting to escape to a different world, a different life.

When Joyce said ‘daulphin’, ‘oldun’, ‘Tumplan’ and ‘Doubtlynn’ in Finnegans Wake, he actually meant the city of Dublin.

And when Joyce set the scene of Ulysses in Dublin, he actually meant Zurich…

Well, there is truth in my reference to Finnegan’s Wake (don’t forget, though, the other 247 or so phrases for Dublin), and my inclusion Eveline is a weak point due to its forgettability , but my Ulysses remark is completely ludicrous. Well, not completely.

Joyce's grave in Fluntern Cemetary

Joyce lived in Zurich in 1904 and then from 1915-19. And it was his first stop on his self-inflicted, or self-endowed, exile. He was supposed to teach English at the Berlitz Language school (I actually saw an ad on tram 6, going back into the city from Joyce’s grave, for Berlitz’s language school!) there, but was sent to Trieste instead. He returned to Zurich in 1915, and wrote ‘Exiles’, quite fittingly.  ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a young Man’ was published, and he began really getting into ‘Ulysses’. It is difficult to consider that his adopted city could not have inspired him in at least small ways during his time writing there.

One piece of quotable Joycean eloquence said of Zurich is along the lines of Bahnhofstrasse is so clean that you can drink minestrone soup off of it. True, the place is ridiculously clean. Admirable, in a way, but this quality deflates in my eyes when I’m reminded of a TripAdvisor reviewer saying ‘Zurich – world’s most boring city?’. Nah, I don’t think so. But I did have a mission, of sorts.

After seeking and finding his grave in a logical and direct manner perhaps typical of Zurich, but definitely not of our Dubliner, I headed to one of his former residences in the city. And I noticed this on the wall.

Granted, he lived here for less than a year (Jan 1918 - 26 Oct 1918), but I’d have to be some mad fan to trace all the residences in Zurich. Joyce’s tendency to not stay put mirrors his writing style well. Notice how in German ‘novel Ulysses’ translates as ‘Roman Ulysses’ – as opposed to ‘Greek Odysseus’? The house is on Universitatsstrasse, just up the road from… yes, the university. I can imagine the number of literature students who gain inspiration from Joyce’s historic presence in their town – well, those who notice the plaque anyway!

But Joyce is not a forgotten ghost of the Irish diaspora. He is regarded as a citizen of the city: there is a James Joyce Foundation in Zurich, I’m happy to say. As the biggest Swiss city, juggling French, German, Italian, and occasionally English, is a daily occurrence – I recall that having resolving an issue with a clerk at the railway station that I had used all four languages in our conversation – so I suppose the Joyce fanatics of Zurich are the best suited to dissecting sections from Finnegans Wake.

Going over my photos from my recent Swiss sojourn, I noticed I had accidentally captured one of Joyce’s favourite restaurants/pubs, Restaurant Augustiner.. You can see the illuminated sign on the right. I’ve put it in B&W so that we can try imagine it being taken ca 1915, and that that’s Joyce standing right outside.

Dublin Castle

An image blurring in its menacing secrecy

Cold stone, dripping fresh rain from above - the castle’s sky

With every wash, more filth surfaces.

Rising in this place, as the ascendency.

For, I have always seen it, through the black and white

Of a past page, two words written with a trembling clasp;

Under, the castle is deluged. Deluged with ‘traitors’.

Men who were made to wear the devil’s mask.

Mocked for the wrongs, they thought rights.

Two colours appear different in diverging eyes

The castle. Dublin. Ireland. Éire. A Kingdom of…

Servants, sinners, stones and our helpful spies.

A place of high standing - It touches the sky.

Not piercingly, but as a plague, an infection.

A knife is easily removed, and replaced.

But it seeps, and all are under our subjection

It owns the sky; sky around it, around this island.

Overcast, stalking closer to those people there.

Storms and tumults to evict their warmth

Rains, winds; a bittering, biting, breaking air.

Torture’s echoes captured in this courtyard

Do chill each footfall that is caste

With the chocked last words of scandal

From martyrs now at last de-masked.

~ Garbhán Ó Ruis

19/9/12

We Saw a Vision

On this day, September 18th, in 1914, the Government of Ireland Act had reached the statute books in Westminster. This act was set to give Ireland Home Rule; something that the Irish politicians and the Irish people had been aiming towards for decades. But, as is natural in Irish history, bad luck has to mock the wishes of the downtrodden Irish (as if Father Time and Mother Éire had had a very difficult divorce. This probably originated in the early Middle Ages when Ireland refused to experience the Dark Ages. )

World War I shook the Home Rule Bill off the table in Westminster. And it would only be back on the table after the conflict had ended.

“Hmmm, lunchtime, maybe? If not, then surely by Christmas?”

Eh, no.

And so, frustrated by this, the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) met to decide the fate of Irish republicanism. The Easter Rising was the ultimate result of this meeting. In commemoration of the importance of the site (north Parnell Square), the Garden of Remembrance was opened in 1916, on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. 

For those who gave their lives in the fight for Irish freedom…

Incidentally, also on this day, in 1922, another bill rose to attention. This was the Constitution of Saorstát Éireann Bill, which W. T. Cosgrave (the first Taoiseach/Prime Minister/ President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State) introduced to enable the implementation of the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland.

And its successor is still on the table.

In Dublin, not Westminster.  

Blogging-silence

Well, it has been the longest time without blogging. Yes, I feel terrible. They say you should blog every day or at least every second day. I feel that such blogging would diminish the quality of my blog posts - though I don't see this one winning any awards.

The life of a tour guide is a very varied and irregular one. Why did I choose it? I like my routines. No, I love my routines; the very few routines that I actually maintain. I have reminders set so that I do my 'daily' to-dos: 'recite poem', 'quotes of the day', 'work, work, work!'.

Truth is, this year has been really good. I mean this work year. I've been relatively busy (is the blog paying off?). I consider myself lucky, even though I did put the work and preparation in. Hey, Napolean used to emphasise the importance of 'mastering luck' in order to achieve his aims. My sister is the lucky one. I stay away from gambling as much as I can, despite my recent success at the dogs at Shelbourne Park. Beginner's luck.

I do, though, find the topic of luck fascinating. So much so that I decided to my philosophy undergraduate thesis on it. Unluckily, (ironically) the topic of 'moral luck' was suggested, and thus the implication that my supervisor would be that most incomprehensible and therefore ridiculously inept professor/teacher/child minder/night light I have ever experienced.

But, hey, if I didn't lose the silicon head of one of my earphones, I wouldn’t be angered enough to feel the need to have a beer at The Gypsy Rose whilst waiting for my bus home. And this blog post would not have existed.

So, thank you bad luck.

• 1 reviews of Dublin Tour Guide- Day Tours in Dublin

New place, new faces, same old Dublin

I’ve finally settled down.

No, not marriage. I mean that everything was quite hectic there for a while. Having returned from living in France, I took to house-hunting in Dublin on the following day, found a place by the fifth day, moved in on the sixth, and had my first tour of the season on the seventh! I hadn’t seen my family since January, so after that tour, I got the bus home. More hecticness – packing the rest of my stuff to bring down before my next tour!

Just in case you’re thinking I’ve been having a bad time so far, I’ll tell you I’m happy to back in Dublin, scumbags and all. Colour, chat, variety, mischief – traits that Grenoble blatantly lacked, and some say Dublin has too much of! Tea. Cadbury’s chocolate. Excellent beef. Guinness. They’re all still here! Thank God!

But changes are inevitable, as my good university buddy Heraclitus was always saying. New shops, restaurants, transport ‘improvements’ (which have exacerbated services), buskers on Grafton St., ways to see Dublin, Starbucks (sigh) on the original site of the Bewley’s Café, and, most importantly, new beers!

Tom Crean, the Irish Giant, is known to Irish people as the fella from Kerry who had quite a walk in Antarctica. Those guys who fabricate those fantastic Guinness TV ads succeeded in recalling his achievements to Irish minds about ten years ago.

Funnily, his connection with Irish beer has now become real.

The ‘Dingle Brewing Company’ has created a beer in honour of the great man. Simply named ‘Tom Crean’s’, the smooth lager is something I’d choose over the boring, predictable common lagers you find everywhere, and I'm not just talking about this country. I think I’ve seen it in three Dublin pubs so far. For a huge, and frequently updated, selection of beers on tap, O’Neill’s on Suffolk never lets me down. Well, except for their removal of Curim on tap. L

‘Eight Degrees Brewing’ has been in half of the pubs I’ve been in since I’m back. Granted, I mainly go into pubs in search of new wonderful inebriating beverages, so that fact is not as startling as would first appear. I‘ve only tried the ‘Sunburnt Irish Red’ (on draught in O’Neill’s on Suffolk St.), but I was mightily impressed – probably my favourite red ale now. It’s rich in flavour and body, two things which 8 degrees obviously knew were desperately lacking from the common Irish red ales.

(I’m still suffering withdrawal symptoms from having worked four months in Belgian beer pub. It’s not all bad; there are places to get Belgian beer here in Dublin, but this post is already too long.)

Know your Capital Cities

Besides the oh-so-often confusion that Irish people speak English and, therefore, must be, for all intents and purposes, English, French people are sometimes surprising ignorant of Ireland. I’m not saying that Ireland is an equally important country, in economic terms, as France for the French, but, hey, it’s a country, with a capital, and a distinct heritage that should be universally acknowledged. That’s all I ask.

[If you’re an economist, or economically-minded, this will either help you with geography or completely confuse you! Either way, it’s interesting]

I mentioned this to a customer in my pub (there I go again saying ‘my’). He didn’t know the capital of the Republic of Ireland. Quite offensive, you must agree, if someone doesn’t know something very important about your country. The capital city, after the name of the country and where it is located, is pretty important. Turns out he didn’t know many European capitals - I was no longer offended.

The smaller the country, the more its people concern themselves with other countries and the rest of the world. The bigger the country, the less they have to. I think we are all familiar with the great Australian clip where the stunning worldly ignorance of many US citizens is proven – and then, to counter this attack, in hilariously ironic, yet stereotypical fashion, some US citizens travel to Britain to show the English (whoops, not the Australians!) how ignorant they can be.

The strength that is self-sufficiency has a weakness in self-dependency.

France isn’t regarded as world-renowned beer-producing country. So, let’s just say I’m glad the pub I work in helps the French learn more about Belgium!