James Joyce in 2015
source : The Irish Times
When James Joyce was asked whether he would ever return to Dublin, he replied: “Have I ever left it?”
He
would only live to the age of 58, dying in Zurich in 1941. Joyce is
still considered one of the most important writers the 20th century
produced and probably remains the best-known Irish writer. The image of
his slicked-back hair and little round glasses are in themselves enough
to evoke Joyce’s reputation as a literary behemoth. Ireland takes pride
in him now that it never really took while he lived — he made us
uncomfortable.
That is, you must admit, very “us” of us.
A
combination of idolising home and spurned irritation at having felt
pushed out — those leaving Ireland at the moment are not solely
responding to the pull of elsewhere
Ulysses
was never banned in Ireland because it was never imported into the
country for sale in the first place. Sure, we wouldn’t want to be
reading dirty books anyway. Joyce’s relationship with Ireland was one of
deep resentment and deep obsession. When he questioned whether he had
ever left, it was because the country — and Dublin in particular —
remained ubiquitous in his writing in the decades after his leaving in
his early 1920s. He described himself as having been “exiled”. Pushed
out by the Irish tendency toward what he considered parochialism, the
religious stranglehold of the Church and the impossibility of
criticising the country on the page — as he so frequently and
excoriatingly did — from within.
It
is so like us (Irish people generally) to leave without leaving. We’ve
made an art of the necessity of emigration since the 1840s, but we’ve
also made an art of leaning back toward home with reverence and
revulsion, reluctance and yearning. Joyce was the most eloquent Irish
emigrant to feel the pain of unrequited love for Ireland, but most of us
appear to feel something along those lines in some respect or other.
A
combination of idolising home and spurned irritation at having felt
pushed out — those leaving Ireland at the moment are not solely
responding to the pull of elsewhere. That pull clutches us from the
feeling of being repelled from home.
Most
people aren’t James Joyce. We only had one of those and we neglected to
send an Irish State representative to his funeral. The rest of us are
just looking at Ireland and wondering if it would make space for us if
we ever did decide to return. There are 26 rental properties available
in my native Limerick city at the time of writing. The cheapest one is
€1,600 a month. It’s a studio flat whose windows look directly out on to
a high wall with thick black cables running along its length. There’s a
chest of drawers pushed up against the back of the couch like a console
table, presumably so you can reach back and grab yourself a pair of
clean underpants while cooking your dinner.
It’s
well for you listening to Paul Brady in Sydney in 30-degree heat, but
if you’re not scraping sleet from your windshield in the dark of a
winter morning, are you one of us?
Why not? Nobody can see in, what with the wall right outside the window. Live a little.
Emigrating
is one of those life-changing experiences that represent a change from
which you can never return. If you’re an Irish person, you can return to
Ireland from the UK, US or Australia, or from another country where a
pocket of the diaspora has settled and made a new life for itself. The
leaving, though, you can’t undo. Ireland will change in your absence and
in some ways, it will resent your going. Your claim to Irish identity
may feel even stronger from a distance — that happens when you leave
home and you must carry your Irishness into every interaction with
people — but those still at home may view your investment in Ireland
from afar as performative or even a form of appropriation.
It’s
well for you listening to Paul Brady in Sydney in 30-degree heat, but
if you’re not scraping sleet from your windshield in the dark of a
winter morning, are you one of us?
You
can go, but don’t pick up any weird ideas and bring them back with you.
Don’t mention the fact that big tech firms would leave Ireland faster
than you could mutter, “I have a degree in computer science” if we did
tax them in the way many Irish people suggest we should and for that
reason perhaps it isn’t useful to consider how much more they’d
contribute to our economy if we took a harder stance on taxation.
They’re not in Ireland for our charm (charming as we are) or because we
know our way around an Excel spreadsheet.
Emigrants love Ireland in the way you can love a parent more when you don’t live under their roof
Don’t suggest that for the property crisis
at home to settle into a mere problem, we might need to think
differently. We might need to consider the way intense scarcity of
housing the Irish Government has no serious plan to tackle accelerating
rental and purchase prices, who that benefits (and who it hits hardest).
Whatever you do, don’t ask why Ireland’s tiny Jewish community is
smaller now than it was in 2016. Also, don’t come home for a visit
wearing anything unusual. That’s notions. Are those aviator sunglasses?
Your old school friends will call you Top Gun every time you saunter
into the local pub for the next 30 years.
Emigrants
love Ireland in the way you can love a parent more when you don’t live
under their roof. When we return we can feel slightly wounded by the
fact that we don’t always slot back in the way we hoped. There’s only
one James Joyce, with his dirty books, weird politics and (probably)
storing cups lip-down in the kitchen cupboard like a Protestant.
Every
emigrant, though, has a little of Joyce in them. The longing for home,
and the awareness of why some people leave. Home is complex and that’s
not just true of Ireland.
= = =
on a personal note, the name of the boat we took from Hollyhead to Dublin when we moved to Ireland, was...Ulysses.
Which country is now our homeland?
My mum says that homeland ( πατρίδα ) is the country and the places we spent our years when we were kinds. Kind of correct.
But, can someone have two homelands?
