Diplomatic moves afoot over Paris portrait of the artist as a British man
HE’S probably Ireland’s most famous cultural export, but a plaque outside a house where James Joyce lived in Paris has raised hackles for years by describing him as a British writer.
Now the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned the Irish Embassy in Paris has contacted the authorities there with a view to having the wording on the plaque changed.
Although Joyce famously lived at many addresses in Dublin, Paris, Trieste, Zurich and beyond, the apartment at 71 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine, in the city’s Latin Quarter, is regarded as especially important, as it’s where he wrote a large part of his masterpiece, Ulysses.
The plaque reads: ‘James Joyce, British writer of Irish descent, welcomed by Valery Larbaud [famous French writer], completed his novel ‘Ulysses’ here, a major work of 20th century literature.’
Ironically, the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris is just 300 metres from the address.
The new cultural officer at the Irish Embassy in Paris, Hugh Farrell, this weekend vowed to take action over the plaque.
He told the MoS: ‘We are, of course, aware of the plaque and its inaccurate description of Joyce’s nationality.
‘The embassy has informally raised the correction of the plaque with the competent authorities, the Mairie [city hall] of the 5th arrondissement, and intends to make further representations on the matter.’
The MoS understands the description of Joyce as a British writer was at the request of his grandson and literary executor, Stephen Joyce, who died in 2020.
A spokeswoman for the James
Joyce Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland, also said this week that the inscription on the plaque at the apartment is ‘just wrong’.
The spokeswoman told the MoS: ‘He would never have described himself as a British writer.’
The apartment is the only one of Joyce’s 18 addresses in Paris that has a plaque in his honour.
The French writer and poet, Valery Larbaud, who was independently wealthy, lent the Paris apartment to Joyce, his wife Nora and their two teenage children, Giorgio and Lucia, from June to September 1921, as Joyce was nearing the end of writing Ulysses.
In a letter to a friend that year, Joyce wrote: ‘Valery Larbaud, the French novelist and translator of Samuel Butler, who is raving about Ulysses, has given us a charming furnished flat to use for the summer.’
Joyce thought the apartment roomy and well-furnished, and he was also impressed that it had a ‘maid servant’.
The plaque at Rue du Cardinal Lemoine states that Joyce finished Ulysses at the apartment but in fact, he carried on writing the book after he left the property on October 4, when the family returned to live at a hotel on the nearby Rue de l’Université.
‘The inscription on the plaque is just wrong’