James Joyce? Wasn’t he the anti-Catholic who looked down his nose at the Christian Brothers and wrote `dirty books’? Or, indeed, who wrote “dirty books” that no one can understand? Well, not quite.
Like many things said about Joyce, there’s truth and fiction there, and we shouldn’t confuse either James with his Stephen Dedalus character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or his father John Stanislaus Joyce with Simon Dedalus.
In that novel, when Stephen’s father Simon parodied all boys who attended Christian Brothers schools as “Paddy Stink and Mickey Mud”, let’s remember that Stephen and Simon are fictitious representations of James and John Stanislaus and that the author, James Joyce, was not above a little artistic licence.
We do know that the fortunes of the Joyce family fell into decline and that John Stanislaus, in 1891, had to remove James from the exclusive and expensive Jesuit-run Clongowes Wood College and that he didn’t enter Belvedere College, a Jesuit day school for boys from what would be called “upper middle class” families, until 1893. So what went on during this interval?
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Joyce seems to suggest in A Portrait of the Artist that he studied at home but more recent research reveals that the bold James was rubbing shoulders with the much-reviled Paddy and Mickey at my old alma mater, O’Connell Schools, North Richmond Street, run by the Christian Brothers.
Readers of A Portrait of the Artist will recall that Fr Conmee, then Rector of Clongowes, gives Stephen a sympathetic hearing when he complains about being unjustly punished by Fr Dolan.
This favourite Jesuit of the author’s makes another of his many appearances in the stories of Joyce/Dedalus, and, at a chance meeting with the senior Joyce/Dedalus, offers the young man a place in Belvedere, free of charge. The incident also sheds a slightly different shade of light on Fr Conmee’s benign greetings when he encounters the “Christian Brother boys” as he takes his afternoon stroll in Ulysses.
Now we know that the young James Joyce was influenced not only by the elite officer corps of the Catholic Church, the Society of Jesus, but also by what we might call, and with absolutely no offence intended here, the infantry, the Christian Brothers. Corporal punishment was used by both for disciplinary purposes; the pandy bat by the Jesuits, and the leather strap by the Brothers.
The Jesuit boys were being prepared for an academic career and university; the Brothers, at the time, were more concerned with practical matters, and would have leant more towards nationalism and the Irish language. But both groups wanted to turn out young Catholic men who could take up leadership positions in the future Ireland.
As for the anti-Catholicism, I would submit that that old chestnut has been overcooked. The Catholicism rife in Ireland during Joyce’s years was of a domineering, bullying kind, with more than a hint of Jansenism imported from the continental colleges where so many priests were educated.
Few loyal Catholics today would sit through the fire-and-brimstone hyperbole of the famous sermon on Hell delivered in `A Portrait of the Artist’ without trying to suppress a cynical smile, although, in unguarded moments, it still retains its power to send a chill up the spine.
The fact is that it was likely Joyce knew far more about Catholic dogma, especially the theology of St Thomas Aquinas, than many of his detractors, and, according to those who knew him, he was quite devout in his attendance at Holy Week ceremonies when living abroad.
As for `dirty books’, well, if you find eroticism dirty, then you’ll more than likely find the books `dirty’ if you can work through the linguistic magic of Joyce’s writing.
Ever since I was involved in the 1982 RTÉ recording of Ulysses, playing Buck Mulligan and quite a few “attendant lords that will do to swell a progress”, I have been firmly of the belief that the best way to enjoy Joyce is to read him aloud, or listen to him being read aloud.
This is what I invite you to do on Bloomsday, next Sunday, June 16th, at 12.30pm in the Jesuit-run Church of St Francis Xavier, Upper Gardiner Street in Dublin, near to Belvedere College and so many places associated with Joyce’s writing while the “Joyce experts”, will, no doubt, find other ways to entertain themselves.
We call the event “Joyce and the Jesuits” and have a good team assembled. You’ll even get a song thrown in. The 60- minute event is hosted by one of Ireland’s favourite TV and radio personalities, Eileen Dunne.
Admission is free and all donations, towards upkeep of the historic and beautiful building that is the Church of St Francis Xavier, will be gratefully accepted. See you there, hopefully.
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