February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
A major focal point of the dispute is the handwritten “Circe” episode from Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which was auctioned in New York several years ago and purchased by the National Library for $1.4 million.
The exhibition, which is due to run for a year, is set to open on June 15, the day before the date made famous in “Ulysses.”
But its form and composition has aroused the ire of Joyce’s grandson, Stephen Joyce.
Joyce has fired off a salvo at the National Library, warning it that the exhibiting of the “Circe” episode, and a number of other sheets and early drafts relating to both “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake,” would be in breach of copyright law.
Joyce’s warning prompted a rapid retort from Dublin’s best-known Joyce scholar, David Norris, and has also prompted the Irish government to introduce emergency legislation that would ensure the public’s right to view the papers.
Norris, a member of the Irish Senate, said that it extraordinary that James Joyce’s own “flesh and blood” would be attempting to stop the exhibiting of Joyce’s work in the city he had made famous. He said that James Joyce had struggled all his life against censorship.
The emergency legislation that is intended to amend Ireland’s existing Copyright Act so as to ensure the opening of the National library exhibition, has been praised by the Irish government’s arts minister, John O’Donoghue.
“It clarifies what was always intended to be the right for the public to view artistic and literary works,” he said. “This amendment has a positive implication for the public who attend museums and galleries throughout Ireland.”
A spokeswoman for the National Library said that it expected the exhibition to open on schedule.
The exhibition, the various components of which were once banned under Irish censorship laws, is expected to attract worldwide attention.
Considerable interest on the part of U.S.-based Joyce enthusiasts and scholars is also certain, not least because the exhibition includes the autographed handwritten first draft of the “Circe” episode.
The “Circe” manuscript was once owned by John Quinn, the American lawyer and book collector who was both Joyce’s legal and financial champion in the United States, where the writer’s works were also banned even as he reached the height of his creative powers.
The “Circe” manuscript was purchased by the National Library in December 2000 after it went on the block in Christie’s of Manhattan.
James Joyce studied at the National Library and used it as a setting for portions of both “Ulysses” and “A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.”
Meanwhile, Stephen Joyce, who is being invited to the opening of the exhibit he has attempted to block, has also moved to put the cork back into a plan to market wine named after his famous ancestor.
The Sunday Business Post in Dublin reported that Joyce had gone to court to halt the marketing of a James Joyce wine in tandem with the upcoming Bloomsday celebration.
Two James Joyce labels have been produced by a Swiss winemaker and a thousand cases have already been imported into Ireland.
Joyce secured an injunction in the Swiss courts blocking sale of the wine. The winemaker, Provins Valais, entered a counter plea claiming damages. A decision is expected before June 16.