What Would James Joyce Think of Brexit?

What would James Joyce think of Brexit? That is certainly the most unusual Brexit-related question I have fielded during my two years in America! It was put to me following a talk I gave at Georgetown University a few months back to a class of literature students who were studying James Joyce's great modernist novel, Ulysses. I was asked to do this talk on account of my enthusiasm for Ulysses and the blog I am currently writing about the novel.

As Ireland's Ambassador to the United States, I have the privilege of addressing audiences all over this country. No matter what my subject might be, I am invariably asked a range of questions pertaining to the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union. I am always happy to answer such questions and set out my country's position on what has come to be known as Brexit.

We have greatly valued our partnership with the UK within the European Union this past 45 years and never wanted to see them leave. Among other things, working together as EU members helped Ireland and the UK to develop an understanding that facilitated the two governments’ cooperation in securing political agreement in Northern Ireland.

We accept, however, that the UK's 2016 referendum, which came out narrowly in favour of leaving the European Union, means that our nearest neighbour is likely sooner or later to cease being a member of the EU. Since 2016, our Government’s goal has been to minimise Brexit's negative consequences for Ireland and for the EU, of which we will, of course, continue to be a deeply committed member. In particular, we have concerns about the implications of Britain’s departure from the European single market and customs’ union—both for our vital trading ties with the UK and for the open border in Ireland. The open border makes an important contribution to sustaining the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which has brought more than two decades of peace to Northern Ireland.

When I was asked the Joyce/Brexit question, I realised, a bit to my surprise, that I actually had an answer to offer! I began my response with a question of my own: "What are the last three words of Ulysses?" to which most readers of Joyce will probably answer, "I will Yes." Those are indeed the words that close Molly Bloom's soliloquy and bring the novel to an end. But there are actually three more words in Ulysses and two dates. These are "Trieste-Zurich-Paris, 1914-1921.” This records the three European cities where Joyce wrote his modern epic in the years during and immediately after the First World War.

Everything in Ulysses is there for a purpose. It is not essential for a writer to record the location of a novel’s composition, and I believe Joyce deliberately name-checked the places where he wrote his master work. For although his book is set entirely in the Dublin he left behind in 1904—and returned to only three times during the remaining 37 years of his life—I take the view that Joyce wanted to signal that Ulysses is a European novel and that it was written in war-torn Europe.

James Joyce left Ireland at the age of 22 because, by his own account, he wanted to escape the "nets" of "nationality, language, religion," which he felt were flung at "the soul of man" in the Ireland of that time. He recoiled from what he saw as an excessively narrow Irish nationalism of his youth, with its Gaelic and Catholic elements, and lampooned them in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses. He turned away from the Irish literary tradition pioneered by W.B. Yeats, with its focus on Irish mythology and the folk traditions of rural Ireland—which he saw as backward-looking—and enthused about modern European masters like Henrik Ibsen. He was determined to be a modern European writer.

After traveling across Europe, Joyce found his way to Trieste, which was then an Italian-speaking city within the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire. Joyce developed a fondness for this “ramshackle empire” and wished “there were more such Empires.” The city's diverse population was composed of Italian, Austrian, Slavic, Hungarian, and Greek elements. It also had a Jewish community. The Joyces were happy in Trieste and continued to use the local Italian dialect at home even after they finally left the city for Paris in 1920.

When Joyce came to write Ulysses, he mapped Leopold Bloom’s wanderings around early 20th-century Dublin against those of Odysseus in his return from the Trojan War. Joyce chose Leopold Bloom, his wife, Molly, and Stephen Dedalus as his three main characters. None was typically Irish.

Bloom's father was a Hungarian Jew who moved to Ireland. In Ulysses, Bloom is perceived by his fellow Dubliners as an outsider. Molly was born in Gibraltar and, as her soliloquy rises to its crescendo, she marvels about “the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe ….” Buck Mulligan mocks Stephen Dedalus on account of his "absurd name, an ancient Greek." In the opening episode of Ulysses, Mulligan urges Stephen to work with him to “do something for the island. Hellenise it.”

There is no doubt that James Joyce wanted Ireland to become more European. This makes me conclude that he would have been happy with Ireland’s more recent evolution as a dedicated member of the European Union, and that he would, like the vast majority of Irish people, be supportive of Ireland’s continued EU membership.

Joyce was no fan of the rampant nationalisms of the early 20th century, and one way of reading Ulysses is to see it as an appeal for tolerance in a turbulent, troubled world. Joyce and his family were forced to leave Trieste during the First World War after they had lived there for 10 years. He spent the inter-war years mainly in Paris until the Nazi conquest of France, when he fled to Zurich—where he died in 1941.

My conclusion is that James Joyce would not have fancied Brexit, which has its roots in the kind of nationalistic urges that were never to his liking. When he departed his homeland in 1904, Joyce made what I might describe, echoing current Brexit terminology, as a soft exit, leaving Ireland behind but remaining deeply fascinated by his native city and its people—and staying very closely connected with it. That is the kind of Brexit most Irish people would hope Britain will ultimately embrace, in order that Britain and Ireland, and the UK and the EU, can continue to do great things together in a neighbourly atmosphere to the benefit of our respective peoples.

Daniel Mulhall in Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States. His Twitter handle is @DanMulhall.