He is called the Irish Chekhov. In his works, the main characters are human feelings. Romantic and idealist, he was incomparable in disputes, talking about the spiritual wealth of his concept of creativity. This writer reminds Don Quixote of his inner world.
James Joyce is considered the creator of the modernist novel. He immortalized his name with the novel Ulysses, called the “great book” by another classic, Ernest Hemingway. He was by nature a creator and source of ideas. He studied intellectualization of prose, psychology, philosophizing, American prose writers John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner.
History of writing an essay
A summary of the contents of the book “Giacomo Joyce” becomes more understandable when associated with events in the life of the writer. The work was written in 1914. Despite the fact that it refers to small forms of prose, it reveals a modernist style, characteristic of Joyce’s novels.
The thirty-two-year-old author of the work, an Irish teacher, earned money by giving private English lessons in wealthy Italian homes. He began writing his masterpiece “Ulysses,” by the way, mentioned in the essay “Giacomo Joyce”.
Teaching, James unexpectedly for himself (oh, these female tricks!) Fell in love with madness in a 16-year-old student, the daughter of the manufacturer Amalia Propper. More precisely, she herself provoked the writer. The girl for herself considered this connection as another adventure and another female victory. And after a certain time, she was already ready to start an affair with another person.
James suffered the ruin of his love (he was sincere!). Perhaps, wanting to cope easier with a mental crisis, the writer just for himself created this essay about himself in love. At the same time, he ironically changed his name to Giacomo, referring to the analogy with Casanova. Moreover, the plot of the essay developed in Italy, in the homeland of the legendary lover.
Edition History
This small prose work is completely innovative, and the history of its publication is unique. Initially, the author did not want to publish “Giacomo Joyce”.
Joyce described deeply personal circumstances in order to designate a milestone in his life. Therefore, the key phrase of the essay is the following: “Youth passes ... Youth passes: this is the end. This will not happen anymore. You know that well. And then what? Write about it, damn it, write ..! ”
For 27 years after writing, no one has heard anything about this masterpiece. The manuscript, written by Joyce in a school notebook, fell into the hands of a European collector (his name was not preserved). He, knowing a lot about creativity, sold it for good money to a famous American collector. And he, in turn, published.
Essay controversial
Despite the obvious success of this work in the West, a smaller part of our readers still do not accept it. Having taken up the reading of Giacomo Joyce, they experience a sharp rejection of it. A subtle, beautiful presentation by a writer of his sense of love to them, unaccustomed to the style of a psychological essay, seems depraved ... How do they give a quote in German from the same work: Aber das ist eine Schweinerei ("This is disgusting!")!
For them, the fact of adultery is in the forefront, and its mere presence already overshadows the obvious artistic and educational value. A literary analogy suggests itself. Obviously, such readers, like Watson, who gets acquainted with Holmes, simply made a mistake in the sign, considering it a plus or minus (the upbringing of feelings was confused with corruption.)
Is now, as in hoary antiquity, one should harbor one's feelings? But the world has changed globally in the information era! And how sad it is that many computer-literate children in it will first find out what porn is without first raising their feelings.
No wonder the Giacomo Joyce appeared in the course of foreign literature! A summary of this prosaic work can be expressed in one sentence: a flash of love, the "Way of the Cross" of a lover, the bitterness of loss, rebirth. One feels the sublime, reverent attitude of the Man towards the Woman.
The student takes the initiative
Retelling "Giacomo Joyce", of course, has its own characteristics. After all, the work of an Irish writer is not at all subject to linear quest-like logic. The structure of the essay is fragmentary, as are the fragmentary memories of the teacher. The world of feelings is always intermittent!
The main character lives a human life, carrying out a lot of small mechanical actions (walks, eats, drinks). And the author discards them, leaving only that which is connected with his consciousness, soul. Only bright strokes remain, with which the picture of this essay is written. Bright. Original. Unique.
And this is so natural for writer James Joyce! Like Anton Palovich, it is about feelings that the author of the essay "Giacomo Joyce" writes.
A summary of the content of the work begins with the impression of teacher Joyce from the first meeting with his student. She, knowing about her beauty, manipulates it: take-off of eyelashes, honed nerve movements, gaze into lorgnette.
The beautiful Jewess "refined by the incisor of intrafamily marriages from an ancient and noble family", "refined (again the author, emphasizing its main feature, uses this word) and matured", "similar to a faint elegant, but very fragrant flower."
She longs for love. Her gaze - the "burning needle point" - pervades the teacher.
The girl continues to slowly inflame the passion of James (“Giacomo Joyce” in the reduction, in our opinion, somewhat lost in the colors of her game). She behaves ambiguously, seeking a married man: gives a flower to his daughter, while being insincere, deceitful. Her gaze is discordant with words.
Communication Feeling manipulation
James follows her charm. With his mind he realizes the impasse, the hopelessness of his feeling ("dark love"), but he can no longer stop. It seems to him that in a crazy, hopeless black and gray world, he finally met a living soul. He calls out to her: "Don't die!" (of course, this is not said in the literal sense, meaning the desire of the lover so that the girl does not lose her spirituality).
Soon their proximity also occurs. There is no description of it in the essay "Giacomo Joyce". A brief summary in Russian tells only about James’s impressions of her body, when he helps the girl “fasten the back of a black muslin dress”, his sensations from the touch of her “cold light fingers”.
For two, everything was mixed up: passion, activities, the exalted, which James talks about in the lessons, and the charm, sensuality of the heroine. Their next proximity is also intentionally omitted by the author. There is only a description “before”: how a girl walking along the corridor “slowly crumbles a dark knot of hair,” and then she asks her lover to “tie her hair into ... a normal knot”.
However, the mistress just plays cat and mouse with him. She really doesn’t have that deep feeling for James that he himself has.
James is free. Goodbye gift
Their next meeting takes place in the "narrow Paris room." A married man finally wants to break this sinful relationship. But, despite her age, the girl is much stronger in matters of love. All she has to do is approach her and kiss her teacher with "tender greedy lips."
He realizes that he is powerless before her. "I perished!" - James writes. For him, his beloved now fills the whole world, including the past and the present. At the same time, he feels that the girl manipulating him has already betrayed him (the author seems to see her among the crying: “Not him, but Varrava! ..”). The Way of the Cross has been passed.
Understanding what is at the top of mental suffering (after all, a relationship with a mistress already occurs without his will, the latter simply breaks in her presence), the Irishman mentally calls for help to his wife (the writer’s wife is Nora).
However, the girl herself decided to break off relations when she felt that she had broken the man’s heart into pieces.
Coming to the end of the essay "Giacomo Joyce". Our brief retelling is initially doomed to be only a pale likeness of the original text ...
The mistress leaves, intentionally leaving James with a memory of himself: a hat with a scarlet flower in the fields and a folded umbrella. She sent them a parcel. They lie near the piano, whose keys she touched with her long, cool fingers.
They are so bright for James in the middle of the "bare walls", "daytime dead light" ... What did she mean by sending her things? Most likely, this can be expressed as: "Love me - love my umbrella!"
The gesture, of course, is eloquent ... (it is difficult to name this act in a different way). A historical analogy suggests itself with the medieval shield of the victorious commander nailed to the gates of the defeated year. On this fragment the essay ends.
Features of the genre
If we talk about the genre specifics of the work, then what is it? Unusual for the domestic reader, the genre of psychological essays "Giacomo Joyce"! The summary discussed above does not provide answers to many questions.
Unusually, the author talks to himself about his feelings, and the reader out of habit perceives the work as a conversation between the author and the reader. Therefore, it does not feel the thread of contact with the essay.
In addition, the work reflects a maximum of feelings and a minimum of physical actions. And this is natural, since in the essay feelings are really primary, and the actions of two lovers are secondary. And this is also difficult to understand (we will irony it: as it is - neither the date of birth, nor the registration, nor the full name of the parents ...).
It’s not even the reader’s hypocrisy. After all, most often it just does not exist. People are simple, good, "ours." They usually read, with bated breath, about corruption, about crime, about war ... (as they were taught, they read it before them ...). “Well, life is life. And we had it,” they will then say, breaking away from the book.
Thinking, I would like to object to them philosophically, echoing the famous song of Igor Talkov: "But life is not what you read about!" After all, life must have a human face, remember the quotation of the Weiner brothers about the era of mercy! The Irish writer tells us about spirituality, which should fill your life so that it is not empty. And although the format of this work is small prose, we can say that it is written in abbreviation about the main “Giacomo Joyce.”
And in this life, to which we unconsciously strive, “good feelings” must be awakened by a lyre of creativity!
Essays - a hymn to unrequited love
How wonderful it is when people fall in love! It is important to be able to recognize this feeling in yourself, to protect, to cherish, like a strange, exotic plant ... That is why Giacomo Joyce appeared in the school curriculum. A summary of the book is usually offered for study by 11th graders. And how wonderful it is when love is decorated with such a culture of feelings, from which it is breathtaking, romantic and sublime. Such as in the essay "Giacomo Joyce".
Only realizing this thought, it is worth undertaking to read this work.
Cheat sheet untrained reader
However, this is not all ... The text, despite its compactness, is rather complicated. Indeed, the author's style of writing, the so-called flow of feelings, is the aerobatics of prose. And that is how James Joyce wrote Giacomo Joyce. For novice readers, the awareness of psychological modernism is really difficult. In it, a large semantic load is played by colors, smells, sounds, contact sensations, symbolic artistic details. James Joyce put a lot of conventions into his essay.
"Giacomo Joyce" will really captivate you if you read, understanding in advance the symbolism of the author. In principle, it is enough to catch the semantic dynamics of colors. She has a special meaning. The author introduced color symbolism in the essay, matching the shades of flowers in the appearance of the main character with her state of mind. Present the information to the reader:
Color | Value | Matching quote |
The black | Secret. A person must go through the black (unknown) in order to free his essence. After all, only after going through the black, he learns how much white is in it. | "Black stone under the arches of dark streets" |
Gray | Used in a negative aspect. It symbolizes the termination of relations, the absence of the future, decay. | "In the gray twilight ... fragile rounded hips ..." |
Purple | Symbolizes nobility and soreness | "The burning needle of a glance ... of purple pupils" |
Pink red | Love, passion | "... lessons, hours ... gradually her cheeks turn pink", "lady's hat decorated with red flowers" |
White (light, light) | Hope, purity, innocence | "White flash - snowflake, snowflake", "Light in the attic", "... white lace" |
Green | Jealousy | "Green ribbon in hair and dress with green embroidery" |
Dark | Hopelessness | "Dark love, dark passion. Gloom", "... voluptuous lips: dark-blooded mollusks" |
Yellow | Lies cheating | "strands of yolk yellowness on a wet brow .." |
Why is everything so encrypted? Yes, because the style is this: modernism. And do not forget what we said earlier: in it the first violin is played by feelings. Their person primarily comprehends through colors, smells, touches, symbols ... Exactly as the author wrote the essay “Giacomo Joyce”.
Conclusion
Many insightful readers note the clear romanticism of this psychological essay, which shows the connection between form and content: it would be true, because true love is always romantic. The lover always idealizes the image of the beloved. Is there any doubt that in the essay every lover will see his ...
However, love is a deeply individual feeling. It is better to find it right away than to be in search of a lifetime ... Therefore, in addition to romanticism (you cannot do without it!), Life-forming should be taken very seriously. Well said the wise philosopher: “Love is the beginning, the middle and the end, alpha and omega!”