James Joyce

Han var en kontroversielll författare på sin tid. Länge var "Ulysses" förbjuden i hans hemland- Irland. Joyce levde större delen av sitt liv i "landsflykt" och han ligger begraven i Zürich.

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Den bok av Joyce som jag tycker allra bäst om är "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. " Joyce är en språkets mästare- han kan också konsten att skriva ner barnets intryck så att de blir mycket trovärdiga. ("A portrait..." är självbiografisk).

"There was a cold night smell in the chapel. But it was a holy smell. It was not like the smell of the old peasants who knelt at the back of the chapel at Sunday mass. That was a smell of air and rain and turf and corduroy. But they were very holy peasants."

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"Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped to the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! "

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I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms allow myself to use- silence, exile and cunning."

(Över huvud taget går "non serviam" som en röd tråd genom boken...). Joyce tillhör en av de författare som jag mycket gärna läser om- jag upptäcker något nytt varje gång.