“The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful.
What the beautiful is is another question.”
Field: Writer.
Born: 2 February 1882, Dublin, Ireland.
Background: Joyce is hailed as the father of literary modernism. His work revolutionized the novel form, partly through the abandonment of ordinary plot for “stream of consciousness’, but more fundamentally through his unprecedented exploration of language. But his early years were unprofitable and seemingly lacking in direction. He studied in Dublin until 1902, when he went to Paris to study medicine, then took up voice training for a concert career, and finally returned to Dublin where he published a few stories but was unable to make a living at it. In 1909 he started the short-lived Volta Cinema Theatre, leaving Dublin the next year. 1915 found him in Zürich, where he formed a company of English players. He settled in Paris for two decades (1920-40) while he wrote most of his well-known works, then returned to Zürich, where he died.
Works: Joyce’s early work includes the short stories “Dubliners” (1914), and “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1914–15). His best-known book, Ulysses, based on one day in Dublin (16 Jun 1904), appeared in Paris in 1922, but was banned in the UK and USA until 1936. Work in progress began to appear in 1927 which finally emerged as Finnegans Wake (1939).
Lesson: A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.