Philippe Soupault:
Together we went often to the theatre, which, like all good Irishmen, he loved. It was the theatre as theatre that he loved. I mean that he was attracted less by the play than by the atmosphere, the footlights and spotlights, the spectators, the kind of solemnity in a theatre. He preferred opera. When he had decided to go, he was happy as a child. He chose a companion, refused to dine (I prepare myself for a sacrament, he told me, explaining this abstinence), and after the performance he had supper at a restaurant, where he had arranged to have his favorite white wines. At the theatre, seated in the first row — presumably because of his very bad eyesight — he carefully watched the actionn and listened closely to the performers. Only children are as passionately attentive as Joyce was.
