Nora Tully:
As his forty-four-year-old mother lay in a coma in the final stages of life, James and his brother Stanislaus reportedly refused to kneel. The equivalent occurs in Ulysses and Buck Mulligan reproaches Stephen for not granting his mother her deathbed wish. James Augustine Joyce chose the confirmation name Aloysius, after the saint who refused to be alone in a room with his mother and feared contact with all women, an interesting detail when viewed within the context of Joyce’s own complicated relationship with women. Joyce had been close to his mother and after her death he wandered the streets of Dublin in mourning. In June of 1904, he met Nora Barnacle.
His interest in Nora was obsessive and he expressed his affection in a spectrum of emotions that ranged from exaltation to degradation. He experienced bouts of jealousy that occasionally verged on extreme. Joyce’s letters to Nora demonstrate a vast flux from transports of romantic cherishing to the more lewd attentions he paid her, this volatility perhaps a means of keeping a necessary distance, presumably for the protection of his art. Although they shared a love of music among other interests, Nora seemed indifferent to his work. In 1922, when Ulysses was published in Paris by Shakespeare and Company, and Joyce gave her an inscribed copy, Nora jokingly threatened to sell the copy he gave her.
Dearest: I was named after my uncle, but it was my father’s habit not to provide his offspring with middle names. Otherwise, by right, I should have had my uncle’s middle name as well–Aloysius. I could have easily accostomed myself to that. On another subject, I was thinking that we should combine Bloomsday and ‘Act like a pirate day’–“Aaargh, yes, i said aarghhh, yes.” love dad
Arrrghhhhhh I think that’s a wonderful idea!