Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service

with me, Simon Watts. This year is the centenary of the publication

of James Joyce's Modernist Novel, Eulaceys, one of the most influential works of the

20th century. In 2012, I brought together archive recordings of people who knew the Irish

writer.

It's the early years of the 20th century and the Irish writer James Joyce is living in self-imposed

exile in Northern Italy. He's working on a new book called Eulaceys. His sister

Eileen recalled his routine.

Music always touched him and Jim had an inspiration. The piano was his call and he would

go and give vent to feeling and singing and even sitting in the dark.

UTGIVES' voice coming through the doors and the windows of the forest and the people

all standing down and clapping him. And as other times he would be quite a blank.

His life would be quite slow and he'd be depressed and he'd be singing sacred music

very much to himself. Joyce's great subject was his own youth and the Irish capital Dublin

with all its life and all its characters. Characters such as his friend Oliver Singengockety

who always remembered the day the two men met.

We were both in a tram and were very few people in the tram and he was sitting on my left hand side.

A young man with a small blue eyes and a chestnut colored eyedashes which were

rather nocible and which was much more nocible a slight golden beard like a haze.

Gockety would become Buck Mulligan in Eulaceys. As in the novel the friend spent time in an

old military tower called a motello tower on the coast a few miles from Dublin. It directly

inspired some of the scenes.

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