Search Results for 'Lucia'

NORA BARNACLE, famous as the liberated woman who stole James Joyce’s heart and who stood by him during numerous controversies, is the subject of a new play.

On a late afternoon last August, my friend John Hill drove me across the city of Zurich, climbing the suburban heights until we stopped at the gates of Fluntern Cemetery. We walked up the last incline to where, among the trees and billard-table lawns, we saw the Joyces’ grave. There was no mistaking it. Just above the grave is the Giacometti-like sculpture of the writer himself, the work of American artist Milton Hebald. There James Joyce sits, in characteristic pose, deep in conversation, head tilted, one leg resting on the other knee, cigarette poised, his slim cane delicately balanced. Someone once remarked that he held his cane like a musical instrument.

Patrick French of Drumharsna Castle, near the village of Kiltartan, died in 1748. His widow, Catherine, was still living in 1768, and was named by her son Henry, who died unmarried, as one of his executors. In his will, dated January 24, 1767, Henry French of Drumharsna left

Nora Barnacle left Galway early in 1904. She was 20 years old, a strong-willed girl running from a tyrannical uncle who disapproved of her latest boy friend. Within weeks of her arrival in Dublin she would become the muse and lover of James Joyce and the inspiration of some and his greatest works — Greta Conroy in The Dead, Bertha the common law wife in Exiles and Molly Bloom in Ulysses — all share some of Nora’s character and experiences. In October of that same year Nora and Jim would elope to Europe and in due course step on to the pages of literary history. She would return to her native city only twice during her 47 years of exile before dying in Zurich in 1951, having lived 67 tumultuous years.