Search Results for 'Trieste'

Like all widows Nora had barely time to grieve. There was so much to be done. Both she and Giorgio and her grandson Stephen, were in a state of shock at Joyce’s sudden death. Joyce suffered indifferent health all his adult life, and endured a series of painful eye operations which had little effect on his looming blindness.

Returning to Paris after an unsuccessful and troublesome visit to Galway in April 1922, Nora and her two children, Georgio (17) and Lucia (15) became aware that fame had come to the Joyces. Three months after its publication, Ulysses was recognised as a work of genius.

It seems laughable today but in 1958 Archbishop John Mc Quaid of Dublin, obsessively monitored Irish life to the extent, that he did not have to ban a film, book or play outright, it was sufficient for his secretary to make it known that the archbishop had wondered if that (name of film, book or movie) was the sort of thing a good Catholic should witness.

New plans projected over a 20 year period will see the inner lands of Galway harbour developed into an attractive commercial and residential area, while reclaimed land from the sea will push out harbour facilities into deep water to accommodate shipping connections to European ports and elsewhere. It is a long over due and worthwhile plan, but it pales almost into insignificance compared to the vaulting ambitions the Galway merchants schemed in the mid 19th century.

MENTION NORA Barnacle and four things come to mind: she was from Galway; she was sexually adventurous and advanced for her day; she was the partner and muse of James Joyce; and she never read a word he wrote.

‘Well what do you have to say to Jim now after all our little squabbles he could not live without me for a month can you imagine my joy when I received a telegram from London a week after Jim and georgie on their way’…….wrote Nora in her unpunctuated flow of words, to her partner’s sister Eileen from her mother’s home in Bowling Green, in July 1912.

BALLINASLOE-BASED author Nuala O’Connor has won the prestigious UK-based Short Fiction Prize for her story ‘Gooseen’, about Galway woman Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce.

If Eamon Bradshaw and his crew think their courageous plan to extend Galway harbour into deep water to accommodate cruise liners is a step into modernity that will bring commercial success to the city on a grand scale, it pales almost into insignificance compared to the stunning ambitions the Galway merchants schemed in the mid 19th century.

We get out of bed at nine, and Nora makes chocolate. At midday we have lunch which we (or rather she) buys (soup, meat, potatoes and some thing else)...At 4 o’clock we have chocolate, and at 8 o’clock dinner which Nora cooks.