A Literary Sense of Dublin

In whose footsteps did Joyce follow when he wrote of modern Dublin city? From whose words might he have gleaned a sense of the looping, curling tendrils of his home town’s history - its DNA, in which no secrets could hide?

Writers came to Dublin from London, Germany, France and America in the 18th and 19th centuries, to observe, take notes and put ink daubed pen to paper. A founding father of the United States, Benjamin Franklin saw the utterly wretched impoverishment of Dubliners in 1771 and took home a salutary lesson in the effects of colonialism. On the other hand, John Ferrar in 1796, had a fawning regard for the inhabitants of Dublin, but only those of influence, many of whom were subscribers to his book.

German, Johann Georg Kohl wrote, in 1844, of Dublin with its fine public buildings, monuments, wide streets and parks. Most definitely, he thought, an English city, except that its lanes were so thickly populated with beggars. With a shy fondness for Dublin and somehow rejecting its English associations, he seemed to regret that it was not an antique and picturesque town in the German style. Though Dublin, he noted, could boast a population approaching that of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Vienna, rivalling that of Berlin and exceeding that of Rome and Stockholm. 

The theme of poverty and hopelessness was not new - a year earlier writer, fellow German, Jacob Venedey, said of Dublin’s many poor children that they looked as if they had never been washed and the old people seemed convinced that water costs money. Even earlier, German Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau wrote of the general tardiness of the smog coated city, notwithstanding its magnificent architectural adornments. In particular,  the Liffey with its beautiful quays and bridges of iron and stone was a great embellishment.  When he visited in 1828 Dublin was awash with military personnel, strutting the streets in their various and brilliant uniforms, an attractive sight in itself, he thought, more reminiscent of continental cities than London. But, then again, Londoners were not so much prone to plotting revolution as were Dubliners.

Joyce may well have read these accounts while cloistered in the reading room of the National Library but if he delved into fiction he would have found little to inspire him. Dublin makes a cameo appearance in The Boyne Water, a tale of the Williamite Wars - ‘a scattering of ill built houses, lying, nearly, on the south side of the river only’ - and is a marriage market for provincial hopefuls who can afford to spend a month in the Shelbourne Hotel in Moore’s ‘Drama in Muslin’ of 1886. It is an address on a letter, a place to do business and visit the oculist but seldom a setting of choice for the 19th century novel.

No writer had ever loved and wrote of Dublin as Dickens did London or as Zola and Hugo did Paris - before Leopold Bloom stepped on what he fancied would be a warm Summer’s day.

by Annette Black, Wicklow
Published on 04th September 2013