With Joyce in Saint Gérand-le-Puy: Maria Jolas’s “Joyce en 1939-1940” in Translation

As one of the most devoted friendships of Joyce’s final years, the author’s relations with Maria and Eugene Jolas spanned many roles. Editors and publisher of some of the first excerpts of the completed Finnegans Wake, the couple also provided guidance and emotional support to the Joyce family, sheltered them in southern France when they left Paris in 1939, and encouraged them to seek asylum in the United States before Joyce decided to return to Switzerland, where he died in Zurich just after the new year. During the last full decade of Joyce’s life, Maria became a com-mitted caretaker of Lucia Joyce, helped ease the breakup of Giorgio’s marriage to Helen Fleischman, and often allowed Joyce needed respite from his work by hosting social gatherings at her home and school in Saint Gérand-le-Puy. Soon after the war, Maria wrote a reminiscence of their time together during this auspicious year and published it in French for the first and only time in 1950 in the journal Mercure de France. The only English translation of the piece was completed in the late 1970s under the direction of Professor Willard Potts of Oregon State University. During their correspondence, however, Maria declared her intention to translate the piece herself and denied him permission to publish, but unfortunately died before she ever completed it. Here, with permission granted by her estate, I present a review of the Jolas-Joyce friendship as a brief introduction to the premier English-language version of this warm and insightful depiction of Joyce during his final full year of life. The essay contains important portraits of Joyce’s person, habits, struggle with ailments, concern for his daughter’s health and his son and grandson’s well-being, and his work in editing the Wake with Paul Léon after reconciling their friendship and just before Léon returned to Paris where he eventually was arrested by Gestapo.