Joycean Unions: Post-Millennial Essays from East to West ed. by R. Brandon Kershner and Tekla Mecsnóber (review)

This collection of sixteen essays by emerging and established Joyceans, edited by R. Brandon Kershner and Tekla Mecsnóber, is based on material from the 2006 International James Joyce Symposium in Hungary, which had the theme “Joycean Unions.” Naturally enough, given the Symposium’s location, the figure of Lipoti Virag looms large in the book, for the introduction opens by reminding us of Bloom’s Hungarian origins. Two of the early essays are by Hungarian Joyce scholars: Mecsnóber, from the University of Budapest, and Marianna Gula, from the University of Debrecen, and they directly address the issue of Joyce’s connections with eastern Europe. Other essays in the volume also recognize this linkage indirectly or in ways we may not expect; for example, Benoît Tadié looks at Virag’s apparition in connection with Dracula, while he also surfaces prominently in discussions of “Circe” by Derek Attridge, André Topia, and Régis Salado. Moreover, many of the inclusions deal with Ulysses because this local association with eastern Europe is established in the novel. The current text is also wider and more eclectic than the account would suggest, addressing topics such as censorship, the visual arts, the Italian language, Joyce as a commodity during the Celtic Tiger and after, immigration and multi-culturalism, sound effects, voyeurism, pararealism, inoculation and injection, sexuality and sexology, phonology, musicology, errors and miscommunications, misquotations, and standard English.

The first section of the collection is devoted to discussions of Joyce and Europe, and, as the subtitle of the book (“Post-Millennial Essays from East to West”) suggests, European themes and perspectives are explored throughout the volume. Mecsnóber’s opening essay addresses the break-up of a united European reception of Joyce in the aftermath of World War II because of the division between East and West and the censorship of Joyce’s works (particularly Ulysses) by the Communist authorities. She suggests that criticism of the novel was stifled even more than the text itself, and she points out that scholars had to resort to “silence, exile, and cunning” in order to work on Joyce (P 247). Her historical argument suggests one of the likely reasons for holding the Symposium in Hungary was to celebrate the work of Joyce scholars from eastern Europe. Gula then examines a more specific example of an artistic relationship with eastern Europe, looking at Joyce’s juvenile response to Mihály Munkácsy’s painting Ecce Homo (CW 31-37).¹ She observes that, since its translation in 1961, Joyce’s commentary, in particular his central argument that the painting is “primarily dramatic” (CW 32), has “become an indispensable part of the extensive Munkácsy criticism in Hungary” (48), suggesting a Joyce who is far more interested in the visual arts than we might realize. Finally, John McCourt’s essay deals with the difficulties and inspirations of the Italian language and literature for Joyce, with special reference to his negotiations with the Triestine dialect and the multilingualism of the city, both of which became a powerful resource for Finnegans Wake.

The following two studies are devoted to Joyce and contemporary Ireland. Barry McCrea discusses the complexities of the reception of Ulysses in a changing Ireland. McCrea’s revised essay paints a dark but accurate picture of Joyce’s exploitation as an Irish national product, and he comments that “[t]he modern incarnation of Ulysses as a national symbol and civic treasure is to some degree a product, like ghost estates and the glass city of the docklands, of the economic boom” (84). In the aftermath of Ireland’s economic collapse, McCrea critiques “Brand Ireland” and “Brand Joyce,” even as he hopes the public visibility of Joyce’s work will somehow be preserved in less commercial forms. On a more positive note, Jason King considers the relevance of Joyce’s legacy in contemporary Ireland in relation...