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Lucia Anna Joyce (26 July 1907 – 12 December 1982) was an Irish professional dancer and the daughter of Irish writer
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
and Nora Barnacle. Once treated by Swiss psychiatrist
Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...
, Joyce was diagnosed as
schizophrenic Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...
in the mid-1930s and institutionalized at the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in
Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
. In 1951, she was transferred to St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, where she remained until her death in 1982. She was the aunt of Stephen James Joyce, who was the last descendant of James Joyce.


Early life and career

Lucia Anna Joyce was born in the Ospedale Civico di Trieste on 26 July 1907. She was the second child of Irish writer
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
and his partner (later wife) Nora Barnacle, after her brother Giorgio. As her parents were expatriates living in
Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...
, Lucia's first language was Italian. In her younger years, she trained as a dancer at the Dalcroze Institute in Paris. She studied dancing from 1925 to 1929, training first with Jacques Dalcroze, followed by Margaret Morris, and later with Raymond Duncan (brother of Isadora Duncan) at his school near Salzburg. In 1927, Joyce danced a short duet as a toy soldier in
Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. His '' La Grande Illusion'' (1937) and '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greate ...
’s film adaptation of
Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogue (literature), travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fai ...
's "La Petite marchande d’allumettes" ( The Little Match Girl). She furthered her studies under Lois Hutton, Hélène Vanel, and Jean Borlin, lead dancer of the Ballet suédois. In 1928, she joined "Les Six de rythme et couleur," a commune of six female dancers that were soon performing at venues in France, Austria, and Germany. After a performance in La Princesse Primitive at the Vieux-Colombier theatre, the ''Paris Times'' wrote of her: "Lucia Joyce is her father's daughter. She has James Joyce's enthusiasm, energy, and a not-yet-determined amount of his genius. When she reaches her full capacity for rhythmic dancing, James Joyce may yet be known as his daughter's father." On 28 May 1929, she was chosen as one of six finalists in the first international festival of dance in Paris held at the Bal Bullier. Although she did not win, the audience, which included her father and the young
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
, championed her performance as outstanding and loudly protested the jury's verdict. It has been alleged that when Lucia was 21, she and Beckett (who was her father's secretary for a short time) became lovers. Their relationship lasted only a short while and ended after Beckett, who was involved with another woman at the time, admitted that his interest was actually in a professional relationship with James Joyce, not a personal one with Joyce's daughter. At the age of 22, Joyce, after years of rigorous dedication and long hours of practice, decided "she was not physically strong enough to be a dancer of any kind". Announcing she would become a teacher, she then "turned down an offer to join a group in
Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...
and effectively gave up dancing." Her biographer Carol Shloss, however, argues that it was her father who finally put an end to her dancing career. James reasoned that the intense physical training for ballet caused her undue stress, which in turn exacerbated the long-standing animosity between her and her mother Nora. The resulting incessant domestic squabbles prevented work on ''
Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It was published in instalments starting in 1924, under the title "fragments from ''Work in Progress''". The final title was only revealed when the book was publishe ...
''. James convinced her she should turn to drawing lettrines to illustrate his prose and forgo her deep-seated artistic inclinations. To his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver, James Joyce wrote that this resulted in "a month of tears as she thinks she has thrown away three or four years of hard work and is sacrificing a talent".


Mental illness and later life

Lucia Joyce started to show signs of
mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
in 1930, including a time period during which she was involved with
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
, then a junior lecturer in English at the
École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
in Paris. In May 1930, while her parents were in Zurich, she invited Beckett to dinner, hoping "to press him into some kind of declaration."Bowker, 400. He flatly rejected her, explaining that he was only interested in her father and his writing. By 1934, she had participated in several affairs, with her drawing teacher
Alexander Calder Alexander "Sandy" Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobile (sculpture), mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, hi ...
, another expatriate artist Albert Hubbell, and Myrsine Moschos, assistant to
Sylvia Beach Sylvia Beach (14 March 1887 – 5 October 1962), born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and World W ...
of Shakespeare and Company. As the year wore on, her condition had deteriorated to the point that James had
Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...
take her in as a patient. Soon after, she was diagnosed with
schizophrenia Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...
at the Burghölzli psychiatric clinic in
Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
. In 1936, James consented to have his daughter undergo blood tests at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton. After a short stay, Lucia Joyce insisted she return to Paris, the doctors explaining to her father that she could not be prevented from doing so unless he had her committed. James told his closest friends that "he would never agree to his daughter being incarcerated among the English."Bowker, 482. Lucia Joyce returned to stay with
Maria Jolas Maria Jolas (January 12, 1893 – March 4, 1987), born Maria McDonald, was an American translator and pacifist, one of the founding members of Transition (literary journal), ''transition'' in Paris with her husband Eugene Jolas. Life Jolas wa ...
, the wife of '' transition'' editor Eugene Jolas, in
Neuilly-sur-Seine Neuilly-sur-Seine (; 'Neuilly-on-Seine'), also known simply as Neuilly, is an urban Communes of France, commune in the Hauts-de-Seine Departments of France, department just west of Paris in France. Immediately adjacent to the city, north of the ...
. After three weeks, her condition worsened and she was taken away in a
straitjacket A straitjacket is a garment shaped like a jacket with long sleeves that surpass the tips of the wearer's fingers. Its most typical use is restraining people who may cause harm to themselves or others. Once the wearer's arms are in the sleeves, ...
to the Maison de Santé Velpeau in Vésinet. Considered a danger to both staff and inmates, she was left in isolation. Two months later, she entered the ''maison de santé'' of François Achille Delmas at
Ivry-sur-Seine Ivry-sur-Seine () is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Paris's main Asian district, the Quartier Asiatique in the 13th arrondissement, borders the ...
. In 1951, Joyce was transferred back to St Andrew's Hospital. Over the years, she received visits from Beckett, Sylvia Beach, Frank Budgen, Maria Jolas, and Harriet Shaw Weaver who acted as her guardian. In 1962, Beckett donated his share of the royalties from his 1929 contributory essay on ''Finnegans Wake'' in '' Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress'' to help pay for her confinement at St Andrew's. In 1982, Lucia Joyce had a stroke and died on 12 December. She is buried in Kingsthorpe Cemetery. Each year on Bloomsday (16 June), extracts from James Joyce's '' Ulysses'' and other readings related to his life and works are read at Lucia Anna Joyce's graveside. In 2018 on Bloomsday, ''Letters to Lucia'', a play written by Richard Rose and James Vollmar in which characters from Lucia's life, including Samuel Beckett, Kathleen Neel, Nora Barnacle/Joyce and Joyce himself appear, was performed by the Triskellion Irish Theatre Company at the graveside.


Legacy

Her mental state, and documentation related to it, is the subject of a 2003 study, ''Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake'', by Carol Loeb Shloss, who believes Lucia Joyce to have been her father's
muse In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...
for ''
Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It was published in instalments starting in 1924, under the title "fragments from ''Work in Progress''". The final title was only revealed when the book was publishe ...
''. Making heavy reference to the letters between Joyce and her father, the study became the subject of a copyright misuse suit by the James Joyce estate. On 25 March 2007, this litigation was resolved in Shloss's favour. Professor John McCourt, of the University of Macerata, a prize-winning Joyce scholar, trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation, and co-founder and director of the International James Joyce symposium held at
Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...
, wrote in ''A Companion to Literary Biography'' (ed. Robert Bradford, Wiley Blackwell, 2019) that Shloss, in her "sometimes obsessive" book, "seeks very deliberately to depose Nora (Joyce's wife) as Joyce's chief muse... in doing so, it overplays its hand with exaggerated claims about Lucia's genius and about her importance to Joyce's creative process and vindictively harsh judgments on most members of the Joyce family and circle"; the book's "most damaging legacy is the cottage industry of derivative versions of Lucia that it has helped to spawn... the key source for a whole series of writings about Lucia that uncomfortably mix fact and fiction" including ''The Joyce Girl'' (2016) by Annabel Abbs, of which McCourt wrote "With Abbs, the perverse cycle of interest in Lucia comes full circle. We are back in the territory of fiction fraudulently posing as biography"; he considered the book "a prime contender for the worst Joyce-inspired 'biography' ever". The book was also the subject of criticism in the ''
Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It was launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is Ireland's leading n ...
'' and ''
Irish Examiner The ''Irish Examiner'', formerly ''The Cork Examiner'' and then ''The Examiner'', is an Republic of Ireland, Irish national daily newspaper which primarily circulates in the Munster region surrounding its base in Cork (city), Cork, though it is ...
'' regarding the author's "unsubstantiated speculations" regarding incest between Lucia and her brother, and the sources of her mental illness. In 1988, Stephen Joyce had all the letters written by Lucia that he received upon her death in 1982 destroyed. Stephen Joyce stated in a letter to the editor of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' that "Regarding the destroyed correspondence, these were all personal letters from Lucia to us. They were written many years after both Nonno and Nonna .e., Mr. and Mrs. Joycedied and did not refer to them. Also destroyed were some postcards and one telegram from
Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...
to Lucia. This was done at Sam's written request." In 2004, Lucia Joyce's life was the subject of ''Calico'', a West End play written by Michael Hastings, and, in 2012, of the graphic novel '' Dotter of Her Father's Eyes'' by Mary and Bryan Talbot. A play exploring her life, titled ''L,'' was performed to a limited audience in Concord Academy from 14 to 16 April 2016. It was written and directed by Sophia Ginsburg. 2016 saw the release of Annabel Abbs's biographical novel, ''The Joyce Girl''; in 2018, she was the subject of a novel by Alex Pheby, titled ''Lucia''. Lucia Joyce is the protagonist of the "Round the Bend" chapter of
Alan Moore Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', ''The Ballad of Halo Jones'', Swamp Thing (comic book), ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman: The Killing Joke' ...
's 2016 novel ''
Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
. S''et at the Northampton clinic where she spent her final years, the chapter is written in the style of her father's ''Finnegans Wake''. In 2023, Joseph Chester released ''Lucia for Guitar & Strings'', a suite for classical guitar and strings, commissioned by Axis Ballymun for the centenary celebrations of '' Ulysses'' in Dublin. The suite had its world premiere in Dublin on Bloomsday 2023, and was released on CD, vinyl and streaming in January 2023 on Bohemia Records. The suite took eleven key moments, or fragments, from the life of Lucia Joyce to paint a portrait of her in music.


References


Bibliography

* Patry, William (2006),
The Patry Copyright Blog: Copyright's Wake
(concerning research done on Lucia as Joyce's muse). Retrieved 28 August 2015 * Shloss, Carol Loeb. ''Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake''. Farrar, Straus, and Girous, New York, 2003.


External links



Collection of articles and reviews.
Resolution of the litigation
Retrieved 9 December 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Joyce, Lucia 1907 births 1982 deaths James Joyce People from Trieste People with schizophrenia