The diaries of an Irish diplomat, donated to DCU's Historical Collections Research Centre, reveal the extent to which James Joyce felt attached to Ireland, writes Ray Burke.
Less than a month before he died, 75 years ago today, James Joyce told an Irish diplomat in Geneva that he was "attached" to Ireland "daily and nightly like an umbilical cord".
Members of his family told the diplomat that Joyce "kept Radio Éireann going on the wireless all the time".
Joyce also told the diplomat, however, that it would be undignified of him to return to neutral Ireland during World War II after he had spent almost 40 years in exile and while his only daughter was in a sanitarium in occupied France.
A detailed account of the conversation between the Joyces and former Irish diplomat, Sean Lester, is contained in Lester's Diaries which have recently been donated by his family to the Dublin City University Historical Collections Research Centre.
Lester, a former journalist and Irish diplomat who became acting secretary general of the League of Nations, met the Joyces in Geneva after they had fled from German-occupied France to neutral Switzerland in December 1940.
Joyce had obtained exit visas for his wife, Nora Barnacle, son Giorgio and grandson Stephen, but he had failed to get one for his mentally-ill daughter Lucia and he was seeking the intervention of the Irish government and the international Red Cross to challenge the German authorities' visa refusal.
Joyce had already written to Lester from France about Lucia.
In that letter, also donated to DCU, Joyce said that the Irish government representative in France, Sean Murphy, had initially been told by the German military authorities in France that they would not oppose Lucia moving to Switzerland, but that the permission was later revoked and only four exit visas from the occupied zone had been issued to the family.
In Geneva, Joyce told Lester that Lucia was "a very gentle and sweet creature" and that he had visited her in the sanitarium every weekend, the diary records.
Lester also wrote in the diary that Joyce told him that when the family had fled from Paris the previous May they had left behind "precious books" and many good paintings, including some by Jack B Yeats.
The diary records Joyce's answer when Lester asked him why he did not go home to Ireland: "I am attached to it daily and nightly like an umbilical cord".
It adds that the family members with Joyce said "it was true he kept Radio Éireann going on the wireless all the time".
It goes on: "The second time I mentioned the question of his returning home, his wife said she had been trying to induce him to for the last two or three years.
"Joyce said nothing, but when I spoke of getting home in the present circumstances, he said the journey would have been quite possible for him, but he felt it would not be very dignified to go home in the present circumstances".
The meeting between Joyce and Lester took place in a hotel in Geneva and lasted three hours.
They also spoke about Dublin, about Joyce's books and about recent Radio Éireann programmes.
Lester said that Joyce told him that he had been a rival to singer John McCormack in his young days and that when he was a struggling writer the notion of giving in to Nora's urging to abandon writing and concentrate instead on a singing career was "a near thing".
Joyce died in a Zurich hospital on the morning that Lester was posting him an update on Lucia's exit visa prospects.
"A great shock...had just written a letter to him about his daughter's case...I am sending a wreath", Lester wrote on 13 January 1941.
