|
Description
|
340 x 535mm., one double-sided sheet on white and pink paper folded to form 10 panels, printed and manuscript, originally valid for two years only, subsequently renewed for three (out of a maximum) four periods, on 20 September 1917 (Zurich), 20 October 1919 (Trieste) and 23 February 1922 (Paris) [finally expiring on 10 August 1923], additional British visa granted in Zurich on the same date as the first renewal (20 September 1917) allowing the bearer "residence within the Consular District of Zurich", further Italian and Swiss visas dated 19 October and 15 October 1919 allowing Joyce and his family to return from Zurich to Trieste, and then four further visas granted in Trieste on 1 July 1920 at various consulates, before the Joyce family's move to Paris: (i) British visa "...Good for the France and the United Kingdom..." (ii) French Visa allowing Joyce and his family to travel to Paris for "recherches littéraires" for three months (iii) Swiss transit visa and (iv) Italian visa for the for the same journey; black and white photographs of Joyce (with moustache and spectacles, in hat and bow tie) and Nora with children Georgio and Lucia (dressed in Sunday best), each photograph 90 x 60mm., these signed by Joyce and Nora, with the purple stamp of the British Consulate General in Zurich (dated 10 August 1915), descriptions of bearers (Joyce's profession is stated as English teacher, with his "special peculiarities" that he wears eyeglasses); further British Consulate paper and ink stamps in purple, black, red and green for the original issuance and renewals of the passport, signed by four separate British Consul-Generals (once by the Pro-Consul), the passport and visas stamped in various locations (including "Chiasso", "Brigue" and "Boulogne", the last on 16 September 1922 when Joyce returned to Paris from London), most panels subsequently stamped "cancelled" [probably when Joyce obtained a new British passport on 3 May 1924], some light discolouration and soiling, remains of original holder or cover on two panels PAPER
|
|
Lot Note
|
A highly evocative and personal Joyce document, recording the author's movements between Trieste, Zurich, Paris, London and other locations during the period of his greatest creative intensity, and almost perfectly spanning the complete writing of his great masterpiece Ulysses, from its first mention on 6 December 1916 to its final completion on 29 October 1921. Ulysses was a seven-year labour of love (and frustration) for Joyce, who, rather like the hero of Homer's original, was forced by both personal circumstances and the great upheavals of the First World War to move his family around from a variety of temporary and semi-permanent address in Trieste, Zurich, Locarno, Paris and elsewhere. This passport, very colourful and visually appealing in itself, is a unique and touching document recording the movements of the entire Joyce family as the writer struggled, ultimately victoriously, to complete hismagnum opus, now commonly accepted as the greatest novel in English of the twentieth century. Joyce had had to flee Trieste after May 1915 when Italy entered the war against Austria, leading to the strong possibility that he might be interned. The family arrived in Zurich on 30 June. Joyce swiftly applied to the British Consulate in Zurich for an official passport to safeguard the whole family. Thus it was that, on 10 August 1915, the Consulate issued Joyce with this wartime passport. An immediately striking feature is Nora's status as Joyce's wife: this was a fiction, since the couple had eloped from Ireland in 1904 and were not actually legally married until 4 July 1931 (for "testamentary reasons", at Kensington registry office in London). The passport may well be the earliest legal document in which Nora Barnacle is declared as Joyce's wife, and would therefore have been relied upon by Joyce to allow him and his family residence in Zurich and elswhere and movement between Switzerland, Italy and Paris. As Richard Ellmann has written, the wartime residence in Zurich was marked by a consolidation of Joyce's role "as a new force in modern literature" and by a "a great exfoliation of [his] creative powers" (The Letters. vol.2, pp.345-6). During this period The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was serialised in the the Egoist (1915), the first book edition of the same work appeared in New York and London (1916 and 1917 respectively), the first American edition of Dubliners was published (1916), and his play Exiles appeared on stage in Munich in 1918. Joyce attracted a new gathering of assorted supporters and patrons, the most important of all clearly being Harriet Shaw Weaver (English owner of the Egoist), who sent him the first of many financial contributions in February 1916. Joyce belatedly had his passport renewed (on 20 September 1917 after its expiry on 10th August) and then left to spend the winter in Locarno, where he underwent a major operation for glaucoma: eye problems plagued him for the rest of his life. He returned to Zurich in January, with the spring bringing the first installment of the serial publication of Ulysses in The Little Review. The war ended, and in 1919 -- following a half-affair with the pretty young Swiss woman Martha Fleischmann -- Joyce obtained the necessary Swiss and Italian visas (the city was now once again Italian territory) to enable the family to return to Trieste. They arrived on 15 October. Five days later, on 20 October 1919, he had the passport belatedly renewed by the local British consulate. The renewal was clearly not affected by the long-running dispute and legal action he had undertaken against Henry Carr, who worked at the British Consulate General in Zurich (this centred on Joyce's involvement with the theatrical company, the English players: see Ellmann, op.cit., p.347).He resumed teaching at the Scuola Superiore di Commercio Revoltella, while all the time working on his great masterwork. In some ways the return was an anti-climax: the city had changed radically, having become less cosmopolitan and having lost its status as a major port. On 8 June 1920 Joyce met Ezra Pound at Sirmione on Lago di Garda, and the poet persuaded Joyce that his best base of operations, to arrange publication of Ulysses, would be Paris. Apparently Joyce's original intention was to travel on to London after staying in Paris for a few weeks. So it was, as the present passport records, that Joyce visited the British and French Consulates in Trieste on 1 July 1920 to secure the necessary visas for his trip (the French visa records his intended address in Paris as Hôtel Elysée, 9 rue de Beaune). The family then left Trieste for good on 3 July, crossing over at Bregue (again, as the stamp here records) on 6 July. It was during the summer and autumn of 1920 that Joyce met Sylvia Beach (the ultimate publisher of Ulysses), T.S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, and Valery Larbaud (who would do so much, as a translator and critic to promote his work). Joyce became a world literary celebrity, and Ulysses was eventually published on 2 February 1922 (his fortieth birthday). The condition of his eyes however was deteriorating and on the advice of his Paris doctors he travelled to London with Nora on 17 August 1922 to consult two ophthalmologists, who were very pessimistic about the prognosis. The passport records their return to Paris via Boulogne, their "débarquement" being stamped on 6 September. The family visited London again the following year, in June 1923. Although it appears Joyce could have renewed this family passport for one further term of two years in August 1923 he opted instead to obtain his own, individual passport. This passport, dated 3 May 1924, now resides in the Joyce Collection at the University of Buffalo, as does a later passport, dated 19 June 1935. Joyce's photograph in the earlier of these, which was formerly part of the Librairie La Hune exhibition in Paris organised by the late Bernard Gheebrandt, is reproduced in volume 3 of The Letters of James Joyce, ed. Richard Ellmann (facing p.16). The photogaphs in the present lot--the earlier passport--may be unpublished.
|