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When it comes to theories of artistic descent, Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence is the best known. The prominent literary critic argues that “poetic influence, when it includes two strong, original poets, always follows with a misreading of the previous poet, an act of creative correction which is in fact and necessarily a misinterpretation.”
This kind of misreading, what Bloom calls “misinterpretation,” often takes place between two artists separated by the great abysses of time and space: Dante’s influence on TS Eliot, for example, or Shakespeare on Herman Melville. When we come to the study of James Joyce (1882-1941), we see that the innovative modernist coincides with one of his most prominent literary heroes, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). As Bloom points out, Joyce described Ibsen’s work as “of universal value.” During his student days, Joyce defended and exalted Ibsen’s then-controversial work, with a 1900 lecture he gave at University College Dublin, as well as a review he published the same year in the London magazine Fortnightly Review. Joyce’s article, “Ibsen’s New Drama,” focused on the playwright’s latest play, When We Wake Up from the Dead, and was warmly received by Ibsen himself, who, through his English translator William Archer, described the review as “cordial” and “benevolent”. Thus began a three-year correspondence between Joyce and Archer and a friendly, somewhat distant relationship between Joyce and Ibsen.
Dear sir,
I write to greet you on the occasion of your seventy-third birthday and to unite my voice with that of your loved ones in all countries. You may remember that shortly after the publication of your most recent drama, When We Awake From the Dead, an appreciation of it appeared in one of the English literary magazines, The Fortnightly Review, in my name. I know you saw it because a short time later, Mr. William Archer wrote to me and told me that in a letter he had received from you a few days ago, you had written, “I have read or rather said I have read syllable by syllable. a review in The Fortnighty Review by Mr. James Joyce who is very kind and for which I would very much like to thank the author as if I had sufficient knowledge of the language. (My knowledge of your language is not, as you can see, excellent, but I believe you will be able to decipher the meaning of what I am writing to you.) I find it difficult to describe how touched I was by your message . I am a young boy, very young and maybe confessing such things so brilliantly will make you smile. But I am sure that if you go back to your life at the time when you were a university student like me, and if you think what it meant to you you would have earned a greeting from someone who in your estimation occupies such a high place as zini you for me, you will understand my feeling. I only regret one thing, that an unreachable and hasty article has caught your attention, instead of something better and more worthy of your praise. There may not have been any intentional folly in it, but I really am not prolonging it anymore. It may be annoying to have your work at the mercy of boys, but I’m sure you would prefer the kidnapping of a boy to nerve-wracking, “cultured” paradoxes. What can I tell you more? I uttered your name defiantly here in college where he was either unknown or little known and very pale. I have declared for you the place you deserve in the history of drama. I have highlighted what, as it seemed to me, was your perfection, your objective power. Your small ambitions, satire, technique and orchestral harmony, these, too, I carried forward. Do not think that I am a fan of heroes. I’m not. And when I have spoken about you in forums, debates and meetings of this nature, I have forced others to pay attention to you but not with worthless lectures. But we always keep the most beloved things to ourselves. I did not tell them what connected me to you. I did not tell you that the trials of your life filled me with pride, your battles, with inspiration, not the apparent material battles, but those that developed and were won over by your mind, as your voluntary solution to discover the secret of life , it gave me heart just like your absolute indifference to the public canons of art, friends and doctrines finding the light of inner heroism. And that is why I am writing to you. Your work on earth is coming to an end, you are close to silence. It is getting dark for you. Many write about such things but do not know them. You have only paved the way, even though you have gone as far as you could, to the end of “John Gabriel Borkman” and his spiritual truth – because your last drama stands, in my opinion, on its own. But I am sure that the highest and holiest enlightenment lies ahead. As one of the younger generation you have spoken of, I salute you, not humbly, for I am dark and you in the bright, not sad because you are an old man and I am young, not with excessive courage, nor with sentimentality, but with joy, with hope and with love, I greet you.
Yours sincerely, James A. Joyce
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