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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
One of the most powerful stories in James Joyce's Dubliners is “A Painful Case.” Much of its strength lies in its deep concern with two basic human experiences, love and death. Yet Joyce seems somehow less concerned with these in themselves than with the personality of his main character, James Duffy. The author's intense analysis of the intellectual and emotional life of this protagonist has made possible the assumption that Joyce himself is Mr. Duffy. Events in the author's life are seemingly paralleled by occurrences in Duffy's life. Both men enjoy, and yet suffer from, the exile which they have imposed upon themselves: “Duffy … wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen.”
1 James Joyce, Dubliners (New York: Random House, n.d.), p. 133.
2 Herbert Gorman, James Joyce (New York, 1939), p. 145 et passim.
3 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (New York, 1939), pp. 169-195.
4 Dubliners, p. 139.
5 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York, 1928), Ch.ii.
6 James Joyce, Ulysses (New York, 1934), p. 49.
7 James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. Theodore Spencer (New York, 1944), p. 158.
8 This MS. draft, formerly in the collection of Mr. John J. Slocum of New York, is now at Yale Univ. Also in that collection is an earlier draft of the same story, in which the title appears as “A Painful Incident.” I am deeply indebted to Mr. Slocum for his kindness in allowing me to examine the MS. versions of the story.
9 In Aug. 1906 Joyce was still revising “A Painful Case.” “The Dead,” the last story written for the collection, was conceived in Rome and probably not finished until late in 1907. See Gorman, pp. 169 and 176.
10 Gorman, pp. 125-127.
11 Silvio Benco, “James Joyce in Trieste,” Bookman, Lxxn (Dec. 1930), 376; Padraic Colum, “Portrait of James Joyce,” Dublin Mag., vn (April-June 1932), 40-43.
12 On the other hand, Joyce's handling of the theme of marriage in “The Dead” and in two of his later poems, “She Weeps over Rahoon” and “Tutto è Sciolto,” as Prof. William York Tindall has suggested to me, may indicate hidden trouble in his relationship with Nora.
13 Also Sprach Zarathustra (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., n.d.), pp. 60-61.
14 Gorman, pp. 73-74.
15 Michael Kramer, in Dos Gesammelte Werk (Berlin, 1943), iii, 379.
16 Dubliners, p. 134.