The Guardian view on repatriating James Joyce´s remains: Dublin should tread carefully | Editorial
(The Guardian Switzerland)

The literary exile´s complicated relationship with Ireland inspired works of genius. Wherever he rests, that intimate connection is what counts`Do you know what Ireland is? Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.` So says Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce´s semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.Joyce made sure he escaped that fate by abandoning Dublin for Trieste in 1904, rejecting a world he thought suffocated by Catholic piety, censorious morals and narrow nationalism. He came to be viewed with deep suspicion by the devout representatives of the Irish Free State, which was founded in 1922 - the year that Joyce´s great modernist work, Ulysses, came out in Paris. The book was roundly denounced in Ireland, where one paper described it as `literature of the latrine`. Continue reading...