This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday, the epic, heroic and ordinary day described in the landmark modernist novel "Ulysses," written by James Joyce — and published by Sylvia Beach.
In fact, it might be more accurate to say "nurtured by Sylvia Beach" because Beach was far more than a publisher to the circle of expatriate writers and artists living in Paris in the 1920's and far, far more than a publisher to Joyce. Beach was a crucial support and a center of the literary scene — the proprietor of Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore and lending library that was both meeting place and community for writers including Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Besides her position in this international literary milieu, Beach had family roots in Princeton, and after her death in 1962, her sister arranged for the University to acquire her papers — a vast collection of correspondence, photographs and books that also includes objects ranging from musical scores by George Antheil to the Walt Whitman manuscripts that were on display in her bookshop. They are all now preserved in Firestone Library.
Beach's bookshop was one of the first places a newcomer went upon arrival in Paris, as Beach, in addition to being lively and charming, had a gift for connecting people.
The French writer Andre Chamson wrote that, "Sylvia carried pollen like a bee. She cross-fertilized these writers. She did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined."
Beach wrote in her memoir, Shakespeare and Company, that the expatriate writers "looked upon [Shakespeare and Company] as their club. Often they would inform me that they had given Shakespeare and Company as their address, and they hoped I didn't mind."
Although many of these writers/"club members" left behind great tomes, works that would come to be recognized as modern masterpieces and bring their writers great fame, Beach's personal legacy is unassuming. Her grave in the Beach family plot in the Princeton cemetery is marked by a small, bare, granite block, printed only with her name and birth and death dates —1887 to 1962. The adjoining grave of her father, the Rev. Sylvester Woodbridge Beach, reads, "I have kept the faith," and the same could be said of his daughter, who, as a patron, poured her time and money into promoting the creative talent she gathered around her, leaving her mark on literary history through others' artistic output.
The Beach family moved to Princeton in 1906 after spending five years in Paris. Beach's father was the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in town and an alumnus of the University.
Beach returned to Europe in 1916, where she traveled and, at last, settled in Paris to open her own bookshop. She had originally planned to start it in New York, but Paris was too much of a draw; living there was "enough to make anyone as happy as happy can be and life read like the Pink Fairy Book," she wrote in a 1919 letter to her mother.
She also wrote to her sister that, "There is much more interest in that sort of thing [literature] over there than there is anywhere at home, and besides that I like living on this side so much better . . . I know that anything but Business and Sport, plus Clothes in our country is a forlorn hope. These are the favorites and no one in their senses would put up any money on Art. I don't blame them for not taking interest in a thing so passé-de-mode either. I wouldn't myself if I hadn't been cursed with a preference for the thing instead of good, practical horse sense."
Beach's ambivalence toward things American — and in particular things Princetonian —comes out in her memoir. The sublime: the little street in Paris she fell in love with, and where she opened Shakespeare and Company, reminded her "somehow of the Colonial houses in Princeton." The disgusting: When Beach visited Joyce after he had an unsuccessful eye surgery, she noticed that leeches used to draw blood off of his eyes were like "those that used to stick to our legs in the Russells' swimming pool in Princeton."
Beach's presence at Joyce's bedside after his surgery shows the enormous role she played in his life and his great dependency on her. She was the only publisher, at first, willing to take up "Ulysses. "Shocking enough to be banned, the novel endured a tumultuous censorship history.
"'Ulysses' would probably never have been published without her," said Maria DiBattista, a professor in the English department who, this semester, prominently features the novel in ENG 341: 20th Century Fiction. "She provided Joyce with financial support, moral support and community — she was completely selfless."
When a customer tried to give Beach a pet dog, she recalled that her first response had been to say, "I couldn't keep a dog and a James Joyce and a bookshop" — Joyce, according to Beach, was deathly afraid of dogs, but seeing to his needs was also a huge job that left Beach with little time for anything else.
Their connection began as a literary friendship, but soon developed into a complicated relationship of dependency.
In 1921, Beach wrote letters to her mother and her sister, "'Ulysses' means thousands of dollars of publicity for me!" and, "Ulysses is going to make my place famous . . . swarms of people visit the shop on hearing the news."
Publishing "Ulysses" was an act of generosity — as well as a business move based on the book's notoriety — that placed Shakespeare and Company at the heart of the modernist scene. Later on, though, when "Ulysses" was legally permitted in the United States, Beach was hurt by the way Joyce did not acknowledge her role as publisher or benefactor by including her in the proceedings, and she seemed to have found the level of the burden he laid on her exhausting.
His daughter, Lucia, was institutionalized for mental illness and wrote frequently to Beach. In 1958, wanting news of her father's health, she turned to Beach rather than other family members.
"I did not understand well about my father," Lucia Joyce wrote in childish scrawl. "George wrote to me when I was in Brittany saying he had an ulcer and I think he died but I am not certain about this. I would like to know for sure if it is not too much trouble for you."
Joyce had, indeed, died, and Beach's ongoing commitment and closeness to his family showed the depth of her immersion in his life and work.
Though Joyce was a life project for Beach, World War II and the occupation of France forced Shakespeare and Company to close in 1941.
The closure was permanent, but Beach remained in the area. The last memory she recorded in her memoir was of the liberation of the Rue de l'Odeon — by Hemingway, who arrived in a Jeep shouting her name and proceeded to shoot Nazi snipers hidden on her roof, before going, Beach reports him as saying, "to liberate the cellar at the Ritz."
Although Hemingway may have liberated Beach, it is Joyce who provided her with her grandest legacy — the now-classic "Ulysses."
"There were many peripheral heroes behind "Ulysses," but she's the real heroine," DiBattista said.
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