The Five Joyces: How James Joyce was Read in Russia

The Five Joyces: How James Joyce was Read in Russia
with Jose Vergara

While James Joyce’s place in the modernist pantheon has long been firmly entrenched, its resonances continue to be uncovered. In the Russian context, the Irish writer has occupied many roles since his work was first translated in the mid-1920s. This talk will trace the development not of a monolithic Joyce, but rather of five separate Russian Joyces — the versions of the author imagined by his Russian readers. Join us for a tour of the Joycean strains in the work of Yury Olesha, Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, and Mikhail Shishkin, who each drew from their predecessor’s texts, particularly Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, to address the volatile questions of lineages in their respective Soviet, émigré, and post-Soviet contexts. As a coda, selections from interviews with contemporary writers will show how the debates regarding Joyce’s legacy are no less settled a century after Ulysses.