James Joyce: the Pula connection
Did you know that the first place James Joyce lived after leaving Ireland with Nora Barnacle in 1904 was Pula, in northwestern Croatia? The Irish literary legend was, at the time, aged 22 and looking for a job, having been disappointed in Geneva and Trieste. Joyce and Barnacle arrived in Pula in October 1904, and stayed until March 1905.
At the time Pula was the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s main naval base. Joyce worked as a professor of English at the Berlitz School, teaching mainly Austro-Hungarian naval officers.
Frustrated by his lack of progress in his literary endeavours and perennially short of money, Joyce was not enamoured by Pula, describing it as a ‘naval Siberia’ in a letter to his aunt on New Year’s Eve, and calling the surrounding peninsula of Istria “a long boring place wedged into the Adriatic peopled by ignorant Slavs who wear little red caps and colossal breeches.”
He frequently turned up late and drunk for classes but he still seems to have been liked by his students. Thankfully the people of Pula have forgiven his insults, seeing them as a sign of his frustrations at the time, and are now proud of their short but meaningful association with the Irish writer.
While he moved on to a longer and happier association with the city of Trieste in Italy in 1905, his time in Pula was not wasted. It was personally significant as the first place where he lived with his partner and later wife, Nora Barnacle, but he is also known to have written Clay, one of the 15 short stories that would comprise his first published work, Dubliners, while in Pula.
One of Joyce’s main pleasures while in the Croatian city was lounging in Café Miramar on the waterfront, where he could read foreign newspapers. The café is closed now, and the house where Joyce lived in long gone. However, the building of the school where he taught, near the old Roman arch, is still there.
Nearby the Uliks Bar celebrates his legacy in Pula, and at one of the tables you can find the man himself in the form of a wonderful bronze sculpture of an older Joyce by Croatian sculpture Mate Čvrljak.
Having a picture taken with him is a popular pastime with visitors, including the many Irish who visit Pula each year to enjoy the beauty of the city and its surroundings. For a number of years there has also been a Bloomsday festival celebrated in the city, with readings at the statue and other events around town.