First: a terrible confession.  I have seen more death masks of James Joyce than I have actually read any of his books.  Death masks: 2.  Novels: 1, and that one only half-completed.  Mind, that half-read is Ulysses, so I like to think that some small amount of leeway can be permitted.  If it had been The Dubliners, I would have already blown any credentials for even thinking about writing this article.  In fact, I have visited far more Joyce-ian cities than I have read either novels, or seen death-masks.  Dublin––obvs––Paris, Trieste, Zurich.  Joyce has an enduring presence even for people who have never read his work.

Joyce’s two original death masks are in the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, Augustinergasse 9, Zurich and in the James Joyce Tower and Museum, Sandycove Point, Dublin.  A third exists in the Washington Library of Congress, but I consider this one something of a Johnny-come-lately.

The Martello Tower, which is the home of the Sandycove Museum, appears in the opening chapter of Ulysses.  At that point, I was thoroughly enjoying the novel.  Enthralled, in fact.  It was only later that it began to lose me.  Joyce himself spent six days in the Martello Tower in 1904.  I spent 55 minutes there in 2015.  I liked the black panther––or was that a dream?  I liked that it was free admission.  Liked its seaside location; its friendly and enthusiastic volunteers; practically everything about it, in fact.

I visited the Zurich James Joyce Foundation in 2024.  As in Sandycove, I was greeted with a traditionally warm Irish welcome by two Swiss nationals, Ursula Zeller, the curator of the Foundation, and Fritz Senn, its founder, now aged 96.

Through an unassuming green door marked Willkommen, up several flights of wooden stairs to a small reception area and shop, with postcards for sale, and Fritz Senn’s book A Brief Introduction to James Joyce, where I was greeted by Ursula and shown into the conference room, which is a meeting place for Joyce researchers and where there are regular sessions for reading extracts from Finnegans Wake and Ulysses; and then into the library, lined with traditional metal shelves, filled with books by Joyce, translations of books by Joyce books about Joyce criticisms of Joyce biographies of Joyce over five thousand volumes on practically every subject relating to Joyce.

I was beginning to feel the Joyce effect.  I needed to take a step back.  Atop the bookshelves were bottles of alcohol, Irish whiskies, Bloom Beer, it all felt very in-keeping.  The next room too: the heavy, wooden display cabinet; the black and white photographs, a strip of wallpaper taken from 7 Eccles Street, the fictional home of Leopold and Molly Bloom, a bowler hat some period cups more bottles of booze on top of a big blue and white room heater more books in a case and fritz sat behind a desk overflowing with more books piled on top of each other and several walking sticks worn and brown and a tie to match and a pocketful of change which wouldnt have bought more than a small glass of porter in a dublin hostelry and a white plaster death mask of joyces face sans spectacles eyes closed but right down to the detail of little bristles erupting across his neck and chin and then finally a signature surprisingly neat given all that has gone before in a first edition of finnegans wake this copy is number 189 which I never intend to read. 

Is that a terrible confession?

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow has The Dubliners on his reading list.