Plan I. Introduction 3 II. Main part 6

Marriage in London[]

1966 drawing of Joyce by Adolf Hoffmeister
In 1930, Joyce began thinking of establishing a residence in London once more,^[301] primarily to assure that Giorgio, who had just married Helen Fleischmann, would have his inheritance secured under British Law.^[302] Joyce moved to London, obtained a long-term lease on a flat, registered on the electoral roll, and became liable for jury service. After living together for twenty-seven years, Joyce and Nora got married at the Register Office in Kensington on 4 July 1931.^[303] Joyce stayed in London for at least six months to establish his residency, but abandoned his flat and returned to Paris later in the year when Lucia showed signs of mental illness. He planned to return, but never did and later became disaffected with England.^[304]
In later years, Joyce lived in Paris but frequently travelled to Switzerland for eye surgery^[aj] or for treatment for Lucia,^[306] who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.^[307] Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung, who had previously written that Ulysses was similar to schizophrenic writing.^[308][ak] Jung suggested that she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that Joyce was diving and Lucia was sinking.^[310] In spite of Joyce's attempts to help Lucia, she remained permanently institutionalised after his death.^[311]
Final return to Zürich[]
In the late 1930s, Joyce became increasingly concerned about the rise of fascism and antisemitism.^[312] As early as 1938, Joyce was involved in helping a number of Jews escape Nazi persecution.^[313] After the defeat of France in World War II, Joyce and his family fled from Nazi occupation, returning to Zürich a final time.^[314]

Chapter 2.
1.2.Death

Grave of James Joyce in Zürich-Fluntern; sculpture by Milton Hebald
On 11 January 1941, Joyce underwent surgery in Zürich for a perforated duodenal ulcer. He fell into a coma the following day. He awoke at 2 am on 13 January 1941, and asked a nurse to call his wife and son. They were en route when he died 15 minutes later, less than a month before his 59th birthday.^[315]
His body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zürich. Swiss tenor Max Meili sang "Addio terra, addio cielo" from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the burial service.^[316] Joyce had been a subject of the United Kingdom all his life and only the British consul attended the funeral. Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral. When Joseph Walshe, secretary at the Department of External Affairs in Dublin, was informed of Joyce's death by Frank Cremins, chargé d'affaires at Bern, Walshe responded, "Please wire details of Joyce's death. If possible find out did he die a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral."^[317] Buried originally in an ordinary grave, Joyce was moved in 1966 to a more prominent "honour grave", with a seated portrait statue by American artist Milton Hebald nearby. Nora, whom he had married in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.^[317]
After Joyce's death, the Irish government declined Nora's request to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains,^[318] despite being persistently lobbied by the American diplomat John J. Slocum.^[317] In October 2019, a motion was put to Dublin City Council to plan and budget for the costs of the exhumations and reburials of Joyce and his family somewhere in Dublin, subject to his family's wishes.^[319] The proposal immediately became controversial, with the Irish Times commenting: " ... it is hard not to suspect that there is a calculating, even mercantile, aspect to contemporary Ireland's relationship to its great writers, whom we are often more keen to 'celebrate', and if possible monetise, than read".^[320]
Joyce and politics[]

1934 portrait of James Joyce by Jacques-Émile Blanche
Throughout his life, Joyce stayed actively interested in Irish national politics^[321] and in its relationship to British colonialism.^[322] He studied socialism^[323] and anarchism.^[324][al] He attended socialist meetings and expressed an individualist view influenced by Benjamin Tucker's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism".^[328] He described his opinions as "those of a socialist artist".^[329] Joyce's direct engagement in politics was strongest during his time in Trieste, when he submitted newspaper articles, gave lectures, and wrote letters advocating for Ireland's independence from British rule.^[330] After leaving Trieste, Joyce's direct involvement in politics waned,^[331] but his later works still reflect his commitment.^[332] He remained sympathetic to individualism and critical toward coercive ideologies such as nationalism.^[333][am] His novels address socialist, anarchist and Irish nationalist issues.^[336] Ulysses has been read as a novel critiquing the effect of English colonialism on the Irish people.^[337] Finnegans Wake has been read as a work that investigates the divisive issues of Irish politics,^[338] the interrelationship between colonialism and race,^[339] and the coercive oppression of nationalism and fascism.^[340]
Joyce's politics is reflected in his attitude toward his British passport. He wrote about the negative effects of English occupation in Ireland and was sympathetic to the attempts of the Irish to free themselves from it.^[341] In 1907, he expressed his support for the early Sinn Féin movement before Irish independence.^[342] But throughout his life, Joyce refused to exchange his British passport for an Irish one.^[343] When he had a choice, he opted to renew his British passport in 1935 instead of obtaining one from the Irish Free State,^[344][an] and he chose to keep it in 1940 when accepting an Irish passport could have helped him to more easily leave Vichy France.^[346] His refusal to change his passport was partly due to the advantages that a British passport gave him internationally,^[347] his being out of sympathy with the violence of Irish politics,^[348] and his dismay with the Irish Free State's political relationship with the church.^[349][ao]
Joyce and religion[]

The interior of the Greek Orthodox Church of San Nicolò in Trieste, where Joyce occasionally attended services^[351]
Joyce had a complex relationship with religion.^[352] Early in life, he lapsed from Roman Catholicism.^[353] First-hand statements by himself,^[ap] Stanislaus^[aq] and Nora^[ar] attest that he did not consider himself a Catholic. Nevertheless, his work is deeply influenced by Catholicism.^[357] In particular, his intellectual foundations were grounded in his early Jesuitical education.^[358][as] Even after he left Ireland, he sometimes went to church. When living in Trieste, he woke up early to attend Catholic Mass on Holy Thursday and Good Friday^[360][at] or occasionally attended Eastern Orthodox services, stating that he liked the ceremonies better.^[362]
A number of Catholic critics suggest that Joyce never fully abandoned his faith,^[363] wrestling with it in his writings and becoming increasingly reconciled with it.^[364] They argue that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are expressions of a Catholic sensibility,^[365] insisting that the critical views of religion expressed by Stephen, the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, does not represent the views of Joyce the author.^[366]
Joyce's attitude toward Catholicism has been described as an enigma in which there are two Joyces: a modern one who resisted Catholic tradition and another who maintained his allegiance to it.^[367] It has alternatively been described as a dialectic that is both affirming and denying. For example, Stephen Dedalus's statement in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man "non-serviam (I will not serve)"^[368] is qualified—"I will not serve that which I no longer believe",^[369] and that the non-serviam will always be balanced by Stephen's "I am ... [a] servant too"^[370] and the "yes" of Molly Bloom's final soliloquy^[371] in Ulysses.^[372] Some critics have suggested that Joyce's apparent apostasy was less a denial of faith than a transmutation,^[373] a criticism of the Church's adverse impact on spiritual life and personal development.^[374] He has been compared to the medieval episcopi vagantes [wandering bishops], who left their discipline but not their cultural heritage of thought.^[375]
Joyce's own responses to questions about his faith were often ambiguous. For example, during an interview after the completion of Ulysses, Joyce was asked "When did you leave the Catholic Church". He answered, "That's for the Church to say."^[376]