Plan I. Introduction 3 II. Main part 6

Second stay in Trieste[]

Trieste circa 1907
Joyce returned to Trieste in March 1907, but was unable to find full-time work. He went back to being an English instructor, working part time for Berlitz and giving private lessons.^[165] The author Ettore Schmitz, better known by pen name Italo Svevo, was one of his students. Svevo was a Catholic of Jewish origin who became one of the models for Leopold Bloom.^[166] Joyce learned much of what he knew about Judaism from him.^[167] The two become lasting friends and mutual critics.^[168] Svevo supported Joyce's identity as an author, helping him work through his writer's block with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.^[169] Roberto Prezioso, or of the Italian newspaper Piccolo della Sera, was another of Joyce's students. He helped Joyce financially by commissioning him to write for the newspaper. Joyce quickly produced three articles aimed toward the Italian irredentists in Trieste. He indirectly paralleled their desire for independence from Austria-Hungary with the struggle of the Irish from British rule.^[170] Joyce earned additional money by giving a series of lectures on Ireland and the arts at Trieste's Università Popolare.^[171] In May, Joyce was struck by an attack of rheumatic fever,^[172] which left him incapacitated for weeks.^[y] The illness exacerbated eye problems that plagued him for the rest of his life.^[178] While Joyce was still recovering from the attack, Lucia was born on 26 July 1907.^[179][z] During his convalescence, he was able to finish "The Dead", the last story of Dubliners.^[181]
Although a heavy drinker,^[182] Joyce gave up alcohol for a period in 1908.^[183] He reworked Stephen Hero as the more concise and interior A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He completed the third chapter by April^[184] and translated John Millington Synge's Riders to the Sea into Italian with the help of Nicolò Vidacovich.^[185] He even took singing lessons again.^[186] Joyce had been looking for an English publisher for Dubliners but was unable to find one, so he submitted it to a Dublin publisher, Maunsel and Company, owned by George Roberts.^[187]