{"id":77119,"date":"2026-06-03T18:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/77119\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T18:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T18:37:10","slug":"aldous-and-joyce-too-frank-mcnally-on-a-literary-pilgrimage-to-zurich-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/77119\/","title":{"rendered":"Aldous and Joyce too: Frank McNally on a literary pilgrimage to Zurich \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visiting Zurich<\/a> for the first time last weekend, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Fluntern Cemetery to pay my respects to Mr Joyce<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As depicted in bronze by sculptor Milton Hebald, the author of Ulysses sits by his own graveside, smoking and reading a book that he has temporarily put aside to peer off into the middle distance, deep in thought.<\/p>\n

He was rudely interrupted from his reverie on Friday last by a copy of The Bloomsday Journal, a quarterly mini-newspaper held open before him by my fellow traveller Senan Molony, a contributor to said organ.<\/p>\n

And for a moment, Joyce really did seem to be absorbed in the headlines, as well he might. But we couldn\u2019t wait for him to read the whole thing, because we had to be back in town within the hour to speak at a literary event. <\/p>\n

An event that, as we had to tell the great man sheepishly, was not about him. Or not primarily, anyway. In fact, we were in Zurich to discuss Aldous Huxley<\/a>, an English writer who never set foot in that city and with whom Joyce had strained relations.<\/p>\n

The odd circumstances that brought our visit about, even odder to say, were in part the influence of another Irish novelist: Flann O\u2019Brien<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For it so happens that there lives in Zurich these days one Ois\u00edn \u00d3 Nuall\u00e1in, son of \u201cthe Brother\u201d, Miche\u00e1l, and nephew of Brian \u00d3 Nuall\u00e1in (aka Flann and Myles). A latterday St Gallen, Ois\u00edn is now on a mission to spread enlightenment among the Swiss.<\/p>\n

Or at least he\u2019s teaching English in a Zurich language school, while also serving as co-ordinator of the local Aldous Huxley Centre. That conjunction arises because the man who owns the school, Swiss-born Robin Hull, may also be the world\u2019s leading Huxley expert and certainly owns the greatest collection of the writer\u2019s work and memorabilia.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that one of Huxley\u2019s novels helped suggest the anarchic structure of O\u2019Brien\u2019s debut, At Swim-Two-Birds, in which fictional characters drug the author and seize control of the plot. <\/p>\n

Joyce and Huxley had met a few times while alive, but not happily, as the Englishman later lamented<\/p>\n

If so, O\u2019Brien repaid the compliment by having the narrator acknowledge that his bookshelves contain not just the works of \u201cMr Joyce\u201d but also \u201cthe widely read books of Mr A Huxley\u201d.<\/p>\n

Well, Hull has all those books, some of them the author\u2019s personal copies. He has also attempted to recreate Huxley\u2019s entire library, the original of which was destroyed in a Californian brush fire of 1961. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just about Huxley, though. At a time when the humanities are in retreat everywhere, Hull is determined to get students reading and thinking about literature in general again. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, given the proven 1,400-year-old track record of Irish educators in Switzerland, he has also had the good sense to hire a Corkman, James Cunningham from Ballincollig<\/a>, as principal of his language school.<\/p>\n

For our event there, we were joined by two fine English academics, Toby Harris and Emily Reed. <\/p>\n

But the Hibernophile flavour was underscored by the presence of Ireland\u2019s entire diplomatic mission to Switzerland, ambassador Aoife McGarry and her deputy David McDonnell, who\u2019d both come up from Berne for the evening. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Surprise(d) guest: Frank McNally on the mysteries of Irish-English and the story behind the world\u2019s greatest collection of JoyceanaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Furthermore, although the discussion was headlined \u201cVisions of Huxley\u201d, we somehow dragged the man from Fluntern Cemetery into it anyway, regardless of the risks.<\/p>\n

Joyce and Huxley had met a few times while alive, but not happily, as the Englishman later lamented. <\/p>\n

First, hosting him at a dinner party once in Paris, they served red wine, whereas Joyce liked only white. For this and other reasons, the conversation dragged: \u201cFinally in despair my wife said something about the flowers on the table: to which he said laconically, \u2018I hate flowers,\u2019 and lapsed into silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our event was more successful, I\u2019m glad to say. Wine and conversation both flowed afterwards, perhaps to a fault.<\/p>\n

Although he spent much longer in Paris and Trieste, Joyce began and ended his exile in Zurich. He went there first in 1904, on a kind of honeymoon with his newly beloved Nora Barnacle, but with no money and what turned out to be the false promise of a job.<\/p>\n

They returned during the first World War when Zurich was full of fellow refugees, including Lenin, who like Joyce frequented the Cafe Odeon (where we also paid respects at the weekend, over a pint). <\/p>\n

And at the end of a precarious life together, the couple fled there again in December 1940 for what proved to be Joyce\u2019s last weeks. <\/p>\n

As Richard Ellmann<\/a> writes, he was back in the city where he had come 36 years before, \u201carrogant in the flush of his own genius\u201d. Now, \u201che knew too much for arrogance; he arrived broken and sick, prematurely aged, among the scenes of his past strength\u201d.<\/p>\n

He died on January 13th, 1941, and was buried at Fluntern \u201con a cold snowy day\u201d. Sure enough, there were no flowers at the funeral. And maybe the single blossom that someone had left on the grave before our visit was for Nora rather than her husband. Forewarned by Huxley, however, we didn\u2019t add to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visiting Zurich for the first time last weekend, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Fluntern Cemetery to pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[40251,39930,40250,51],"class_list":["post-77119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zurich","tag-flann-o-brien","tag-irish-diary","tag-james-joyce","tag-zurich"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116687630803200394","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}