Trieste, in search of epiphany by Peter Leyland
I have spent the past week in Trieste with my wife in search of something, I don’t quite know what - perhaps I imagined that the ghost of James Joyce’s alter ego, Stephen Daedalus, would reach me there? In my very battered copy of Stephen Hero, repaired with ageing Sellotape - a book which was not published in Joyce’s lifetime - there is a definition of what I was looking for. The artist, Stephen, walking on a Dublin street and feeling restless, pauses as he passes a set of area railings to listen to the fragment of a conversation between a young lady and a gentleman. Stephen’s mind turns to the idea of gathering such moments together in a book of epiphanies:
“By an epiphany he (Stephen) meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments” (pp.215-16).
Looking further for the meaning of the word epiphany I came across the idea that it is “a moment of sudden striking realisation or ‘aha’ moment”. I was reminded of ‘the ahness of things’, which in Japanese culture is known as ‘mono no aware’, a deep feeling of the pathos of events which resides in their transience, such as the falling of cherry blossoms, or the changes of the moon. For the C18 Japanese scholar, Motoori Norinaga, ‘mono no aware’ was a form of knowledge which could be traced back to The Tale of Genji, the classic Japanese novel of the Heian period (923-1014). In this story Genji tries to win back the lover who has renounced him because of his waning feelings for her. Genji’s failure to achieve this is enacted against the background of the autumn season and the waning moon. It evokes a scene of exquisite pathos as his lover rejects him, and before daylight Genji has to leave her, his sleeve made wet with dew and tears on his way.
Remembering these ideas led me back to my participation in a research study by the artist, Alice Tuppen-Corps, where she had asked the group to consider a threshold point in our lives which had acted as a trigger for change. For Alice’s project, I had recalled a trip to Ireland in the 1990s, a journey that I had taken on my own, a new departure for me as I generally liked to link up with a friend for company. Although I had asked a girl I knew who was originally from Belfast to accompany me - we had once flown to Dublin, and I had been photographed beside James Joyce’s statue there - she was busy with other things.
I drove off the deck of the car ferry in Cork in late August 1994 and made my way to Sheila’s Hostel. I settled into the dormitory there and later went out into the town, and in a music shop I asked for recommendations of music worth listening to and was offered a cassette by Mary Black. The next day I began my journey driving towards the West of Ireland playing:
I was born on the holy ground/ A running child in fields of clover/ I was living in the grandeur/ Of my father's land.
I travelled towards Bantry Bay and at some point, I kissed the Blarney Stone (as if I didn’t talk too much already) and later took a boat to Innisfallen Island, a site that would be the beginning of the epiphany that I was seeking.
A story within a story, within a story. This is how I reflect upon the next few days of my journey: walking through trees and bracken with Van Morrison's “Wild Mountain Thyme” and Mary Black's song going through my mind; a meeting with a French student teacher and historian, and discussing with him the idealism of youth; recovering from a drunken binge featuring much Guinness and Jameson’s whiskey, and buying a reviving breakfast of Spanish omelette which was served up by a sympathetic woman in a roadside cafe; visiting the town of Lisdoonvarna, a beautiful place in County Clare which I would later learn was famed for its Matchmaking Festival, but that was not until September, alas.
My hostel roommates that night were Maurizio and Roberto, Italians from Rome in their mid-twenties with whom I shared life stories. They recommended that I explore The Burren and so in the morning I set out. As usual my dreadful sense of direction led me far from where I wanted to go, but as luck would have it I met up with Maurizio and Roberto on the road and we walked together for seven kilometres discoursing philosophically on a variety of subjects, history, politics, girlfriends, and whatever.
Male bonding is a special thing. That evening at a bar near the hostel we listened to superb fiddle playing; a local girl sang a beautiful solo, and the landlord’s daughter did a tap dance. Old Country Joe played “The Last Thing on My Mind”. The following day we completed a 15 kilometre walk on The Burren and the day after that set off for Connemara in my car.
We arrived at the Cornamona Hostel amid a rainstorm of great ferocity. We were lucky to find somewhere as most places are fully booked. It was with great relief that I finally got through to someone with three spare beds. The hostel was very basic in a remote region of Co Galway where Gaelic is spoken as a first language. Downstairs it had one long room containing a kitchen where Roberto and Maurizio began cooking the most magnificent pasta:
In olive oil fry the onions and carrots (chopped), add green peppers and chilli peppers, and garlic. Then add tuna and sardines mixed together, Finally, add a tin of peeled plum tomatoes (or fresh if available) NB. Never add cheese to a fish pasta – possibly a little rosemary if you have it but no other herbs. Stir and check frequently.
Now we sit before a peat fire which is burning with a bright flame, the blocks of peat residing in bins beside the hearth. We have eaten well. The pasta was excellent and was accompanied with cups of Harp lager, oranges and chocolate. And so began a turning point in my life: this was an understanding of something greater - being able to make a journey by myself - and like a real writer I kept a record. When the Irish journey ended, I kept in touch with my Italian friends and the following Easter they invited me to Rome, booking me into an inexpensive hotel. I was able to join their families and friends there for a very enjoyable week which in turn led to other things.
It is 2026 and I have returned from Trieste. My wife and I frequently visited a coffee bar there called Home, run entirely by young people, where a surprising rapport existed between us from the first moment. Nearby is a Literary Museum devoted to the writers James Joyce and Italo Svevo, and the Italian poet Umberto Saba. Their statues too are placed around the city. The picture of me at the start of this blog, taken from a bridge over The Canal, is with the James Joyce statue.
I have most of this writer's published work. In addition to Stephen Hero, I have Ulysses, of which he wrote most in Trieste; Dubliners, Exiles, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Pomes Penyeach, and in the museum shop I came across the Faber edition of Giacomo Joyce. This book in Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellman’s words, is a work of ‘small, fragile, enduring perfection’. I look forward to reading it:
Perhaps I will do so now that I am home, as the past and the present turn into each other in the shape of epiphany.
References
James Joyce Stephen Hero (1966) published by Four Square Books
James Joyce Giacomo Joyce (2019) published in Faber Stories with an introduction by Colm Toibin
Peter Leyland Irish Notebook Summer 1994
Tuppen-Corps, A. (May 2017 - May 2018) Transformational Encounters. Touch, Traction. Transform (TETTT)
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