Exiles

For a while now, I have been interested in the lives of artists. Compared to the million-and-wan imitations of Rilke’s letters spawning in every online cultural magazine, biography lays out the whole creative process in exemplar. It’s comforting to find small excerpts of failed drafts, long periods of writer’s block, lost friends or lovers, and exile. The last of these is the subject of James Joyce’s one flirtation with playwriting. Published in 1918, Exiles was rejected by W. B. Yeats’ Abbey Theatre and performed in Munich to unfavourable reviews. Although it was revived by Harold Pinter in 1970 with some success, it remains on the periphery of discussions about Joyce. Much like the künstlerroman A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it is semi-autobiographical. The play deals with tensions between two couples: Richard and Bertha, libertine lovers recently returned to Ireland from Rome, and Robert and Beatrice, a married couple in Dublin, with Robert, an old friend of Richard’s. Although Richard “allows Bertha complete freedom” — which she also tacitly allows him after Robert makes a serious advance on her — Richard cannot help himself but feel jealous even as his principles force him to consent to the affair.

It is easy to see why Exiles was not staged at the Abbey. Cosmopolitan, with sprinkles of philosophy, Italian vocabulary, and knowing social commentary, the play is nothing like the earthy, wild plays of John Millington Synge, Lady Gregory, or the Irish Literary Revival. Exiles is, however, a significant work, even if it pales in comparison to something like Ulysses, published in its entirety four years later in 1922. The play is an exploration of the mental exile that proceeds to and from physical exile. As Robert and Bertha attempt to explain to Richard their budding affair, the sound of a fisherwoman shouting “fresh Dublin Bay herrings” echoes throughout the room, homely Ireland appearing and constricting them.

Although the romantic events of the play are fictional, the situation is not dissimilar to Joyce’s own life. He met Nora Barnacle in 1904 and they were unmarried until 1931, while also having a son. Joyce, much like next generation figures Samuel Beckett and Thomas MacGreevy, found the literary establishment in Ireland frigid and stifling. It seems a logical step then, that all three left the country just as their literary ambitions were beginning. Joyce and MacGreevy met in Paris in 1927, while both Beckett and MacGreevy were teaching at the École Normale Supérieure, and MacGreevy introduced Beckett to Joyce. Notably, this meeting took place in France, then considered by many as the centre of the artistic world. It is easy to see the development of these artists historically — they found themselves in the ‘unique’ freeing atmosphere of 1920s Paris and formed opposition to their old country. Exiles seems to be a response to this backward, repressive Ireland, and a danger is that we might be tempted to define it this way. After all, modern technology renders exile itself almost obsolete now, right?

It seems easier to characterise exile now as an inherently political part of a contemporary writer’s development. In the last century this was mostly observed within Latin America and the Soviet bloc. Yet even these examples illustrate how difficult it is to define something or someone, especially an artist, historically. Soviet exiles were at first White Russians, and their writing often reflects a yearning for an idealised Tsarist Russia, with strong details and romance, as in the case of Nabokov. But compared to the Irish exiles, Nabokov was never considered a German writer (despite living some twenty years in Berlin), nor is he seen as an American writer. Nonetheless, the United States as an idea, especially as a ‘free’ country, dominates his later novels. More recently by comparison, Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis and Azar Nasifi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran have been criticised by some for glorifying Western conceptions of Iranian culture and history, and failing to deconstruct Orientalist and oppressive structures in Western culture. For these writers, the West and the United States seem a model for ‘free’ countries and yet, as the criticism reflects, it is not that simple. In this context, we find the cosmopolitan, liberal ideals of exile in Joyce inverted.

But it is worth remembering that an author is an individual, and wherever their location, they do possess the ability to make original works. As Josef Brodsky, himself an exile from Soviet control, said on a 1982 talk show “A poet, like a bird, will start to chirp on any branch he alights on.” It is unfair to reduce an artist to a visa.

And what about Australia? As Patrick White saw it in 1957, there was a Great Australian Emptiness at the heart of our cultural life, an “exaltation of the average.” Although this criticism is no longer fair, partially as a result of White and his colleagues, Australian literature remains isolated from the international scene. In some ways this is even advancing. Until the admittance of US writers into the Booker Prize, Australians had featured prominently (think Kate Grenville, Thomas Keneally, and Aravind Adiga) but Charlotte Wood’s longlisting this year was the first since the naturalised J. M. Coetzee in 2016. Of course, one award is no indication of cultural life, but to be frank, it is not healthy for us to be read only by ourselves. When that happens there is always the risk of stagnation and insularity. Consider that one of Australia’s best innovators, Gerald Murnane, has mostly stayed out of the cultural world, and lives in Goroke, a small town west of Horsham in Victoria. There is nothing unusual in writers living away from the cities, but for some reason Murnane’s existence has been characterised as exile. Unlike the famous recluse Thomas Pynchon, who famously said that “'recluse' is a codeword generated by journalists…meaning 'doesn't like to talk to reporters',” Murnane has given plenty of interviews, including to ABC News in 2018. One way of thinking about this is that Australia has a very strict understanding of what a ‘good writer’ should do and be and Murnane simply does not feel comfortable in that kind of existence.

Perhaps this example reflects our own desire to ground ourselves in notions of place and belonging. It seems better to be loved inside a box than free but alone, especially before success. But art, if I can join the mass of Rilke’s imitators, cannot exist in submitting to what is already there. One way or another, an artist must make something of the world. Exile is ultimately what a gaoler calls freedom, and we are far too often our own prisoners.