… will zwei ihrer neuen Schiffe nach Joyce und Beckett benennen. Im kritischen Artikel dazu erfährt man, was der Staat Irland für seine Dichter übrig hatte. Es handelt sich um ein in der Geschichte immer wiederkehrendes Verhaltensmuster. Zu Lebzeiten, zu Zeiten, in denen vor allem Künstler noch unbekannt sind, stoßen sie, wenn sie Hilfe benötigen, auf verschlossene Türen. Werden sie aber später berühmt, nutzt man ihren Ruhm, um ihre Namen sich als Verdienst an die Brust zu heften.
>>Beckett and Joyce, in exile, scraping by on a pittance, created art that is still acclaimed around the world. The full resources of the State in that period (including the energies of all the Irish writers who stayed at home) were unable to create anything that had the global cultural impact of two guys who were so poor that Joyce once paid Beckett for some secretarial work with a pair of second-hand trousers.
Both men left the country as young men, and didn’t come back. Both wrote their masterpieces overseas, knowing that, thanks to State censorship, their work would not even be read back home.
When James Joyce died, in Zurich in 1941, the State had two diplomats stationed there. Despite Joyce’s global fame, neither attended his funeral. When Joyce’s widow, Nora Barnacle of Galway, asked for the State’s assistance in repatriating her husband’s body to Ireland, it refused. He is therefore buried in a modest grave in Zurich. (His American friend and patron, Harriet Weaver, paid for his funeral.)
There’s unsupportive, and there’s unsupportive. The State wouldn’t even give Joyce a lift home when he was dead.
As for Beckett, he was still having new works banned in Ireland as late as the 1960s, with the Beatles in the charts.What does that say about Ireland? What does that say about Joyce and Beckett? What does that say about the State’s right to borrow their names for a branding exercise?<<
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Siehe hierzu auch: Arno Schmidt, den derartige Vereinnahmung erboste.