THE MIRACLES OF THE season vary over time. One century’s miracles are another’s footnote. What could be more miraculous than standing at an Orthodox Paschal liturgy in a northern Italian port city next to an Irish sceptic named James Joyce?

By R. J. SCHORK [Journal of Modern Greek Studies] – In the autumn of 1904 the young man-artist and Nora Barnacle left Dublin to travel across Europe to the Austro-Hungarian port of Trieste, where Joyce had been promised a position as an instructor in the Berlitz language school. There was a large, well-established community of diaspora Greeks in the Adriatic city….A friend from the Trieste years recalls that Joyce would not be available to anyone on Palm Sunday and on the last days of Holy Week, “especially during all the hours of those great symbolic rituals at the early morning service”.

A generation later, a friend in Paris reports that Joyce told him “that Good Friday and the Holy Saturday were the two days of the year when he went to church, for the liturgies, which represented by their symbolic rituals the oldest mysteries of humanity”. That report is supported by evidence from Joyce’s brother.

The magnet that drew Joyce to these ceremonies was not some residual trace of personal piety, but an abiding appreciation for the music and hymns. Indeed, a distinguished classicist has detected a considerable pattern of echoes from Tenebrae and the Improperia of Good Friday in Ulysses. [Jacques] Mercanton’s memoir also includes a comment on Joyce’s qualified enthusiasm for the chants of the Slavic branch of Orthodoxy: “Speaking next about Russian churches, where he [Joyce] loved to hear the deep, bass voices of the officiants, he said he could not understand my fervent admiration for the Oriental ritual”.

Joyce’s most expansive comment about the Orthodox liturgy comes from another letter to his brother in Dublin. Appropriately enough, the occasion was a Lenten ceremony in Trieste:

While I was attending the Greek mass here last Sunday it seemed to me that my story “The Sisters” was rather remarkable. The Greek mass is strange. The altar is not visible but at times the priest opens the gates and shows himself. He opens and shuts them about six times. For the Gospel he comes out of a side gate and comes down into the chapel and reads from the book. For the elevation he does the same. At the end when he has blessed the people he shuts the gates: a boy comes running down the side of the chapel with a large tray full of little lumps of bread. The priest comes after him and distributes the lumps to scrambling believers. Damn droll! The Greek priest has been taking a great eyeful out of me; two haruspices. (Letters II:86-87)

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Citations omitted. Continued at the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (17.1 [1999] 107-124). M– USE institutional/subscriber access only | A blog post on the topic at Mystagogy | More Chronicles & Notices.