4. Do you think that Lucia's madness affected Joyce's writing? Do you think Joyce had writer’s block at any time?
Fritz Senn said ----- It most likely did. --- I can’t tell about writer’s block. Obviously there were long periods when Joyce did not work on the Wake, because of problems, eyes, Lucia, lack of inspiration, maybe writer’s block. (This is not my area). --- [Another question: Do you suppose Lucia could read FW? If so, do you think she could understand it better than others?] No idea. If she had read it, or ever could, she might well have picked out meanings that are hidden from us.
David Hayman said ----- Of course it did, but not in any simple or straight forward fashion. Joyce's relationship to his daughter, his wife, his son and himself figures in the book on many levels and defies analysis. It is prime matter if not primal matter. On the other hand, he wrote the book with Lucia firmly in mind. She figures in some of his earliest conceptual notes as a model of young femininity. If her madness predated the composition, then it may have infected that part of the book, but madness is a theme in Joyce at least from Portrait. It frightened him as it does most of us. His daughter's madness left him helpless and in denial, but the Wake is bigger than that. --- See "Her Father's Voice" (much reprinted but available in the James Joyce: the Centennial Symposium). That essay treats Lucia's [auto]biographical papers and her dreams. See also "I Think Her Pretty" [James Joyce Annual 1990] in which I treat the responses to her behavior that I have found in one of Joyce’s notebooks.
more at ___ Of course Joyce, the Joyce terrain is a disputed territory ~ but more at the place where I quoted from They may give you some ammunition.
