With St Patrick’s Day approaching this weekend, Pula will be celebrating the occasion as heartily as any city – only this one has special ties to Ireland’s most famous writer.
He may have only stayed for half a year, but James Joyce once graced Pula, just as he did Trieste, Zürich and Paris.
It was 120 years ago that Joyce, then 22, arrived here with his new love Nora Barnacle, to take up a post teaching English at the Berlitz School. They had left Dublin in October 1904, stopping off in London and Paris, then heading to Zürich for Joyce to work at the Berlitz School there.
With no job available, Joyce tried in Trieste before being sent on to nearby Pula, then referred to as Pola, a major naval base in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
They arrived on October 30. The school had just opened, mainly to cater to the naval officers who required a higher standard of English. One of these was the later autocratic leader of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, head of the country between the wars.
For Joyce, teaching English was simply a means to an end, to allow him to keep writing. It was here that he completed Clay, one of the 15 short stories that would comprise his first published work, Dubliners.
It would be ten years before the collection saw the light of day. In the meantime, Joyce continued to teach. By December 1904, Nora discovered she was pregnant. Impoverished and miserable in Pula, Joyce described it as a ‘naval Siberia’ when writing to his aunt on New Year’s Eve.
One of Joyce’s few pleasures was spending time in the popular Café Miramar on the Riva, where foreign newspapers were available.
The couple stuck it out until March 1905. When a position at last became available in Trieste, they went there as quickly as they could. By July, Nora gave birth to their first child, and Joyce invited his brother Stanislaus to stay in a city he would call home for several years.
The most striking reminder of Joyce’s short interlude in Pula is a statue created by Istrian sculptor Mate Čvrljak. It shows the writer in a familiar pose, having coffee at a terrace table. The location is no coincidence: the Caffe Uliks (‘Ulysses’) at Trg Portarata, next door to the language school where he taught, now a hostel. Joyce and Nora lived opposite.
A plaque in English and Croatian commemorates the author’s short sojourn. Sadly, the Café Miramar is long closed.