ABSTRACT
How much of an influence did Søren Kierkegaard have on James Joyce? This is a question that is as dubious as its answer. For a start, with the multiplicity of references in Joyce’s works it is difficult to say who was an actual influence at all, with the exception of course of key players such as Homer, Dante, Vico, Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, and the authors and artists of the Book of Kells. As anyone will know who has dipped into at least the final two works of Joyce, there are references to Western culture ad infinitum and sometimes ad nauseam that has no rival in the history of literature. As one Joycean scholar wrote on Ulysses, “In a sense everything in the book is a quotation anyway.”4 It is important to realize when entering the universe of Joyce that he was not a philosopher per se, nor even
1 James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company 1922, p. 650. See also reproduction of the 1922 edition with introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson in Oxford World Classics edition (Oxford University Press 2008). 2 SKS 27, 282-3, Papir 292 / JP 5, 5556. 3 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, London: Faber and Faber 1939, p. 184. See also the reproduction of the original 1939 edition in the Penguin Books edition (London 1992) with introduction by Seamus Deane, p. 184.
