JAMES JOYCE – TRIESTE
The statue of James Joyce was created by the Trieste sculptor Nino Spagnoli and placed in Ponterosso on the Grand Canal in 2004 to commemorate the centenary of the Irish writer’s arrival in Trieste.
Under the statue a plaque
recalls the writer’s deep bond with the city of Trieste. The 16th June of every year in Trieste since 2010 is Bloomsday the symbolic date in which James Joyce’s scholars and passionate readers all over the world celebrate the Irish writer. of the hero of the novel Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, through the streets of his Dublin.
James Joyce arrived in Trieste on October 20, 1904 with his partner Nora Barnacle to work as a teacher at the Berlitz School. Unfortunately the place was no longer available and was sent to Pula where there was a new school location. He returned to Trieste in 1905 at the birth of his first son Giorgio and in the meantime he was joined by his brother Stanislaus who began to work at the Berlitz School. In 1907, after a period in Rome where he worked as a clerk at Nast, Kolb & Schumacher Bank, he returned to Trieste. Here he lectured on behalf of the Popular University and published Chamber Music. He began to teach private students belonging to the Trieste high bourgeoisie, including Italo Svevo. Between the two began a deep relationship of friendship and mutual respect.
Italo Svevo had already published his first two books “Una Vita” and “Senilità”, but no one had dealt with them. Joyce read them and urged Svevo to keep writing. Meanwhile Joyce’s life was divided between private lessons, the chair at the Revoltella Higher School of Commerce, the conferences at the Popular University and his first publications Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners also arrived. He began to design the first parts of the Ulysses.
At the outbreak of the First World War he had to leave Trieste for Zurich to return in October 1919, remaining there until June 1920. During this period Joyce wrote Nausicaa and Oxen of the Sun, two episodes of Ulysses, and began the episode entitled Circe. He moved to Paris and never returned to Trieste. Ulysses was published in 1922.
SALONE DEGLI INCANTI TRIESTE
The architect Giorgio Polli built the ex-Pescheria Centrale in 1913, in Riva Nazario Sauro in front of Piazza Venezia. Due to the structure that resembles a church, it is called by the people of Trieste “Santa Maria del Guato”, a typical local fish.
The construction of brick walls interspersed with large windows integrates with the neoclassical style of the buildings overlooking the banks.
The sea water tank was contained by the bell tower. Bas-relief sculptures of the prow of fishing bragozzi and crustaceans adorn the facade and recall the function of the building.
Inside, the large liberty style hall, surrounded by large perimeter walls which, with huge iron windows, open at intervals on the sea and the shores, housed a noisy market.
The fish auctions were held on the pronaos, while the retail market took place inside, where the fish was displayed on large Karst marble counters.
The catch was mainly brought from the prow of the bragozzi from Gradesi and Chioggiotti moored at the adjacent pier. The façade covered in bricks with prominences in white stone and adorned with bas-relief sculptures of a marine character gives the structure a “veiling” of the Venetian style that well combines the location of the building between the quays of the dock and the front of the neoclassical buildings of the Rive .
Currently the building houses the Salone degli Incanti, a multipurpose exhibition center that hosts events, exhibitions and cultural events. The name derives from the auction sale of the fish that took place on the pronaos of the former fish market.
In 1974 Francis Ford Coppola chooses the former fish shop in Trieste to shoot the scene of the arrival of Vito Andolini from Corleone, in the film “The Godfather”, at Ellis Island in New York.