Photographs of the famous Irish author, James Joyce, mostly picture him wearing his iconic metal round-eye spectacles with tortoiseshell rims. In his younger days he used pince-nez. But there are also images of him with the addition of an eyepatch over his left eye which, together with his moustache, thin goatee beard and bow-tie, gives him quite a rakish air. But the eyepatch was not merely an affectation, as Joyce was plagued by ocular problems throughout his life.
From a young age, Joyce showed himself to be an intelligent boy, with a gift for languages and an aptitude for writing. He taught himself Norwegian so that he could read the plays of Ibsen in their original language, while also ploughing through Dante, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In later life he was able to speak 17 languages, partly thanks to his travels around Europe. For such a bookish individual, the eye conditions that were to render him unable to read or write for long periods must have felt like a particular form of torture.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, the eldest of 10 children. His father, Stanislaus, was a fine singer but too fond of drink to be able to provide a stable income for the family. The Joyces’ frequently impecunious status necessitated several changes of lodgings, but the seaside town of Bray, along the coast from Dublin, was where he called home during his early years.
Eye problems were a family trait, so it is not entirely surprising that Joyce was to suffer such difficulties himself. His father was treated at the Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin, for iritis and conjunctivitis. Incidentally, that venerable institution is the oldest voluntary hospital in Great Britain and Ireland, having been founded by six surgeons in 1718, appalled by the misery of the sick and the poor in their city. In 1903 Joyce’s mother, Mary Jane, was also examined by an ophthalmologist there. In a letter to Joyce, his father states that ‘… the Dr says she has small ulcers but did not alarm us.’
By the age of six Joyce had been diagnosed as myopic and prescribed spectacles. An episode from that time, when he was accidentally knocked over and the spectacles were ‘broken in three pieces’, made such an impression, especially when, a few days later, a prefect at his school punished him unfairly, that a version of it found its way into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
‘Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with your hand this moment!’
In around 1908-09, Joyce had his first attack of iritis. The cause is still a matter for conjecture; was it a complication of a rheumatic illness, which occurred initially while in Trieste in 1907, or was it a result of possible venereal infections contracted during that period? Meanwhile, his myopia was progressing. ‘I was examined by the doctor of the naval hospital here last week,’ he wrote from Trieste in 1905, ‘and I now wear pince-nez glasses on a string for reading. My number is very strong…’.
Joyce clearly found wearing spectacles very irritating. In another letter he complained that, ‘My glasses annoy me. They are crooked and there is a flaw in both of the glasses. It is a bloody nuisance to have to carry bits of glass in your eye.’ So, in the summer of 1909, Joyce was laid up in Dublin with rheumatism and iritis. According to one visiting friend he looked ‘in splendid health’. But another visitor, the surgeon-poet Oliver St John Gogarty, exclaimed, ‘Jaysus, man, you’re in phthisis [tubercular].’
Further rheumatic episodes followed and, in 1917, now living in Zurich with his wife Nora and children, Giorgio and Lucia, he suffered a further attack of iritis, complicated by acute and very painful glaucoma. On August 24, he had an iridectomy performed on his right eye, by Ernst Sidler Huguenin, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Zurich. Although the operation was successful, it had been complicated. There was some haemmorhaging for several days and the slow recovery was not helped by Joyce having a nervous collapse lasting three days. He recovered sufficiently to be able to write limericks in the dark. But the eye problems were not completely resolved and there was some permanent loss of vision in the right eye. This was the first of 11 eye operations that Joyce was to undergo during his lifetime.
In 1918 and 1919 the iritis returned, affecting both eyes. By 1921, now living in Paris in somewhat straitened circumstances, he reported that, ‘I am nearly dead with work and eyes.’ A friend arranged for him to see an American ophthalmologist, Louis Borsch, who practised there. An interesting character, he patented the first fused bifocal design, and manufactured it in America under the ‘Kryptok’ name in partnership with the Bristol-based English optician, Matthew Dunscome, and the Prussian-American optician, Emil Myerowitz. Borsch prevaricated over another operation, instead suggesting dental extractions (his teeth were in a poor state) and rest first.
A stay in Nice was spoiled within the first day by yet another iritis attack. Joyce consulted a colleague that Borsch had recommended, Louis Colin. To his patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, he explained, ‘I am to have the visit of five leeches in an hour from now and he [Colin] hopes that by relieving the congestion the attack will not develop.’ Additional treatment with dionine, an opiate narcotic analgesic, kept the condition in check. After his return to Paris, Borsch performed a sphincterectomy in April 1923, which resulted in a slow improvement of vision, followed by an iridectomy on the left eye in June 1924.
This latter was less successful: Joyce wrote in October, ‘During these last two days the sight of my eye has been wretched. I see less than before.’ And then, in November, came the shock of ‘…unpleasant news for me. I have a cataract and am to be operated on next Saturday. This came on me as a surprise. Borsch did not tell me and I could not understand how my sight went on failing. He says I will get my sight back. These continuous operations are dreadful.’
The cataract operation was not a great success. To add to the misery, when he closed his eyes Joyce suffered visual hallucinations. By early 1925, having suffered with conjunctivitis, he was managing to write in large black letters with a black pencil, using a magnifying glass to decipher the words. In this mode he managed to work a little on Finnegan’s Wake. That April Borsch performed a capsulotomy, again with little improvement in vision.
Borsch died of a heart attack in 1929. Joyce was recommended to Professor Alfred Vogt, Sidler Huguenin’s successor at Zurich. A gruff, taciturn character, he was nevertheless incredibly patient and was an excellent surgeon; he also published The Handbook and Atlas of Slit-lamp Microscopy of the Living Eye (1941). Joyce consulted Vogt in April 1930 after which Vogt wrote up a detailed report. He operated on the left eye for ‘tertiary cataract’ noting that much of the vitreous had been lost during previous operations. There was also some posterior capsule remaining from the previous operation which had now become fibrosed and would require a further procedure. The right eye had ‘a complicated cataract on which an 11th operation must ultimately be performed.’ At least, in both eyes, optic nerves, peripheral retinas and maculae were functioning normally.
Despite orders to see Vogt again soon, Joyce did not get back to Zurich until 1932. Unfortunately, it was now too late for the proposed operation on the right eye as the cataract had progressed too far and was complicated by glaucoma and retinal atrophy. Consequently, Vogt was also reluctant to touch the left eye. In 1933 Joyce wrote to his father that the cataract was now obscuring Vogt’s view of the retina and there was little light perception. He continued to consult Vogt until at least 1937, maintaining some vision in his left eye.
Whether his iritis was due to syphilis, rheumatism, ankylosing spondylitis or – perhaps poetically given Joyce’s love of puns – Reiter’s syndrome, his eyes were a constant source of trouble and are referenced in his work. A poem he wrote in 1918 begins:
The eyes that mock me sign the way
Whereto I pass at the eve of day…