Joyce, James

writer

Born: 02.02.1882 in Dublin

died: 13.01.1941 in Zurich

The Irish writer, who had traveled from Paris, spent a week in the spa town largely unnoticed, but not because of the hot springs. Rather, he suffered from short-sightedness from an early age and - after bouts of iritis (an inflammation of the iris) and glaucoma - his eyesight was impaired to the point of blindness following several (unsuccessful) operations. At the beginning of 1930, he visited the ophthalmologist Prof. Alfred Vogt (1879-1943) in Zurich and then consulted the Wiesbaden specialist Prof. Hermann Pagenstecher to obtain a second opinion. Pagenstecher had made a name for himself with methods of cataract surgery in particular. Pagenstecher was able to confirm Prof. Vogt's diagnosis in all respects and the author was operated on by Vogt in Zurich on May 15 (a third-stage cataract in the left eye).

The theme of blindness, which Joyce felt threatened by, is also touched on several times in his novel "Ulysses" (1922), whose main character embarks on an odyssey through the city of Dublin in the course of a single day, using associative techniques to refer to the songs of Homer's "Odyssey". In the so-called Cyclops chapter, he indirectly alludes to the blinding of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus by Odysseus. In another episode, a blind man emerges from the protagonist's stream of consciousness: "What dreams he must have where he sees nothing at all. Life is a dream for him. To be born like this, where is the justice in that?" The author's health improved after the operation. He saw "light again."