James Joyce

Yeats, an early influence, put him up in London en route to Paris, later turning down his only play and trying to entice him back to Ireland. Pound met him through Yeats, and energetically championed his work. Synge was a supportive companion in Paris, Svevo a student in Trieste. Joyce’s dinner with Proust, Picasso, Stravinsky and Diaghilev was disappointing: he and Proust hardly spoke, though Proust’s day was just starting as his own ended. Beckett assisted, Brancusi drew, Eliot and Shaw corresponded, Jung treated his daughter, while Claudel, appalled, returned the signed copy of Finnegan’s Wake Joyce had given him.