Not many people know that James Joyce spent 11 years in Trieste as a lecturer at the University. Now, his bronze statue still walks the bridge across the canal on Ponte Rossa:
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Trieste at night. Smell of the Adriatic sea, in which I learned to swim some decades ago, just two towns (and two border crossings) away from here. Ponte Rossa, where I got my first jeans, back in 1970 or so. Nostalgia.
Note: I originally planned to post this along with the Friday Fractal. Then, like chaos, fractals, and life, it didn't turn out the way I expected. Considering the length and tone of this piece, it will stand better alone. Never fear, the fractal is still on the way.
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Cleo was almost 16 years old, she'd been sick, and her death was no surprise. Still, when I returned to a home without cats, without pets of any sort, I was startled by my grief -- not so much its intensity as…
Joyce was particularly taken with the dialect; if Dublin speech is distinctive, Triestine speech is much more so, having its own spelling and verb forms and infusion of Slovene and other words. Not only was Triestino a special dialect, but the residents of Trieste, who had congregated from Greece, Austria, Hungary, and Italy, all spoke the dialect with special pronunciations. The puns and international jokes that resulted delighted Joyce.
~from James Joyce, by Richard Ellman