Joyce smelled it, too

I was on my way to the Italian-American Association this morning, which I tend to think of in its Italian form: "Associazione Italo-Americana" or ASSITAM for short, when I came across the life-size bronze statue of James Joyce on the canal bridge in Via Roma. He's got his head tilted just so, he's wearing those funny round glasses and hat, his hands are in his pockets like he's in no hurry to get to work, which was at the Berlitz school (now defunct) to teach English. He lived in Trieste for ten years, I've heard, and spoke the Triestino dialect fluently. He said it was "easy on the tongue," while he preferred to write in English. His daughter's first language was Triestino, by the way, and the family went on to speak it together even after they left Trieste.

Right now I happen to be reading the book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris (I have it checked out from the library. You can read it when I'm done), and she has this great quote from Joyce talking about going to see the Opera in the cheap seats at the Teatro Verdi (a place to see, by the way, same architect as the Scala in Milan, so just like it, only smaller).

"The business families of Trieste were fervent opera-goers. When Joyce went to a performance, to sit among the 'sour reek of armpits' and 'phosphorescent farts' of the upper balcony, he often saw in the stalls and boxes below bourgeois pupils of his, following the music with extreme attention..."

And that's all I have to say about that.

Except for this. That statue of Joyce is about 5 years old now. A lot of people must pat him on the back as they pass him on that bridge because his left shoulder has become the color that parts of statues get when you rub them for good luck.