Joyce's "The Dead" takes place today 6 January, the feast of the Epiphany, la festa della Befana. Joyce turns the usual comforting Christmas tale of new life, new hope, into a meditation on the darker and more painful side of the season marked by death, memory, loss. Thread "The Dead" corrects some of the bleakness of the earlier stories in Dubliners. Joyce wrote that he had "been unnecessarily harsh" in not reproducing any Dublin's "ingenuous insularity and its hospitality. The latter “virtue” so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe"

Joyce's great story, "The Dead" takes place today 6 January, feast of the Epiphany. I look forward to discussing it this evening @IrlEmbRome. An endlessly rich story for our times, it turns the comforting Christmas tale of new life into a meditation on death, memory, loss. Thread It corrects or seems to correct some of the bleakness of the earlier stories. Joyce wrote that he had "been unnecessarily harsh" in not reproducing any Dublin's "ingenuous insularity and its hospitality. The latter 'virtue' so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe".

Diary from Italy, 1 April 2020 - on the need for the EU 27 to get their act together before it is too late. Includes English version of @CarloCalenda's letter to @faznet Thread. Full diary: facebook.com/john.mccourt1/…
@IBN_Berlin Social unrest is growing in #Italy Italy as people are worrying not simply about catching the #coronavirus coronavirus but about running out of food and money particularly in the poorer southern regions of the country.