The Dirty Letters of James Joyce to Nora

THE DIRTY LETTERS OF JAMES JOYCE TO NORA.Preface by Brenda Maddox
This volume was printed in a limited edition of three copies in May 2008 at Vakalo School of Art and Design under the Art Direction of Hector Haralambous and Dimitris Kritsotakis. It was designed and illustrated by Eleni Marini.
A very rare book with many humorous, graphic images.1909. James Joyce lives in Trieste (Italy) with his family. End of October, he leaves alone for Dublin on a business trip, and stays thereuntil the end of December. He makes a pact with his wife to write to
each other erotic letters. The letters of his wife disappeared, but the
ones he wrote were published in 1975, the “dirty” letters of Joyce to
her wife. Transcribing from Richard Ellmann, Selected Letters of James
Joyce, Introduction, Faber & Faber, London, 1975:
“Frank as these letters are, their psychology can easily be
misunderstood. They were intended to accomplish sexual gratification in
him and inspire the same in her, and at moments they fasten intently on
peculiarities of sexual behaviour, some of which might be technically
called perverse. They display traces of fetishism, anality, paranoia and
masochism, but before quartering Joyce into these categories and
consigning him to their tyranny we must remember that he was capable, in
his work, of ridiculing them all as Circean beguilements, of turning
them into vaudeville routines. Then too, the letters rebuke such obvious
labels by an ulterior purpose; besides the immediate physical goal,
Joyce wi…