Snow

It is almost Christmas. Miss Kate and Miss Julia are giving their annual ball. One by one the guests appear, there is dancing, eating (fat brown goose, marinated rib eye, pudding), there is apprehension about Freddy Malins who is bound to reappear drunk, and Gabriel gives a short table speech as usual.

Gabriel fears his speech will be too pompous. He is worried about his wife Gretta's health and jealous when she listens to tenor Bartelle D'Arcy with too much attention.

Then it is time to leave. In the carriage to their hotel, Gabriel is overcome by a strange combination of joy, lust and anger. In the hotel room, he seeks closeness with his wife. Then, as it has started snowing again outside, the shadow that has been a constant presence in the background of the story appears: Michael Fury, Gretta's former lover.

And while his wife has already fallen asleep and Gabriel reflects on Michael Fury, he feels the presence of all the people who have already died or will die.

An unforgettable impression

James Joyce is not the most accessible writer in world literature. The story The dead counts as an accessible entry to his oeuvre. Here, the writer experiments for the first time with the interior monologue with which he will later become famous. But that comment may also be binned immediately. Just as the plot described above is of minor importance. For it is the closing lines from The dead that make an unforgettable impression. Once you have read them, you won't soon forget them:

Yes, what the newspapers wrote was right: snow was falling all over Ireland. It fell everywhere on the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, fell softly on the Allen Bog and, further west, fell softly into the dark rebellious waves of the Shannon. It also fell everywhere on the lonely graveyard on the hill where Michael Fury was buried. It lay thickly blown up on the crooked crosses and tombstones, on the points of the fence, on the bare thorns. His soul slowly swooned as he heard the snow falling softly across the universe and gently, like the descent of their final end, on all the living and the dead.

Nb. The above piece is a short adaptation of an extensive article on Culture Press from 2016. The story 'the dead' was then republished at Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep publishers. This lovely little book can still be bought for a few euros at your local bookshop.