JansyM wrote: ... mysteriously, he is named Daniel O'Connell. One more trip to his book-case and he gets Joyce's "The Dead" in which there is no reference to Daniel O'Connell, nor any O'Donnell.
I’m deeply puzzled. No conceivable mystery about one of Ireland’s most renowned rebel politicians! Dónal Ó Conaill (6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847; English spelling: Daniel O'Connell. His name and praise for his struggles for Catholic (and more generally Human) rights are ever-present in Irish songs and literature. His face adorns postage stamps and bank notes. It’s impossible to do the Bloomsday tour without walking up Dublin’s main street, named after this hero. The O’Connell Street Post Office was the immortal scene of the Easter 1914 Rising. One end of this street is dominated by the huge O’Connell monument (erected 1864).
His fame as the Great Emancipator was world-wide, influencing Gandhi and Martin Luther-King Jr.
There’s also an interesting Hispanic connection: “O'Connell admired Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar, and one of his sons, Morgan O'Connell, was a volunteer officer in Bolívar's army in 1820, aged 15.”
Endless literary links:
He was told by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) "you have done more for your nation than any man since Washington ever did." William Gladstone (1809–1898) described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen." Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote that "Napoleon and O'Connell were the only great men the 19th century had ever seen." Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) wrote that "the only man like Luther, in the power he wielded was O'Connell." William Grenville (1759–1834) wrote that "history will speak of him as one of the most remarkable men that ever lived." O'Connell met, befriended, and became a great inspiration to Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) a former American slave who became a highly influential leader of the abolitionist movement, social reformer, orator, writer and statesman.
(wiki)
I have no idea why Daniel O’Connell’s name should or should not be expected in Joyce’s The Dead.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 01/07/2011 00:59, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
"O’Donnell, Sylvia, nee O’Connell, born 1895? 1890?, the much-traveled, much-married mother of Odon (q.v.), 149, 691; after marrying and divorcing college president Leopold O’Donnell in 1915, father of Odon, she married Peter Gusev, first Duke of Rahl, and graced Zembla till about 1925 when she married an Oriental prince met in Chamonix; after a number of other more or less glamorous marriages, she was in the act of divorcing Lionel Lavender, cousin of Joseph, when last seen in this Index."
(Pale Fire)
Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas, in Dublinesca (2010), describes the mental and physical rambles of an ex-editor who is fond of quotations and sees his life as a written text, called Samuel Riba.The editor-narrator has decided to visit Dublin during bloomsday but he realizes that he's forgotten the name of a bridge where a white horse is seen by every person who crosses it. He checks it in his translation of Joyce's Dubliners by Guillermo Cabrera Infante and finds out that, by a misprint, the bridge is at first called O'Connell but next it becomes O' Donnell. He now checks it in María Isabel Butler de Foley's translation which only mentions O' Connell but where, mysteriously, he is named Daniel O'Connell. One more trip to his book-case and he gets Joyce's "The Dead" in which there is no reference to Daniel O'Connell, nor any O'Donnell.
This particular item may have caught E.Vila-Matas's attention because he'd read Nabokov's "Pale Fire" and still remembered a certain Sylvia née O' Connell, later married to Leopold O' Donnell. By unfolding his search by focusing on this particular item he'd be making a subtle reference to Nabokov, along with James Joyce. However, only the author himself can confirm such a conjecture. It's almost impossible that Nabokov would have inserted a reference to Joyce's Dubliners at this point. Unless there's a particular meaning, related to PF, that can be found in ... a white horse?