Methinks
the search for any commonality among authors with shifting domiciles is
complicated by the wide diversity of the circumstances and motives
leading to their nation-hopping. In particular, we have voluntary
(Joyce) and forced “exiles” (Nabokov). Even this distinction can be
blurred, as in Conrad’s confusing travels prior to his taking UK
citizenship.
Me also thinks that we risk the ancient pattern-searching dangers: the
excess of instances (I’m sure others will add to Jansy’s examples) can
support any cherry-picked hypothesis.
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a
camel?
Polonius: By th' Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale.
Polonius: Very like a whale.
Act III scene ii
Ease of travel since, say, 1900, is a real but mundane factor, as are
the Tax incentives that have best-selling writers skipping to Ireland,
Monaco, or Switzerland (the list of havens changes regularly).
Censorship and sheer living-standards are also common factors
attracting third-world writers to western capitals, while climate can
work in the opposite direction.
The subsequent choice of language also presents too many particular
examples to allow naïve generalizations. TS Eliot, Oscar Wilde and
Henry James, of course, moved within Anglophonia and had no reason to
switch languages. Joyce-in-Exile continued to write in English (even
allowing for the 26 languages used in Finnegans Wake!) while his friend
Beckett wrote major works in the French of his adopted domicile.
Nabokov remains, I believe, a truly unique multilingual miracle,
transcending the bilingualism of Conrad and Beckett. More when this
damned World Cup is over.
Stan Kelly-Bootle (Boole’s Kant Telly?)