‘Quakers are at an advantage when it comes to appreciating this notoriously willful writer.’

James Joyce’s work has been called ‘a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement’. But there’s a lot of evidence that he took a close interest in Quakerism, says Jonathan Wooding

'Quaker thoughts need not be pious, consolatory or proper or successful. They may be turbulent, disruptive, rude, even alien.' | Photo: iStock/Niall_Majury.

Are these the wandering thoughts of an individual in a silent Meeting?:

‘God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.’

You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.