Exiles is a wonderful play, it really is. The Ibsen influences are obvious and for the most part welcome. Refreshingly liberal and open in its ideas, Exiles is a play that is well worth the reading. With some changes, Exiles could have had been a masterpiece, but it is pretty impressive as it is. What changes you might ask? It is hard for me to put a finger of it, but this play did feel a bit unfinished. Perhaps it just needed more work and thought. Exiles has the potential without doubt, it has...

The Heart flutters. Fill it to brim with love and it still flutters at the corners for freedom. Dump in a handful of greed and it continues to flutter in the remaining space for ablution. Allow peace to be its sole tenant and it still flutters at the bottom for silent passion. What do you do of the adamant, furtive heart? One who doesn’t know bowing, doesn’t recognize rules, doesn’t believe in silence, doesn’t belong to society? What can you possibly make it understand when all the understanding...

Not my favorite Joyce.

You may then know in soul and body, a hundred forms, and ever restlessly, what some old theologian, Duns Scotus, I think, called a death of the spirit. There is a muddy dip of uncertainty surrounding this piece. I have been addled by overwork for over a month and having found this paperback a few weeks back I kept it in reserve: circumstances rewarding portability have grown common. My expectations for Exiles were of a bridge, another route to Ulysses and the Wake. The opening act appeared to a

I'm not really excited about the theater plays, when it comes to reading them, but, it just happens to hit one in my hand, and really to enjoy it, at the beginning. "Exiles" - is a little book which you go through quickly, but which leaves you with a certain sense of frustration, in the end. Here is a tangled love-story, with a loving quadrangle, in which none of the four characters knows indeed what he wants. They are crushed by consuming passions, which grind on them, but no one does anything...

Exiles is the only play written by Jame Joyce. He was so inspired by the Henrik Ibsen's plays and is said to have written is as a tribute to that great Norwegian playwright. The play did not receive well. In fact, Exiles is considered as the least successful out of all the published works by James Joyce. The story of the play is to some part modeled on the author himself. The story begins with the arrival of Richard Rowan and his common-law wife, Bertha in Dublin after a long self-imposed exil

RICHARD: Listen. She is dead. She lies on my bed. I look at her body which I betrayed — grossly and many times. And loved, too, and wept over. And I know that her body was always my loyal slave. To me, to me only she gave...[He breaks off and turns aside, unable to speak.]

Oof, oh boy. Yeah, Joyce wrote a play. That's why he didn't write two plays. This isn't a case like his poetry, which is unremarkable but acceptable and goes down easy; no, Exiles is more or less a failure. The biggest issue with it is dialogue, James, what happened to ye? It has neither the lively full bodied character dialogue of works like Ulysses, and it doesn't have the low key nigh-realistic dialogue of Dubliners. It's either bafflingly didactic or shamelessly mechanical. The entire play i...

I'm not a fan of Joyce, which probably explains why I really liked this play. Exiles is much more straightforward than any of his novels, and far more dramatic and interesting than any of the short stories in The Dubliners. I decided to give it a try after hearing that it was by far his most "conventional" work, a term which appeals to me in respect to authors like James Joyce and William Faulkner. If you like stories where you have to wrestle with every sentence in order to appreciate their sub...

I was going to start this with a 'Joyce is to English and world literature what x is to y...' but, I'll go one better and just say that Joyce just IS literature. The man embodied so much of what's great and horrible about writers, about the craft, about the simplicity of telling a story versus the herculean nonsense that is the extracting of meaning, new, old, completely invented or absolute truth, from that writing. Joyce was brilliant and revolutionary. He completely shifted the course of Engl...

Originally published on my blog here in May 2001.Of all Joyce's mature writing, his only play is probably the least well known. It is also one of his least successful pieces, never having had much success on the stage. Displaying an unusual lack of confidence, it shows its influences strongly.The Exiles manages to simultaneously be dull enough to seem longer than it is and unsatisfying enough to seem shorter. This is because Joyce gives all the real character to the part of Richard; neither he n...

Meh, it would probably be better to see this performed. Nonetheless, I have read it. Must finish the Wake now.

I am recommending this for two reasons.The first is that the introduction is by Conor McPherson, a playwright whose works (among them THE SEAFARER, which is currently on Broadway) take a cue from Joyce and Yeats.The second reason is that this volume contains a twelve-page set of notes by Joyce himself. It's handy to have EXILES by itself. I've only noticed it previously contained in THE PORTABLE JOYCE, which, I think, has gone out of print. [It hasn't. It's even been corrected to show dashes ins...

I'm reading Joyce for uni because my final essay has to be on a Joyce short story and I want to familiarise myself with his writing, and this was surprisingly interesting? I've never been particularly interested in reading plays but the dynamic between the characters was quite interesting. the thought of the men being so open with their relationships and their love was definitely not what I expected from a play published in 1915, but on the other hand I was not a fan of how the women were portra...

no one understands like joyce does

Exiles, a 3-act play by James Joyce, is centered on a love-triangle between Richard Rowan, his wife Bertha, and Robert Hand, Richard's longtime friend. Their conversation rapidly dribbles out little tidbits that bring a slew of questions to the mind of the reader (or audience). Questions like, "What kind of wild past did these two guys enjoy?" Or, "Does Richard want his friend and his wife to get together?" And perhaps most of all, "Why did James Joyce try to write a play?" That's just it. A dra...

Picture a strong Ibsen influence, yet more autobiographical, more unique and with a happy end. It sure gets you thinking, after all it's more than a complex triangle. It's about the implications of love and commitment, of life and freedom. You manage to empathize with some of the characters even if you'd never would do this game of self damage.

Worst JJ book is better than everybody else's best!edit-On second thought this is good but pretty forgettable. Fun for JJ fans, tho!

a confused play supposedly based on Joyce's fear/expectation of what would happen if he returned to Ireland after his years living abroad. not worth your time

It's no secret that James Joyce was an admirer of the work of Henrik Ibsen. This guy: Not to be confused with this fellow here: When asked once "And what did you do in the Great War?" James Joyce purportedly replied, "I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?" And "What did you do between Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses?" "I did Ibsen." The influence of Ibsen in Joyce's only play is undeniable, but the themes, particularly exile and forging one's own path in the word are constant preoccupations of Jo...

‘Exiles’ is the only play Joyce produced and was, upon its release, derided as filth and rejected by theatres at home and abroad, as well as by esteemed literary and theatre figures like George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats. Having been familiar with Joyce only through his collection of stories, ‘The Dubliners’, ‘Exiles’ proved somewhat of a departure, and a disappointing one at that. The protagonist is clearly a self-projection of Joyce, and he and his wife’s exile to Rome clearly mirrors that of J...

Thought I'd fill. in a Joyce gap since I should be rereading chunks soon. This is a funny little piece - his only play. It's... not brilliant. I wouldn't quite call it regressive but I don't think it could ever be described as forward-thinking. The genius doesn't shine here as it ought.Was halfway convinced it was going to go all Design for Living at one point. It's incredibly generous in feeding fuel to queer readings so there's that entertaining avenue there. In its way it is entertaining and

Painfully honest-- hands empty; revealing.

Very - very - dramatic

I typically love Joyce, but perhaps plays are not his format. I found this very boring.

Joyce's too oft neglected (perhaps because of its falling between Portrait and Ulysses) only play and one of his most personally revealing works. His early devotion to Ibsen really comes to the fore here. Would love to see this on the stage.

I feel this play could have been better but I cannot define precisely how. I cannot picture it on stage, but that does not bother me, I've loved many "only to read" plays. Perhaps with some editing and rewriting Exiles could have been really great. ( Here I go with the maybes: If it had been a great success would it have been edited and improved? Ah, questions, questions) It has the potential without doubt, it has some wonderful dialogues but I feel something is missing. It may be that Joyce's t...

"It is not in the darkness of belief that I desire you. But in restless, living, wounding doubt."-RichardDon’t read this play too fast.If you take the time to parse lines such as the one above, instead of skating over their vague emotion, your brain will squirm, bend, and morph as it tries to evolve into a more skillful mechanism. This is the classic Joycean headspace -- or at least the best junior version of it that can be mustered on the predominantly extroverted medium of the Stage.It is f...

A must read if you’re interested in the progression of Joyce.I started reading this on Bloomsday 2018 sitting on a beach in Lanzarote facing the Atlantic. I write these words on a sun lounger at the Lanzarote Paradise as the sun scorches my already burnt to a crisp fatty back even more. Perhaps it’s just me but Lanzarote Paradise sounds a tad unnerving, a bit Hotel California. On this same cheap ten day trip to the Canary Islands I also turned the pages of The Old Man And The Sea which was writt...

Supposed to be feminist & kinda liberal, but this play just oozes homoerotic tension and poor writing. I'm not so passionate about reading plays, but I can tell the good from the bad, especially when I know how masterful Joyce is with his prose.This play was inspired by Ibsen's work and yet remains just as subtly sexist as Joyce's Portrait and Ulysses. At some point in his notes he says Richard is modeled on Schopenhauer's view on women's rights and that's it on Joyce's progressivism.