Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett

by Richard Ellmann

Book by Ellman, Richard

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Literature, Criticism, 20th Century, Irish Literature

122 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Richard David Ellmann was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century. Its 1982 revised edition won James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Ellmann was a liberal humanist, and his academic work focuses on the major modernist writers of the 20th century.

Reviews

[iosephvs bibliothecarivs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and readable critical analysis and synthesis. This book had its origins in lectures Ellmann gave at the Library of Congress in the early 1980s. The theme seems to be the way in which each writer dealt with contradictions in their lives and work. I knew the least about Beckett beforehand and consequently learned a lot about him. I knew the most about Yeats, but my favourite chapters were those on Wilde and Joyce. Contains some mature language (how could it not with these modernists?) and outdated language ('commit suicide') but definitely worth reading for those interested in art and its creation, Irish literature and drama, European history 1850-1980.

Strangely, the title has nothing to do with the analysis. The author spends no time on Dublin's effect on the writers and does talk about their time away from Ireland - Wilde at Oxford, Yeats in London and the south of France, Joyce and Beckett in Paris. A better title would have been 'Four Irishmen at Home and Abroad'.

If the book were extended after Wilde (b. 1854), Yeats (b. 1865), Joyce (b. 1882), and Beckett (b. 1906) to bring the literary tradition up to today, who might be included? Maybe Behan (b. 1923), Heaney (b. 1939), Patrick McCabe (b. 1955), and Martin MacDonagh (b. 1970)?

[Cem Yüksel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Birbirleri ile yazılarının yanısıra kişisel bağlantıları da olan Wilde, Yeats, Joyce ve Bennett’in kitaplarını anlamak açısından iyi bir analiz kitabı. Yazarlar üzerine verilen konferanslardan oluşturulan kitapta, yazarların kitaplarına yansıyan hayatlarından , düşünce ve tutumlarından izleri görmek ilgi çekici.

[Alger Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me he dado cuenta de un cuarteto de cosas con estos extraordinarios ensayitos:

1) Que me gusta mucho más leer sobre Oscar Wilde que leerlo (a excepción de su teatro, su teatro es impresionante).
2) Que Samuel Beckett me parece, en efecto, algo demasiado extraño como para considerarse un clásico universal, yo siempre lo veré con la pinta de underground, así disfruto más explorarlo.
3) William Butler Yeats es, en efecto, de los autores e irlandeses de lo más "crack" y magníficos que han existido.
4) La persona James Joyce me inspira una desolación bastante agradable, quizás pueda contribuir a que ya me anime a leer ese "Ulysses".

Richard Ellmann me ha permitido conocer otras partes de estos autores que los vuelven mucho más contagiosos e interesantes. Un precioso libro, incluso introductorio, para quien no sienta curiosidad alguna por este cuarteto hasta cierto punto "Beatle" de una Irlanda de la que deseo cada vez saber más. Ya puedo verlos cruzando algún Abbey Road paralelo al británico, quizás algún escenario de algún teatro vibrante de cosas nuevas.

[dkaufman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just enjoyed this book so much. Each essay was specific and enthusiastically written. Delightful reading for those who are interested in these authors!

[ilayda_metis]

Sanırım puan kıracak olsam kısalığından kırardım. Onun dışında güzeldi ve kitabın sonunda dört yazarın da benzerliklerini ve birbirlerinden nasıl etkilendiklerini de güzel açıklamış yazar.

[James Dempsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beckett on learning to ply his art -

‘His teaching post at Trinity he quit abruptly because he discovered, and would later remark,that he could not teach others what he did not himself understand, a handicap that most of us endure without bridling. He returned to the continent, he traveled, he idled, he absorbed languages while he idled, he allowed himself amorous entangle¬ ments, andbecause there was nothing else for it and he was, as he liked to say later,“in the last ditch,” he began to write. Whether he did it to express nuances or to exorcise demons he could perhaps not havespecified.But writehedid.First hewas a poet whowrote short srories,then a novelist who wrote plays.Compositions of all kinds—often hard to label in traditional terms of genre—sprang from his sense that the old relations of authors to their subjects,to their characters, to their language, to their readers, and even to their own selves were discredited.’

[Edward · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of four lectures is a quick read and although it provides some insights into the personal nature/quirks of these writers it is not that informative. The book is not even a short biography of these four and the tone of the text tends to be gossipy but gossip that is presumably backed up by little known sources familiar to the author.

The author attempts some discussion on the interrelationship of among these writers but he falls far short and the result is that they seem to not share all that much in common which may be more the case than not. The lecture on Wilde is probably the least absorbing and the one on Yeats the most engaging as the author is a biographer of the latter.

The reader should be ready to follow up on leads to people and places referenced in the lectures because they can provide some depth into the lives of the individual writers.

[Maria Azpiroz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richar Ellmann es uno de los grandes críticos estadounidenses y famosísimo por su biografía de Joyce. Este libro compila ensayos que son verisiones retocadas de conferencias que dio en la Biblioteca del Congreso durante cuatro años. Tiene numerosas ilustraciones y es muy breve.
Los ensayos no son biografías, contienen anécdotas aisladas y breves análisis de la producción literaria de Oscar Wilde, Yeats, James Joyce y Samuel Beckett. Coincido con algunos lectores que mencionan que el intento de justificar puntos en común de estos autores más allá de Dublín, resulta forzado. Los ensayos incluyen datos y fotos muy interesantes pero en su conjunto carecen de brillo y de fuerza. No he leído la biografía de Joyce de Ellmann que la compré hace un tiempo y la tengo en la lista. Espero sea mejor que este libro.

[Alejandro Orradre · Rating 4 out of 5]

A través de una sencilla prosa, Richard Ellmann nos acerca en el ensayo Cuatro dublineses a la figura de, tal vez, las cuatro figuras masculinas más famosas y trascendentes de la literatura irlandesa (Wilde, Yeats, Joyce y Beckett) en forma de cuatro mini-biografías que recogen puntos concretos de sus vidas, esos momentos en los que se erigieron como personajes inmortales para la Historia.

Siendo un ámbito que pudiera ser pesado o aburrido, Ellmann consigue todo lo contrario: un retrato apasionado y ágil que se lee en una tarde, sin decaer el interés por la lectura y demostrando que quien escribe es un apasionado de la temática.

[tripswithbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bir ülkeyi tanımanın çeşitli yolları var. Yazarlarıyla tanışmak bunlardan biri. Dorian Gray’in Portresi ile sevdiğim Wilde ve Dublinliler öykü kitabıyla tanıştığım James Joyce beni Dublin konusunda ilk heyecanlandıran detaylardan. Alfa Yayınları’ndan çıkan Dört Dublinli de Dublin deyince akla gelen dört önemli yazar hakkında birer makale içeriyor. Merak ettiği yazarlar hakkında araştırma yapmayı sevenler, sevecektir.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems to have been a promotional/novelty publication, lectures derived from chapters of Ellmann's biographies of the four. Anecdotes worth knowing but probably better gotten elsewhere; the introduction's promise of connecting the four was blatantly false until the interesting but brief study of Beckett in comparison with his three Irish predecessors.

[Levi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great accompaniment when trying to read through Ulysses with such little context. This book of essays helped me understand some of the metatext, the background information, so that I could better understand the cultural climate under Joyce and other Dubliners.

[Biblio Curious · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great little book on these authors combined with their works.

[Roxie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Stephen Batty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief overview of four Irish greats as a starting point - doesn't really try to integrate or differentiate their achievements.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Ellmann offers biographic details linking the four to eeach other in the time stream of the 20th century. I am now going to delve further into Wilde, Yeats and Beckett as i have with Joyce.

[Ciara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf/// too much religion

[Timothy Hoiland · Rating 3 out of 5]

“These four, it may be granted, make a strange consortium. Yet resemblances of which they were unaware begin to appear. Displaced, witty, complex, savage, they companion each other. . . . That they should all come from the same city does not explain them, but they share with their island a tense struggle for autonomy, a disdain for occupation by outside authorities, and a good deal of inner division. These qualities are not exclusively Irish, yet Ireland helps to focus them. And through these four of her natives, Dublin—once reluctantly imperial—regains its power to influence the world through another imperium, that of art.”

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro genial de un crítico genial. Cuatro Dublineses presenta claves de lectura para profundizar en las obras de Oscar Wilde, William Yates, James Joyce y Samuel Beckett. Richard Ellmann logra en ensayos breves, de prosa precisa y erudita, formar una imagen clara de estos cuatro gigantes de la literatura universal desde la perspectiva de su condición de irlandeses, más aún, de dublineses. En mi opinión, sobresale el ensayo sobre Joyce, que logra articular la obra, el autor y la cuidad en un mismo objeto complejo, en un ser vivo que sigue creciendo bajo nuestros ojos en cada lectura del Ulises, de Dublineses, del Finnegans Wake. Mientras esperamos la reedición de la monumental biografía de Ellmann sobre Joyce publicada en español por Anagrama, contamos por suerte con este breve pero magistral ensayo sobre cuatro dublineses que no nos dejan interrumpir la lectura de sus libros, con sus continuidades y rupturas, sus tradiciones y sus revoluciones estéticas. Opino que Cuatro Dublineses es un libro muy recomendable, una muestra de fácil accesibilidad, de lectura sencilla, de una de las piezas de cámara más sublimes de la crítica literaria.

[Ronald Wendling · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been around for a while, but it is a grand introduction to the four greatest Irish literary figures of the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries: Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. We learn, among other things, that they were acquainted with one another, that their sexuality had much to do with what they wrote, and that they all resisted trying to deny the contradictions of life by reducing it to some easy formula. I am going to Dublin soon and am grateful for going there with this new sense of the greatness of these giants of Irish literature.

[William Dearth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a long book. It is basically four lectures that Ellmann gave at various times of the four Irish icons. All are good though I found the Samuel Beckett lecture the most interesting. That may because Ellmann knew him personally and Beckett did not pass until 1986.

[Sarah]

Each of the first three chapters on Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce stand alone (makes sense as each chapter on the book was a seep rate lecture the author gave), but the final chapter on Beckett puts the other three writers in contrast to Beckett in interesting ways.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief, masterful consideration of four great Irish writers by Richard Ellmann, author of the definitive biographies of Joyce, Yeats, and Wilde. Although his longer biographies are consistently superb, this smaller work is a consistent pleasure.

[Braaaaais · Rating 2 out of 5]

What pussy does to a man ( Joyce)

[Cem]

Küçük ama yoğun.

[Marko]

I have the german edition.