In August of 1917, Joyce began to undergo a series of eye operations, surgery which would continue throughout the next fifteen years. He sustained his creative enthusiasm, nonetheless, and the serial publication of his new work, Ulysses, appeared in the Little Review in 1918 and continued through 1920.
This enormous novel, loosely structured in episodes akin to Homer's Odyssey, takes place during the course of a single day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser, and a now-matured Stephen Dedalus. Ulysses revolutionized the notion of what a novel was; never before had a writer so challenged the elasticity of the English language. Immediately, critical debate raged regarding Ulysses' literary merit, and eventually the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice lodged an official complaint against the Little Review for publishing obscene material, which it identified with references to specific episodes. The result of this suit deemed Ulysses virtually unpublishable until Sylvia Beach, through her Shakespeare and Company bookstore, decided to undertake the production of the novel. It appeared on February 2, 1922.
The censorship of Joyce's epic whetted public interest in the work, and, at one time, one never traveled to Paris and returned home without attempting to smuggle in a copy of Ulysses. Until the famed Woolsey decision of 1933, Ulysses could not be legally admitted into the United States. In 1923, Joyce began working on Finnegans Wake, the enigmatic work that would consume him throughout the final years of his life. This novel, a dream-like vision of life's cycles, seems to be specifically about the past and future of man's "universal history." Essentially, the work seems to be a written revelation of the author's inner life, related in what Joyce called the "stages" of night language—with its "conscious, then semi-conscious, then unconscious" associations. Reflecting on the novel, Joyce said that the work represented a reality that was, to him, more real than everyday life. This perception of the work, however, was neither shared by his friends nor by his literary associates. The work appeared, in part, in several magazines from 1927 through 1938 and was finally published in its complete form in 1939.
The final days of Joyce's life were filled with frustration—beginning with the angry, critical reception of Finnegans Wake and continuing through the beginning of World War II, an event which once again necessitated Joyce's moving his family. In addition, Joyce's eyes and his general health had begun to steadily decline, and he was continually worried about the mental instability of his daughter, Lucia; she had suffered a severe mental breakdown in 1932 and was diagnosed as an incurable schizophrenic. In spite of the hopelessness of Lucia’s condition, Joyce persisted in trying to find a cure for her; he felt that in some way he was responsible—that he had failed her as a father.
Joyce's own health continued to decline, and after succumbing to stomach cramps, he agreed to surgery for a previously undiagnosed duodenal ulcer; he never recovered and died on January 13, 1941. He was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery on a hill in Zurich, and his grave was decorated with only a green wreath woven in the shape of a lyre, a symbol and emblem of Ireland.
