James Joyce’s words haunt Dublin. It doesn’t need his bones | Mark O’Connell

When James Joyce died in Zurich in 1941, the Irish government’s chief diplomat in Switzerland contacted the secretary of the Department of External Affairs in Dublin to inform him of the news. “Please wire details about Joyce’s death,” responded the secretary. “If possible find out if he died a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain inability to attend funeral.”

Consequently, no official representative of the Irish state was present at the burial of one of the century’s most significant cultural figures, and probably the most celebrated Irishman in history.

Joyce’s relationship with his country was famously vexed. He left for good in his early 20s, driven out – “exiled”, as he himself liked to put it was never officially banned in Ireland for the simple reason that no bookseller was reckless enough to attempt getting it through customs. And yet for all the world-encircling magnitude of his genius, the universality of his themes, it was Ireland, and specifically Dublin, that remained the inexhaustible subject of his work. When he was asked toward the end of his life whether he would ever consider returning to the place, he answered: “Have I ever left it?”