Mr Alexis Léon, the vendor of the large collection of Joyce manuscripts acquired by the National Library, was not aware of the treasure trove he possessed until 1999, he told The Irish Times yesterday.
At that stage, he went through the effects of his mother, who had died in 1972, and discovered the material in various cardboard boxes which had for a long time been placed in storage.
The material had been in his father's flat in Paris and was overlooked by the Gestapo who twice visited the apartment in search of "something valuable". It had nothing to do with the documents that his father, Paul Léon, had rescued from James Joyce's own flat at the start of the war, he said.
The full extent of what the National Library has acquired became clear yesterday, when details were given of it and a small amount was put on display.
By far the most important category is the documents to do with Ulysses. In the case of three episodes of the novel - "Scylla and Charybdis", "Ithaca" and "Penelope" - these are the only drafts that are known to exist. (It is particularly appropriate that "Scylla and Charybdis", the episode set in the National Library, should now be residing there.)
Other manuscripts complete partial drafts that were already known to exist. A draft of the third episode, "Proteus", which is at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was believed to be the earliest existing draft for any episode of Ulysses. This collection contains what is clearly an even earlier draft of the episode.
The fact that so many of the drafts are early ones is a particularly exciting aspect of the collection.
Also of great interest are the many conceptual notes that are included in the drafts.
The leading Joyce textual scholar, Prof Michael Groden, mentioned yesterday that they include such intriguing questions as "Did Bloom like Boylan?" (the man who was having an affair with his wife); an idea that certainly would require a bit of rethinking of the main lines of Ulysses.
Prof Groden had examined the archive on behalf of the library and gave a full and fascinating outline of its contents there yesterday.
Taken all in all, the textual record for Ulysses has increased exponentially with the revelation of this material.
Much that has been written will have to be reassessed, and many new avenues of exploration have presented themselves.
The vistas opened up by the National Library's acquisition are almost dizzying to contemplate. Joyce has once again shown that he is our contemporary and that his work continues to evolve some 60 years after his passing. As the ballad so well puts it, "Did ye think I'm dead?"