The acquisition by the National Library of the Leon collection of James Joyce manuscripts for €12 .6 million has suddenly brought Ireland to the top of the world league for Joyce holdings. This is not just a significant purchase - as was the acquisition of a manuscript of the "Circe" episode of Ulysses in 2000 - it is a quantum leap in terms of this State's standing as a repository of Joyce documents. It is fitting that this should be so; Joyce is one of our greatest writers, and the reasons why so little of his work was actually kept here up to now, were partly economic and partly to do with a set of unlamented social attitudes that are now very firmly in the past.
Praise is due to the National Library, to the Minister and Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, and to Allied Irish Banks. Thanks are also in order to the vendors, Mr Alexis Leon and his wife, for giving the National Library first refusal on the documents when they decided to sell them.
But this acquisition also poses a challenge, primarily to the National Library itself and to the Department that underwrites it. It is not enough just to have these documents, to preserve them scrupulously, to put them on display occasionally and to make them available to scholars - all this, knowing the Library's fine track record, will undoubtedly be done. However, an institution that has Joyce holdings of such colossal significance has a virtual obligation to become itself a centre for their study. This would mean devoting, in expanded premises, a special space to Joyce and his work and having the resources available on a permanent basis to further what will be an enormous task: the full exploration and understanding of the implications of these new findings.
Not the least pleasing aspect of this transaction is that while it was conducted in great secrecy (and that was probably unavoidable), it has now become an unusually open one. Quite often, in these matters, at least one side of the exchange prefers to shun the limelight. But while we rejoice, it is all too easy to gloss over the struggles, the exile and the many obstacles faced by Joyce.
Talk of "homecoming" and other such inappropriate terms have been scattered around with some abandon. (In all probability, even the very earliest of these documents was written in Paris, so Joyce was already an exile.) The current enthusiasm is in stark contrast with the neglect of Joyce during his lifetime. We cannot undo the past. At the same time, the value now set by the Irish State upon the work of James Joyce could scarcely be given a more concrete expression than last week's magnificent development.