Solitary hotel in mountain pass.
Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit.
In dark corner young man seated.
Young woman enters.
Restless. Solitary. She sits.
She goes to window. She stands.
She sits. Twilight. She thinks.
On solitary hotel paper she writes.
She thinks. She writes. She sighs.
Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out.
He comes from his dark corner.
He seizes solitary paper.
He holds it towards fire.
Twilight. He reads. Solitary.

What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's hotel, Queen's hotel, Queen's Ho...

About the headline (FAQ)

Confirmed with James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, 1922, page 637.

Note: This is a prose selection (contrary to popular belief that this is a poem). Line breaks added arbitrarily. The first fourteen lines as appear here are actually all one paragraph in the original. This excerpt is from Part III, Episode 17, Ithaca.

Text Authorship:

• by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), no title, appears in Ulysses, Paris, Shakespeare and Company, first published 1922 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Samuel Barber (1910 - 1981), "Solitary hotel", op. 41 no. 4, from Despite and still, no. 4 [sung text checked 1 time]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• FRE French (Français) (Guy Laffaille) , "Hôtel solitaire", copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
• SPA Spanish (Español) (Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit) , "Hotel solitario", copyright © 2022, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 82