| Summary: | This article brings together contemporaries James Joyce and Fernando Pessoa in articulating the idea of mythologising the exiled self. There are interesting points of convergence between Joyce and Pessoa which are very fruitful to delving deeper into the works of both authors and reading them anew to open up fresh perspectives and horizons. Pessoa most likely only scanned quickly though Ulysses and read little else of Joyce; and Joyce probably never even heard of Pessoa. Nevertheless, Pessoa's small critical synopsis of Ulysses with the fascinating descriptions of it as a "literatura de antemanhã" and "sintoma de intermédio" are worthy of attention. I focus on three themes in mythologizing the exiled self: first, that of the peripheral landscape via motifs of defeat, homelessness, language, and the sea; second the expression of plurality of the subject rather than "death of the subject"; and third, the creation of the "nightbook," giving the exiled self a way to see in the dark, the freedom to dream infinitely, and to embrace the life of repetition that is the passport to eternity during the one of the darkest chapters in twentieth century history.
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