1924 Paris Olympics and “athletic literature” competitions: Johnny’s games, but not Jimmy’s
This year, the 2024 Olympics will be held in Paris from 26 July to 11 August, followed by the Paralympics from 28 August to 8 September. It will be a hundred years since the 1924 Paris Olympics – its opening ceremony commenced on 5 July and closed on 27 July with 44 countries competing.
Irish author James Joyce (1882-1941) lived in Paris for 19 years since his arrival in July 1920, with his wife Nora and their two children Georgio and Lucia. Ireland was given formal recognition as an independent nation in the Olympic Movement in Paris in 1924, and therefore Ireland made its first appearance in the Olympics as an independent country. But I cannot find any reference to James (Jimmy) Joyce attending the Paris 1924 Olympics, or even mentioning it.
Jimmy was not sporty – his prowess was literary. Miles Osgood, in his 2019 dissertation on The World Arena: The Olympic Art Competitions and the Sport of International Literature writes about the history of “athletic literature” from 1912 to 1948 when writers competed for medals at the Olympic Games. He writes of the hidden history of the “Pentathlon of the Muses” which involved “roughly 300 judges, 3,000 competitors, and countless festival contributors.”
Apparently, it was very prestigious and popular in the modernist period. Miles Osgood says that the Olympics
“inspired writers and artists at large to model themselves after athletes to represent their countries in front of international crowds.”
Writers entering these competitions included James Joyce, Robert Graves, Jean Cocteau, Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, Marianne Moore, Mulk Raj Anand, and Kamau Braithwaite.
Until 1924 and in 1932, there was only one category in the literature competitions. From 1928, several categories were added, such as dramatic, epic, and lyric literature, limited to 20,000 words.
In 1924, the gold medal winner of the literature competiton was French writer Charles Louis Proper Guyot, known as Géo-Charles, for “Jeux Olympiques” with the silver medal split between Danish author Josef Petersen for “Euryale” and British author Margaret Stuart for “Sword Songs.” The bronze medal was also split and went to French writer Charles Gonnet for “Vers le Dieu d’Olympie” and Irish author Oliver Gogarty for “Ode to the Tailteann Games.” James Joyce didn’t enter the competition in 1924.
So, people won’t remember Jimmy Joyce for anything of note in 1924, but they may remember Johnny.
Johnny Weissmuller is best known for his definitive role in 12 movies as Tarzan, from the 1932 Tarzan the Ape Man to the 1948 Tarzan and the Mermaids. After playing Tarzan of the Edgar Rice Burroughs character in his 1912-1947 magazine series called Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller then played the role as Jungle Jim from 1948-1954 in 13 movies and 26 episodes of the 1956-1958 television program.
But before he was Tarzan and Jungle Jim, he was an Olympic swimmer. Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) was born Johann Peter Weissmuller in Freidorf in Hungary (now in Romania). His parents migrated to America in 1905.
He became known for having one of the best competitive swimming records in the 20th century. He won five gold medals in two Olympic Games: Paris in 1924 and Amsterdam in 1928.
In 1924 at the Paris Olympics, at the age of 20, he won the 100-metre and 400-metre freestyle and the 4×200 metre freestyle relay, as well as bronze in the water polo team competition. In 1928, he won the 100-metre freestyle and the 4×200 metre freestyle relay.
In closing, I am excited to announce that I will be a volunteer at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. More information will become known to me in the upcoming months, but what I do know is that I will tentatively be in the Grand Palais venue for the fencing and wheelchair fencing competitions.
Citation
Osgood, Miles. 2019. The World Arena: The Olympic Art Competitions and the Sport of International Literature. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Photographs
Taken at the exhibition at the Paris Town Hall of the 6th arrondissement in February 2022 called “History, Sport & Citizenship: From the Olympic Games in Athens 1896 to the Olympics and Paralympics in Paris 1924” – Histoire, Sport & Citoyenneté: Des Jeux Olympiques D’Athenes 1896 aux Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques de Paris 2024.