Dear Folks,
Well I drove up from Galway to Dublin straight after the match on Sunday. There was a lot of traffic in town but once I got on the motorway it was smooth sailing. I stopped for gas at the rest stop in Enfield which is about 40 minutes west of Rathfarnham. I saw a lot of green and red jerseys there, which was cool, Mayo fans who had driven the 3 hours to Galway to see the match.
I had a little bit of business to do in town this week, and I wanted to bring all my clothes up to unpack here at Sandra's, but the main reason I wanted to be in Dublin was for Bloomsday! James Joyce's novel Ulysses is 265,000 words in length (approximately 643 pages). He wrote it mainly during the period from 1914 to 1921 while he and his family lived in poverty in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. It describes the city of Dublin, and the thoughts and movements of its main characters in extreme detail, but it all takes place in a single day, June 16th, 1904! Joyce chose that day because it commemorated his first date with the woman he was going to share his life with, Nora Barnacle of Galway.
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| Across the street from Lincoln's Inn. |
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| Originally the site of Finn's Hotel. |
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| Where Nora Barnacle worked as a maid. |
I have to warn you that this will be a long post with a lot of pictures, most of which won't be very scenic. Ulysses is a very difficult book to read. Joyce combined different techniques, he experimented with language and styles, there are obscure references all throughout the work. I first read the book as part of a college course and so we were guided through it by Professor Nagel. Most people, especially if they try to read it on their own, get stuck around episode 3 and give up. I don't know that I'd recommend the book to anyone, I don't think it's even my favorite novel, although it is a great and important work of modern art. I would however strongly recommend Kevin Birmingham's book, 'The Most Dangerous Book', which is about the writing and publication of Ulysses and the legal battles that took place over it, as it was deemed obscene and couldn't be published or sold in the United States and England. To me Birmingham answers one of the most important questions about Ulysses, which is, why bother reading it?
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| Schoolchildren in Sandycove, in Joycean dress, visiting the Martello Tower. |
For some fans of Joyce Bloomsday is a big deal. In different places around the world there are readings and radio programs and internet podcasts celebrating the book and its author. In Dublin, where all of the episodes take place, it is a very big deal. People dress up in period costume and go to various sites around the city. They visit Sweny's Joycean Pharmacy (now a used book store) and buy lemon soap. They go to Davy Byrne's pub and have a Gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Burgundy.
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| I didn't buy a bar of Lemon Soap. |
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| I didn't have a Gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Burgundy. |
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| I did listen to part of one reading. |
The pictures I'm posting now were taken over the course of two days and they aren't in chronological order, or in the order of the episodes from the book, so bear with me. The James Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove is the setting for the first episode of the novel. Joyce's book mainly tells the story of two men, Stephen Dedalus (whom Joyce modeled on himself) and Leopold Bloom, a half Jewish advertising canvasser who is married to a woman who is going to have a liaison with another man that day. The book mirrors the Odyssey, Homer's epic poem about Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin), one of the heroes of the Trojan War, who has been struggling for ten years to return home through various trials, while his wife Penelope is being harassed by suitors who want to marry her, and in the meanwhile are eating up their house and home. The book begins with Odysseus's son Telemachus who is just coming into manhood, leaving home to find out whatever he can about the fate of his father. In Joyce's book, Stephen is Telemachus, Bloom is Odysseus and Molly, Bloom's wife, is Penelope (and also Calypso, the nymph who has kept Odysseus prisoner for several years).
1904 was a critical year in Joyce's life. The previous August his mother had died of cancer. Joyce had been in Paris where he'd gone to study medicine (although he soon gave this up) and received a telegram from his father, John Stanislaus Joyce, reading 'Nother dying come home father'. It was also the year he met Nora. And it was in 1904 that he stayed for a short period of time with Oliver Gogarty, a medical student and friend, who had rented the tower during the summer, partly to assist Joyce in writing his first novel. The two had a falling out. Staying with them was another friend of Gogarty's, Samuel Trench. Five nights after Joyce moved in Trench had a nightmare about a panther and woke up firing a gun. Gogarty took the gun from him but fired another few shots (as a joke) over the bed where Joyce was sleeping. Joyce left the tower shaken. Sometime later he sought out Nora and asked her to leave Ireland with him for Paris. The first episode (chapter) of Ulysses takes place in the Tower, with Stephen, Buck Mulligan (Gogarty) and Haines (Trench).
This is a recreation of the room where the three of them slept and ate. It's probably based more on the book than on the reality.
The Leopard from Haines's (Trench's) nightmare is represented.
The museum has a small collection but a nice one. The tower, and the other Martello Towers that were built around Dublin, was erected in 1804 to counter a possible invasion by Napoleon. It was decommissioned in 1904 and rented out by the war department. Gogarty was the first tenant. With financial help from John Huston, the actor/director, the tower was opened as a museum in 1962, by Sylvia Beach, the bookstore owner who took it on herself to publish Ulysses in 1922. In 1951 the first Bloomsday celebration was organized here by artist John Ryan and novelist Brian O'Nolan, also in attendance was the poet, Patrick Kavanagh.
Another great resource for Joyce fanatics is the James Joyce Center on North George's Street. They do walking tours of Dublin from here every day.
Again, it's a small collection, but the place is worth a visit. Above is a photograph of Joyce with Sylvia Beach at her bookshop, Shakespeare & Co., which stood on the Rue de L'Odeon in Paris. Joyce was a great artist and gifted writer, but he wasn't much as a person. He made poor Nora's life miserable and he took terrible advantage of his friends and admirers, like Harriet Weaver, his patron who supported him financially for much of his career, and particularly Sylvia Beach, who did so much for him for so little thanks.
Not far from the tower in Dalkey, an upscale suburb of Dublin, is Summerfield House. It's a private residence and there is no marker outside to indicate it has anything to do with Joyce. The volunteers at the museum know about in and there is a helpful book by Robert Nicholson called 'The Ulysses Guide' which can help you navigate to the different places in Dublin where Ulysses is set, or at least to where they used to be.
The second episode in the book after 'Telemachus' is 'Nestor'. Stephen works at a local privately owned school who's master and proprietor is Garrett Deasy. Mr. Deasy is based on Francis Irwin whose Clifton School was located here. Joyce told one of his biographers that he worked here for a short time in 1904, but there's no other record of it.
North of Sandycove is Sandymount Strand. The third episode 'Proteus' is set there. It begins: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes." Largely written as an interior monologue of Stephen's it is full of obscure references and I think this is where most people stop reading. The next chapter is a bit easier going, but there are more difficult parts that follow later. Proteus was 'The Old Man of The Sea' a son of Poseidon who changes shape to avoid answering questions. But if you hold on to him through all his changes he will have to answer you.
The picture above shows the remaining beach which is south along the shore from where the episode would have been set.
Dublin's coast has itself changed shape. Ringsend Park has been constructed since Joyce's time and Pigeon House Road which was where the old shoreline ended is now an industrial area and a cargo dock.
It's not the most scenic part of Dublin. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who wandered out here for Bloomsday.
Ringsend Park is nice though, there's a football pitch and a monument to Joyce (no plaque though). It would have been all beach area in the summer of 1904. And here we have some Bloomsday celebrants.
Stephen is on his way to his aunt's house, here on Strasburg Terrace. He's decided he won't be returning to the Tower that evening. Besides Haines's nightmare, his relationship to Mulligan (Gogarty) has cooled for several reasons, mainly jealousy. Mulligan has been invited to a party given by a leading literary figure, George Moore. Stephen has not and feels that Mulligan is a 'usurper' who is stealing his place in literary society. On his way here though Stephen changes his mind and does not call on her. Since Mulligan has taken the key Stephen now (at least in his own mind) has nowhere to spend the night.
There are a couple of things that happen through the day in Sandymount so will return here later.
Here we are on the corner of Eccles Street and Dorset Street Lower where the Mater Private Hospital is. Leopold and Marion (Molly) Bloom live at number 7 Eccles Street and it is to here that the novel shifts, to 8:00 am, earlier in the day when Stephen is at the tower, in Episode 4 'Calypso'.
At least there's a plaque here. As you may have noticed, a lot of places mentioned in the book are unmarked and hard to find. Number 7 Eccles Street was demolished in the mid-sixties to make way for the hospital.
Across the road though are some houses remaining from Bloom's (Joyce's) day and number 7 would have looked like those.
Here's a watercolor that you can find if you visit the Joyce Tower. Although some Bloomsday people make their way up to Eccles street, not many do, it's on the north side, it's not that close to the city center (but it's not that far either) and it's not in that great a neighborhood (but it's safe enough to walk around in), plus the building isn't there any more. But it is an important location in the book and three key chapters take place here, the fourth episode, and the last two episodes, 'Ithaca' which is a difficult chapter retelling (in the form of a catechism) Bloom and Stephen's journey back to Bloom's house and the conversation (which we don't really get to hear) that they have here, and 'Penelope' which is Molly's internal dialogue, also pretty hard to read and pretty dirty, but we learn a lot in it about Bloom and their marriage.
The next episode is 'Lotus Eaters' I'm going to skip over this, and some other episodes, because there are either too many characters or too many places involved, but I will include a picture of myself in front of Sweny's chemist, which is mentioned in the chapter. I might make fun of their lemon soap, but Sweny's is kind of a national treasure of Ireland. It's no longer a pharmacy, it's a used book shop (not such a great one, sorry), but it's really kind of a club house for Joyce lunatics. They have readings daily, and anyone can join in. There's no fee, but they do appreciate (and badly need) donations. This picture was taken on the 15th, before the madness starts, on the 16th it's one of the main centers of activity for Bloomsday.
Back in Sandymount in front of Number 9 Newbridge Avenue. Again a private house, no plaque outside, thanks go to Mr. Nicholson and his 'Ulysses Guide'for helping me find this place. Number 9 is the home of the (as of June 16th, 1904) deceased fictional character, Paddy Dignam, and it is where the funeral cortege begins it's journey to Glasnevin cemetery. The carriage ride and the funeral are the scenes of episode 4, 'Hades'. Bloom rides to the funeral with three other characters, one of whom is Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father, based on Joyce's father John Stanislaus Joyce.
Who lies here, in Glasnevin, along with his wife, Mary Jane (Mae) Joyce, the model for Stephen's mother. John Stanislaus Joyce has his own biography written by John Wyse Jackson and Peter Costello, and there are thousands of pages of scholarship written on the father and son and their relationship. The relationship between Simon and Stephen, and the story of a son searching for a father (like Telemachus searching for Odysseus) is one of the themes of Ulysses.
Glasnevin is worth stopping by for anyone who visits Dublin, there are many figures of importance to Irish history buried here, and I will be paying further visits when I have time off and posting more photographs. But for Bloomsday I include one more.
John O'Connell was the Superintendent of Prospect Cemetery (Glasnevin) and as such appears as himself in Ulysses. If you visit Glasnevin you can get a tour of the grounds or explore for yourself. They sell a tourist map with the general position of graves of notable people marked out, and also a Joycean map, with the graves of people relevant to Joyce's life and work marked out. Some graves are on both, like Parnell's and Arthur Griffith's.
Above is the General Post Office, GPO, on O'Connell Street, called Sackville Street in 1904, a much visited tourist attraction because of the role it played in the Easter Monday rising in 1916.
And this is Prince's street on the south side of the GPO and across from it, to the left in this picture, were the offices of the Freeman's Journal, the paper where Bloom works as an advertising salesman. The Freeman's Journal was the oldest nationalist paper in Ireland, founded in 1763. The offices of the Journal are the scene of 'Aeolus', Episode 7 of Ulysses, and it's one of the places where Bloom and Stephen are in proximity to one another during the day.
The next episode is 'Lestrygonians' where Bloom has his cheese sandwich and glass of wine here at Davy Byrne's Pub, which has been continuously in operation on this spot since Joyce's day, and was a favorite of Joyce's. This is another picture that was taken on the 15th, otherwise the scene behind me would be mobbed with people in period costume.
I'm not going to cover 'Lestrygonians' in detail. Bloom does a lot of walking in it. It is the chapter though which has the most coverage in terms of noted landmarks and plaques. If you go into a tourist office for a free Ulysses map, what they give you is Bloom's itinerary during this chapter, and there are plaques on the street all along the route. I think this is because Bloom is walking through the main tourist areas of O'Connell and Grafton street past all the fancy stores and restaurants. Like Brown Thomas,
which is still in operation all over Ireland. It's a very expensive department store.
And this brings us to the National Library, one of the young Joyce's favorite haunts and the scene of the next episode, 'Scylla and Charybdis'.
In the office of the Librarian, off the main reading room on the second floor, Stephen gives a theory of 'Hamlet', linking it to speculations about events in Shakespeare's life. His listeners are Thomas Lyster, William Magee (known by his nom-de-plume, John Eglinton) and Richard Best, all real people who worked in the library in 1904. I'm not supposed to be taking pictures here, but I did get permission from a guy working in the office behind the desk.
Hence my admission to the Librarian's private office, this is strictly off limits stuff here. On the wall is a photograph of the head librarian Lyster at his desk.
And here is the fireplace that can be seen in the photo, preserved from Lyster's (and Joyce's) day.
At the library, in the auditorium on the 15th and 16th were performances of the one woman show, 'Joyced!', by Donal O'Kelly and performed by Katie O'Kelly here on the left. The other young lady to her right is her sister. You can read about the prodution here: Benbo Productions. I caught the show on the evening of the 15th and I thought it was great. It's all about Joyce's life in 1904, when Ulysses takes place and as I've noted a critical year for young James.
The next episode is 'Wandering Rocks', which I'm pretty much going to skip over. It follows the routes of 19 different characters as they work their ways through various parts of Dublin. I do include the picture I took above of Merchant's arch, just south of the Ha'penny bridge, that I took while passing by on Bloomsday. In this episode Bloom stops here to look at the bookseller's stalls where he is trying to find a smutty book his wife asked him to buy for her.
And above is the neon sign for the now abandoned Ormond Hotel on Ormond Quay, on the north side of the Liffey. I don't know what year the sign dates from, obviously it was after 1904.
And here behind me is the Ormond hotel, sadly looking a little shabby. It began operations in 1889. There is a fight over whether to preserve it or demolish it. As of now it sits here abandoned. And again, there is no sign or plaque to indicate that it has any significance other than as an abandoned building. It is the scene of the 'Sirens' chapter in Ulysses, which is one of the most beautifully written parts of the book, but again is very difficult. It is Joyce's attempt at imitating a piece of music in prose and musical references abound throughout the chapter.
And here we are at the corner of Little Britain Street where Barney Kiernan's Pub once stood, the scene of the 'Cyclops' episode. Behind me is Tommo (Tom O'?) who told me that they opened the doors early that day because there was a shedload of Americans on the street outside drinking Guinness. Tommo also said that he's trying to get the owner to put up a sign outside the bar noting that this is a Joyce-related spot. I agreed that this would be a good idea.
Tommo also very helpfully pointed Little Green Street to me on the corner. 'Cyclops' is one of my favorite chapters in Ulysses, in some ways one of the funniest, but it is also Bloom's finest moment as he stands up to the anti-semitic ultra-nationalist 'The Citizen', whom Joyce modeled, perhaps unfairly, on the founder of the GAA, Michael Cusack. After a conversation in the pub which becomes heated, Bloom is dragged out by Martin Cunningham and hurried off in a cab down Little Green Street while 'The Citizen' hobbles out after them and chucks a biscuit tin at our hero.
Back to the pictures of Sandymount I took earlier in the morning. This is the view of the park from Leahy terrace. Bloom has been spending the last few hours on a mission of mercy with Martin Cunningham, visiting Paddy Dignam's widow and arranging for a fund to take care of the children's education (to which Bloom has generously donated). After leaving the house around 8:00 pm, he wanders over to the spot where Stephen had been walking earlier in the day. There he watches the young woman Gerty McDowell, and does something that he should ought not to have done, especially in a public place. The episode is 'Nausicaa' and when it first appeared in print in the literary magazine, 'The Little Review' (Before being published in book form, Ulysses was released in serialized form in privately circulated literary magazines), it caused the Post Office in the US to sieze copies of the magazine and file obscenity charges against the publishers. All of this is related extremely well in Kevin Birmingham's book, and it's an exciting read. 'Nausicaa', is not exactly an exciting read, and unless you are a very careful reader or already know what's going on, you might not be able to figure out what is the obscene part. Most of the chapter is written in a syrupy romance novel type style. It's hard to get through.
Across the street from the Holles street entrance of the National Maternity Hospital. The next episode, 'Oxen of The Sun', maybe the most difficult in the book, takes place here. Bloom is on another errand of mercy, an old friend, Mina Purefoy, is in the middle of a very difficult birth, she's been in labor for five days, and he comes here to see how she is doing. Also here are Stephen, and a bunch of medical students who are getting roaringly drunk and it is here that they first meet. Besides all of the Bloomsday touring I actually had a reason for going by the hospital that day, note that I am holding up two fingers.
Bloom, worried about Stephen, the son of his friend Simon Dedalus, decides to follow him and another of the medical students to 'Monto', the red-light district in 1904 Dublin, called 'Nighttown' by Joyce in Ulysses. They go to Bella Cohen's brothel on Tyrone Street, now Railway Street, pictured here. It's a very trippy chapter, written as a sort of play, with lots of hallucinations. It's also one of the raunchiest chapters in the book. The kernel of Ulysses was based on an incident that occurred in 1904, when Joyce, drunk, propositioned a young lady in Stephen's Green. The English soldier she was with had gone behind a bush to pee and when he came back he knocked Joyce down. A passer by, one Alfred Hunter, came to Joyce's aid, picked him up and brushed him off and may have brought him to his home to sober him up. Not too much is known about Hunter. He was rumored to have been Jewish, which he wasn't, and to have an unfaithful wife. He was at the burial in Glasnevin of Matt Kane (who was the basis for Martin Cunningham, and Paddy Dignam) which was attended by Joyce and his father John. Mr. O'Kelley and his daughter in their play 'Joyced!' make a lot of Alfred Hunter and much of it may be poetic license, but it was a simple act of kindness, by this now forgotten ordinary man, that inspired one of the great characters in literature and one of the greatest novels ever written.
On the north quays by Butt Bridge, near the Customs house. Here, where the dart rail lines now run, would have been the Cabman's shelter that is the setting of the 'Eumaeus' episode. Bloom brings Stephen here to try to sober him up a little after rescuing him from being beaten by two soldiers. It's the third to last chapter, the last two, 'Ithaca' and 'Penelope' take place in Bloom's home in Eccles street which you've already seen. The final chapter 'Penelope' is the internal monologue of Molly, Bloom's unfaithful wife, and the language in it is very explicit. She has a bit of a smutty mind. It's also over thirty pages long and consists of just eight sentences without punctuation. It ends with her recalling Bloom's proposal and her answer on Howth Hill with the famous lines, "he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." Molly was modeled on Nora Barnacle, Joyce's long suffering wife. It was with her that he left Ireland in 1904 as a self imposed exile and June 16th 1904, Bloomsday, was the day of their first date.
The last thing I did that day was attend a concert in the National Concert Hall, a piece called 'Nora Barnacle', composed by Shaun Davey with a book by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. It was sung by Davey's wife, Rita Connolly and performed by an ensemble of six musicians, piano, keyboard, accordian, oboe, guitar and percussion. Inspired by Nora's life with Jim, the music was contemporary, but reminiscent of the Irish ballads of the turn of the century. It was really quite good, but I liked the songs in the first half of the performance better than the second half. I would totally buy the CD though. It was a nice way to end the evening.
Well, that was my Bloomsday eve and Bloomsday in Dublin, 2015. If you've read all of this I congratulate you. I promise future posts will not be this long or obscure. Hope this finds all well,
Luke
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