Dublin's Bloomsday

Article by: Fionn Davenport, June 2008

The greatest novel of the 20th century

In 1999, the prestigious Everyman Library came up with its list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. Top of the pile was James Joyce's modernist masterpiece, Ulysses. Ireland, but Dublin in particular, raised a glass to acknowledge the accomplishments of its most famous son, whose most famous book bears a uniquely symbiotic relationship to the city of its setting. And, just to prove that we Dubliners really love Joyce and Ulysses, every June 16 we offer a select few the chance to don Edwardian gear and amble about the city celebrating the yumminess of grilled mutton kidneys with a 'faint tang of urine'.

It's a date

They may look mad, but they're not - at least not clinically. They're committed Bloomsdayers, taking their name from the hero of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, whose passage through the city (the main thread of the novel, which mirrors the action of Homer's Odyssey) takes place over the course of one 'ordinary Dublin day': June 16, 1904.

Except it wasn't an ordinary Dublin day, at least not in Joyce's life. It was actually the first time he 'stepped out' with Nora Barnacle, who would remain at his side for the rest of his life (when he first heard her name, Joyce's dad commented that she would surely stick by him), eventually marrying him in 1931.

An estranged relationship

Dublin has celebrated Bloomsday since 1954, but it's not all love between Joyce and the city. For much of his life - and for a few decades after it - Joyce was considered by Irish authorities to be little more than a literary pornographer, and while Ulysses wasn't banned, it was considered an 'immoral' book. US audiences couldn't get their hands on it until 1933, and a 1967 film version wasn't cleared for release by the Irish censors until 2000; it spent 33 years wrapped in plain brown paper on the grounds that it was 'subversive to public morality'.

Crazy stuff, right? But when you consider that the supreme chronicler of Dublin never set foot in the place after 1912 but still managed to produce a book that he boasted could serve as a template to rebuild the city brick by brick if it were ever destroyed, then you've got an inkling of the paradoxical relationship between the writer and the city of his birth.

Mad dogs and Englishmen

Truth is, most Dubliners couldn't care less about Bloomsday and mark its passing by treating it like an 'ordinary Dublin day' (Joyce would be so pleased), but it's popular with foreign tourists, who get a kick out of the mad actors who usually lead the celebrations, and it's probably one of the best ways to get an 'in' into this Everest of a novel (tough going but rewarding to the relative few who finish it).

If you're game, you can kick off the day with the traditional breakfast (including those infamous mutton kidneys) and follow it with dramatic readings from Ulysses - including Molly Bloom's sexually explicit soliloquy (the final chapter of the book). This year you can also get a sneak peak at a new musical, Himself & Nora, which will shortly go to London's West End and then Broadway. Then, there's the ubiquitous tour of the various pubs and streets mentioned in the novel, at the end of which you should be 'blue mouldy for the want of that pint'.

The whole day is run out of the James Joyce Centre (tel: 01 878 8547; 35 North Great George's St), which is worth a visit at any time of year; it certainly helped me overcome my fear of reading a book that so many nod in sage admiration at but never quite find the time or energy to read. One of these days I may actually finish the damn thing.