Few publicly admit that they do not revere James Joyce's Ulysses as the great English-language novel of the 20th century. Gossips say, however, that not even a tenth of those who dare with it manage to finish the nearly a thousand pages in which, in great detail, yes, a single day in the life of Leopold Bloom is narrated: the June 16, 1904.
For 69 years - what better figure for a book then labeled as pornographic! -, every June 16, Bloomsday or Bloom Day is celebrated in his honor around half the world. But no celebration overshadows those of Dublin, as protagonist of Ulysses as the irreverent Leopold; his wife, Molly, and Stephen Dedalus, alter ego of the author of this authentic eight thousand letters that marked a before and after in universal literature... although only illustrious minds enjoy it!
Whether or not they have been able to with their cryptic soliloquies, their quotes in a barbarity of languages or their invented words, hordes of gentlemen in rigorous black and bowler hats take to its streets on the day of yore like walking portraits of Joyce. Or with a bow tie and boater hat, like her characters, while women of any age move pints of beer through the least expected pub in clothes, like them, from the Edwardian era.
The most fans will have started the day, just like the Ulysses, with a dip in the “verdemoco” and “tensaescrotos” waters -don't kill the messenger; niceties are a Joyce-Sandycove thing. In this bay on the outskirts of Dublin, one of the Martello towers houses a museum dedicated to the author where every Bloomsday unconditional gather to read passages from the novel. It will take even more courage to start the party with a breakfast of grilled kidneys like the ones that, in homage to the tastes of Mr. Bloom, a good string of taverns dispatches this day throughout the Irish capital.
The breakfast at the James Joyce Cultural Center is in such high demand that your tickets will have flown. This Georgian mansion bustles with effervescence even a few days before and after the strict date of Bloomsday. To the revelry of locals and strangers in 19th century costumes, interpretations of melodies from the book are added in their halls, readings by established actors and, without fail, the assistance of Joyce descendants. Everyone, children included, under the gondolier-style straw hat that has become the watchword of a unique literary festival of its kind, where the author is not commemorated, but the character.
From there start some of the walks through the Ulysses scenes through Dublin, a city, in the words of Joyce, that could be rebuilt from his books if it were one day destroyed. The Davy Byrnes pub on Duke Street will not be missing on the route, where on Bloomsday they get fed up with serving gorgonzola sandwiches like the one that, accompanied by a glass of burgundy, the protagonist drinks there. Nor the Glasnevin cemetery where he goes for a funeral or Grafton Street, which is now commercial, through which he also wanders in his wanderings through the city.
Essential will also be from the National Library and St Stephen's Green park to Trinity College, passing through the renamed James Joyce Street, which once gave access to the brothel district, or, unforgivable, the Sweny pharmacy. Although the lemon soaps that Bloom bought for Molly are still sold among its ancient woods, years ago it was recycled at a center run by Joyce's lovers. The improvised declamations, its owner on the guitar or Guinness until after hours make Sweny a focus of pilgrimage for the thousands who come, also from abroad, to Bloomsday.
Opened in 2019, the Museum of Irish Literature -or MoLI, in a clear nod to Bloom's wife- exhibits a first edition of this loved or hated book that came to light in the prudish society of those days thanks to a triad of publishers brave. In 1918, Ulysses began to be published in installments in the American magazine Little Review until its partners, Margaret Anderson and Jean Heap, had to stop when such an indecent text was brought to trial by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, of New York. Better luck ran the also American Sylvia Beach, owner of the mythical Parisian bookstore Shakespeare
In Great Britain and the United States it was banned until the late thirties and in Ireland it was still to be achieved under the hood two decades later. He even disowned the self-exiled Joyce when on June 16, 1954, coinciding with the half-century of the day in question, the writers Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien got extremely drunk reciting passages from Ulysses in as many pubs as are quoted in the book during the first more or less official Bloomsday in history.
