Analysis: Dublin's annual celebration of James Joyce's Ulysses may be a big event now, but its debut outing was rather inauspicious
June 16th may not be the first date that springs to mind as a celebrated Irish national day. It isn't a public holiday (yet at least), but marks Bloomsday, the annual celebration of James Joyce's novel, Ulysses. The modernist masterpiece provoked responses as polarising as declarations of literary genius to book confiscations and banning internationally. Now over a century later, how did celebrating the novel on this date begin? And when was the first Bloomsday in Dublin celebrated?
Joyce first started writing Ulysses in 1914 while in Trieste, Italy. Ulysses was serialised between 1918 and 1920 in The Little Review, a modernist magazine published in the United States. Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Co. bookshop in Paris, published the infamous first edition of Ulysses in 1922, with its iconic yet simple blue cover with white lettering.
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From RTÉ Archives, Niall Sheridan talks to Sylvia Beach, the woman responsible for publishing Ulysses, for an episode of Self Portrait in 1962
The 'Bloom’ in the day’s title is Leopold Bloom, the fictional protagonist of Joyce’s sprawling novel of Dublin streets and characters, along with Stephen Dedalus, Molly Bloom and a host of others. The novel’s setting of June 16th 1904 was used by Joyce to mark his first date with Nora Barnacle, his love and future wife. The first usage of Bloomsday is argued to be found in 1924, when Harriet Shaw Weaver, Joyce's friend and patron, wrote to him to say that a small group had gathered in Dublin to join in honour of the book and its author. References by Ezra Pound as early as 1922 are also cited. In any case, Bloomsday had begun.
Word of the annual Joycean celebration was spreading internationally, with events regularly held in America by the mid-20th century. In 1953, writer Padraic Colum, in his capacity as president of the James Joyce Society, was reading extracts of Joyce’s work at the Gotham Book Mart in New York City. When a new book on Joyce was being noted for publication on the upcoming Bloomday, one of the perplexed attendees clarified aloud if Colum had in fact meant ‘Doomsday’?
From RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany, Anthony Cronin recalls the very first Bloomsday
However, the first ‘official’ modern Bloomsday in Ireland is recorded as happening in Dublin in 1954, marking the 50th anniversary of the original occasion. It featured poet Patrick Kavanagh, critic Anthony Cronin, editor and artist John Ryan, writer Brian O'Nolan (aka Flann O'Brien), writer and critic A.J. Leventhal, and a family relative, Tom Joyce. As Kavanagh recounted for the RTÉ Guide, the group met "on a pleasant sunny evening" outside "an ordinary little house in Rathgar" and undertook a trek around Dublin.
They called at places synonymous with Joyce and Ulysses, including Sandymount Strand, and, later, fuelled by much drink at Ryan’s pub, The Bailey, on Duke Street. The reaction to their tour was somewhat underwhelming. "Our expedition on that June day 1954 got scant courtesy from many people who are now deeply involved in Bloomsday", wrote Kavanagh. "Numbers of well know publicists appeared on the scene to have a good laugh at us".
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From RTÉ Archives, the Broadsheet TV shows marks Bloomsday with a journey through Joyce's Dublin in 1962
A decade later, a bronze plaque was unveiled inside the same house at 41 Brighton Square West, Rathgar, the birthplace of Joyce, with the inscription: Presented by Montclair State College, New Jersey, U.S.A., "Bloomsday", 16 June 1964". The commemoration plaque was led by Dr. Frederic Harold Young, a professor at Montclair, with funds raised by faculty and students of the college.
Ryan was part of Dublin’s literary coterie of the mid-20th century and was a self-described Joycean in 1950s Dublin. "But by then," he wrote, "all the world was there before me". Ryan was invited to be an honorary secretary of the James Joyce Tower Society upon its founding in 1962. The Martello Tower in Sandycove, setting of the opening of the novel where ‘Stately Plump Buck Mulligan’ first appears, was situated on land owned by architect Michael Scott, and agreed for the tower to become a Joyce Museum which was officially opened on Bloomsday 1962. Sylvia Beach, Ulysses’ original publisher travelled from Paris for the occasion in Dublin and recounted her early meetings with Joyce in Paris.
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From RTÉ Archives, Eamon Morrissey draws on personalities created by James Joyce in Ulysses for Joycemen broadcast in 1982
In 1964, a stage play, Bloomsday was produced and designed by John Ryan and directed by Barry Cassin at the Gate Theatre, Dublin. Starring Anna Manahan and Ronnie Walsh, this stage adaptation of Ulysses by Allan McClelland was originally banned from production at the new Dublin Theatre Festival in 1958 due to objections from Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.
To mark the centenary of Joyce's birth in 1982, a full-length radio reading of Ulysses was broadcast on RTÉ Radio in real time. Totalling 29 hours and 45 minutes, this is still considered the definitive radio performance of the novel. Other plays, films, and events brought Ulysses to audiences on stage and screen.
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From RTÉ Archives, RTE News' bluffer's guide to Bloomsday from 1999
Over the years, Bloomsday events have been annual fixtures in Dublin on a national level and at local and regional events around the country. There was a Bloomsday-themed Women’s Run in Dublin in 1984, and Bloomsday events in Galway in 2000 celebrating Joyce's wife and love, Nora Barnacle. In 2004, Ulysses took over O’Connell Street for a city-wide Bloomsday centenary breakfast that attracted attendees from around the world.
But does Bloomsday help make the book more accessible to readers? Joyce’s story of a perambulation around ‘Dear Old Dirty Dublin’ can put off the average reader as much as it beguiles. The novel is sometimes perceived as the preserve of a certain class, dressed in straw boaters and who breakfast on kidneys and gorgonzola.
The Simpsons do Bloomsday
Bloomsday seeps into all sorts of popular culture, and not always in a complimentary way. In a 2009 episode of The Simpsons ('In The Name of the Grandfather"), the family travel to Ireland and see a group in Joycean dress reading from the book. Lisa informs them this is a Bloomsday event, which prompts Bart to write a note-to-self: "Next time visit Scotland".
Notwithstanding certain perceptions, a day such as Bloomsday which celebrates a true literary masterpiece published over a century ago, and whose presence continues to grow wider around the world each year should be recognised. While Joycean heritage in Dublin (such as 15 Usher's Island) continues to be neglected, the legacy of Ulysses lives on and shows no sign of abating. This Bloomsday, pick up Ulysses in a form accessible to you, in print or in audio, and follow Bloom and company into a journey round Dublin that you will be glad you went on. Straw boater optional.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
