Bloomsday

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Biography

Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Ireland|Irish writer James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses (which is set on 16 June 1904) are relived. It is observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere. Joyce chose the date as it was the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle ; they walked to the Dublin suburb of Ringsend . The name derives from Leopold Bloom , the protagonist of Ulysses .

The English portmanteau word Bloomsday is usually used in Irish language|Irish as well, though some linguistic purism|purist publications, including the Irish Wikipedia, call it Lá Bloom http://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1_Bloom http://www.dast.gov.ie/publications/release.ie.asp? ID=100101.

First Bloomsday Celebration

Bloomsday (a term Joyce himself did not employ) was invented in 1954, on the 50th anniversary of the events in the novel, when John Ryan (Dublin artist)|John Ryan (artist, critic, publican and founder of Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art|Envoy magazine ) and the novelist Flann O'Brien organised what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the Ulysses route. They were joined by Patrick Kavanagh , Anthony Cronin , Tom Joyce (a dentist who, as Joyce's cousin, represented the family interest) and AJ Leventhal (Registrar of Trinity College, Dublin ). Ryan had engaged two horse drawn cabs, of the old-fashioned kind, which in Ulysses Mr. Bloom and his friends drive to poor Paddy Dignam's funeral. The party were assigned roles from the novel. They planned to travel round the city through the day, visiting in turn the scenes of the novel, ending at night in what had once been the brothel quarter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Nighttown. The pilgrimage was abandoned halfway through, when the weary Lestrygonians succumbed to inebriation and rancour at the Bailey pub in the city centre, which Ryan then owned, and at which, in 1967, he installed the door to No. 7 Eccles Street (Leopold Bloom’s front door), having rescued it from demolition . A Bloomsday record of 1954, informally filmed by John Ryan, follows this pilgrimage.Link to an account of this day:

Bloomsday activities

;Dublin
The day involves a range of cultural activities including Ulysses readings and dramatisations, pub crawl s and other events, much of it hosted by the James Joyce Centre in North Great George's Street. Enthusiasts often dress in Edwardian period|Edwardian costume to celebrate Bloomsday, and retrace Bloom's route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne's pub . Hard-core devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire novel, some lasting up to 36 hours. A five-month-long festival ( ReJoyce Dublin 2004 ) took place in Dublin between 1 April and 31 August 2004. On the Sunday in 2004 before the 100th "anniversary" of the fictional events described in the book, 10,000 people in Dublin were treated to a free, open-air, full Full breakfast|Irish breakfast on O'Connell Street consisting of sausage s, rashers , toast , bean s, and black pudding|black and white pudding s. "Every year hundreds of Dubliners dress as characters from the book ... as if to assert their willingness to become one with the text. It is quite impossible to imagine any other masterpiece of modernism having quite such an effect on the life of a city."

On Bloomsday 1982, the centenary year of Joyce's birth, Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ , transmitted a Ulysses (broadcast)|continuous 30-hour dramatic performance of the entire text of Ulysses on radio.

;Hungary
Bloomsday has also been celebrated since 1994 in the Hungary|Hungarian town of Szombathely , the fictional birthplace of Leopold Bloom's father, Virág Rudolf, an emigrant History of the Jews in Hungary|Hungarian Jew . The event is usually centered around the Iseum , the remnants of an Isis temple from Ancient Rome|Roman times , and the Blum-mansion, commemorated to Joyce since 1997, at 40–41 Fo street, which used to be the property of an actual Jewish family called Blum. Hungarian author László Najmányi in his 2007 novel, The Mystery of the Blum-mansion (A Blum-ház rejtélye) describes the results of his research on the connection between Joyce and the Blum family.

;United States
The Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia is the home of the handwritten manuscript of Ulysses and celebrates Bloomsday with a street festival including readings, Music of Ireland|Irish music , and traditional Irish cuisine provided by local Irish-themed pub s.

New York City has several events on Bloomsday including formal readings at Symphony Space and informal readings and music at the downtown Ulysses' Folk House pub.

The Syracuse James Joyce Club holds an annual Bloomsday celebration at Johnston's BallyBay Pub in Syracuse, New York , at which large portions of the book are either read aloud, or presented as dramatizations by costumed performers. The club awards scholarships and other prizes to students who have written essays on Joyce or fiction pertaining to his work. The city is home to Syracuse University , whose press has published or reprinted several volumes of Joyce studies.

;Italy
There have been many Bloomsday events in Trieste , where the first part of Ulysses was written. The Joyce Museum Trieste, opened on 16 June 2004, collects works by and about James Joyce, including secondary sources, with a special emphasis on his period in Trieste.

Since 2005 Bloomsday has been celebrated every year in Genoa , with a reading of Ulysses in Italian by volunteers (students, actors, teachers, scholars), starting at 0900 and finishing in the early hours of 17 June; the readings take place in 18 different places in the old town centre, one for each chapter of the novel, and these places are selected for their resemblance to the original settings. Thus for example chapter 1 is read in a medieval tower, chapter 2 in a classroom of the Faculty of Languages, chapter 3 in a bookshop on the waterfront, chapter 9 in the University Library, and chapter 12 ("Cyclops") in an old pub. The Genoa Bloomsday is organized by the Faculty of Languages and the International Genoa Poetry Festival.

;Australia
In Sydney , Australia, Bloomsday is hosted by the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies University of New South Wales|UNSW in association with the National Irish Association Sydney and the Consulate General of Ireland, Sydney.

;Global
On Bloomsday 2011, @11ysses was the stage for an experimental day-long tweading of Ulysses. Starting at 0800 (Dublin time) on Thursday 16 June 2011, the aim was to explore what would happen if Ulysses was recast 140 characters at a time. It was hoped that the event would become the first of a series.

Literary references

In 2004 Vintage Publishers issued Yes I said yes I will yes: A Celebration of James Joyce, Ulysses, and 100 Years of Bloomsday . It is one of the few monograph s that details the increasing popularity of Bloomsday. The book's title comes from the novel's famous last lines.

In 1956, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were married by special licence of the Archbishop of Canterbury at St George the Martyr Holborn|St George the Martyr Church, Holborn , on 16 June, in honour of Bloomsday.

Seamus Sweeney's short story "Bloomsday 3004" is a description of a future in which Bloomsday continues to be celebrated, however its origins are completely forgotten and it is now a quasi-religious folk ritual.Link to discussion of ongoing influence of Joyce including Seamus Sweeney's story:

Pat Conroy 's 2009 novel South of Broad has numerous references to Bloomsday. Leopold Bloom King is the narrator. The book's first chapter describes the events of 16 June 1969 in Leo's story.

In the novel by Enrique Vila-Matas Dublinesca (2010), part of the action takes place in Dublin for the Bloomsday. The book's main protagonist, Riba, a retired Spanish editor, moves to this city with several writer friends to officiate a "funeral" for the Gutenberg era.

Popular cultural references

Jefferson Airplane 's 1967 album '' After Bathing at Baxter's '' contains the track, " Rejoyce ", inspired by Joyce's Ulysses .

In Mel Brooks ' 1968 film The Producers (1968 film)|The Producers , Gene Wilder 's character is called Leo Bloom , an homage to Joyce's character. In the musical The Producers (2005 film)|2005 version , in the evening scene at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park , Leo asks, "When will it be Bloom's day? ". However, in the earlier scene in which Bloom first meets Max Bialystock, the office wall calendar shows that the current day is 16 June, indicating that it is, in fact, Bloomsday.

Punk band Minutemen (band)|Minutemen have a song on their 1984 Double Nickels on the Dime album entitled "16 June".

Richard Linklater references Ulysses in two of his films. Once in 1991's Slacker (film)|Slacker , where a character reads an excerpt from Ulysses after convincing his friends to dump a tent and a typewriter in a river as a response to a prior lover's infidelity. And again in 1995's Before Sunrise , where the events take place on 16 June.

In 2009 an episode of the cartoon The Simpsons , " In the Name of the Grandfather ", featured the family's trip to Dublin and Lisa Simpson|Lisa's reference to Bloomsday.

image:james joyce by Brian Whelan.jpg|thumb|upright=.50|James Joyce by Brian Whelan
U2 's 2009 song " Breathe (U2 song)|Breathe " refers to events taking place on a fictitious 16 June.

Copyright Citations

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