Happy Bloomsday

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow.*

Thus, at line 72 in Part II, chapter 4 — referred to as “Calypso” — Leopold Bloom steps out of his door at 7 Eccles St., Dublin, Ireland on June 16, 1904. He’s 36 years old, leaving the flat he shares with his still-sleeping wife, Molly.

The book is Ulysses, by James Joyce. All the events in the book — aside from flashbacks delivered in a number of interior monologues — occur on that date. Thus, in certain corners of the of the reading world, today — “Bloomsday” — is a celebration of one of the most noted — and notorious — books of the 20th century.

Revered by many as a groundbreaking work of art, scorned by plenty as impenetrable, one must make of Ulysses what one will. It’s difficult to entirely ignore it and call one’s self any sort of student of at least 20th century literature in English.

Joyce — a native Dubliner —chose that date first because it was the day on which he had his first significant encounter with a young woman from Galway, Nora Barnacle, when Joyce was 22. Nora had just turned 20. They were — despite radically different personalities and in the face of an often tempestuous relationship — together for the rest of Joyce’s life.

1904 was a watershed year for Joyce, marking not only the beginning of his relationship with Nora, but his first attempt to leave Ireland and escape what he considered a provincial and limiting environment — despite the fact that almost everything he wrote was set there, mining every possible detail of the people, culture, events and the cityscape of Dublin itself.

So detailed are the dual travels of Bloom and his younger foil, Stephen Dedalus, across the city during the one day that unfolds through the course of Ulysses, that tours of “Bloom’s Dublin” have long been a standard tourist attraction (although the original flat on Eccles St., where a friend of Joyce’s lived, no longer stands). (One must assume there’s some regret in Dublin today, with travel limited by health restrictions!)

I’m not here to provide any guided tour of either Dublin or — heaven forbid — Ulysses itself. I had intended to start re-reading the book today, for the first time in several decades. I’m a bit behind schedule, still studying some background material so I can mount at least a reasonable assault on it.

It is, after all, just a book one can read in (highly stylized) English, although no ordinary one. It’s packed full of characters, most of them contrived by Joyce by combining aspects of actual people he knew, or knew of — sometimes resulting in not at all complimentary treatment of people Joyce didn’t like.

The structure of the book has multiple layers, including physical travel through Dublin, the passage of time from morning until late night, successively related in 18 episodes that correlate to events in Homer’s Odyssey. In each episode, there’s another narrative voice, another perspective, corresponding to various aspects of the characters of Bloom, Dedalus, Molly and other players. Some episodes are more or less traditional third person narrative, some rely heavily on Joyce’s innovative use of interior monologue, as well as drama-like sections of dialogue, and … too detailed a list for me to recount.

It took Joyce about seven years to write Ulysses, which was finally published in a limited edition in France in 1922. The tale of how it managed to be published at all is a torturous one, including multiple challenges regarding obscenity laws, demands for censorship of many passages, and Joyce’s perpetual state of dire poverty — exacerbated by his failing eyesight, the turmoil of life with Nora and their two children, and Joyce’s utter inability to hold on to a shilling or franc for any length of time.

Still, we get to say, “It’s today,” and open up Ulysses. Stephen Dedalus is living in the Martello Tower, Bloom wakes up to breakfast at 7 Eccles St., then sets forth, Joyce’s modern Odysseus. Eventually, in the final episode, at the end of the day — “Penelope” — Molly is lying in bed next to Leopold. In eight unpunctuated, stream-of-consciousness sentences that span about 35 pages, Joyce has Molly deliver one of literature’s most spectacular tours de force.

It’s easier to begin reading James Joyce with the memorable stories collected in Dubliners, or his novella A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where Stephen Dedalus is the protagonist. Both highly recommended.

June 16th. A good day to read a few pages of Mr. Joyce? As he wrote elsewhere, “Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong verbs weak oach either.”**

Or, as Molly memorably concludes Ulysses, “…yes.”

Celebrate Bloomsday with me in a comment.

© Brad Nixon 2020. *James Joyce, Ulysses, Vintage Books, New York, 1986, p. 45; **James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, originally published 1939. I don’t have bibliographical information, and am relying on memory for this quotation. My copy’s stashed away. This passage appears in the first paragraph of the book. Corrections invited.