Through a reader's eyes: Bloomsday celebrations in James Joyce's city, Dublin

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2 days ago

I didn't grow up reading Ulysses, but what I did see growing up in Calcutta is the celebration of poets, writers, and the written word. The earliest memory of which would be to wake up early in the morning, wear a sari, put flowers in my hair, and head to school to celebrate Rabindranath Tagore on his birthday. Be it reciting one of his poems, singing Rabindrasangeet in a choir, or being a part of one of his operas, Rabindra Jayanti is a core memory in almost every Bengali's life. It is almost equal to, or sometimes even more important than Durga Puja; probably the only non-religious festival where a 'thakur' isn't sacrosanct.
This Bloomsday, I experienced something very similar in Dublin. The day is celebrated every year on 16 June, the date on which the action – such as it is – in James Joyce's Ulysses unfolds.
Joyce's is a I first heard uttered in reverent tones in classroom lectures at Presidency College during my time as a student. It's a name that I both admired and feared, for his oeuvre tends to have just that effect on young readers. But it also takes me back to an afternoon of solemn silence in the classroom when our professor finished reading 'The Dead' from Dubliners. In that moment, Joyce, to me, wasn't just a writer; he was a rite of passage.
Fast forward to a few years, and it feels almost unreal to be walking the same streets as him or his characters in Dublin. Until now, I had only read about Bloomsday and how the city of Dublin comes together on 16 June 16 celebrate the author and his modernist epic Ulysses, but this year, I was lucky enough to have stepped into his world, not just as a reader, but as a witness to the carnivalesque occasion.
A Joycean evening at Dalkey Castle
The celebrations start much ahead of the actual day, with locals and tourists picking their favourite events to attend. For me, it began with an evening at the heritage town of Dalkey, a small town perched on the southern coast of Dublin, a seaside suburb with literary ghosts in its granite walls. Joyce drew upon his experience as a teacher in the Clifton School, the site and inspiration for the schoolroom scene of the Nestor episode from Ulysses, which still stands tall at Dalkey Avenue. His father, John Stanislaus Joyce, who lived here, is also fondly remembered by the locals. Inside the 14th-century stone castle, actors Martin Lindane and Declan Brennan acted out the Nestor episode as Stephen Daedalus and Mr Deasy, accompanied by the beautiful baritone of Simon Morgan, who performed The Croppy Boy and Rocky Road to Dublin, which were originally present in Joyce's works.
This was followed by a dramatic re-enactment of the Christmas Dinner scene from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, originally set in Martello Terrace, which is just a few miles away. The highlight of the evening for me was the dramatisation of the scene between Gretta and Gabriel from 'The Dead', which was originally set in the Gresham Hotel in the heart of Dublin. As it poured outside the castle, Darina Gallagher sang The Lass of Aughri m, bringing Joyce's characters to life – not as abstract literary constructs, but as real people, with real desires, disappointments, and Dublin rain in their hair. 'The reason we celebrate the fact that James Joyce set the Nestor episode in Dalkey is that I delight in celebrating writers' work in the places that inspired them.', said Margaret Dunne, the manager at Dalkey Castle and Heritage Centre.
At home with Joyce
On the morning of Bloomsday, I made my way to the James Joyce Centre in north Dublin. Housed in a Georgian townhouse with creaking staircases and fireplaces, the centre felt like Joyce's spiritual home, even though he never actually lived there. I was greeted by a huge crowd of people, dressed in Edwardian attire, women wearing long skirts, elaborately designed hats, and ruffled blouses, men dressed in Bloom's funeral attire (a black suit), or as Joyce himself – straw hat, rounded spectacles, britches and braces, and a cane. I was clearly not dressed for the occasion!
Inside, there were exhibitions tracing the evolution of Ulysses, from its fraught writing process to its scandalous reception. Mamalujo: Finnegans Wake as a Work in Progress, an exhibition that displayed the various installments in honour of the 101th anniversary of the former, an exhibit by French artist Rémi Rousseau, presenting more than 100 illustrations providing a visual depiction of Ulysses, Modality of the Visible: Ulysses VR, an immersive VR project taking the visitors on a journey through the Dublin of 1904 in a visual, interactive way where the audience could mount the gunrest of the Martello Tower, walk along Eccles Street, hang around the gentlemen at Barney Kiernan's, and explore other settings of Ulysses. At the back of the ground floor of the building stood the original door from No. 7 Eccles Street, Leopold and Molly Bloom's address in Ulysses. The building buzzed with people as they queued to get a copy of their favourite book or merchandise from the store downstairs.
At noon, as hunger pangs hit, I found my way to Davy Byrnes pub on Duke Street. All Ulysses enthusiasts know that Leopold Bloom stopped here for a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzola sandwich. The pub was brimming with pilgrims like me – readers, scholars, and curious tourists, all dressed for the occasion, eager for a taste of Joyce. I shared a table with a group of elderly people from Cork who claimed to have been attending Bloomsday 'since before it was fashionable.' We raised our glasses in a toast to Bloom and enjoyed the street theatre in front of the pub.
From there, I headed to Hodges Figgis, the iconic Dublin bookshop and also the oldest in Ireland. It is the very same bookstore that Joyce has Leopold Bloom stroll past it on Dawson Street, immortalising it in Ulysses when Stephen Dedalus recalls seeing 'a virgin at Hodges Figgis' window' glancing at the books in the window. A literary haunt even to this day, I found myself engrossed in the book reading session at the store, striking interesting conversations with fellow Joyce enthusiasts such as Robert Nicholson, the former curator of Martello Tower, that houses the James Joyce Museum. 'Hodges Figgis holds such significance not only for the people of Dublin, but everyone who loves literature. Every year we have several tourists making a stop here on Bloomsday and during the walking tours in the city. We look forward to these readings on Bloomsday throughout the year,' said Tony Hayes, manager of the bookstore.
Later, I wandered into MoLI – the Museum of Literature Ireland – at the Newman House of University College Dublin, where Joyce once studied. Visiting MoLI and seeing the first copy of the novel which is the reason behind all the celebration, felt surreal. As I peeped through the glass at the blue cover of the first copy of Ulysses, it felt like life had come a full circle, it felt as if I were on the last stop of a pilgrimage. The museum lets you 'walk through' Ulysses and trace the events of the book through the map of Dublin in an illustrious exhibit.
Just a short walk from there led me to my last stop for the day, Sweny's Pharmacy, a cultural hotspot in town. Preserved almost exactly as it was in Joyce's day, it is where Leopold Bloom goes into Sweny's dispensary to buy some skin lotion for Molly, and ends up buying a bar of lemon soap. Though Sweny's is not a pharmacy anymore, it is a mandatory stop for all Joyce lovers – to get a bar of soap for themselves or participate in a reading session. I sat in a group along with PJ Murphy, who now runs the place, dressed as a chemist, as people dressed in hats and gowns took pictures outside the store. The lemon soap, wrapped in wax paper, smelled like nostalgia, of both mine and someone else's. I bought one to take home to Kolkata, a sensory souvenir of this remarkable day.
The city as text
As I headed home, stepping on few of the bronze plaques which anyone who has visited Dublin would have spotted, a part of the Joyce Trail by artist Robin Buick set into the streets of Dublin, at locations relevant to scenes from Ulysses, I couldn't help but wonder how Joyce had taken a single day, June 16, 1904, and turned it into an epic. An ordinary 'Day in the Life' as we now know it in the age of social media influencing, turned into something that has stood the test of time, something that reminds us that no quotidian act is actually ordinary: every moment holds the possibility of becoming an epic.
As someone who grew up far from Dublin – in a similar city of trams, books, and literary geniuses, I never imagined I'd end up walking these cobblestone lanes in the footsteps of Bloom. And yet here I was, on Bloomsday, celebrating the past in the present, being reminded of home, and how literature holds the power to transcend time, emotion, and geopolitical borders, acting as a unifying force, bringing people together for a cause that is pure and unconditional.
Anisha Pal is a postgraduate student of Marketing at Trinity College, Dublin.