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Hindustan Times
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Delhiwale: Dilli's first Joycean
Meet Dilli's no. 1 Joycean. This gentlewoman in Sunder Nagar is likely to be the only Delhi dweller to have made it to the most significant James Joyce destination on the very first day of its opening to the public. 86-year-old Nayana Goradia fondly recalls being at the site of the novel's opening scene on Bloomsday in 1962. (HT Photo) It all started in 1922, with the publication of Ulysses. Joyce's great Dublin novel unfolds within a single day—16 June, today named Bloomsday after the book's hero, and celebrated across the world. That day, Dublin's sea-facing Martello tower becomes a mecca for Joyce fans; it being the site of the novel's opening scene. In 1962, the tower was filled with souvenirs from the writer's life, and thrown open on that year's Bloomsday as James Joyce Museum. Among the first visitors was a woman in sari. This evening in 2025, ensconced in her living room with her hardbound Ulysses, the 86-year-old Nayana Goradia fondly recalls that afternoon. 'I remember the tower's staircase so clearly—I couldn't believe I was actually there.' Nayana was a literature student in England when she boarded a Dublin-bound ferry in Liverpool. The young woman expected to meet countless Joyce readers on reaching the Irish capital. But she found no Bloomsday buzz. She didn't even encounter much of a crowd in the museum, except for some Joyce fanatics from America. Could it be because Joyce, dead for 20 years by then, didn't yet command the esteem he does today among his country people? Many Irish considered the novel to be insulting to their religion and nation. 'Do you not know that Joyce was a traitor?'—Nayana remembers a Dubliner admonishing her in a pub. Whatever, 'I was thrilled to be walking along the streets that Joyce had written about in Ulysses.' Strolling in the Trinity College grounds, she met a young man lying on the grass with Lady Chatterley's Lover. Turned out his father had personally been acquainted with Joyce! For five days, Nayana walked the Dublin streets in silk saris; her long hair tamed into two neat braids. Today, she is wearing a long kurta over chooridar pajamas; her hair shorter and smart. Walking in careful steps, she escorts her guest to a table laid out with sandwiches, quiches, pakodis, tarts, pastries and chai. She doesn't touch a single snack as she talks about her massive book collection ('neem leaves keep the books safe'). Her chai turns lukewarm, malai forming on the top. A few months after her literary pilgrimage to Joyceland, while visiting friends in Geneva, Nayana chanced to meet a man of letters whose nana was the Raja of Kapurthala. Stuart Ahluwalia Gilbert is more renowned for being the world's first Joyce scholar. He was also a friend of Joyce. Nayana now gets up from the table to show her copy of Gilbert's influential book—James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study. The paperback bears Gilbert's handwritten inscription for Nayana, testifying to their 'agreeable meeting.'
Scroll.in
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Through a reader's eyes: Bloomsday celebrations in James Joyce's city, Dublin
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.
Hindustan Times
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Dublinwale: A tale of two readers
This is the story of two Dubliners. One is a professor, the other is an engineer. One is a former New Yorker, the other is an Irish native. Both share a passion for the same novel. James Joyce's Ulysses is contained into a single day, 16 June, and that date is celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday, named after the novel's hero—Mr. Bloom. To celebrate the city novel, this reporter is in Dublin for Bloomsday 2025, and the Delhiwale column briefly becomes Dublinwale. Sam Slote is among the world's most renowned Joyceans. He is a Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin. His book Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses is the most authoritative guide to understand the notoriously difficult novel. The wall-sized book rack in his office is crammed with the different translations of Ulysses, including Dutch, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Arabic, and Malayalam. John O'Connell is an electrical engineer working in Telecom, but also conducts walking tours to Joyce's Dublin. A volunteer at the James Joyce Tower and Museum, he often dresses up as Mr Bloom, complete with a hat and a fake moustache. He believes that Ulysses is Dublin's very own Sistine Chapel. This afternoon, Sam Slote is sitting in his office, working on his annotated book's next edition. More particularly, he is busy with some specific question of punctuation in episode 17. His tone is gracious and delves deeply—yet effortlessly—into the intricacies of the novel. This sort of precision and care for detail is essential to a scholar of Ulysses, where everything is likely to carry narrative and symbolic weight. This afternoon, John O'Connell is crossing the Grattan Bridge over the Liffey, leading a walking tour. In the Dublin rain, he's excitedly pointing at a building in front of which a minor character makes a fleeting appearance. This sort of precision and care for detail is essential to a guide of Ulysses, where every street corner possibly has a role to play. Sam Slote says that he read Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, before the Ulysses. This is surprising because the world is full of Joyce fanatics who adore Ulysses and have read it many times, but just couldn't climb the heights of Finnegans, considered a super-difficult book. John O'Connell says that when he first read Ulysses, 'I didn't really get it then, but I knew there was a genius driving the bus.' On finishing the dreaded Finnegans Wake, he announced his accomplishment in an office meeting. The colleagues, he recalls, looked bemused. For his everyday use, Sam Slote carries a 1986 Gabler hardbound edition of Ulysses, published by Bodley Head, bearing a grey cover. For his everyday use, John O'Connell carries a 2000 hardbound reprinting of the 1986 Gabler edition of Ulysses, published by Bodley Head, bearing a green cover.
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
In pictures: Bloomsday 2025
Bloomsday , the celebration of James Joyce's literary masterpiece Ulysses, was celebrated in Dublin today. Named after its anti-hero, Leopold Bloom, and based on his all-day meanderings around Dublin on June 16th, 1904, it has been celebrated annually since 1994 with breakfasts, public readings from the book and the donning of the finest of Edwardian clothing. John O'Reilly and his wife Marianne O'Reilly on their way to a Bloomsday breakfast in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Singer Simon Morgan (right) and other performers prepare behind the scenes at the Bloomsday breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison People gather at the table for Bloomsday Breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison Simon Morgan sings for the audience at the Bloomsday breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison Baby Nova Forbes enjoying the Bloomsday breakfast in Belvedere College, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison (L-R) Carol Reynolds, Sheena Bourke, Marian Finn, Carol O'Neill, Louise Whelan, Margaret Gray, Rosemary Phipps and Yvonne Rossiter in Ringsend Park, the location of James Joyce's first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Philip Murphy and Mary O'Neill Byrne at the Joyce Bench in Ringsend Park, Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Brendan Byrne plays the ukulele in Kennedy's, Westland Row, Dublin, during Bloomsday breakfast. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Carole Ward and Liz Kinch enjoying the Bloomsday festivities on Duke Street, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Lisa Tonello from Italy and Issa Ali from Dublin celebrate Bloomsday in Kennedy's, Westland Row, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times A group of friends dressed up for Bloomsday on Duke Street, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Raychel O'Connell and her son Tadhg in Bloomsday attire on Duke Street, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Paddy Keogh at Kennedy's, Westland Row, Dublin, for Bloomsday breakfast. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bloomsday: Aficionados enjoy a Full Joyce for breakfast then devour extra helpings of Ulysses
It was the usual high-cholesterol Bloomsday in Dublin, with at least half a dozen venues offering the Full Joyce for breakfast, complete with inner organs of beasts and fowls. For a man who spent most of his life on mainland Europe, James Joyce, the author of Ulysses, did little to popularise the continental petit-déjeuner. As licensed by his greatest creation, the breakfast fry-up remains the supreme choice of Joyceans everywhere. Mind you, on Monday you would have been hard pressed to find a mutton kidney in modern-day Dorset Street, where Leopold Bloom bought his on June 16, 1904, in the epic novel. Moses Dlugacz's butcher's shop – fictional to start with – is now a dentist's. But in other victuallers along the Dublin street, a pork kidney was the nearest I could find. READ MORE At Brady's, on the corner with Belvedere Road, a man with an east European accent said the mutton variety was an old-fashioned taste now, although if I was desperate for one, he thought there was a place over on Thomas Street that might still do them. In general, despite its prominent role in Ulysses, Dorset Street is still a Bloomsday-free zone. The nearby Belvedere College, where a Grecian blue carpet was rolled out on the front steps for the occasion, is one of the big breakfast venues, hosting for the Joyce Centre just down the way from it. But, as in 1904, Dorset Street is still too busy being Dorset Street to celebrate its immortalisation in literature. [ In pictures: Bloomsday 2025 - Bright colours, fine clothing and lots of smiles as Dublin comes alive for Joycean celebrations ] Bloomsday 2025 was an occasion for straw hats, in every sense. Unfortunately, those are the only items of Edwardian apparel that suited a sweltering June day in Dublin, with unbroken sunshine and temperatures in the 20s. Dundalk-born Philip Mullen, one of those attending breakfast at the Silk Road cafe in Dublin Castle, recalled that the colourful striped jacket he wore was originally a gamble on the fashion of the New Romantics, circa 1980, catching on in his native town. Instead, he was worn it for 'every Bloomsday since 1982'. But combined with the obligatory waistcoat and the rest of the ensemble, wearing it was sweaty work even before the sun climbed over the castle parapets. John O'Connell, meanwhile, among those Joyceans who had chosen a black suit and bowler hat for the day, was suffering a bit too. And that was even before he decided which of his pack-of-six false moustaches to put on. But mourning gear is part of the price of having to attend the annual funeral of Paddy Dignam, a man who since 1954, when Ulysses re-enactments began, has been ritually buried almost as often as Mayo football. As usual, the biggest Bloomsday attendances per square centimetre were in the diminutive Sweny's Pharmacy, where capacity attendances (about 17 at a time) squeezed in to buy lemon soap or to participate in readings and song. From outside, it looked and sounded like mass in very small chapel in 20th-century Ireland as the readings and hymns leaked out to crowds standing around the door and beyond, some of them smoking. The smokers included Katia Farias Rodriguez from Amsterdam, dressed in Molly Bloom-style blouse, skirt, and hat (also hard work in the balmy temperatures). As a precocious teenager reader once, she used to be challenged by her father: 'Why do you bother with those books? There's only one that matters.' He meant Ulysses, so when that turned up on the reading list for her last year in school, she finally plunged in. Her teacher wasn't pleased, 'because that meant she had to read it too'. Then it turned out that her father hadn't read it at all. Katia ended up having to tell him what it was about. Across the road in Kennedy's pub, Polish ambassador Artur Michalski told me he has attempted it twice without success, although he had earlier read the opening section at the Joyce Tower at Sandycove, so this may be third time lucky. Vastly improving the pub's average readership of the book, meanwhile, was Ana Dahlberg, from Portugal via Sweden. An ex-teacher turned food-and-beverage manager, she has devoured Ulysses five times now, with ever-increasing levels of engagement. Her copy is densely transcribed and complete with an explosion of colour-coded page tags, like confetti at a wedding. Over on Duke Street, at lunchtime, Davy Byrnes was as busy as ever, still benefiting from Bloom's historic change of mind in having a cheese sandwich and glass of wine there in 1904. But there's no such thing as bad publicity in Ulysses, as the revival of the adjacent Burton Tavern testifies. Having first thought of having lunch at the Burton, Bloom instead gave it the sort of the review that might have closed it down had it not been shut already by the time Ulysses was published. Sumptuously recreated last year, the venue now celebrates the link with Joyce. After a long delay, it was at last thrown temporarily open for this year's Bloomsday. The full unveiling is expected next month.
