Latest news with #Joycean
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.'
Irish Post
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Bloomsday celebrated at Lucia Joyce's resting place
KINGSTHORPE Cemetery in Northampton may seem an unlikely setting for Bloomsday celebrations — but for those marking James Joyce's signature day, it is in fact a place of deep resonance. On June 16th, the Triskellion Theatre Company will return once again to honour Ulysses , and to pay tribute to the Joycean legacy rooted in Northampton through the figure of Lucia Anna Joyce. Bloomsday commemorates the events of June 16th, 1904, the day on which Ulysses unfolds. The connection to Northampton is through Lucia, James Joyce's only daughter. Born in Trieste — where the Joyces lived for over a decade and where much of Ulysses was written — Lucia was once a gifted dancer and a noted figure in artistic circles. In the 1920s she had a brief romance with Samuel Beckett, but her life was increasingly marked by mental illness. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was treated by Carl Jung in Zurich and spent her final decades as a patient at St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, where she died in 1982. She is buried in Kingsthorpe Cemetery. This year's event will once again include a performance of Letters to Lucia , a play written by local writers and staged at her graveside by Triskellion Theatre Company, led by Gerry Molumby of Thurles, Co. Tipperary. The day will also feature readings from Ulysses , live music from folk band The Tim Finnegans, and guest speakers exploring the Joycean ties to Northampton. Richard Rose will speak on Lucia Joyce's long and poignant connection to the town. Triskellion has been bringing turn-of-the-century Dublin to Kingsthorpe each Bloomsday since 2005, with cast members dressed in period costume and a spirit of both celebration and reflection. Previous years have seen contributions from the local branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, and performances by Sean Cannon of The Dubliners. As Bloomsday marks the ordinary made extraordinary, Kingsthorpe Cemetery becomes, just for a moment, a corner of Dublin transplanted to Northampton — a place where memory, art and identity meet. See More: Bloomsday, Northampton, Triskellion Irish Theatre Company
Hindustan Times
14-06-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Dublinwale: Door to door
Years after poet Ghalib's passing, the beautiful doorway of his last haveli in the Walled City was carefully dismantled from its surrounding wall of old-fashioned lakhori bricks, and installed as a primary exhibit in the museum celebrating his life and works. But you can never see that door because… well, the story's not true. The final residence of Delhi's great literary figure actually fell into dereliction. At one point, it was used as a coal warehouse. This wasn't exactly the kismet of Dublin's great writer James Joyce—but we'll get there. His novel Ulysses is famously contained into a single day, 16 June, and that date is celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday, named after the novel's hero. To celebrate the iconic city-novel, this reporter is in Dublin for Bloomsday 2025, with Delhiwale briefly becoming Dublinwale. In Ulysses, Mr Leopold Bloom lives on 7, Eccles Street. While the character of Mr Bloom is fiction, a house actually stood on this address. It was razed in 1967. The door and the surrounding brickwork was rescued by a committed Joycean and it is now installed in the courtyard of James Joyce Centre on North Great George's Street (see left photo with Josh Newman, a staff member of the Center). The door is a literary souvenir, possessing a Joycean sentence of its own—'He (Mr Bloom) pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid.' One can only make conjectures about Ghalib's darwaza. It must have resembled the few arched doors that still stand in random parts of Old Delhi. Was it like the spiky darwaza in Pahari Bhojla? Or like the ones in Gali Arya Samaj, testimonies of Delhi's long-ago architecture? In Dublin, old doors appear to be greater in numbers than in Delhi. They in fact constitute the city's signature look, as essential to its personality as Eiffel is to Paris. All these doors look the same, borne out of Georgian architecture, dating from eighteenth and nineteenth century. And yet, because of the dizzying variety of colours, they look profoundly different from each other. Rare for two adjacent doorways to be painted in the same shade. Take the doors of the aforementioned Eccles Street. Red, brown, yellow, blue, green, white. And suddenly, on Frederick Street, the door to house no. 13 is pitch black. This afternoon, round the next turn, a Dubliner is standing on the threshold of his apartment. The door is open. The citizen is boldly facing the busy street, busily trimming his moustache (See other photo).
RTÉ News
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
What happened on the very first Bloomsday in 1954?
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. 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". 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. 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 dramatisation of Ulysses was broadcast on RTÉ Radio in real time. Totalling 29 hours and 45 minutes, this is still considered the definitive radio dramatisation of the novel. Other plays, films, and events brought Ulysses to audiences on stage and screen. 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.
RTÉ News
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Bloomsday Film Festival 2025 celebrates James Joyce and cinema
The 2025 Bloomsday Film Festival will take place across Dublin from Wednesday 11th to Sunday 16th June, offering a programme that celebrates the legacy of James Joyce's life and work. This year's festival opens on 11th June, with an event at the James Joyce Centre; the programme includes a performance by the Giorgi Aleksidze Tbilisi Contemporary Ballet, music from David Keenan, and a set by Gramophone Dublin Social. The event is presented in partnership with the Bloomsday Festival and the James Joyce Centre. From Thursday 12 to Saturday 15 June, the main programme will run at the Belvedere Townhouse - the site of James Joyce's former school, Belvedere College - with screenings of 60 short films and features, ranging from stories about Dublin to films with Joycean, literary, poetic and experimental themes. Festival highlights include Ulysses: A Magic Lantern Show, a theatrical presentation of scenes from Joyce's Ulysses using a restored Victorian-era magic lantern; devised by Jeremy and Carolyn Brooker, the performance features live narration and musical accompaniment. A poetry film showcase titled Joyce's Universal City, features new poetry films with performances by Éanna Hardwicke and Olwen Fouéré, and a live performance from poet Stephen James Smith. In collaboration with the Irish Film Institute, the festival will present A Volta CineConcert, a screening of seven short films originally shown at Joyce's own Volta Cinema in 1909. The programme is introduced by Joycean scholar Dr Keith Williams and early cinema historian Dr Denis Condon, with musician Morgan Cooke will provide live piano accompaniment. Two feature films will be screened during the festival. Horrible Creature, directed by Áine Stapleton, explores the life of Lucia Joyce and challenges traditional narratives about her mental health. Songs of Blood and Destiny, directed by Trish McAdam, is based on Marina Carr's poem iGirl and stars Cathy Belton, Eileen Walsh and Brian Gleeson. Both films will be followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. Short films include The Secret Life of James Joyce, which revisits Joyce's life through imagined diary entries by Nora Barnacle, and 6.14, which explores creative life in Paris through the work of legendary photographer John Minihan.
