BLOOMING LITERARY GENIUS

Today I received an e-card from Myo wishing me a Happy Bloomsday Centenary. Today marks the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, a holiday for the Irish and literary buffs from all over the world.

Bloomsday is June 16th 1904, the day immortalized by James Joyce in his unparalleled novel Ulysses. On that day, the protagonist Leopold Bloom is followed all over Dublin – talking, thinking, walking, eating, shitting, masturbating, philosophizing, mourning, singing, drinking, remembering, dreaming, reading, shopping, working, worrying – doing all of the mundane tasks which human beings engage in everyday.

Though, of course, he and his actions are abstract metaphors for all of literature and history, the backdrop for Life’s Big Questions and the recreation of all forms of art. Written as a modernist parallel to the Greek Odysseus, this is a tale of humanity throughout time, in its age-old struggle to reconcile to the realities of life. It is the eternal search for the father by the son and the son by the father, the search for meaning in a sometimes meaningless universe.

Leopold is not the only character in Ulysses. The story begins, in fact, with Stephen Dedalus, the literary artist character based upon Joyce himself. He is an intellectual faced with the predicaments of creating art in a world which often has no use for it. He is trying to find his way in the world, in his life, and more particularly in Dublin. Will he stay within the comfort of the familiar? Or will he travel to points unknown in search of his destiny?

These two characters have an interesting relationship in that both are in search of a paternal bond. There is a theme of sons searching for fathers, searching for guidance, searching for a link to the past and reality in general. Leopold has lost his son and Stephen is searching for a meaningful father. Though they wander separately throughout most of the novel, their meeting is, from the first page, inevitable.

Issues of religion are also discussed. Stephen comes from a Catholic family and is imbued with all the classic guilt which that implies. He is haunted by his mother’s ghost, forever following him from beyond the grave, chastising him for refusing to pray at her deathbed.

Leopold is Jewish, a minority in Dublin at the turn of the century. He is culturally an outsider, the brunt of prejudice and stereotypes.

This is also largely the story of Dublin – so much so that it could be argued that the city itself is actually the main character. Every street, backalley, graveyard and pub has a line to say as the landscape weaves its way through the narrative. The Liffey River winds through the story, carrying a discarded religious pamphlet proselytizing metaphoric remarks about the blood of the lamb.


Each character – often including people passed in the street – is portrayed in first person. We see the world through the eyes of the characters, including all of the mental tangents and asides which take place constantly in the mind, usually out of site of the consciousness. This is the portrayal of People As They Really Are, rather than characterizations of people.

For instance, no dialog in the book looks like this:

He approached the driver, shaking his head. “How do you expect me to shove this in your trunk?”

“How should I know,” he retorted, spitting disgustedly on the ground. “You’re the one who dropped the apple dumplings.”

Instead, it looks more like this:

Driver standing on the curb like old aunt emma those last years before succumbed to religiosity and rheumatism. Don’t forget to pick up the soap smelling of summer before a storm dusty roses in the window panes. How do you expect me to shove this in your trunk? Red rose. Too small for even a rat’s parcel to fit in that hole made of powdered ironore, forever limping through purgatory...

Each chapter represents a chapter of Odysseus, though often in a quite abstract way. The chapter based upon "The Wandering Rocks," for example, is represented by a labyrinth of people wandering this way and that through town, skipping from one perspective to the next as the citizens of Dublin carry out their regular business. (Ironically, in Odysseus Ulysses is warned to avoid the wandering rocks, which he does. Joyce bravely navigates through them.)

Or, as in the chapter paralleling "The Oxen of the Sun," we see medical students at a maternity hospital being generally inappropriate (they’re drinking and arguing) to the point of committing a sacrilege against objects of fertility, much as Ulysses’ men did in the Greek original. Furthermore, Joyce portrays this through a chronological exposition of writing styles, beginning with pre-English Latinical syntax and moving through the historic styles employed in the canon of classic literature.

Each and every sentence is layered with meaning – there is never “just one thing” happening. The words, the style, the puns, the very structure of the story itself all have multi-layered meaning, both literal and symbolic. It took James Joyce ten years to write Ulysses, and in his opinion it should take ten years to read.

Ulysses is a technically challenging book to read. Though most people have heard of it – it is often touted as The Best Book Ever Written – very few people have actually read it in its entirety. Even when it is taught in college classes, students are often only responsible for reading parts of it, and never can a class go very in depth. One professor of mine used to say that Ulysses is more a book that you re-read than read – each time there is something new to be discovered.

I’ve read it six times and can thus far affirm that assertion. Every time I read it I find another theme, another metaphor, another thread which ties the intricate tapestry together.

I enjoy this book, and the writings of James Joyce in general, so much that I’ve chosen it as the topic of my graduate study. He only wrote four books in his career, and though that doesn’t sound like a large body for study, it most assuredly is.

Each book gets progressively more abstract and complex, beginning with Dubliners and culminating in Finnegans Wake. Ulysses is number three out of four, so though it stretches literary conventions to quite a degree, it doesn’t snap them into smithereens as Finnegans Wake arguably does. I have often contended that Ulysses is considered The Best Book Ever Written because nobody gets through Finnegans Wake – it is the ultimate infinite onion of literature.

But back to Bloomsday…

There is a third character in the novel, though we don’t get to see the world through her eyes until the very end after the men have either departed or gone to sleep. Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife, is the lifeblood of the book, the down to earthmother goddess which wraps the reader in her ecstatic revelations and sends them sailing out of the Joycian universe with a happy Yes!

It has been said that it is not possible to “get” Ulysses until Molly’s section, which is at the very end. (The parallel to "Penelope” in Odysseus. )She is the other half of Leopold’s life, and through her we gain insights which the men overlook or don’t understand. She is the feminine divine of the everyday woman – a modern day archetype which Joyce openly worshiped in and out of his fiction.

In Ireland, they are holding a five month long Rejoyce Dublin 2004 Bloomsday Centenary Festival in celebration of the hundreth anniversary of Bloomsday. There are walks which are taken every year through Dublin, stopping at all of the places illustrated in the book, seeing the sights which are portrayed through the eyes of Stephen and Leopold. (Molly doesn’t leave the hosue that day – her lover comes to visit her since her husband is out.) In Ireland, James Joyce is a Big Deal and Bloomsday is considered an important day in Irish history.

Ironically, James Joyce didn’t live in Dublin for most of his life. He was not well-received or accepted in his native country during his lifetime and his practice of “living in sin” was frowned upon by devout Catholics. He was also prone to excessive drinking and irresponsible bookkeeping – his brother Stansilus often bailed him out financially throughout their lives.

Many people say that Molly was modeled after Nora, the love and life partner of Joyce. Ulysses itself is a testament to his regard for her – Bloomsday takes place on June 16th because that was the day Joyce spent wooing Nora at the beginning of their relationship.

So, today I gave thanks that there IS a Bloomsday, because that means that there is a Ulysses for me to read and reread over and over again. Someday I would love to go to Dublin for the Bloomsday tour, or even to walk the path myself on any day of the year. I know people who have done it, and apparently one must wear very good walking shoes. It is actually quite a hike, especially if one is sticking to the timeline which occurs in the book. (Each chapter happens at a particular time of the day.)

I never tire of this book – there is always more and more to discover within its pages. Perhaps it’s not for everyone, but for me it is definitely The Second Best Book Ever Written.

And if Ulysses is the story of a day, then Finnegans Wake is the story of a night. A darkstumtumblingeverneverendingnight – and that, my friends, is literature.