Note: Scott Buechler, associate dean of the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, wrote this account and supplied photos from his recent trip to Ireland.
Great literature deserves a great party.
James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” judged the greatest novel written in English in the 20th century, was duly honored with a great bash in Dublin, Ireland, on the 16th of June, the centennial of Bloomsday.
“Bloomsday” is named in honor of Leopold Bloom, the central character in James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Set in Dublin on June 16, 1904, the novel details the routine, complex, allusive, often hilarious, sometimes pathetic life of Leopold Bloom, a typical man living a typical day in a typical city of the early 20th century.
But of course as anyone who has tried to read the novel knows, Joyce’s novel is anything but typical. The same can be said for the centennial celebration, which drew thousands of Joyce enthusiasts from across the world.
Taking its lead from Leopold Bloom’s breakfast on June 16, 1904, the day began with a breakfast of kidney, rashers, and Guinness outside the James Joyce Centre just off O’Connell Street in Dublin. Joyce admirers, many dressed in character or period costumes, joined in the celebration.
Actors played the parts of several characters in the novel. Upstairs in the James Joyce Centre, Irish dignitaries, including Mary McAleese, president of Ireland, read from the novel.
Outside in the streets participants mingled with characters from the novel–Leopold and Molly Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, the Sirens from the Ormond Bar, the bigoted Citizen from Barney Kiernan’s, and many others.
The actors performed brief dramatizations of several scenes from the book, and Buechler was chosen from the audience to play the part of Leopold Bloom in one of the skits.
Throughout the day, the Joycean pilgrims journeyed to the various locations where events in the novel take place. For lunch, the crowd met a Davy Byrnes’ “Moral Pub.” At 4:00, the crowd assembled at the Ormond Bar for refreshments and song.
In the evening, two actresses perched atop Nelson’s pillar in central Dublin performed the Parable of the Plums, discoursing, disputing, eating plums and spitting the pits into the air to fall at the feet (and on the heads) of the audience below.
It was great, high-spirited, literary fun.
Bloomsday has been marked since 1954, when a handful of fans retraced on June 16 of that year the steps so famously taken by Leopold Bloom on June 16, 1904. The celebration has grown over the years, with this year’s centennial clearly surpassing all Bloomsdays past.
Buechler had prepared for this celebration by writing and producing “Bloomsday at Elon: Celebrating the Centennial,” edited and directed last April by Richard Gang and performed by students in the Department of Performing Arts.