Religion, Nationalism, Love, and Belonging – James Joyce’s “Ulysses” Themes on Bloomsday June 16th

Joyce started writing Ulysses in 1914 in Trieste. On June 16th 1915, he wrote to his brother Stanislaus that he had finished the first episode of Ulysses. He would work on the novel in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris under strenuous circumstances. After Ulysses was published on February 2nd 1922 (Joyce’s 40th birthday) in Paris, some of Joyce’s friends and many admirers began to mark June 16th as ‘Bloomsday.’

On June 16th 1924, Joyce was in the hospital, his eyes bandaged after having surgery on them (this was one of the dozen of such procedures he would have in his lifetime). He had been sent a bouquet of white and blue hydrangea flowers. White and blue, the colours of the Greek flag, were the colours chosen by Joyce for the cover of the now-iconic cover of Ulysses. Joyce despondently scrawled in his notebook: ‘Today 16 June 1924 twenty years after. Will anybody remember this date.’

As it happened, that day saw the first recorded celebration of Bloomsday, just two years after the novel’s publication. We are not too sure of the details but Joyce’s long-time patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, received a letter by Joyce on June 27th in which he claimed ‘there is a group of people who observe what they call Bloom’s day — 16 June. They sent me hortensias, white and blue, dyed.’

The first major celebration of Bloomsday came in 1929. Adrienne Monnier, the partner of the publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach, published the French translation in February. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first Bloomsday, she organised a ‘Déjeuner Ulysse,’ a luncheon at the Hôtel Léopold (appropriately enough) near Versailles that June. The event, however, took place a little late, on the 29th rather than the 16th. Sadly, Joyce spent Bloomsday in 1940 fleeing wartime occupied-Paris.

The first known Bloomsday celebrated in Ireland was in 1954 on the 50th anniversary when Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, Anthony Cronin, Tom Joyce (a cousin of James Joyce), and others visited the Martello Tower at Sandycove (where the beginning on the novel takes place) and Davy Byrnes pub on Duke Street (where Bloom eats a gorgonzola sandwich with a glass of burgundy), reading parts of Ulysses and drinking a great deal as they went. They intended to end in the infamous Monto or ‘Nighttown’ district from the ‘Circe’ episode, although due to the prevailing social mores of the time (and the excessive drinking), they did not make it past Davy Byrnes.

The centenary of Joyce’s birth in 1982 helped to change this attitude towards Bloomsday. Increased publicity, commemorative material, and special events helped to enliven Irish people’s interest in Ulysses and Joyce. RTÉ released a 30-hour reading of the novel and a bust of Joyce was unveiled in St. Stephen’s Green. A massive c reconstruction of the ‘Wandering Rocks’ episode involving actors in period costume took place. The James Joyce Centre was opened with Lord Mayor Alexis FitzGerald Jr. handing over the keys of No. 35 North Great George’s Street to Senator David Norris.

By the late-1980s, Bloomsday was an established annual event — with complications. On one Bloomsday, for example, there were only 66 visitors to the James Joyce Tower & Museum, half of which were a school group supposed to be at the Maritime Museum, which was closed! Despite this seeming disinterest, every year saw some new anniversary or publication which linked in the festivities, and it continued to grow. In 1994, the first Bloomsday Festival, the weeklong celebration we know today, was organised on behalf of the city of Dublin by the James Joyce Centre.

Today, Bloomsday is one of the world’s most iconic literary and cultural celebrations.

SOURCE- James Joyce Centre