Princes Pier in Greenock is where James Joyce arrived in Scotland. James Joyce in Glasgow: ‘clyding by on her eastway’ – Professor Willy Maley, University of Glasgow
TODAY was Bloomsday, a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin and elsewhere on 16 June, the day his 1922 novel Ulysses takes place on a Thursday in 1904, the date of his first sexual encounter with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, and named after its protagonist Leopold Bloom.
The English compound word Bloomsday is usually used in Irish as well, though some publications call it Lá Bloom (Bloom’s Day, in Irish).
The first mention of such a celebration is to be found in a letter by Joyce to Miss Weaver of 27 June 1924, which refers to “a group of people who observe what they call Bloom’s day – 16 June”.
Ireland’s most famous writer – James Joyce with his wife, Nora Barnacle.
On the 50th anniversary of the events in the novel, a Wednesday in 1954, John Ryan (artist, critic, publican and founder of Envoy magazine) and the novelist Brian O’Nolan organised what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the Ulysses route. They were joined by Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, Tom Joyce (a dentist who, as Joyce’s cousin, represented the family interest) and A. J. Leventhal (a lecturer in French at Trinity College Dublin). Ryan had engaged two horse-drawn cabs, of the old-fashioned kind, in which in Ulysses Mr. Bloom and his friends drive to Paddy Dignam’s funeral. The party were assigned roles from the novel. Cronin stood in for Stephen Dedalus, O’Nolan for his father Simon Dedalus, Ryan for the journalist Martin Cunningham, and Leventhal, being Jewish, was recruited to fill (unknownst to him, according to Ryan) the role of Leopold Bloom. They planned to travel round the city through the day, starting at the Martello tower at Sandycove (where the novel begins), visiting in turn the scenes of the novel, ending at night in what had once been the brothel quarter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Nighttown. The pilgrimage was abandoned halfway through, when the weary pilgrims succumbed to inebriation and rancour at the Bailey pub in the city centre, which Ryan then owned, and at which in 1967 he installed the door to No. 7 Eccles Street (Leopold Bloom’s front door), having rescued it from demolition. A Bloomsday record of 1954, informally filmed by Ryan, follows this pilgrimage.[4][5]
Since 1994, the Bloomsday Festival has been celebrated in Dublin. The Bloomsday Festival is one-week long and is scheduled on the week of June 16th. The festival involves a range of cultural activities, including Ulysses readings and dramatisations, pub crawls and other events. Enthusiasts often dress in Edwardian costume to celebrate Bloomsday, and retrace Bloom’s route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne’s pub. Hard-core devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire novel, some lasting up to 36 hours. The Bloomsday Festival is organised by the James Joyce Centre on behalf of the city of Dublin.[6]
The James Joyce Tower and Museum at Sandycove, site of the opening chapter of Ulysses, hosts many free activities around Bloomsday including theatrical performances, musical events, tours of the iconic tower and readings from Joyce’s masterpiece.
“Every year hundreds of Dubliners dress as characters from the book … as if to assert their willingness to become one with the text. It is quite impossible to imagine any other masterpiece of modernism having quite such an effect on the life of a city.”[7]
On Bloomsday 1982, the centenary year of Joyce’s birth, Irish state broadcaster RTÉ transmitted a continuous 30-hour dramatic performance of the entire text of Ulysses on radio.
A five-month-long festival, ReJoyce Dublin 2004, took place in Dublin between 1 April and 31 August 2004. On the Sunday before the 100th “anniversary” of the fictional events described in the book, 10,000 people in Dublin were treated to a free, open-air, full Irish breakfast on O’Connell Street consisting of sausages, rashers, toast, beans, and black and white puddings.
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- The above article in its entirety was taken from Wikipedia. The article below by Professor Willy Maley is a wonderful insight into James Joyce and a memorable visit he made to Glasgow with his father. It’s a must read for lovers of Joyce and Ulysses in particular and it’s one you won’t want to miss and should keep until you have time to read it.
- James Joyce in Glasgow: ‘clyding by on her eastway’ – Willy Maley
There is a picture with Professor Maley’s article – there are lots of interesting pictures in the article – of a Celtic football team from 1893. The team includes John ‘The Rooter’ Madden, pictured right, who is from College Street in Dumbarton, and who played for Dumbarton before joining Celtic and eventually becoming one of the most famous football coaches in Europe with Red Star in Prague (using a reference from a Rangers player named Speedie, also from Dumbarton, to help him get the job!) John Madden was a granduncle of Scotland and Aston Villa player John McGinn. - There is also a player in the Celtic team called J Divers, who is identified in the picture caption and may have been a relative of the late John Divers, who played for Celtic in the 1960s and who was a teacher at St Patrick’s High School in Dumbarton.