Happy Bloomsday!

Today is the 100th anniversary of the great fictional day, June 16, 1904, on which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place. There are Bloomsday 100 festivities under way around the world, but especially in Dublin. The vast majority of the celebrants will not have actually read Ulysses, of course, and neither have I. Despite being an English major in college, I managed to completely elude any requirement to read Ulysses and I understand it to be quite the feat to get through.

To celebrate, some links:

* The official Bloomsday 100 centenary festival site

* Today's Writer’s Almanac – a synopsis and a short excerpt

* Interesting essay in The Village Voice

* Dervala – I figured being an Irish gal she’d post on Bloomsday, but who knew it’s also her birthday!

And I’m lifting this excerpt yes of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy entirely from Ernesto, oh yes:

...O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

-James Joyce, Ulysses

9:10:00 AM      trackback []