Dublin in Bloom

Take a trip back in time with Bloomsday, a festival celebrating the best of James Joyce's literary masterpiece Ulysses

If you throw a stone anywhere in Dublin, it will probably land on a literary landmark. As you explore the city, you invariably come across places where writers like Yeats, Beckett or Swift lived, drank, wrote and socialised.
This particular day, however, I feel like I've been transported back to the early 1900s, with gentlemen in Edwardian coats, bowler hats, bow ties and three-piece suits, and ladies in elaborate dresses and flounced gowns everywhere you look. I am in Dublin to celebrate Bloomsday - the longest day in literature: 24 hours in the life of Leopold Bloom, a central character in James Joyce's epic 1922 novel Ulysses. The period costumes are all part of the celebrations, as ardent fans dress up and re-enact scenes from the book at their exact locations every year, on June 16, which also happens to be the anniversary of Joyce's first date with his wife, Nora Barnacle.
Understanding what an onerous work Ulysses is is no easy task. When I was in college, I remember struggling through it with a guide and still failing to understand the zillion literary references, puns and connections. After all, the author himself had claimed that Ulysses has enough enigmas to keep 'the critics busy for the next 300 years'. I knew that it loosely mirrors Homer's epic Odyssey, but got frustrated with the 'stream of consciousness' narrative.

When I had realised that I would be in Dublin celebrating Bloomsday, I picked up a copy of Ulysses for Dummies (yes, there is one) and started to become proficient in Joycean connotations. "Joyce, a writer in exile, spent most of his years in Paris, Trieste and Zurich, but always was in Dublin in spirit," my enthusiastic guide, Ally Carr, explains. Just like the main characters, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, I was also to journey across Dublin!
We headed, first, to the James Joyce Centre where a street feast was planned with enactments from the book, complete with a four-poster bed as a prop. We were served a Bloomsday brunch box where every piece of food has a connection to Ulysses; for example, crumpets inspired by Molly Bloom's breakfast in bed, and a cereal milk doughnut, inspired by the 'jam puffs' mentioned in the book!
The next few hours were spent tracing the footsteps of Bloom on his day-long journey across the streets of Dublin. The Edwardian city he wrote about is almost recognisable as the modern Dublin of today, and many of the urban landmarks featured in his writing still exist. Ulysses is filled with minute details of Dublin as it was at the beginning of the last century: its characters, streets, parks and eateries.
In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom goes into Sweny's Pharmacy to buy some orangeflower and whitewax skin lotion for Molly. After taking a whiff of a bar of lemon soap, he decides to buy it too. Sweny's ceased to operate as a pharmacy back in 2009, and is now kept open and run solely by volunteers who love Joyce. I couldn't resist buying some lemon soap, which Sweny's still sells.
Next, I made a trip to one of the largest cemeteries in the world - the Glasnevin Cemetery - that stretches over 120 acres and dates back to 1832. Before it was established, Irish Catholics had no cemeteries of their own to bury their dead. Since then, it has hosted 1.5 million burials, and houses everyone from generals to cholera victims. The setting for the Hades episode in Ulysses is marked by high walls and watchtowers that were originally built to deter body-snatchers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and Joyce's parents are actually buried here. In the story, Paddy Dignam's funeral carriage clip-clops here.
My favourite part of the literary pilgrimage was a visit to the stately National Library, designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane, which dates back to 1877. Located on Kildare Street, this Irish institution is a reference library housing Irish books, manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals and photographs. It provides genealogy services as well. "Joyce wrote, studied, and even set part of Ulysses here," explained our guide as she showed us around the library.

I was transfixed by the sight of the magnificent reading room, which is a horseshoe-shaped cathedral, with cherubs etched on friezes and natural light flooding in from the large central dome and side windows. You can only research here, but I wished I had the time to sit down and read Irish classics and old newspapers. Instead, I watched dozens of scholars bent over their papers and books, quietly turning the pages and typing on their laptops. I love the way modern technology makes a precious copy of the book, which Joyce presented to patron and friend Harriet Weaver, and is now accessible to visitors. On St Patrick's Day 1952, she presented this copy to the National Library. Using 'turning the pages' computer technology, I was able to spin the 740-page book in three dimensions, flip from episode to episode, magnify the text, and avail of the audio commentary.
Still following Bloom's footsteps, we then headed outside the city, hiking the Cliff Path Loop in Howth Head, a bustling fishing village, 15km northeast of Dublin City. The Danes named it 'hoved' meaning head, and over the years this came to be Howth. It's a beautiful walk, taking us through a small path overlooking the sea, with meadows strewn with wildflowers, with seagulls circling above our heads and views of a lighthouse. It's, of course, the place where Leopold Bloom proposed to Molly at a picnic. I remember the words from the book - that silent monologue of Molly - 25,000 unspoken words, without any punctuation at all. In her soliloquy, she contemplates Bloom's flawed character, their unhappy marriage, her lovers, and a woman's vulnerability. And I will always remember those last words - "And her heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes". We go on to visit The Kitchen in the Castle Cookery School, Dublin's most unique cookery school, based in the beautifully restored Georgian kitchens of historic Howth Castle, with gorgeous gardens that are home to a 10m high hedge and the ruins of St Mary's Abbey.
As evening came, we headed towards the 19^th century restaurant The Duke, where actors such as Colm Quilligan host lively literary jaunts that introduce visitors to watering-holes frequented by writers or featured in their works. It's a good place to soak up history. However, that evening there had been an accident and his actors were stranded in traffic, so he doubled up to entertain us. "There's great history and storytelling and characters in these streets," explains Colm Quilligan. "For example, did you know that 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' was actually a complaint against medieval English taxes on wool?" He then walked us to the cobblestone quad in Trinity College, and talked about Swift, Beckett, Stoker, Wilde and others - before meandering through more prose.
I left town before the 'icky innards' breakfast on Bloomsday, which includes fried kidneys that Bloom eats for breakfast, but as a vegetarian, that didn't bother me one bit. I had enjoyed the best of the literary festival! Joyce once said that he 'wanted to create a picture of Dublin so detailed that it could be recreated from his book if it were ever destroyed'. It looks like his wish was fulfilled.
wknd@khaleejtimes.com