Bloomsday

Finished my first summer read on Friday. Expect a write-up on The Count of Monte Cristo sometime this week.

This past Saturday, June 16th, was Bloomsday--the 108th anniversary of the events in James Joyce's Ulysses. On this day each year, readers all around the world commemorate the life of Joyce and his literary contribution through readings, dramitizations, and drinking sprees.

I'm incredibly new to Joyce. I can't pretend to know much about him or his Ulysses or even Bloomsday. Somehow, though, I feel like Ulysses and I have just been waiting to run into each other. Ever since my Understanding World Art professor mentioned the book during a lecture, four years ago.

Talk to me about Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's response to Joyce's novel, and I could gush for hours. Even ask me about Woolf's thoughts on Ulysses. She wasn't thrilled, that's for certain:

"I should be reading Ulysses, & fabricating my case for & against. I have read 200 pages so far - not a third; & have been amused, stimulated, charmed interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters - to the end of the Cemetery scene; & then puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. And Tom, great Tom, thinks this on a par with War & Peace!" - Diary, Vol. 2, pp 188-9

But ask me about Ulysses? Well, I do know that it takes place on one day in Dublin. Uses stream of consciousness. Contains a section with absolutely no punctuation.

And that's the extent of my knowledge.

As a starting point, I signed up for a Bloomsday Readalong. Put Ulysses on my summer reading list. When June 16th rolled around, I eagerly began reading at 8:00 am. Because of time constraints (I was pretending to be Mrs. Dalloway and throwing a tea party), I was only able to read the first episode (Telemachus). So, while baking scones and cupcakes, I listened to some of BBC Radio 4's James Joyce's Ulysses. Now I am very intrigued. And ready to read more.

I particularly adore(d) this passage:

     "Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.
     A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear by music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery."
- Joyce, Ulysses

I've always been a sucker for water imagery and alliterations.

Do read o's Bloomsday write up (found here: Happy Bloomsday!), as it is exceedingly charming and very encouraging for those who weren't brave enough to read Ulysses in one day.