Re: Bloomsday (16 June)

On 2024-06-16 21:27:05 +0000, Ross Clark said:

On 16/06/2024 12:49 p.m., HenHanna wrote:

 On 6/15/2024 4:56 PM, Ross Clark wrote:

"This day celebrates the life and writing of Irish author James Joyce (1882-1941), chiefly be(by) retracing the route through Dublin taken by Leonard* Bloom, the central character in _Ulysses_....the action of the novel takes place entirely on a single day: 16 June 1904, which was also the day Joyce first went out with Nora Barnacle, whom he later married."
 *That's _Leopold_ Bloom! Two gaffes in two days! This book needed an editor.
 Bloomsday is a real thing. A few years ago I went to a Bloomsday celebration at a local "Irish pub" called the Dogs Bollix. Some professional readings, some amateur singings, and lots of drinkings. Good fun.
 When I briefly visited Pula, Croatia (at the southern tip of Istria) in 2009, I was surprised to see a life-size image* of JJ, seated at a table outside a local cafe. I knew he had lived in Trieste (which is not far away); but before that, for a few months 1904-5, he had a job in Pula (then called Pola), teaching English at the Berlitz School, mainly to Austro-Hungarian naval officers.

  there is a pub (with Blue Tiles) that Joyce frequented in Trieste  ?

 Could well be. We were only in Trieste for a couple of hours, and weren't looking for a pub or for Joyceana. I seem to remember a bookshop named after him right at the railway station, but it doesn't seem to be there any more.

Trieste (or Trst, as the Slovenes call it) was, in 1964, the site of my shortest ever wait for a lift when hitchhiking. The first car that arrived stopped and picked me up. I was on my way from Ljubljana to Milan. I didn't discuss Joyce with the driver.

 

*I wanted to say "statue", but is it a statue if it's sitting? Sitting on a horse, OK, but sitting at a table, drinking coffee?
 "While he was in Pola he organised the local printing of his broadsheet The Holy Office, which satirised both William Butler Yeats and George William Russell,"
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula

  one theory (or story) is that...  on their first date...
                       Nora went down on Jim... made him really happy.
 

 I thought it was a hand job.

--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly in England until 1987.