Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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While the works of James Joyce did not feature on the syllabus of the English section of the Faculty of Arts when I was a student we were nonetheless encouraged to read him. And for some reason we all seemed to have a great fascination with Irish writers, from Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory through to Joyce.

Maybe it was a result of our shared history, the fact that both Ireland and Egypt were suffering under British rule. The 1919 Revolution, after all, came only two years after the 1917 Easter Uprising. Whatever the reasons, the fact is that in my student days Irish writers were very much in vogue, and widely read.

The Dubliners, and The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man were relatively straightforward. But then came Ulysses, far less straightforward, and then Finnegan's Wake, which was a terrible plod.

I recalled this while perusing Reauthorizing Joyce, a study by Vicki Mahaffer that is concerned with what she calls "the micropolitics of language and narrative". She examines the contradiction between the authoritativeness of Joyce's language and his lifelong and passionate resistance to coercion of any form which, according to her, "prompted his famous evasions of the authority of state, church and marriage". But my purpose here is not to attempt an analysis of Joyce, but rather to join in a peculiarly Irish event.

On 16 June Dublin celebrated the 100th anniversary of the day on which the epic novel Ulysses was set. It is called bloomsday, after Leopold Bloom, hero of Ulysses.

Ulysses first appeared in 1922 and was immediately banned in Ireland at the behest of the Catholic church. It was placed on the Index, a list of books not to be circulated, alongside such titles as Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.

In an article in The Independent Review my favourite writer, John Walsh, described what Dubliners do on 16 June. They undertake what he calls "a great walk of fiction", following in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom as he traversed Dublin on that fateful day in 1904.

Walsh expresses his surprise that "for a man who spent most of his life anywhere but his native Dublin, James Joyce was obsessed with the place. Virtually everything he wrote was set in the Irish capital."

After underlining the value of Ulysses as the Bible of modernism -- it is considered by many "to be the finest prose work of the 20th century" -- he goes on to take us on the tour Joyce's hero took.

Walsh describes how on 16 June the population of Dublin dress up and by mid-morning the streets around O'Connel Bridge "are pullulating with men in Edwardian flat caps, funereal black jackets and jaunty bow-ties carrying asphalt sticks, while the ladies affect white lace blouses, picture hats and their grandmothers' cameo brooches".

Walsh describes the tour he makes, giving the kind of running commentary one might expect from a well-informed tour guide. We get to know about the Martello tower, home to Stephen Dedalus when Joyce's great novel opens. The tower has now become a Joyce museum, and its holdings include collections of letters, photographs, rare editions and assorted Joyceana. Readings from Joyce's works are rendered by some of Ireland's leading actors.

Meanwhile, a number of radio and television programmes are scheduled, including a 10-part series which features contemporary writers sharing their thoughts on the world depicted in Ulysses. The Irish Museum of Modern Art has also organised an exhibition of Joyce-influenced arts to celebrate the anniversary.

Walsh quotes Joyce as saying about Ulysses : "The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not a serious line in it."

But as Walsh ends his article he notes that the thousands of Irish who are swelling the streets of Dublin are celebrating "the fact that their countryman is taken very seriously indeed by the world".