Patrick Comerford
As Charlotte and I were strolling through the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin last weekend, we were surprised to find the gate leading into the gardens of MoLI – the Museum of Literature Ireland.
The gardens are at the back of the Museum, which is housed at 86 Saint Stephen’s Green – this was Newman House, once a part of University College Dublin. The place still boasts that this is where James Joyce was a student, and the acronym MoLI was chosen as a wordplay on the name of Molly Bloom.
The museum is a digital, interactive celebration of Ireland’s literary legacy and of Irish poets, playwrights and novelists. It features immersive multimedia exhibitions and literary artefacts, including Joyce’s Ulysses notebooks and ‘Copy No 1’ of Ulysses, inscribed by Joyce for his patron Harriet Weaver, who donated it to the National Library of Ireland in 1952.
MoLI also hosts events and performances, creative workshops and education programmes. The changing exhibitions include one that features an in-depth look at one author at a time, while another looks at the connections between Irish literature and international cities.
The earliest piece in the museum collection is by a female author dating from ca 900 CE. Other work on display includes Joyce manuscript pages, some annotated, a letter from Joyce to William Butler Yeats and samples of Joyce’s notebooks.
The first of MoLI’s revolving exhibitions, in place for the opening, was on Kate O’Brien, and was followed by another on Nuala O’Faolain. Last year, MoLi marked the 100th anniversary of Brendan Behan’s birth, with ‘The Holy Hour’, an audiovisual installation reframing Behan’s life and work.
The museum is in two Georgian townhouses collectively known as Newman House, where the Catholic University of Ireland was founded in 1865, and also incorporates the original university Aula Maxima or Great Hall of UCD. Newman House remains part of UCD, although the university is now located in Belfield.
Newman House is not one but two restored townhouses. No 85, the granite-faced original house, was designed by Richard Cassels in 1738 for Hugh Montgomery MP, who sold it to Richard Chapel Whaley MP in 1765. But he wanted a grander home, and commissioned another house next door at No 86.
When Whaley lived there, the house developed some notoriety because of the lifestyle and reputation of his son, Buck Whaley, a notorious gambler and hellraiser.
The house is admired for Cassels’s architectural work, but its plasterwork is also known as the finest in Dublin. The artists at No 85 were the Italian stuccodores Paolo and Filippo Lafranchini, whose work includes the detailed Apollo Room on the ground floor. The plasterwork in No 86 is by the Irish stuccodore Robert West. When the Catholic University of Ireland took possession of the house in 1865, the alterations to some of the plasterwork included covering the nude figures with ‘modesty vests’.
While Newman House was part of the university, the residents included the Jesuit priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who was Professor of Classics, from 1884 until he died. The students there included James Joyce from 1899 to 1902.
The museum is a partnership between the National Library of Ireland and UCD. Its origins are in a conversation at Bewley’s Café between Eamonn Ceannt, Bursar and Vice-President of UCD, and a representative of the National Library of Ireland, when they talked about a literary centre at Newman House began with a discussion.
The new museum was originally planned as an exposition of the work of James Joyce, to be known as the Ulysses Centre. But, after discussions with Failte Ireland, the concept was expanded to include Irish literature in general.
The original plan was to open in the spring 2019, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic the launch was delayed and MoLI was finally launched on Culture Night, 20 September 2019. Meanwhile, the Dublin Writers Museum on Parnell Square had closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, and finally shut down in 2022 without ever reopening. Since then, many of its collections have been transferred to MoLI.
The Readers’ Garden, which we accessed from the Iveagh Gardens on Saturday morning, includes the café courtyard, secluded places to read, a sculpture of a reading Jesuit – inspired, perhaps, by Gerard Manley Hopkins – and two protected trees: the ash tree where James Joyce had his graduation photograph taken and a Killarney Strawberry tree.
The museum café, the Commons, opens onto the Readers’ Garden, and is run by Peaches and Domini Kemp. Beside it is the museum shop.
Across from Newman House, on the south side of Saint Stephen’s Green, Marjorie Fitzgibbon’s 1982 bronze bust of James Joyce faces his alma mater. It is mounted on a tall square-plan limestone plinth inscribed with carved painted lettering: ‘James Joyce 1882-1941 Crossing Stephen’s, that is, my green …’ Joyce’s bust is part of a significant group within the Green, including Constance Markievicz, Arthur Guinness, Theobald Wolfe Tone and Rabindranath Tagore.
Earlier that morning, I had come across a more recent image of James Joyce nearby, side-by-side with Nora Barnacle in street art near the end of Dawson Street and close to the Nassau Street gate of Trinity College Dublin. ‘Love loves to love love’ was painted last year (2023) by the artist Andrew McCarthy, who was also the head designer of the new National Transport Livery for TFI.
James Joyce met Nora Barnacle from Galway for the first time on 10 June 1904 while walking down Nassau Street. They had their first date on 16 June 1904, now celebrated as Bloomsday, and she would become his wife and muse and the inspiration for the character of Molly Bloom in Ulysses.
Dublin can never get enough of James Joyce.
No comments:
Post a Comment