Bloomsday arrives early in Dublin to celebrate the centenary of Ulysses

‘Ulysses’ and Joyce … Joyceana in Sweny’s window in Lincoln Place, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

Bloomsday has come early to Dublin this year. Today marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses on 2 February 1922, and a plethora of Joycean activity around Dublin throughout this year.

Ulysses was first published 100 years ago, on 2 February 1922, by Sylvia Beach in her small bookshop in Paris, Shakespeare and Company. The book consumed seven years of Joyce’s life, and has transformed our culture and literary world.

Joyce celebrated his 40th birthday on the same day that Ulysses was published. In that same year, 1922, Ireland was grappling with its new independent status in the world. It is hard to imagine today that Ulysses was banned in the US and Britain until the 1930s, and that until Joyce died in 1941 he was out of favour with the Irish establishment. But no modern novel rivals Ulysses in its reach, and it has become the most influential pieces of modernist literature.

In my own personal celebration of this centenary, I visited a number of Joycean sites in Dublin yesterday (1 February 2022) during an extended walking tour between a dental appointment in the late morning and a consultation in mid-afternoon.

The places I visited included Sweny’s on the corner of Lincoln Place and Lower Merrion Street, where Leopold Bloom bought his lemon soap; and Kennedy’s, on the opposite corner of Lincoln Place and Westland Row, where Joyce once drank at the bar.

The Bailey on Duke Street once displayed the front door of 7 Eccles Street, where, according to Ulysses, Molly and Leopold Bloom lived on Bloomsday in 1904. When the Bailey was acquired by Marks and Spencer in 1993, the door was presented to the James Joyce Centre on North Great George’s Street.

Another plaque on the Bailey celebrated John Ryan (1926-1992), the ‘artist, writer, Joycean and benefactor’ who was the owner of the Bailey in 1956-1971, and who organised the first ‘Bloomsday’ celebrations in Dublin in 1954.

And, of course, on bus journeys in and out of the city centre, I passed the houses on Clanbrassil Street where Leopold Bloom may have been born, and where his neighbours, the Comerfords, lived when Molly Bloom was caught short after one of their parties. Joyce says Bloom was born at 52 Clanbrassil Street, two doors down from a Comerford family home.

Sweny’s on the corner of Lincoln Place and Lower Merrion Street, where Leopold Bloom bought his lemon soap (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

RTÉ is marking the 100th anniversary with an extensive and ambitious programme of themed content across television, radio and online.

RTÉ One is screening 100 Years of Ulysses on television tomorrow night (10.15 pm, 3 February). This new documentary by the historian the late Frank Callanan and directed by Ruán Magan features interviews with writers and scholars including Eimear McBride, Paul Muldoon, John McCourt and Margaret O Callaghan, illuminative archive film and photographs, newly commissioned art works by Jess Tobin, Brian Lalor and Holly Pereira and a beautiful original score by Natasa Paulberg.

Tomorrow night’s 100 Years of Ulysses promises an enlightening journey into the heart of one of the most inspiring and influential novels and reveals how it remains relevant today.

RTÉ One is devoting a special edition of Nationwide to Ulysses this evening (7 pm, 2 February). Anne Cassin views the first ever printed copy of Ulysses with Katherine McSharry at the Museum of Literature Ireland. She meets Booker Prize-winning author Anne Enright, who shares her thoughts on Ulysses. She visits the Joyce Tower in Sandycove to meet with one of the early curators, Vivien Igoe. And she returns to Studio 9 in RTÉ with actor Patrick Dawson to hear about the marathon 30-hour radio dramatisation that was broadcast in 1982.

The feature ‘Book on One’ during Late Date on RTÉ Radio 1 each evening this week at 11.20 pm highlights the worldwide significance and influence of Ulysses on other writers.

A special edition of Arena on RTÉ Radio 1 this evening (7 pm, 2 February) is dedicated to Ulysses and the contributors include Colm Toibín, Nuala O'Connor, Mary Costello, John Patrick McHugh and Catherine Flynn.

Other contributions from RTÉ include Finnegans Wake – Suite of Affections, a new work by composer Roger Doyle; readings of excerpts from Ulysses and other works by Joyce; and ‘James Joyce’s Chamber Music: The Lost Song Settings and the Story of an Intriguing Collaboration.’

Nora, a novel by Nuala O’Connor, reimagines the fascinating love story of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce and has been chosen as the ‘One Dublin One Book’ choice for 2022.

An Post has launched two new postage stamps to celebrate this centenary. The Ulysses 100 stamps are the work by Amsterdam-based Irish designers, The Stone Twins, and consist of 18 sections, signifying the number of chapters in the book. The stamp design features photographs by the photographer JJ Clarke, who took vivid images of daily life in Dublin when he was a medical student in the city between 1897 and 1904.

Ulysses Journey 2022 is an international programme of music, film and talks to mark this centenary. It began yesterday (1 February 2022) and continues until 18 June 18, and is a collaboration between Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland (CMC) and Centre Culturel Irlandais (CCI).

To celebrate the centenary, six specially commissioned films are being screened in Dublin, Belfast, Paris and Budapest. Other programmes include an international concert series of new and existing works by Irish and Hungarian composers, which is appropriate given Leopold Bloom’s supposed Hungarian origins.

Plaques at the Bailey celebrate John Ryan and recall Leopold Bloom’s front door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Finding relics of Eliot and Joyce in Dun Laoghaire and Sandycove

Haigh Terrace, Dun Laoghaire … a forgotten connection with TS Eliot by marriage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

During a presentation on TS Eliot, his poetry and his spirituality, I referred yesterday [7 November 2015] to the Irish background of the family of his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, and how some of their wealth came from a terrace of houses in Dun Laoghaire, and I referred also to his friendship with James Joyce, which lasted for the best part of two decades.

It seems natural then, at the end of a long working weekend, after our closing Eucharist and a light lunch, that two of us should spend the afternoon visiting Haigh Terrace in Dun Laoghaire and the Joyce Tower at Sandycove.

On a rainy, wind-swept afternoon, it is possible to miss Haigh Terrace altogether. One side has humdrum modern apartments and a side entrance to the Royal Marine Hotel, the end is closed off with bollards to create an artificial cul-de-sac, and the side lined with the houses built by the Haigh family is better known for the former Kingstown Mariners’ Church, now the National Maritime Museum, at the end of the sloping avenue the looks out to the sea.

Remembering the name of the Haigh-Wood family on a house in Haigh Terrace (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Some of the once-elegant Victorian houses on Haigh Terrace are now divided into flats, with multiple doorbells at the front doors, while others have been spruced up in recent years, and the original name recalling the Haigh family is still carved into the corner of one house.

However, there is nothing to indicate that this terrace has any connections with TS Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood who were married 100 years ago in 1915.

A king for Kingstown? ... a figure at the porch of the former Mariners’ Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

At the end of the terrace, the former Mariners’ Church was built by subscription in 1836, after £1,000 was given as endowment for a church for seafarers to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Mariners’ Church at Kingstown Harbour.

In the 1830s, the town and harbour of Kingstown were growing in social and commercial importance and a need was identified for a church to care for the spiritual needs of officers and sailors.

The church was designed by the architect Joseph Welland (1798-1860) and was consecrated in 1843. The first chaplain, the Revd Richard Sinclair Brooke (1802-1882), described it at the time as “large and gaunt and lofty and ugly a satire on taste, a libel of all ecclesiastical rule, mocking at proportion and symmetry.”

In 1862-1867, the spire designed by Raffles Browne and the lancet windows were added, and the chancel was added in 1884.

There were further renovations in 1870, and again in 1884, under the direction of the architect Thomas Drew (1838-1910). During this work, a plasterer working on the ceiling died when the scaffolding collapsed and his colleague was seriously injured.

The church reopened in 1884, but the congregation dwindled in the last century, and the church for worship at Easter 1972. In 1974 the Maritime Institute signed a lease on the church, and the National Maritime Museum was opened by President Patrick Hillery in 1978.

The Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

From Dun Laoghaire, we drove on through Glasthule to Sandycove and parked close to “the Forty Foot” and the little sandy cove that gives this village its name.

This was my first time to visit the James Joyce Tower and Museum, housed in a former Martello Tower built in 1804.

The tower is the location of the opening passage of Ulysses and houses a museum with letters, photographs and many of the personal possessions of James Joyce.

This is Sandycove’s main attraction, and it has survived recent threats of imminent closure. But the ‘Friends of Joyce Tower Society’ were formed and came to rescue. The tower is now open to the public every day, with volunteers on hand. Visitors number around 150-200 a day in summer and 50-60 in the winter season.

A copy of James Joyce’s death mask in Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The tower is about 40 ft high with walls 8 ft thick. It was demilitarised in 1904 and put up for rent by the War Department at £8 a year. The first tenant was Oliver St John Gogarty, a medical student and budding poet, who moved in in August and invited the James Joyce, then a 20-year-old to join him.

Joyce arrived at the tower on 9 September, and they were joined by Samuel Chenevix Trench, an Oxford friend of Gogarty’s. But Joyce’s stay was brief. He was chased out of the tower on the night of 14 September and never returned. A month later he left Ireland for a literary career in Europe.

The first chapter of Ulysses, published in 1922, is set in the tower with characters based on himself and his companions and with the implication that he had paid the rent. As a result the tower became his monument despite the fact that Gogarty had been the tenant and had been visited here over the years by many celebrated Irish personalities and literary figures.

The tower was bought in 1954 by the architect Michael Scott. With the help of a gift of money from the filmmaker John Huston, he and his friends set up the James Joyce Museum which was opened on 16 June 1962 by Sylvia Beach, the first publisher of Ulysses.

Over the years the museum collection has grown thanks to the generosity of many donors. In 1978 an exhibition hall was added to the building and a new entrance put in at ground level.

From the top, there are views to Dalkey and Dun Laoghaire, and out across Dublin Bay to Howth.

When we climbed back down, there was a half rainbow in sky, a few swimmers in the water at the Forty Foot, and the sun had come out again, shining across Dun Laoghaire and onto the small sandy cove at Sandycove, below the Joyce Tower and Museum.

Sunset at the sandy cove that gives its name to Sandycove, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)