“Bloomsday”
“There is a group of people who observe what they call Bloom’s day – 16 June.” So wrote Irish author James Joyce (1882-1941) in 1924. Since then, June 16th has been used by literary enthusiasts around the world to celebrate the life and works of Joyce whose novel Ulysses tells the story of one day — June 16 — in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom. (Joyce had chosen the date because it was on that day in 1904 that he had his first sexual encounter with Nora Barnacle who was to become his wife.)
Bloomsday takes many forms. In Ireland, it is often the occasion for readings, pub crawls or re-enactments of scenes in the novel. On the centenary of Joyce’s birth in 1982 a 30-hour dramatization of the book was broadcast by Irish radio. The day is also marked in Hungary because Bloom’s fictional father Vrag was a Hungarian Jew who migrated to Dublin. In the United States readings are often paired with the performance of Irish music, while in Trieste, Italy (where part of Ulysses was written) the Joyce Museum is the centre of Bloomsday events. On Bloomsday 2011, @Ulysses was the stage for an experimental day-long tweeting of the novel, 140 characters at a time.
