I have a confession to make: I have never read Ulysses. It is a fact I chalk up to poor book design: I own a copy of the famous James Joyce novel, but every time I begin to read it, I cringe upon opening it, and I inevitably falter within the first ten pages. The edition of Ulysses that I have on my bookshelf is just so poorly designed, I can’t read it. The paper is too thin, there is far too little white space, no rest for the eye, and the title, in Futura type, is printed at the top of every single page. I know what I’m reading, thank you very much. I don’t need to be reminded page by page.
Bloomsday is the annual celebration of the pilgrimage through Dublin of Leopold Bloom, the main character in James Joyce’s Ulysses. The action in Joyce’s book takes place on the 16th of June, 1904, and so literary types who love this novel (and who no doubt own better designed editions than mine) honor James Joyce and his book by recreating the adventures of Leopold Bloom each June 16. This happens in Dublin, of course, and these folks dress in Edwardian garb for the day. They stop at the apothecary to buy lemon soap, just as Mr. Bloom did in the book. They fill the pubs and read excerpts from Joyce’s novel and this happens not just in Dublin but in cities all over the world. (It’s even happened once or twice right here in Lake Worth, thanks to our friends at Blue Planet Writers’ Room.)
No matter how well designed your copy of Ulysses may be, this novel, known as a masterpiece of Modernism, is not an easy book to read, and for many, this is reason enough not to read it. Or anything at all by Joyce, for that matter. This, however, is a great disservice to Joyce and to yourself. And while I have still not read Ulysses, I have read Dubliners over and over again. Dubliners, in which James Joyce explored his concept of epiphany: the characters in each of these stories come to some sort of understanding of self. The book ends with “The Dead,” considered one of the finest short stories ever written. To give you the ending of that story here would not require a spoiler alert; James Joyce was not that kind of writer. But read this, read it for the first time, or read it again:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
I can imagine James Joyce typing that paragraph through to the end and sitting back in his chair, spent. I think of the creative energy necessary to find these words within yourself and get them down on paper. I think he must have wept when he was done.
I may have never read Ulysses, but the reason for Bloomsday becomes obvious just by reading that paragraph from “The Dead”. We don’t set many days aside each year to call to mind writers, but on each 16th of June, thanks to a fictional character, we get to remember the man who wrote that achingly beautiful paragraph. He deserves it.
