Happy Bloomsday! Dublin Celebrates The Works Of James Joyce

Happy Bloomsday! Fans of James Joyce are gathering today in Dublin, the author’s hometown, to celebrate famous books like Ulysses.

Bloomsday, named after Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s novel Ulysses, is celebrated every year in Dublin. Joyce fans gather at various locations to read passages from the author’s most famous novel.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr Andrew Montague said:

“It’s a great day for showing off our city and to get the fun out of Bloomsday. There is a huge amount of humor in [Ulysses].”

The BBC reports that Ulysses is widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of literature from the 20th century. Irish President, Michael D Higgins called the novel “a groundbreaking piece of work” that changed the way novels were written and stories were told.

Higgins said:

“Although it was written at the commencement of the last century, Ulysses is a novel that resounds, in many ways, with a particular significance for early 21st Century Ireland, a country going through seismic change and not a little upheaval.”

Many revelers in Ireland started the day with a traditional Bloomsday breakfast, inspired from a passage from Joyce’s novel.

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

If you can’t stomach inner organs and nutty gizzards there are other ways to celebrate Bloomsday. The pubs will be full today as Joyce fans drink stout and whiskey in honor of one of the great Irish novels.