Philly celebrates James Joyce holiday Bloomsday

Bloomsday, the literary celebration of James Joyce's modernist classic Ulysses, is held across the world every June 16. From Australia to Hungary, from the Czech Republic to Philadelphia, fans gather to read and discuss Joyce's allusive, poetical, musical, and often elusive work.

The local Bloomsday event features a daylong reading of passages from the novel by more than 75 local men and women drawn from every walk of life at three locations - the steps of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Central Library, Rittenhouse Square, and the Rosenbach Museum & Library. (The museum will be open all day, with admission free.) Street musicians at all locations will perform Irish music.

Serialized between 1918 and 1920 and published as a book in 1922, Ulysses is modeled on the structure of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. It records not a heroic, world-historical journey, but a day in the life of the city of Dublin, Ireland, as experienced primarily by a middle-age man of great appetites - both culinary and sexual - named Leopold Bloom. The novel takes place June 16, 1904, so chosen by Joyce because it was the day he and wife-to-be Nora Barnacle had their first date.

The first Bloomsday took place in Dublin just two years after the novel's publication. "There is a group of people who observe what they call Bloom's day - 16 June," Joyce wrote in 1924 to his benefactor Harriet Shaw Weaver.

The Philadelphia event, founded in 1992 by former Pennsylvania State University literature professor Carol Shloss in partnership with the Rosenbach, has gathered a worldwide following. The Rosenbach holds among its Joyce collection the original handwritten manuscript of Ulysses.

Despite the number of readers who will perform in Philadelphia, the famously lengthy and difficult book will not be covered in full. The Rosenbach helps readers master their respective passages, said Alexandra Wilder, the museum's manager of public programs, by sitting them down with a local scholar to discuss the text. "We have a good mix of people each year. Some are familiar with Ulysses and are scholars," Wilder said, "but some have never read the book."

Each reader will perform for about five minutes. Some will come in costume. They are actively discouraged from affecting an Irish accent.

For an off-Bloomsday Joyce education, the Rosenbach also offers a seminar in the fall on the novel.

Fergus Carey, co-owner of Fergie's Pub and Monk's Cafe in Center City, among other bars, has participated in the readings for 15 years, but he didn't get around to reading the book cover to cover until he took the seminar five years ago.

"I had tried to read it myself several times," said Carey, 51, a Dublin native who moved to Philadelphia in 1987. "Reading it in the class was a lot of fun."

He added, "When I got to the end, I felt I had run a marathon."

Ed Rendell is another Bloomsday staple. "I've missed a year or two here and there, but I've done it since I became mayor in 1992," said the former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor. "I love Ulysses, and I love that period in history."

While he was in office, Rendell said, he stipulated he not be assigned any salacious passages. (Ulysses was, for its time, shockingly frank about sex.)

"I didn't think it was all that appropriate for a mayor or governor," Rendell said. He's free now, he said, to assay passages that are a little blue.

Mount Airy singer and musicologist April James is new to Bloomsday. "This is my first time engaging with Joyce," she said. "It's just so interesting to see Dublin through Joyce's eyes. His prose is so musical, and there's so much humor in it."

Shloss, now a consulting professor of English at Stanford University and a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Philadelphia's event was inspired by a pair of international Joyce conferences she organized in the early 1980s that drew nearly 500 participants. A major coup for the city at the time, it featured a dinner and various events sponsored by the Mayor's Office.

But what is it about Ulysses that fascinates so many? Surely it's not simply because reading the book is the aesthetic equivalent of running a marathon?

"People find joy in it," Shloss said. "It has great writing. Writing that's full of local color, local voices, laughter, and music.

"And Bloomsday is a happy occasion that brings people together, a public occasion that's grown into a worldwide movement."

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Bloomsday

Tuesday, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Central Library, 1901 Vine St.; 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., Rittenhouse Square, 210 W. Rittenhouse Square; 3 to 7:30 p.m., Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2008 Delancey Place.

Information: 215-732-1600 or www.rosenbach.org

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