Ulysses for All 2022

Online Course Spring Summer 2022

Read Ulysses by James Joyce in 2022! Join our global readership (and guest speakers) for an online odyssey from the James Joyce Centre this Spring where the 10th edition of ‘Ulysses for All’, led by Dubliner and Joycean, Dr. Caroline Elbay will celebrate the centenary of Joyce’s great Dublin epic.  A carnival of language (and linguistic styles) and a celebration of existence, Ulysses deals with (but is not limited to) sex, alcohol, adultery, identity (in all its forms), life, death, religion, and guilt.

The course is a live zoom session for 18 weeks on Wednesday evenings from 6pm – 8pm.
Start Date: 2/2/2022
End Date: 8/6/2022
Fee: €140

To critics who found the book unreadable and/or obscene, Joyce simply replied “If Ulysses isn’t fit to be read, then life isn’t fit to be lived”.

This year’s course will celebrate the Book of Bloom: Joyce’s Wandering Womanly Jew “My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn…ye shall ere long enter into the golden city…the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future”  (U15: 1542-44)

When Jacques Mercanton posed the question to James Joyce regarding the placing of Bloom as the central figure in Ulysses, the response emphasised not only Bloom’s ‘Jewishness’ but also his ‘foreigness’: “Bloom Jewish?  Yes, because only a foreigner would do”.  The Jews were ‘foreigners’ in Dublin at that time.  There was no hostility towards them but contempt, yes, the contempt people always show for the unknown (Nadel).   This is one of many aspects that make Ulyssesperhaps even more relevant today than when it was originally written.  In an increasingly globalised world where migration, trans-nationalism, and the emergence of nation states (and nationalism) are an everyday reality, any investigation of the character, Bloom, is ultimately an investigation of both individual and social identity (along with all its attendant concerns and prejudices) in a world where ‘foreigness’ has become an intimate and everyday reality.

***Places are limited, so early booking is advised***

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Painting Ulysses is an exhibition based on the 18 episodes of James Joyce’s novel. The works, painted by Aidan Hickey to mark the 100th Anniversary of Ulysses’ publication, will hang in the James Joyce Centre, North Great George’s Street, Dublin, from February to June, 2022.

Since each of Joyce’s episodes was written in a different literary style, Hickey designed each painting in a different visual style. This exhibition responds to both the text of Ulysses and an eclectic exploration of European Art History.

Aidan Hickey studied at the National College of Art and spent most of his career drawing and writing animated films for Children’s TV. Always keen to tell visual stories, he worked in a Narrative style and searched for a suitable subject. And, about six years ago he found it, in Ulysses. Today, looking at the finished paintings, he says,

“Pictures can convey a lot of the spirit of a written episode, but very little of its true significance. That said, even if my paintings only hint at the novel’s wealth of comedy and complexity, they might, for a new audience, become a silent “Open Sesame” to Joyce’s treasure trove.”

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Budgen and Joyce

Frank Budgen (1882 – 1971) was an English writer and painter who lived in Switzerland during the First World War. He met James Joyce in Zurich in 1918, after their mutual friend, Horace Taylor, insisted that they meet. Over the next two years, Budgen and Joyce met almost daily to walk, talk, and drink wine. During these meetings they discussed Ulysses, the novel Joyce was then writing. In his memoir James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, Budgen describes the first time he met Joyce.

“I saw a tall slender man come into the garden through the restaurant. Swinging a thin cane he walked deliberately down the steps to the gravelled garden path. He was a dark mass against the orange light of the restaurant glass door, but he carried his head with the chin uptilted so that his face collected cool light from the sky. His walk as he came slowly across to us suggested that of a wading heron.”

The two developed a strong bond and friendship, one so comfortable and trusting that Joyce used Budgen as a sounding board while writing many of his great works, most notably Ulysses. Over the years, Budgen amassed a large library of works written by and about Joyce, and went on to write his own account of their friendship. He detailed their friendship in his memoirs and continued to collect books and other materials relating to Joyce. Many of the items he received contain handwritten notes from the authors, including Joyce himself.

In 2012, his daughter, Joan Budgen, donated a portion of his library to the James Joyce Centre. The collection includes 23 books and related ephemera, 3 original sketches, and 1 audio tape cassette.

“The books…came from the library of my father, Frank Budgen, and, when he died in 1971, I inherited them. He was a close friend of James Joyce, especially during the years of the writing of Ulysses in Zurich, about which he wrote in James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses.” Joan Budgen, 25 July 2012

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“As one grew to know him, one became as it were enveloped by a fine network of half-expressed thoughts and feelings that created an atmosphere of such suavity that it was difficult to resist, all the more so since it contained no element of restraint.”
Paul Léon on James Joyce

The James Joyce Centre Dublin is home to a table and four armchairs that came from the apartment of Joyce’s friend Paul Léon in Paris. Here Joyce was an almost daily visitor from 1928-1939.

Paul Léon was a Russian Jewish émigré who left Russia after the Revolution and came to settle in Paris in the 1920s with his wife Lucie. He was a lawyer, philosopher and sociologist who had published two books. James Joyce and Paul Léon first met through Giorgio’s friend Alex Ponisovsky, Léon’s brother in law, who was giving Joyce lessons in Russian. In the early 1930s, Léon took over as Joyce’s unpaid secretary looking after most of his legal and literary correspondence. When Joyce was writing Finnegans Wake, bad eyesight and general ill health made the task of birthing ‘the monster’ even more difficult. Léon’s help, was indispensable.

Joyce and Léon met regularly with others to work on the text. Towards the end of November 1931, Philippe Soupault joined the group which met each Thursday at 2.30pm in Léon’s apartment on the rue Casimir Perier. They would use the table and chairs that you see in the exhibition, and read the English and French texts of Finnegans Wake. Léon would regularly threaten to sell the round table if Joyce would only inscribe his name upon it.

Their relationship was typified by the following correspondence when Joyce wrote a note to thank Léon for his help in April 1930, Léon replied

“One thing I do object to, it is in your thanks to me which I do feel I cannot ever thank you enough for having allowed me to observe the formation of your thoughts which is, I confess, both captivating and meaningful”.

After the Joyces fled Paris in 1940, Léon salvaged the family’s belongings and dispersed them among friends for safe-keeping for the duration of the war. Léon was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 and died in a concentration camp in Silesia in 1942, but it was thanks to his efforts that the Joyces’ possessions survived the war.

Joyce recorded his own appreciation of Léon in Herbert Gorman’s biography:

“For the last dozen years, in sickness or health, night and day, he [Léon] has been an absolutely disinterested and devoted friend and I could never have done what I did without his help.”

This exhibition now recreates the apartment to pay tribute to this extraordinary friendship. The James Joyce Centre gratefully acknowledges the support of Alex Léon, The Heritage Council, The Office of Public Works and Mr. Danis Rose.

Exhibition at the James Joyce Centre

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Et Voilá ! Franco Irish podcast channel sponsored by the Cultural section of the French Embassy in Ireland. The 2 episodes talk about James Joyce last year in St Gérand le Puy in France with Marion Byrne from Association de James Joyce in St Gérand, Darina Gallagher Director in James Joyce Centre, Dr Adrian Paterson NUI Galway, Catherine Gagneux French Hon Consul Connacht & Donegal

Contributors: Olwen Fouéré reading and performance of Tutto e Scoilto and Finnegans Wake, Paraic Breathnach reading and performance of Flower to my Daughter and The Night piece, Aindreas Muldowney Reading of correspondanc, Laure Terchair/ Laure Chartier music for Tutto e Scoilto, Alan Preims Soundcast and Podcast Galway for Recording, editing, music composed

Listen to James Joyce’s Last Year In France Part One by Et Voilà ! on #SoundCloud

Listen to James Joyce’s Last Year In France Part Two by Et Voilà ! on #SoundCloud

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Each year the James Joyce Centre has the honour of commissioning a poem for Bloomsday. For Bloomsday 2021, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne created the beautiful – Lower Drumcondra. The Irish Times filmed Darina Gallagher, Director of the James Joyce Centre reading the poem.

Watch the Reading

LOWER DRUMCONDRA

Griffith Park has beauty.
Willows, dandelions
And tumbling chestnuts
Choirs of children laughing.
In the bubbling river
a heron always stands
Watching, on a rock,
Like any artist.

These shining slopes
Are built upon a dump.
Once the Millmount hills
Were lumps of rubbish,
mouldy offal,Micky Mud.
How it must have stunk.

He spread his wings
And headed south
Through Dorset Street
and Eccles.
North Richmond which is blind.
And on and on
and on.

Sixteen moves
Before he reached the boat.
Not quite a house for every year.
But close.

When he was twelve
He lived on the riverside
He saw the heron,
legs delicate and long,
Enchanting midstream
In the land of tundish.

She stands in the river still
Sublime upon her rock
Listening to the best English
The ardent river song.

The Joyce’s house is gone.

About the poet 

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954 and is a graduate of UCD.

She lived for one year in Copenhagen, and otherwise has always lived in Dublin. She has two grown up sons and two grandchildren.

Eilis went to school to Scoil Bhríde, now in Ranelagh, and to Scoil Chaitríona, on Eccles Street. Then she studied at UCD, for almost ten years. She focused on literature and narrative studies, studying Pure English for the BA, doing an M Phil in Middle English and Old Irish, and finishing in 1982 with a Ph.D., dealing with the relationship of oral and written narrative. From 1978-9 she studied at the Folklore Institute in the University of Copenhagen as a research scholar, while researching her doctoral thesis.

Eilis worked in various jobs while she was studying – in Greene’s Bookshop, as a still room waitress on the Isle of Wight and on the Friesian Islands, in St James’s Hospital as a nurse’s assistant. For many years she worked as an assistant keeper, a librarian, in the National Library of Ireland. She has been lecturer in Creative Writing in UCD, and Writer Fellow at Trinity College. She was Burns Scholar at Boston College for Fall 2020.

She started writing short stories when she was a student and published her first story in the New Irish Writing Page in the Irish Press, in 1974 (the story was called ‘Green Fuse’), under the pseudonym Elizabeth Dean. For about ten years she wrote occasional short stories, many of which were published in the Irish Press.  Her first collection of stories was published in 1988, Blood and Water, and since then she has written 25 books, including  novels, collections of short stories, several books for children, plays and non-fiction works. She writes in both Irish and English. A list of the books is available on this website: see PUBLICATIONS on the menu on the left of the front page.

She has won several awards for her writing over the years. Among them are The Bisto Book of the Year Award, the Readers’ Association of Ireland Award, the Stewart Parker Award for Drama, the Butler Award for Prose from the Irish American Cultural Institute and several Oireachtas awards for novels and plays in Irish. The novel The Dancers Dancing was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2015 she was awarded the Irish PEN award for an outstanding contribution to Irish literature, and in 2016 she was given a Hennessy Hall of Fame award for lifetime achievement.  Her stories are widely anthologized and translated. Her latest novel for young people, Aisling, was published in 2015; her Selected Stories were published in 2017 by Dalkey Archive Press, and a memoir, Twelve Thousand Days, in 2018. She recently published a collection of short stories, Little Red and Other Stories (Blackstaff Press 2020.

She was elected to Aosdána, the academy of Irish writers and artists, in 2004. She is a current ambassador for the Irish Writers’ Centre, and President of the Folklore of Ireland Society (An Cumann le Béaloideas Éireann).

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

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James Joyce (1882 – 1941) is one of Ireland’s most influential and celebrated writers. His most famous work is Ulysses (1922) which follows the movements of Leopold Bloom through a single day on June 16th, 1904. Some of Joyce’s other major works include the short story collection Dubliners (1914), and novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Joyce was born in Dublin on 2nd February 1882 at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland. Joyce’s father was John Stanislaus Joyce and his mother was Mary Jane “May” (née Murray). He was the eldest of 10 children.

He attended school in Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College (just up the road from the Centre) before going on to University College, then located on St Stephen’s Green, where he studied modern languages.

After graduating from university, Joyce went to Paris, ostensibly to study medicine, and was recalled to Dublin in April 1903 because of the illness and subsequent death of his mother. He stayed in Ireland until 1904, and in June that year he met Nora Barnacle, the Galway woman who was to become his partner and later his wife.

In August 1904 the first of Joyce’s short stories was published in the Irish Homestead magazine, followed by two others, but in October Joyce and Nora left Ireland going first to Pola (now Pula, Croatia) where Joyce got a job teaching English at a Berlitz school. After he left Ireland in 1904, Joyce only made four return visits, the last of those in 1912, after which he never returned to Ireland.

James Joyce in the Dublin garden of
Constantine Curran in 1904.

James Joyce photographed with
his Grandson Stephen in 1934.

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