Bloomsday 2024!

For many of us the opening lines of Ulysses, which usher in the one day (16 June 1904) on which Leopold Bloom takes his long perambulation around Dublin, are so familiar they scarcely need repeating. And yet, there are always people who have yet to read – or re-read – James Joyce’s monumental work of art. For anyone contemplating this journey through time we are planning a new Ulysses study starting early in 2025, details will be announced here on the website and in our newsletter soon (please make sure you are subscribed).

We have some incredible readers who are just in the process of completing Ulysses with Toby, after six months of what she describes as: “mad reading, struggling for understanding, deep probing of textual complexity, gender roles and identifications, the awful weight of history, antisemitism, the haunting of grief and the meaning of the lemon soap – a lovely group of readers have triumphed in their work with Joyce – their final meeting happens this week.” 

Unusually, we are not celebrating Bloomsday formally this year, BUT the gallery above is a reminder of Bloomsday and other Joyce-related events the Salon has enjoyed in recent years (and there will be more in the future). Meanwhile, here are a few things going on if you are keen to find a last minute opportunity:

  • The London Balloonatics, who can normally be found on Bloomsday re-enacting Bloom’s Dublin walk on the streets of London, are instead walking in Dublin this year (find them on the Bloomsday Festival website link below) but offer this audio for those of us who are not in Dublin with them!
  • Our friends at Audrey are offering a ‘listen-along’ Ulysses opportunity.
  • For anyone in Dublin the James Joyce Centre’s annual Bloomsday Festival has lots going on this weekend, as does the Derry-based YES Festival celebrating female creativity with a focus on Molly Bloom’s soliloquy.
  • In London the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith is offering a play Norah & Jim and an art exhibition based on Ulysses.

Happy Bloomsday!

In Search of Mrs Dalloway!

To Agistri by land and sea . . .

“Strolling the decks in the morning sun as the ship cruises past the islands of Cephalonia and Ithaca is the nicest part of the trip”

The Man in Seat 61
Musee de la Vie Romantique, Paris
Architectural detail, Milan Centrale Station
Bari Old Town
Zeas Harbour restaurant in Piraeus

We loved reading Night and Day in Alfriston!

Each travel study is its own epic experience. We work hard to put together the text, the group, a special site, unique eating experiences, relevant gallery or museum visits, outdoor adventures and of course, a wild swim or two, but still I experience a healthy anxiety in hoping that all the planning will result yet again in the magical coming together of minds, words and ideas that makes these times so unique. 

The study of a book that I have not previously worked through makes this pre-trip tension even greater. For our latest big Woolf read, Night and Day in Alfriston earlier this month, I had the great privilege of working with Dr. Karina Jakubowicz, whose deep knowledge, great energy and humour made the facilitation electric. She also makes a fine fire!

Added to this, we had a core group of dedicated Woolfians – some of whom are in the ongoing diary study of Woolf – who had prepared reflections from that work that informed our reading of Night and Day

We were also truly enriched by our contact and meeting with the brilliant folks at Much Ado Books in Alfriston. The space they have created, with such love for books and art, welcomes all readers into the bright and illuminating world of beautiful books. They have a wonderful variety of rooms and extra buildings dedicated to different aspects of literary art, and they kindly hosted one of our sessions in the barn that houses their collection of Book Art – a vibrant response to the meeting of word and material. I value this connection greatly and was inspired by their embracing space and passion for books. We plan to be back in Alfriston next April and look forward to more events and exchanges with this very special location.

On first diving-in, Night and Day can seem like a conventional late nineteenth century novel of romantic entanglements, but our time around the work introduced new understanding as we were guided by Woolf’s probing – and at times ironic – gaze into family life, women’s work and social relationships in the late Edwardian era. In his literary theories, Mikhail Bakhtin developed the proposal that social situation and relationships determine the structure of utterance. Night and Day, positioned at a moment of immense change in the world, as portrayed in Woolf’s later novels, captures this change by using traditional language to address the rigid values around marriage, love and the position of women. But into this (teetering) order, Woolf inserts dreams, darknesses, gaps in language and volition that reflect the difficulty of resistance to a system in which one is embedded. By the novel’s end, some of the characters are stepping out towards a new world, just as Woolf herself will move towards more experimental forms of language and complex understanding of character in all her subsequent works. 

During our time in Alfriston, some of us would venture to Seaford early in the mornings for a dip in the sea to get our minds moving. As we drove to the beach on 13 April, we learned of the Iranian missile attack on Israel (particularly relevant to one of our participants, a political journalist whose radio interview that morning was abruptly cancelled). Suddenly, war and global conflict invaded our idyll, giving us a different understanding of how Woolf could have written this most domestic of novels in the midst of the Great War (a concern voiced by many critics, especially in her immediate group). We realised that with the threat of war around us (and I believe that awareness of our global position means we are all implicated in war anywhere in the world) we might turn purposefully to the drama of human relationships, where conflict can spark and glow to destruction. We also reflected that, in the chaos of the news around us, the generation of hope in human potential for progressive change is an ember that must be nurtured. 

There were so many moments of glittering insight and pleasure during our time together engrossed in this lesser-known Woolf work. I became aware of how the great privilege of time dedicated to this process of exploration results in an expanded space in the mind. Like swimming in fresh waters, the flotsam is softened and made fluid. With time spent focusing on a narrative, away from the needs of home, work and family, my mind gains strength as I move towards a healthy kind of attention. 

The study of great literature gives me an envelope within which to manage the disparate struggles of being human. There is no absolute truth to learn, but always a greater understanding of who we are in relationship to others and the world around us.

Reading Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day in Alfriston

Why read Fernando Pessoa?

Fernando Pessoa by unknown photographer, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

A focus on long reads

One recent Proust participant described the Salon experience like this: “ . . . thoroughly enjoying the Proust. Exactly what I anticipated and wanted. It’s the stimulus of the discussion I find motivating. I’m not that interested in the reading round it. The group is warm and tolerant enough for me to utter things that I quickly realise are wrong (a long-standing way of learning with me) and I can readjust. I guess the dialectic approach has always appealed to me and it is great to be in a rich environment in which I can indulge it without irritating people (too much anyway!) and deepen my understanding. Basically a blast! “

Iain MacGilchrist The Matter with Things

On reading: long reading, slow reading, hard reading, reading that tickles . . .

My mind feels crowded and noisy in the face of so many demands on my attention. It is easy — so easy — to be caught up in the movement of the day and reach the twilight moments of reflection to wonder: what have I done? With this day? With my life?

I emerge from the Salon with gratitude for the wonderful minds I have engaged with, for the willingness of each person to go deeply into the work, to offer their ideas, to try out a reading of a difficult passage, sometimes to stumble, and to learn.

What is a ‘text’?

Angelus Novus by Paul Klee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When I thought about an image to illustrate Philosophy & Literature, Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus immediately came to mind. Benjamin, the German Jewish philosopher, was a literary critic known for his work on Proust, Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, theatre, storytelling, libraries and more. I felt that a salon reflecting on ‘text’ should somehow pay homage to this great critic who was interested in the truth found not just in books but in objects, advertisements, technology, arcades . . .  A monoprint of Klee’s Angel was one of Benjamin’s most cherished possessions and was found among his sparse belongings when he committed suicide in 1940, at the French/Spanish border he needed to cross to escape Nazism in France and which had just closed.

For Benjamin, the Angelus Novus is the Angel of History. “His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet”. The pile of debris only grows higher as a storm pushes him backwards towards the future. This storm, says Benjamin “is what we call progress”, I wanted the Klee image to “quote” Benjamin, to remind us of his dedicated search for truth in all forms – from the smallest object to the most scholarly treatise. Unfortunately, with the horrendous attack on Israel by Hamas and the suffering of the Palestinian people, the Klee image brings back to our minds the despair suffered before, the pile of debris, the wreckage of human folly that we call progress and which surrounds us at this moment.

The philosophical work of Benjamin is inspiring and his search for truth in all objects and texts is worth pursuing. We are keen readers who, like Benjamin, love stories and books, and we ponder over them. Is Ulysses telling the ‘truth’ when he recounts his adventures to the Phaeacian king? Is Ishmael telling the truth when he weaves a story about Moby Dick to some Spanish gentlemen in Lima? What is the ‘truth’ of these narratives? Who is Mrs Dalloway? Who is the ‘real’ Clarissa? Reading Proust’s Search, we wonder, who is telling the story? What is that story about? Is there only one way of reading a text? What is a ‘text’? Who speaks what, to whom and with what effect? Can we speak of truth, reality or knowledge when we read? Can we speak of pleasure?

These questions do not have straight answers but, as a philosopher by training, I think they deserve a space of their own. Not that I believe philosophy can resolve them: nowadays we have become suspicious of the idea of a ‘foundation’ of knowledge.  Indeed, often we believe that philosophy is just one possible narrative among others. Still, as philosophy has traditionally addressed many of these questions, it will be interesting to see if, by reading excerpts of some well-known philosophical texts we can enrich our discussion.

Participants joining the Philosophy & Literature salon do not need to have had any previous acquaintance with philosophical texts. As readers who enjoy reading and discussing texts using our own experiences, we are ready to start. I will provide notes with background information on the authors, concepts and ideas, as well as some further reading for those who want to pursue those ideas. In the sessions we will be reading the texts and discussing how they present ideas of reality, truth, art and experience, seeking to integrate these ideas with our own understanding of books we have read and our own lived experience. Contributions from participants from all areas of knowledge will be very welcome. ‘Text’ as Barthes suggests, encompasses more than just the written word.   

We will start with Aristotle, who defined the art of ‘poetics’ as ‘imitation’: copying, representing reality. We will try to see how those ideas influenced the way we understand language, knowledge and art. From there we will move to Nietzsche, a big leap no doubt, but one that opens the space for modernist – and postmodern – literature. Wittgenstein will bring to the fore the horizon of shared practices, values and customs that surround language, writing, speaking and reading. Finally, we will ‘visit’ Paris and possibly find ‘pleasure’ amidst the multi-layered texts of Barthes, who in many ways and forms reminds us, once again, of Benjamin.

Philosophy & Literature, a four week study, begins on 25 January 2024. I invite you to join the journey.

Is there always more to say about Ulysses?

Portrait of James Joyce by Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1934, National Gallery of Ireland, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Is there always more to say about Ulysses? Yes, there is always more to say about Ulysses. Particularly in the wake of the tidal wave of the centenary . . . and the wonderful writer Colm Tóibín always adds to my view with his deft prose and deep curiosity.

From the London Review of Books: Arruginated: James Joyce’s Errors by Colm Tóibín

In this article from the LRB about the errors—volitional or otherwise—that Joyce makes in the text, I found myself bemused by the desire to drill down to fact in the face of the magnificent vision of Ulysses

Having spent some time in the text—reading, teaching, singing, researching and puzzling—it is interesting to know that we are still learning how the details of the text match or do not match the historical experience of Dublin in 1904. As Tóibín considers, some of it matters (the final notes), some of it may not. Sometimes we go off on galloping goose chases, sometimes we disappear down holes more fitting the Mad Hatter. As I read this, I was thinking about the sweet satisfaction I have in peeling back layers of the text with both new and practised Ulyssians. 

Our Slow-Read Ulysses group has found a rhythm of play in a careful exploration of the text that expands both my knowledge of the text and my understanding of what a close encounter with a great work may yield. While some of our own work echoes Tóibín’s detective work traced in the article, we also find moments of lift-off, when the beauty of the prose and Joyce’s technical mastery of the language launch us into new realms of thought—about our relationship to history, about identity, around gender play, about our relationship to the material world . . . and how Joyce pulls us in with his shimmering net of wordplay, allusion and musicality in language. 

In Arruginated, I am faced with fragments and details that may offer verisimilitude to the real world, or remind me how much the experience of the real world is always sifting in my mind—against my memories, imagination and sensory limits and embellishments. This puts me in mind of our wonderful work in the Finnegans Wake group, as it shifts and adapts to the needs of life and time, goes from digging in fragments (the middenheap with the Hen) with an eye towards the wider scapes of sky or water. This was echoed in the recent Anselm Kiefer exhibition on Finnegans Wake which included rubble as part of the installation. I had not realised that Kiefer’s home had been destroyed by bombing on the day he was born; the rubble he used in the installation was from his childhood home—he had played in that rubble, and the tactile experience of rubble informs his vision of fragments and broken pieces that gave him insight into the Wake

We are continuing our Slow-Read of Ulysses in a few weeks . . . there are spaces available if you would like to join us, anyone who has meandered through Ulysses is most welcome. You can do a series (usually six weeks of meetings) and then drop out and return as you wish and as life allows. We will be digging into Aeolus next: the pace is comfortable (3-5 pages p/week), the work is shared and we have lots of laughs. And, o, there is some learning along the way!

Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

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