Your favourite Ulysses quotes for Bloomsday, please
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Version 0 of 1. I’ve been having a lot of fun getting in touch with people around the world to see what they’re up to for Bloomsday. There is something really heart-warming about the fact that James Joyce’s notoriously tricky novel is the subject of celebrations from Croatia to Canada today (readers in Australia will already be well on the way to Bloomsday’s end). As well as asking all these brilliant people what they were planning, I also got some of them to name their (current) favourite passages from the novel. Here’s what they told me – and please share your own favourites below the line: Dean Parker in New Zealand: Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising from marsh lands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, connorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlin, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. It rains dragon’s teeth. Armed heroes spring up from furrows. Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O’Brien against Daniel O’Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M’Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against liar O’Johnny, lord Edward Fitzgerald against lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O’Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The Donoghue …” Igor Jurilj in Croatia: The Wandering Rocks episode . Aguinaldo Medici Severino in Brazil: What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman? “Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.” Dave Schurman in Montreal: A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.” Elizabeth Fuller in Philadelphia: He rests. He has travelled. With? Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer. When? Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler. Where?” —Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child. A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time. —Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it. The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.” Mark Traynor in Dublin: White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.” |