In 2003, I watched illustrious members of the Munster Literature Centre, Gerry Murphy and Pat Cotter celebrate Bloomsday with a reading in Shalom Park, Cork, Ireland.
Bloomsday in Shalom Park with a reading by Gerry Murphy, 2003
Bloomsday in Shalom Park with a reading by Pat Cotter, 2003
To quote James Joyce, whose writing is celebrated and still relevant, today:
“He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.
—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.
—I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.
Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen’s peering eyes.
—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!
Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:
—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.”
(from Ulysses, text I by James Joyce.)
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