Monthly Archives: June 2017

Wilde

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Throughout this study abroad, we have discussed place. In my blog posts, I have repeatedly mentioned place as a physical location. This connection is easy to make, especially given the fact that we are in Dublin, where many of our readings take place. Today, though, I would like to discuss place in terms of time. Oscar Wilde was ultimately executed because he had sexual relations with men. As discussed in class, sexuality was not linked to identity in Wilde’s time, but it was still demonized and stigmatized to the point where people were killed if they participated in any homosexual activities. This month is Pride month, and I think that this is an example of how far we have come from Wilde’s time (though we still have a long way to go). People can openly acknowledge their own sexual identity and celebrate other’s. So, in this case, place is closely related to time in a way that shows how society has changed over time. Today, we also visited Wilde’s statue in Merrion Square. It was situated between some trees, but the sun shown over most of the area. As the group walked away, I looked down a noticed a tiny little plaque. It was a memorial to members of the Irish lesbian and gay community who have died. It is implied that the plaque is further memorializing those that have died due to persecution because of their sexual orientation. It is very interesting to me that this plaque is situated right by Wilde’s statue. It is fitting, too. It acknowledges Wilde’s orientation and reason for death in a subtle way, which does not detract or diminish the light that shines upon him and his accomplishments.

Bloomsday

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Yesterday was Bloomsday which was the day that James Joyce’s novel took place. I thought it was extremely cool that we were here since we’re studying James Joyce. Sandycove was absolutely breathtaking, and I thought the scenery was something that I connected with. The James Joyce museum was something I thought was really powerful. The museum was interesting because it showed pieces of his texts, and it showed where he lived for a while. I thought this was really powerful because it showed the state in which he wrote some of these texts in, and I think that shows a different imagery than just seeing pictures of said location. With the theory of place, I think actually seeing the place in the exact setup and circumstances where someone was experiencing something is a lot more powerful than seeing a picture of a place or just seeing an empty room that means nothing to people. I think its interesting that being physically in a place gives you more of a perspective of how events played out than just seeing a picture. It’s almost like we have more of an imagery and physical feeling of how things happened when we’re physically in a place. It also felt really real when we were on the tower and the guy was actually reading excerpts of Ulysses, and that made the experience much more powerful. I also noticed something about the people here- they all are extremely knowledgeable about their own history of Ireland and everyone seems to have a story of how it effected them or their family. I think it was also really cool that a lot of people dress up and celebrate Bloomsday, and I honestly do not think something of that nature would happen in the United States.

The Dead-Class Differences

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When I read The Dead I felt that it could be interpreted in many different ways. One piece of the text that seemed to have an open interpretation of Gabriel’s interaction with Lily the caretaker. Was his interaction lecherous or was it just an innocent conversation that just became a bit awkward. Gabriel himself is a character who comes off as feeling both superior and inadequate to others. He is very self-conscious and that can make reading his interactions with others a bit vague. We can never really know what Gabriel feels about something because James Joyce seems to give information but leave out just enough to make it open for interpretation and without resolution.

Some of the themes in the book story that we discussed were religion, love, and consciousness. One of the biggest themes is love and desire and the loss or absence of that. Gretta has to deal with the loss of the Michael Fur, someone who she felt had died of a broken heart over her. In reality, he most likely died of tuberculosis exacerbated by the standing out in the rain.

This theme and loss and death is woven into the text through the aging aunts, Gabriel’s dead mother, and Michael Fury. The life and death around him make him think about his own role and feelings towards others. He learns about his true feeling for his wife and the short comings he has when it comes to interactions with others. Many of Gabriel’s internal struggles are exemplifies through the poetic devices used in the text. Especially, at the end in his moments of desperation and devastation. Repetition, imagery, inversion, simile, and alliteration were all used to convey the emotions in the last paragraph.

Ulysses – Parody of the Odyssey

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In class, we discussed the episode one of Ulysses: Telemachus and its impact on the novel as a whole. One thing that I found interesting was that one can travel through the city of Dublin according to the locations and events in the book. Apparently, James Joyce was very meticulous and deliberate about what he wrote and everything has a meaning and a purpose if it is present in his writing. I learned that the book Ulysses is a mock/parody of the Odyssey. For one thing the main character, Steven Dedalus has a Greek name that references to Daedalus, Icarus’ father. I also learned more about Joyce’s inventive writing style. He made something new with his writing. Through his work, one can definitely see a consciousness and a shift from traditional writing.

Today, the 16th of June was also the Bloomsday celebration. It celebrates June 16th, 1904, a day depicted in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and is names after the central character in the story, Leopold Bloom. We traveled to Sandycove and saw many Bloomsday celebrators donning straw hats with black sashes, three piece suites, and long dresses. We visited the tower where Joyce had last stayed before he had left Ireland. There was a reading of the Ulysses going taking place on the roof top. The reader put so much life into the words and similar to No’s Knife gave meaning to what can sometimes seem like meaningless words.

After that, we enjoyed the scenery and watching the local festivities of Bloomsday.

 

Bloomsday!

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Today was Bloomsday!

 

As someone who has never actually read Ulysses (aside from the first chapter/episode that we read in class), I was worried that this day would not hold much for me in the educational department. However, I was pleasantly surprised as the train pulled up to our stop at Sandycove. The location was beautiful and thriving with live music, fresh food, and happy people. As we made our way towards the restaurant, we passed countless people who were out to celebrate the life and writing of James Joyce. After reading the first chapter of Ulysses, I could begin to picture it somewhat as we walked around the area and made our way towards the tower.

 

At the tower, I was definitely not expecting to climb up those incredibly narrow and suffocating steps. Miraculously I made it to the top and got to hear an incredible reading of Ulysses. The speaker had so much enthusiasm and theatric qualities that he truly brought the story to life at the top of the tower. On the middle floor, they room had been preserved the way it would have been in 1904. A guide showed us where each person would have slept and why things were where they were.

As I said before, my limited Ulysses knowledge did not hinder my experience of Bloomsday. If anything, I learned more about the book and its importance to the culture of Dublin and its people.

Bloomsday

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While I have never read Ulysses, I did read the first chapter for this class and it was incredible to experience Bloomsday, today. I think that being in Dublin has allowed me to better conceptualize the book, which will aid me in reading the entire book when I return to the United Sates. Seeing the way that people reacted and dressed up for Bloomsday really warmed my heart. The fact that one book has grasped onto entire generations of people and defined a city for an entire day was so moving. Literature can bring together a city in a way that no other medium can. Also, I remember on the tour, when Lucy was saying that the publishers were imploring James Joyce to remove the names of places and people around Dublin. Now, though, places celebrate being mentioned in Ulysses, and they make a lot of money from people travelling from all over the world for Bloomsday. It is interesting also, that James Joyce’s most famous and defining work was centered around a city that he, ultimately, left. People flock to the same city that Joyce was so critical of. They spend money and celebrate Dublin, the city that Joyce ran from, but always wrote about. It is a very interesting conundrum, and I wonder how Joyce would feel about the situation now. Given his ego, I’m sure he would relish and understand the wide obsession with his work, Ulysses, but I do not think he would grasp the concept of people visiting all places important to him and ones mentioned in the book.

 

Frozen Toes On Bloomsday

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On this day, June 16th, Ulysses written by James Joyce, takes place. Whilst celebrating Bloomsday with fellow Irish people and enjoying ice cream, we went into the Martello Tower where the events in episode one take place. It also happens to be a museum. It was very interesting to see the room were Joyce lived for 6 days in his 20’s. I also enjoyed the live reading, which took place on the top of the tower. It was a very fun experience for me to actually be in the exact same area where episode one took place. Seeing the children today splash around in the bathing area (the open swimming hole) allowed me to imagine exactly what the setting looked like in the book. I found it every helpful to be present in the same setting as the chapter.

After the museum tour, a couple of us walked along the bay/beach area and were able to picture life in 1902. This was just too much fun to imagine what life was like back then. As we were walking, we became extremely giddy and decided on impulse to kick off our shoes, roll our pants up and dip our feet into the icy blue water. I don’t think I could ever swim in it without heat similar to Atlanta’s. A windy day swim is a big pass for me, I couldn’t just take a dip especially during weather similar to today’s.

On a side note: it was also very precious to see families ranging from elderly to small toddlers dressed up in their Bloomsday attire which is basically clothing from the early 1900’s. SO. CUTE.

Bloomsday!

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Last summer, I read Ulysses with a small group of graduate students from GSU. To put it simply, Ulysses is a difficult text. As the summer wore on, our mantra became “let’s just get through it.” We incorporated into our study of Ulysses Don Gifford’s Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, the Gilbert Schema and Linati Schema, and some other criticism, but we mostly soldiered through the text. I read Ulysses after my first visit to Ireland, so I had a limited frame of reference for many of the places and people Joyce included in his tome; however, on this trip, I have been able to relate much more to the text because I’m in Ireland and many of the tours and activities in which we’ve participated have revealed aspects of Joyce’s life, both personal and professional, that have helped me better understand the minutiae of Ulysses.

Randy Malamud and I have had several discussions about the importance of reading certain texts in place. To that end, I appreciated our read in place assignment because it made me connect differently with the material. Also, with regard to preparing for my comprehensive exams, I’ve read all Irish literature on this trip. Specific aspects of these texts are more meaningful to me because of what I’ve learned in the last week. Although I couldn’t read Ulysses in its entirety on this trip, it was exciting to read “Telemachus” and visit the Martello tower at Sandycove. The tower was exactly as I envisioned it, especially the round room.

In honor of Bloomsday, I want to post my favorite passage from Ulysses, which is in the episode “Ithaca.” Joyce’s prose in this passage is stunning:

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 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 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 splendor, when visible: her attraction, when visible.

 

 

Bloomsday

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Today was an amazing day. We started the day by studying “Dead” by James Joyce and disscusted  episode 1 of the “Ulysses”.  I personally enjoyed reading the first text. I found it to be very different from the other stories found in “Dubliners”. In this story, Joyce gave us the opportunity to have a little more information about the the characters in the story, which made it easier to understand and draw better  conclusions from text. After class,  we headed to Sandycove beach , which is one of the settings of Ulysses.  I must mentioned that Sandycoves is such a beautiful place that is sorrounded by blue cristalline waters.  In there, we visited the Martello Tower , where James Joyce himself lived for  six days back in 1904. The tower is now a museum in honor of James Joyce. I was very excited because today happens to be Bloomsday , the day depicted  in the story. I learned that people in Ireland celebrate this day by dressing up as the characters from the story, and attending to the places mentioned in the book. I think it is pretty amazing that people in Ireland have so much appreciation for this author. Their admiration for him is so much that they even made a national holiday  out of  one of his book. I have never heard or seen such a devotion for an author. Once we were in the museum, we have the opportunity to heard the reading of one of the episode of  Ulysses , and to have a little more information about James Joyce’s staying. I ended the day by going for walk in the beach, and eating a cone of ice cream by the shore. Honestly today couldn’t have been any better.

Free Day

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Today was our free day to explore Dublin on our own. Sammie, Diana, and I slept in until about mid morning because we went out the previous night and had loads of fun. We departed UCD and headed straight into St. Stephens Green to conquer the list of places we had set on going. Our list included places like H&M, Lush, Murphy’s Ice Cream, Penney’s, and Sub City Comics. Unfortunately we only made it to two of the several places on our list because of the fatigue we experienced due to our late night out. We ended up making it to Lush and H&M. Prior to this trip I had never been to Lush before, and Sammie convinced me that it was somewhere that I had to experience. I am a curious person (obviously, or else wouldn’t be on this trip) so I decided to go in and experience the experience the was Lush Cosmetics. I would call it a life changing experience to be honest with you. Pictured above are some [vegan] products I purchased today that I am extremely excited about. To tie it in, the concept of place played a huge role into how I saw myself in this store today. I had an idea of what Lush was, I knew what it sold and that it did have quality products. It wasn’t until I had actually experienced the products itself, the store atmosphere, and learned about their ethical standpoints and realized that this was a place I really felt connected to. The concept of place is extremely versatile, I find it interesting that I can have an idea of what a place is and even have feelings about it even though I have never been there. My perception of this place changed after my experience there and it will most likely continue to change the more I spend time there. I think this makes the concept of place very individualized because of it’s fluidity.