"On the rocky road to Dublin." Ellis R. Ephraim. New York: M. Witmark & Sons, 1905
The events of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses take place in Dublin on a single day, June 16, 1904. Joyceans the world over celebrate Bloomsday with marathon readings and a pint of Guinness or two. Say yes yes to James Joyce with the Performing Arts Encyclopedia, where you can find manuscripts of Samuel Barber’s “Three Songs,” musical settings of poems from Joyce’s Chamber Music: “Rain has fallen,” “I hear an army,” and “Solitary hotel.”
Bloomsday, with or without a pint, is celebrated at the Library of Congress on a regular basis. The Music Division’s own Joseph Bartl coordinates the Bloomsday Camerata, a group of staff members who meet for lunch once a week to read through the classics. The group has completed all of Joyce, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ezra Pound’s Cantos, and selected works of Beckett. They are currently reading through Boccaccio’s Decameron.