HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!
“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes.”
Bloomsday is an annual celebration held on June 16th to honor the life of Irish author James Joyce and commemorate the events of his landmark modernist novel, Ulysses. The entire book takes place over the course of this single day in 1904, following the ordinary journeys and thoughts of protagonist Leopold Bloom through the streets of Dublin. Named after Bloom, the festival is observed worldwide—most passionately in Dublin—with lively public readings, dramatic re-enactments, pub crawls and participants dressing in Edwardian-era attire. Joyce chose this specific date because it marks his very first outing with his lifelong partner and eventual wife, Nora Barnacle.
“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another… then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”