JUNE 16TH 11904 - JUNE 16TH 2004. 100 YEARS OF MR LEOPOLD BLOOM
It is said that on June
16th 1904 Mr. James Joyce met his would-be wife, Nora. The masterpiece of
this great Irish writer was born as an act of love, which is remarkable
indeed.
After 100 years we are
still celebrating the “deeds” of Ulysses-like Mr. Leopold Bloom: well,
admittedly he may have some Jewish blood in his veins (and so, not a pure
Irish-born gentleman) but in the novel he behaves and acts like a perfect
Irish man: broke, lightly lingering, he crawls from pub to pub, from brothel
to streets, from shop to shop…in short, he wanders around Dublin, the real
“bellybutton of the world” ever in this novel.
We
must thank an Irish artist for one of the key-texts of modern literature and
contemporary culture: we must thank a literary character for a reference I
daresay worldwide that is justly celebrated today. The little, trivial
Leopold is the modern Ulysses and he has resisted a whole century, even the
nuclear threat and two world wars: not bad for a little meaningless man of
the still more meaningless Dublin of that time, which Mr. Joyce left on a
self-imposed exile because in his opinion it represented the “core of the
paralysis” of the world, upset and destroyed by the blows of the World War
I.
Mr. Leopold Bloom is the
symbol of the crisis of modern man and, at the same time, of the birth of a
really revolutionary narrative style, the so-called “stream of
consciousness”, which could never be cancelable by the art of the next
years. Mr. Leopold Bloom is the main character of the so-called “mythical
method” which, by referring
to the classical Odyssey, breaks it up and overturns it to show all
the potential of the new artistic language.
But in times of equal
opportunities, we also must pay a homage to Leopold’s female alter-ego,
Mrs. Molly Bloom who, as a modern Penelope, waits with patience for her
husband’s homecoming, completely drunk, to spin off the most famous
monologue of contemporary literature (indeed well-known as “Molly
Bloom’s monologue”).
Last but not the least,
Stephen Dedalus, third character of the literary reference, Telemachus,
Ulysses’s son. Here Stephen is but a young man met by chance by Leopold in
his wandering. Stephen Dedalus recalls other two fundamental myths: Stephen
is the first Christian martyr (in fact it is celebrated the day after
Christmas) and Dedalus is the creator of the classical labyrinth, home of
the Minotaur. He embodies both the Christian and Pagan worlds: not bad
indeed! And, dulcis in fundo, he embodies the true portrait of an artist,
according to Mr. Joyce.
There’s nothing much
to say: we owe a lot to these distant characters of Ireland and not only as
we are people fond of and in love with the Emerald Land.
For this, let’s lift
our pints and toast on an everlasting cheer to Leopold and his family.
John O'Iannaghan
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