This is the second of my blog posts for Bloomsday. The third and final will go up tomorrow. Check out the Bloomsday 2022 tag for the others.
This year marks the centenary of Ulysses‘ publication, but it was set eighteen years earlier. The actual date of publication was the 2nd of February, Joyce’s birthday (also Groundhog Day!), so perhaps that should technically have been the focal point of celebration; Joyce mentions a “Bloom’s day” in his letters as early as 1924, but the first famous one was in 1954, fifty years after the events of the novel, led by Flann O’Brien and others. So perhaps the 16th of June, 2022—which is not exactly a hundred years since the date of publication, nor anything close to a hundred years since the date of Leopold Bloom’s odyssey, nor a round number of years since 1954—is a bit of an uncertain anniversary (though it does, like the one in the novel, fall on a Thursday). Still, it’s the first Bloomsday I’ve ever celebrated, and I wanted to do something. I couldn’t really make the pilgrimage to Dublin—it’s a bit too far for me to travel under current circumstances. I did think of dressing up in Edwardian costume, but that would have required more of a financial outlay than I was willing to make. I could have stayed in bed all day like Molly Bloom, but that’s not much of a novelty. I also had no funerals to go to, ads to sell, or Hamlet theories to expound, and I’d rather not go to a brothel or lock myself out of the house.
I did find my own way, though, to mark Bloomsday. Here I present to you my own Bloomian journey, with additional commentary from a renowned Panicky scholar.
9.30am: Mrkgnao! I feed my cat. Mr Kelly eats with relish the biscuits of fowls.
Commentary: There is more than one reversal at play here. While Mr Bloom’s cat remains unnamed in the text, “Mr Kelly” is only one of several names Panicky’s cat can boast; he is variously referred to as Kellas, Kit Kelly and Kit Kat. Bloom, meanwhile, goes variously by Leopold, Mr Bloom, Henry Flower, and even Miss Bloom; there are also references to his father’s original Hungarian name of ‘Virag’, before he changed it by deed poll. By contrast, Panicky refuses to reveal her (to use the pronoun of least resistance) legal name, going instead by a handle.
There is also a reversal of sex: Mr Bloom’s cat is female, and Panicky’s cat is male (though castrated). The fact that Panicky does not strictly identify as a woman does not negate this reversal, since Bloom himself is an androgynous figure, as brought out most strongly in the ‘Circe’ chapter. Indeed, there is scope for contemporary readings of both Bloom and Molly as in some way genderqueer or genderfluid.
The transformation of “innards” into “biscuits” could be read as showing an increasing reliance on processed food in the intervening century, though processed foods are in fact a feature of Joyce’s text.
10am: I eat with relish the ovum of fowl.
Commentary: Unlike Bloom, Panicky does not eat meat. While Bloom does have some misgivings about his meat consumption, he is ultimately driven by corporeal desires. The same is not true of Panicky, who fastidiously abstains from all meat and dairy products, in addition to other lifestyle choices made in deference to environmental concerns. While she and Bloom are alike in not having had penetrative sex for many years, they have different motivations for this.
10.30am: I make myself a cup of coffee and sit in my hammock to drink it, but fumble and spill hot coffee all over my genitals. I change out of my now-soaked underwear and sleep trousers and into a pair of yellow silk boxer shorts with little elephants on them which I bought secondhand several years ago from ‘White Rose’, a secondhand shop in Nottingham.
Commentary: This episode is rich in symbolism. The burning of the genitals recalls the “burnt offering” Bloom refers to in ‘Ithaca’—the burnt kidney of the ‘Calypso’ chapter; it also brings to mind Buck Mulligan’s epithet for God, “the collector of prepuces”. However, the multivalence of associations and allusions does not stop there. Think of Bloom’s symbolic castration, literalised in the ‘Circe’ episode, or of Molly Bloom’s memory of “sitting in a swamp” in ‘Penelope’.
The first-time reader may miss a more obscure correspondence. In ‘Telemachus’, it is Haines who is seen rising from a hammock. Like Bloom, Panicky has Irish citizenship, but is of mixed provenance; unlike Bloom, however, she is primarily of British descent. The blood of the coloniser occupies her person, much as the Martello tower is occupied by Haines. Might this act of self-harm, subconscious though it is, reflect the internal conflict between the Irish and British aspects of herself?
One last note is the yellow silk boxer shorts. Panicky would not normally wear silk, given that the production process necessitates the death of silkworms; however, these are secondhand, or “left off”—note the correspondence to Molly Bloom, who “has left off clothes of all descriptions”. Yellow is Buck Mulligan’s signature colour, and the elephants recall Bloom’s orientalist musings. The reference to Nottingham is also interesting: Nottingham is Panicky’s home town, just as Dublin is Stephen’s and Joyce’s; she was often unhappy there, as were Stephen and Joyce, but is currently planning to return, at least temporarily, just as Stephen has. Indeed, in this respect she is closer to Stephen, the uncertain graduate, than she is to Bloom. It is worth remembering that Joyce was writing about Dublin while in self-imposed exile, and never physically returned there, despite never leaving it in his writing. Panicky’s reference to the city, though offhand, may reflect its primacy in her subconscious.
11.30am: I try to finish reading ‘Penelope’, but keep getting distracted.
Commentary: While, of the novel’s three main protagonists, Panicky is closest in age and sex to Molly Bloom, correspondences between the two are scant. Here, we see what is probably the nearest allusion to Molly; Molly also gets distracted from her reading on the morning of June the 16th. If Molly stumbles over a long word (“metempsychosis”) in her smutty book, Panicky is also reading a book with both smut and stumbling blocks galore.
1pm: I set off to Blyth South Beach on my bike, passing several Union flags still displayed for the Jubilee. I’m listening to ‘Blind Date With Bloomsday’ on BBC Sounds, and the segment of the latest TLS podcast which concerns Bloomsday.
Commentary: The Union flags are, of course, a development of the theme of British imperialism already hinted at in the coffee episode.
Also of interest is the bicycle. The safety bicycle, though invented two decades or so before the action of Ulysses, does not feature prominently in the novel, except for a brief mention in the ‘Nausicaa’ chapter; most of the characters locomote via the means of perambulation. The bicycle was, in Joyce’s time, associated with increased mobility for women; in Panicky’s time, though, it is more associated with environmentalism. In either case, it may be considered a forward-thinking vehicle, perhaps marking Panicky as a progressive in Bloom’s mould. Of course, it may also simply signify that she cannot afford a car.
Podcasts would not have been available in 1904; indeed, sound recording in itself was a very new invention. Sound and music, however, are of great importance to Ulysses.
1.30pm: I walk along the strand listening to the RTE dramatisation of the ‘Proteus’ chapter. At one point I mutter “ineluctable modality of the visible” to myself. I also try closing my eyes as I walk along the strand, but open them just in time to see a small crab almost being washed over my bare feet.
Commentary: While Panicky is explicitly linking herself with Stephen Dedalus here, a cynical reader might be tempted to point out that—in filtering her identity through her reading material—Panicky is closer to Gerty MacDowell. That said, the same accusation could really be levelled at Stephen himself; while the literature he has access to is wider, more obscure and academic, his identity is obviously strongly shaped by those influences. Even his poem in the ‘Proteus’ chapter is almost entirely plagiarised from a passage of Douglas Hyde’s; he has yet to establish a singular voice.
2.30pm: I get chips and a coffee. At first I eat them at one of the outside tables, but I’m put off by the number of people coughing around me, so I move to one of the benches overlooking the sea. I participate in a twitter discussion about animal personhood and the ethics of eating meat.
Commentary: Another episode very rich with symbolism. The obvious allusions are to the ‘Lestrygonians’ chapter: like Bloom, Panicky retreats from one eating establishment after being disgusted by the clientele, though in her case, this is due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic (Joyce was also writing in the wake of a similar pandemic, though there are of course no textual references to it given the book’s setting eighteen years earlier). Her continued caution, in contrast to the other patrons, further marks her as an outsider or nonconformist, like Joyce’s two principal characters (Stephen by design, Bloom by accident of birth).
Also in ‘Lestrygonians’, Bloom ponders the ethics of meat-eating; the theme of animal cruelty and his attitude towards it will recur in ‘Circe’. This is externalised to twitter in Panicky’s case, which brings up another interesting point: the polyphony of Dublin’s streets and pubs has been transferred to social media.
There is also a tenuous link to ‘Eumeaus’ here, in which Stephen and Bloom buy coffee and a bun in a cabman’s shelter. However, the ‘Lestrygonians’ parallels are much stronger.
5pm: I have a bath, washing with lemon soap.
Commentary: Note the time jump here, which elides the journey home. These lacunae do appear in Joyce’s text, often—but not always—masking a traumatic event. For example, we are not privy to either Stephen’s fight with Buck Mulligan in which he hurts his hand, or Bloom’s visit to the widow Dignam’s house. At other times, as in the time elapsed between the ‘Nestor’ and ‘Proteus’ episodes, we are given no reason to infer that any significant event has happened. The same is true here. If Panicky were attempting a novel-length work over a period of years, as was Joyce, she might be able to develop these non-events into stream of consciousness passages, but she is prohibited by limitations of time and scope.
Bloom buys lemon soap and ponders a Turkish bath in ‘Lotus Eaters’; it is later confirmed that he did bathe, but it happens off-page.
6pm: I work on this blog post.
Commentary: An interesting piece of metatextuality, recalling the “Jamesy” moment in ‘Penelope’. Given that subsequent events are alluded to within the blog post itself, it can be assumed that she does not finish writing it here, and continues to add to it throughout the rest of the evening.
7pm: I finish Ulysses.
Commentary: Curious that Panicky finishes the novel so late in the day, having already performed a number of Bloomsday-related activities. It might be wondered why she didn’t finish the novel beforehand, cycling to the coast later when she could have avoided some of the day’s heat, especially since it is nearly midsummer and the days are exceptionally long. This may have been an oversight.
7.30pm: I go to the shops, since I seem to remember that a few things I saw in M&S the other day are due to expire, so they might be reduced. The selection doesn’t turn out to be as good as I thought, but I pick up a couple of things, then go to ASDA and buy some plums.
Commentary: Unlike Bloom, Panicky visits the shops at the end of the day, not the beginning—for pecuniary reasons. This would seem to confirm her perilous financial status, or at least that she—like Bloom—is prudent with money.
Plums are something of a motif in Ulysses; it’s likely that Panicky bought them precisely for this reason.
10.30pm: I get up to take my pill.
Commentary: An episode which is sparse in details, though it does recall ‘Oxen of the Sun’ in its reference to contraceptives (though Panicky does not use them for contraceptive purposes but rather to prevent painful menstruation, something Molly Bloom could only dream of). Note another ellipsis (it seems unlikely that Panicky has been shopping all this time).
10.45pm: I practice Irish on Duolingo.
Most of the Gaelophones in Joyce are not depicted very sympathetically, from the English appropriator Haines to the antisemitic Irish nationalists. However, it would be a mistake to interpret this too simplistically, since some of the nationalist arguments employed by the novel’s villains—particularly concerning Ireland’s reforestation—can also be found in Joyce’s lectures. Additionally, the recovery of the Irish language over recent years has been dramatic, and its current status is very different than it was in Joyce’s day, though it may have comparable nationalist and post-colonial resonances.
11.30pm: I make myself a hot chocolate, avoiding the mug that burnt me this morning.
Commentary: An amusing bit of humanisation here, with Panicky imagining that the mug is at fault for burning her. Again, Panicky’s behaviour echoes Bloom’s, but her motivations are distinct: in ‘Ithaca’, he chooses not to use his favourite moustache cup, bought for him by his daughter Milly, out of deference to his guest.
There is, perhaps, a poignancy here. While Bloom and Stephen both have outsider status, they have spent most of the day in company of some kind. Their sharing of cocoa has been read by some as a form of communion; regardless, it is a moment of connection. Panicky is alone. However, we should do her the honour of not assuming that she is therefore lonely. If her story, unlike that of the Blooms, does not end in a marital bed, perhaps, like Stephen’s, it continues with a leap into the dark, while the heaventree of stars is hung with humid nightblue fruit. We leave Panicky contemplating a return to familial, landlocked territory, but that does not mean that her story is at an end. In Tennyson’s Ulysses, the errant king is not satisfied on his homecoming, and ventures off again.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea.
For those who long to sail, the sea is always there.
Panicky in the UK 