Bloomsday festivals are held around the world to mark Joyce’s great work and this year Cyprus is included too. ELENI PHILIPPOU finds out more

Ireland’s culture and celebratory style are world-renowned, going beyond the popular green-dressed fiestas in March. Plenty more significant days bring life out on to the street, celebrating culture, history and literature. A cherished annual celebration is that of Bloomsday which takes places primarily in Dublin every year on June 16. The day is dedicated to Irish writer James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, whose central character is Leopold Bloom after whom the day is named.

The 1922 novel follows the life of Leopold and a host of other characters, some fictional, some real, on a single day – June 16. In some 700 pages, Ulysses follows Leopold and his acquaintances from 8am on that June day in 1904 until the early hours of the following morning. It was a feat that took Joyce eight years to finish and 2022 celebrates 100 years since that date. This summer centenary celebrations reach our corner of the Mediterranean as well.

Bloomsday events generally include performances, readings, re-enactments, tours, dressing up in Edwardian costume and even having the same breakfast as Leopold Bloom eats in the novel on the morning of June 16: liver and kidneys alongside a full Irish fry-up!

The first-ever Bloomsday event in Cyprus is a collaboration between the cultural organisation Ideogramma and the Embassy of Ireland. The free events in June and early July hope to raise awareness around the island about the prolific Irish writer and his most characteristic book.

Joyce himself described the novel as “a book from 18 different angles and in an equal number of styles, which apparently my colleagues of literature neither know nor have discovered”. These angles each have a different style and technical narrative, as they tell the story of a single day in Dublin.

“Ulysses,” said the organisers of the Cyprus events, “is not just an emblematic book of world literature, it is a mythical book not only for those who managed to read it, but for those who acquired the novel and abandoned it, frightened perhaps by its shifting style and density.”

Joining a dozen other Bloomsday events around the world, Ideogramma and the Embassy will host a special event on the evening of June 16 at the outdoor amphitheatre of the Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia. Theatre director Andreas Araouzos will coordinate the event which will include readings from Ulysses in Greek, English and Turkish. The 8.30pm event will also include video and audio excerpts of interviews by Joyce as well as music interludes and a Celtic harp performance.

“I am delighted to welcome our first Bloomsday Festival in Cyprus,” Irish Ambassador Conor Long told Cyprus Mail. “Joyce’s Ulysses is as universal a story as Homer’s, and is celebrated around the world. With such deep connections to both the Greek and Anglophone cultural worlds, I can think of nowhere more appropriate than Cyprus to celebrate Bloomsday.”

On the same day, celebrations will take place in Ireland but also in Italy, Greece, Australia, Latvia, Norway and the USA, according to the official Irish Bloomsday Festival website.

Celebrations beyond the famous June date will see events in Nicosia. On July 1, 2 and 3 a musical staged reading in Greek will take place at ARTos House in Ayioi Omologites with storyteller Marina Katsari and musician Vangelis Gettos on stage. Their performance is titled Nobody and as it happens within the Cyprus Bloomsday Festival 2022, it brings together three epic writers – Homer, Kazantzakis and Joyce. Marina and Vangelis dissect the transformations of Odysseus through the works of three literary legends that were influenced by the adventures of the mythical hero: Homer and his Odysseus, his Joyce and Ulysses, Nikos Kazantzakis and his own Dysseas.

The connecting factor of these three is not the Greek roots but rather their theme and view of death. The musical-narrative performance is based on the rhapsody Nekia, the land of the dead, which is found in all three works. “The transcendental performance-experience,” commented the organisers, “combines the cosmopolitan discourse of the great writers and original live music on stage and seeks to remind audiences of the most basic crime committed by man over time: the insult to the privilege of being with the living.”

A rather packed literary agenda makes up the first official Cyprus Bloomsday Festival and in the years to come, the organisers hope to build more recognition of the novel and the Irish writer. In Ireland and around the world, Bloomsday culture is alive and growing, Ideogramma and the Irish Embassy wish to make it local as well, connecting Dublin and Nicosia even more.

“I would like to emulate the Dublin celebration,” the Ambassador concluded, “where the public and performers re-enact parts of the story across different locations in Dublin. Nicosia, especially the walled city, seems like the perfect location to recreate the atmosphere of the book. I hope that we can do this in the future, as an event in which the public can join in.”

Bloomsday – 100 Years of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Readings from Ulysses novel, audio excerpts and a Celtic harp performance. Part of the Cyprus Bloomsday Festival 2022. June 16. Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia. 8.30pm. Free. In Greek, English and Turkish

Nobody

Musical staged reading with Marina Katsari and Vaggelis Gettos. Part of the Cyprus Bloomsday Festival 2022. July 1-3. ARTos House, Nicosia. 8pm-9pm. Free. In Greek. Tel: 96-130158. Facebook event: Kanenas