BLOOMSDAY - 2019

BLOOMSDAY BY OLLI CELEBRATION 2019

WHERE/WHEN: This reading will take place in Room A (the lecture hall) at 4801 Mass. Ave. NW on Friday, June 21 from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.

AFTER: It will be followed by an off-site Guinness-fueled cast party to which all attendees are invited (at 3618 Chesapeake Street NW, about a mile from OLLI) – where films and recordings will be available as optional forms of entertainment to complement and supplement the conviviality.

WHAT: We will be reading chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Ulysses*

OUR READERS:

• Katey Adams

• Geri Critchley

• Robert Aubrey Davis

• Marilyn Wong Gleysteen

• Christopher Griffin

• Enid Hyde

• Walter Kamiat

• Peggy Keegan

• Bob Kolodney

• Sandy Leibowitz

• Gail Lelyveld

• Dee Mahan

• Patricia Aycock Mertz

• David Palmeter

• Dennis Shaw

• Marc Wall

READING ASSIGNMENTS: Attached as Word Document

RESERVATIONS: on the Events Calendar on the OLLI-DC website at REGISTRATION (this is a free event but requires reservations for non-reader attendees).

*PROGRAM NOTES: After having re-lived the first four chapters of Ulysses in February at James Joyce’s OLLI Birthday Party, we will continue to wend our way through the novel and Leopold Bloom’s odyssey across Dublin’s fair city by reading the next three chapters:

• Chapter 5 (Lotus Eaters) – which includes secret correspondence, a misunderstanding about a horse race and a memorable bath scene;

• Chapter 6 (Hades) – which features an undertaker who is the most cheerful man in Dublin;

• Chapter 7 (Aeolus) – in which the Irish Language revival is supported by a lesson from Egypt.

Bloom provides food for thought and comic relief throughout. At the point in the novel where our reading starts, he is setting out from home on his odyssey across Dublin.

James Joyce didn't generally appreciate Tennyson whom he described as prudish and deficient in intellect, but, one can't help but wonder whether Tennyson's poem, Ulysses, didn't have some impact on him as he wrote the novel. A few quotes that seem to fit very well:

• "I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart";

• "I am part of all that I have met, yet experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades for ever and for ever as I move";

• "to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bounds of human thought";

• "my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars, until I die"; and, of course,

• "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

At any rate the restless curiosity and resourcefulness of the original Odysseus come down to us through the centuries in the unlikely person of Leopold Bloom and the ceaseless process of logical and artistic striving in James Joyce's Ulysses.

TEXT: The Script (of Chapters 5, 6 and 7 broken down into Reading Assignments) and the Rosenbach Library plot summaries of the chapters are attached to this page in Word and pdf formats.

The script of the February 2019 Birthday Party with text of Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the Rosenbach Library plot summaries of those chapters are attached to the JJ BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FEBRUARY 2019 page in Word and pdf versions.

ULYSSES/DUBLIN MAP: You can trace the chapter by chapter odyssey across Dublin on the interactive map at: ULYSSES-DUBLIN INTERACTIVE MAP

DOCUMENTS ATTACHED TO THIS PAGE

• Program

• Reading Assignments

• Plot Summaries of Chapters 5, 6, 7 (in Word and Pdf)

• Script (in Word and Pdf)