Trieste is preparing to host the 14th edition of its annual June 16th Bloomsday celebrations. Home to the great Irish writer James Joyce for many years, the celebration is that of the author and his most famous novel, Ulysses.
The event, an initiative of the Municipality of Trieste with the Joyce Museum and the University of the Adriatic city, where Joyce taught English, is named after the novel’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom.
This year the three-day event focuses on Circe, the “very rich, visionary, sometimes stark and sometimes dreamy” 15th episode of Ulysses. The episode mixes reality and fantasy into a kind of continuous nightmare, according to a statement from the city council.
The Bloomsday calendar of theatre, lectures, art exhibitions and concerts also reaffirms the link between Trieste and Joyce through his relationship with the local writer Italo Svevo. Joyce taught Svevo English. The latter’s The Conscience of Zeno was first published in 1923, a year after Ulysses.
Festival highlights included a performance lecture at Trieste university by actor Alessandro Bergonzoni, English literature professor Enrico Terrinoni and translator and literary critic Fabio Pedone on the magic of Joyce’s language.
There is also a dramatisation reconstructing the Dublin “brothel” in the evocative location of Lloyd’s Tower. Not to miss are Davide Lippolis’ exhibition Belle dame sans serif and Joycean walking tours.
