Today, 16 June, is Bloomsday, an event that is celebrated worldwide in celebration of James Joyce, his book Ulysses, and the hero of the book Leopold Bloom.
Here are two passages from Ulysses that make mention of the date:
Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman in White far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her typewriter.
Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion?
Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.
The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled
them: six.
Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:
—16 June 1904.
Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny’s corner and
the slab where Wolfe Tone’s statue was not, eeled themselves turning
H. E. L. Y’S and plodded back as they had come.
* * *
He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee. He scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin (1 shilling), placed there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade.
Compile the budget for 16 June 1904.
* * *
I first looked into Ulysses when I was a student at Park College, lo, these many years ago and I continue to savor its pages as well as the substantial critical literature it has occasioned. It is, as someone has said, a book of many happy returns.
Blissings on Bloomsday!
HyC