Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
bloomsday breakfast
Get the last of the nutty gizzards...
Why sitting down to a feed of “inner organs of beasts and fowls” is now an essential part of the modern Joycean celebration.
Updated at 9.30am
THE BLOOMSDAY BREAKFAST…
It’s now an essential part of the modern-day celebration of Leopold Bloom’s fictional Dublin odyssey – and earlier this morning, hungry guests made their way to the James Joyce Centre on the city’s North Great George’s Street to partake in the traditional feast.
It’s an acquired taste, to say the least…
Here’s what James Joyce made poor Leopold Bloom sit down to in Ulysses, before he began his busy day:
Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Bloom, in other words, liked his offal. And while, admittedly, one man’s bacon is another man’s poison – there was no shortage of interest in this year’s breakfast event, in Dublin.
Diners were served “a traditional Irish breakfast in period costume with optional gruesome extras“. (It cost €30).
What is Bloomsday?
2015′s events to celebrate James Joyce and his most famous character have been ongoing since last Thursday.
It’s marked every year around 16 June, as that’s the day the events of Ulysses were set (16 June 1904, to be precise). Chronicling Bloom’s day in Dublin, the novel features many well known places like Sandycove Martello Tower, Westland Row, and Davy Byrne’s Pub.
Festivals and events have sprung up over the years around the featured locations and are a great way to spend some time when Bloomday celebrations are taking place. Details of the rest of the day’s big events can be viewed on the Bloomsday Festival website (screengrab below)
And arguably the highlight of this year’s celebrations takes place this evening, as the Joycean’s Joycean, Senator David Norris, sits down for a chat with Stephen Fry in Joyce’s own alma mater, Belvedere College.
have your say