James Joyce: Ulysses

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the day James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and others go about the business of their ordinary lives on 16 June 1904 in Dublin.

Yes, it's Bloomsday!

The final chapter of Joyce's wonderful novel Ulysses closes with Molly Bloom's interior monologue. Here are the exquisite, extraordinary, only terminally punctuated, final lines:

O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Trieste-Zürich-Paris, 1914--1921

Reading matters

On this day in 1904, the Irish writer James Joyce had his first romantic liason with Nora Barnacle. Subsequently, Joyce chose that 16 June in Dublin as the day for the setting of his novel Ulysses.

The novel concludes with the stream of consciousness of Bloom's wife, Molly:

and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Trieste-Zurich-Paris
1914-1921

Ulysses ebook: Project Gutenberg

Bloomsday: Wikipedia

Yes.