Bloomsday, and Europe paralysed by Joyceans
Ulysses, Episode 7, Aeolus: The Great Gallaher — "You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you."
Ulysses, Episode 15, Circe: Myles Crawford (His cock's wattles wagging.) "Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arse Wiper here. Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?"
The genius Joyce understood the Irish soul better than anyone before or since and he knew that his nation would one day paralyse Europe. As it surely did last Thursday. But one man who has not read his Joyce is the German politician Axel Schäfer, SPD Bundestag committee member on EU matters. Sez the bould Axel to the Irish Times: "With all respect for the Irish vote, we cannot allow the huge majority of Europe to be duped by a minority of a minority of a minority." Herr Schäfer, to whom irony appears to be something Irish, is one of those political shepherds who will do all in his power to prevent the majority of the majority of the majority of the European flock from voting on the Lisbon Treaty, as Henry Farrell noted over at Crooked Timber..
Anyway, today's the day when Joyceans the world over will pause to think of the mastermind who rewrote the book. It's Bloomsday and in the spirit of things European, the Instituto Cervantes de Dublin it matching up Spanish writers Jordi Soler, Edwardo Lago and Antonio Soler with Ciaran Cosgrove, Head of the Hispanic Studies Department, Trinity College Dublin and David Butler, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Carlow College. Together they will take part in a "roundtable discussion on Joyce's work and his reception with the Hispanic world." Afterwards, they will pile into The Lincoln Inn across the road from the Cervantes Institute. That's the kind of European reception Joyce's characters would have approved of.
