Last Thursday was June 16, a day that has little meaning for most Dutch people, but is all the more significant for Irish people. It is the day when one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century is celebrated: James Joyces Ulysses. That date not only coincides with the date everything in that great novel takes place, but is also the day Joyce apparently first made love to Nora Barnacle, the woman who would soon become his wife. Irish know how to celebrate literature. If you walk through the streets of Dublin on June 16, you will see lavishly dressed people. It’s just not yet a national holiday, but it’s not much of a difference.
The Irish embassy in The Hague decided to celebrate Bloomsday – because that’s the official name of this day – in the Netherlands and organized a real James Joyce lunch for that purpose. There is an intimate connection between literature and food, a connection that is particularly evident in Ulysses well expressed. Famous is the fourth episode in which protagonist Leopold Bloom ate ‘with great taste from the internal organs of mammals and poultry’. Kidneys in particular are greedily eaten here, while there is a lot of discussion about metempsychosis (transmigration of souls). Joyce, so much is clear from his letters, did not like vegetarians. ‘So curse she Russell,’ he once wrote, ‘curse Yeats, curse Skeffington, curse Darlington, curse the editors, curse the freethinkers, curse the vegetable verse and doubly curse the vegetable philosophy!’
The Irish embassy knew what to do with that. She flew in Irish chef Rory Morahan to prepare a Bloomsday lunch in front of diplomats and journalists. He had made it past customs at Schiphol with great difficulty. He brought 48 kilos of luggage with him, including his salmon lacquered by himself in Guinness. What else was on the menu? kidney, lamb liver, gizzards (gizzards), bacon, pan roast stuffed pork steak and Swiss chocolate cake (Joyce spent some time in Zurich, he also died there). And all that was devoured to the accompaniment of the booming voice of Morahan, who couldn’t read any of his notes thanks to faulty Joyce-esque reading glasses. But everything he said, everything he made came †straight from the heart† And all those dishes were somehow connected to Ulysses.
Look, this is how you can honor your literary ancestors: not with deadly reading lists, but with lavish meals. In any case, I returned to that majestic blue-covered book with different eyes. Maybe we should quickly exchange our King’s Day for a Bloomsday. Or for a day dedicated to a Dutch author; though I wouldn’t know to whom.