Happy Bloomsday

James Joyce's sketch of Ulysses' hero, Leopold Bloom. The line in Greek is the opening line of The Odyssey: "Tell me Muse, of the man of many devices, who over many ways…” Image found here.

It is June 16th again. If there's a literary equivalent of solar calendars, surely one of the days by which it would be oriented would be this day. Ulysses is one of those books which, even if you haven't read it, you have inescapably read books which owe their forms and strategies to it. (And just for the record, I'm saying that like it's a good thing.)

By way of celebrating the day, here's Kate Bush's video for the title track of her 1989 album, The Sensual World. It's not quite 1904 Dublin, but listen closely and you'll hear some very familiar language:



Also, by (the Mrs.') request, this blast from the past.