The northeastern city of Trieste was
on Thursday preparing to host the 14th edition of its annual
June 16 Bloomsday celebrations of the great Irish writer James
Joyce and his most famous novel, Ulysses.
The event, an initiative of the Municipality of Trieste with the
Joyce Museum and the University of the Adriatic city where Joyce
taught English is named after the novel's protagonist, Leopold
Bloom.
This year the three-day event focuses on Circe, the "very rich,
visionary, sometimes stark and sometimes dreamy" 15th episode of
the novel mixing reality and fantasy into a kind of continuous
nightmare, according to a statement from the city council.
The calendar of theater, lectures, art exhibitions and concerts
also reaffirms the link between Trieste and Joyce through his
relationship with the local writer Italo Svevo, to whom he
taught English and whose The Conscience of Zeno was first
published in 1923, a year after Ulysses.
Festival highlights included a performance lecture at Trieste
university by actor Alessandro Bergonzoni, English literature
professor Enrico Terrinoni and translator and literary critic
Fabio Pedone on the magic of Joyce's language; a dramatization
reconstructing the Dublin "brothel" in the evocative location of
Lloyd's Tower; Davide Lippolis' exhibition Belle dame sans
serif; and Joycean walking tours.
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