Ireland celebrates 100 years of Ulysses, novel by James Joyce

The Irish celebrate Thursday June 16 the centenary of James Joyce's novel,

, a major work of English-language literature, on the occasion of a traditional "Bloomsday" - which celebrates the life of the writer - even more festive than habit.

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Ulysses

, published in Paris in February 1922, recounts the wanderings of Leopold Bloom, an ordinary Irishman who indirectly follows the same adventures as the hero of Homer's

on his return from Troy.

The novel takes place in a Dublin then under British control, on June 16, 1904, a “Bloomsday” celebrated every year by Irish fans of the writer.

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This year, as the novel celebrates the centenary of its publication - it will be banned for years in the UK and the US due to passages deemed

the Irish have planned to mark June 16 with gusto. .

Since the beginning of the week, fans have been walking around in period dress and re-enacting scenes from the book on both sides of the Irish capital.

In a fort where Joyce stayed, which has become a museum and a place of pilgrimage, a representation of an imaginary meeting between the Irish author and his French contemporary Marcel Proust took place on Tuesday June 14.

"A bit of madness"

In it, the two titans of literature debate Joyce's legacy while sipping wine - apple juice - for the matinee's performance.

says Tom Fitzgerald, who plays Joyce.

he smiles.

The celebrations even go beyond Ireland, with festivities organized in Irish embassies in South Africa and Vietnam and book festivals in Canada and China.

Considered by many critics to be the most important English-language work of the 20th century,

is a dense novel that is difficult to categorize, breaking down genres and storytelling techniques and touching on Irish nationalism, religious dogma and issues of sexuality alike.

The Irish government, which at the time of the poet was under the influence of the Catholic Church, had refused the repatriation of the body of James Joyce after his death in January 1941, at the age of 58, because of the violent criticisms he had leveled against the institution.

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and our contemporary Cyclops”

The mustachioed and bespectacled author, who spent much of his life in continental Europe, is still buried in Zurich, Switzerland, where tourists come to gather.

If it shocked, the novel, written while Joyce was at the front during the First World War, is of a biting humor and ready for reflection, the author reclaiming the myth of Homer by adapting it to the Dublin of the time.

For Darina Gallagher, director of the James Joyce Center in Dublin,

, published the very year of the creation of the Irish state, raises questions that the country still asks.

she said.