 Good afternoon and welcome to virtual North Great Georgia Street in the heart of Joyce's Dublin. I'm pleased to welcome you to this webinar as we descend down the metaphorical stairwell at Sandy Mount ahead of Bloom's Day tomorrow to discuss James Joyce's epic Ulysses with two leading experts on Joyce. We'd allotted to be joined by Anne Fogarty, Professor of James Joyce Studies at UCD, and Daniel Mulholl, Ambassador of Ireland to the United States of America, and indeed incoming partner fellow at Mortland College, Cambridge, who has both been good enough to talk to us today about the political, European and international dimensions of Ulysses. I'm also very happy to be joined on screen later by Alexander Conway, our EU Affairs researcher here at the IIA. Alex has a keen interest in literature and in Joyce, and this event was his brainchild. Alex will put some questions directly to our speakers on screen during the Q&A part of our discussion. Beginning with Professor Fogarty, our panelists will each give some initial remarks for approximately 10 to 15 minutes. And then we'll move to the questions and answers part of our discussion with myself and Alex, and then of course with you, our audience. As always, you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we'll come to as many of them as we can. Please mention any affiliation if you have one, and if you think it's relevant, and a reminder that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. Please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIA. Before I introduce our speakers on the floor to them, I'd like to also thank our neighbors on Norfolk, Georgia streets, specifically Senator David Norris and his colleague Miriam Smith, as well as Darina Gallagher of the James Joyce Center for their kind and generous support for this initiative and indeed for keeping Bloomsday so vibrant in our part of the city. I'll now formally introduce our speakers. Anne Fogarty is full professor and director of the Center for James Joyce Studies at UCD. Professor Fogarty is an expert on the historical context of Ulysses and on 20th century Irish modernism and contemporary fiction. Her latest publication is on modernism memory and the biographical impulse and James Joyce remembers 2022 edition UCD press. Daniel Mulhall is the current ambassador of Ireland to the United States since 2017 and served previously as ambassador in London, as well as director general for European Affairs in our department of foreign affairs. Dan is an authority in Irish history and literature, having co-edited the shaping of modern Ireland, a centenary assessment 2016 with Professor Eugenio Biagini, with Irish academic press, and having written the recently published Ulysses, a readers Odyssey 2022 with New Island books. Thanks all for being with us. And Professor Fogarty, the floor is yours. I suppose there's a question mark there. James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and died in Zurich in 1941 and is buried there. And that already tells a little bit of his story. He grew up in Dublin and went to school in Ireland to Clongerswood College and Belvedere College. He took a BA in Modern Languages and English at UCD. The languages were French and Italian, graduating in 1902. He first went to Paris in the autumn of 1902, purportedly to study medicine, surprisingly enough, but was forced abruptly to return home to attend to his mother and her final illness. He Joyce died, sadly, on 13th of August, 1903, and it was one of the ruptures in Joyce's life. His exile is partly emotional, I think. Joyce lingered disconsolently in Dublin thereafter, but 1904 became a decisive year for him. He met Nora Barnacle in June 1904, as many people will know, published the first stories in Dubliners over the summer of 1904 in the Irish homestead. The most important change in his life, however, was to happen in the autumn of 1904. Faithfully, decisively and irrevocably, he left Dublin with Nora Barnacle on 8th of October 1904, thereafter they always celebrated this as their anniversary. Returning to the city only a few times thereafter and going increasingly disaffected with Ireland and with Dublin. Joyce remained in exile and exile is a loaded word, as I will discuss, and retained a British passport even after the Irish Free State was established in 1922. He was in exile certainly, but we could also describe him as a migrant and a refugee. He was displaced both by the First World War. He had to leave to yesterday and move to Zurich and was displaced laterally by the Second World War, fleeing Paris in advance of the Nazi invasion of Paris and ending up once again in that sanctuary of Zurich where he died. The abiding paradox of Joyce's work, of course, is that he obsessively wrote about Dublin and Ireland and imaginatively claimed possession of both Dublin and Ireland at a remove and from the distance of European exile. Some people argue that being in exile facilitated his giant imaginative project. The signatures to his books after Dubliners tell the story of his wanderings and displacement, but they also proclaimed that the books are products of European culture and the result of Joyce's entanglement with the several European cities in which he lived. So a portrait of the artist as a young man is signed off with Dublin 1904, Trieste 1914. Ulysses famously ends with the lines Trieste Zurich Paris 1914 to 1921 and Finnegan's Wake concludes with Paris 1922 to 1939. The Bloomsday Festival in Dublin every year and we're in the midst of it and currently always allows us to touch base with Joyce's work, but also to our air many fundamental questions such as the one that we're weighing up today. And the question we're considering is, how do we place Joyce, where do we place him, is he an Irish writer, a European one, an international or global one. Many people would make arguments for one or other of these labels above the other they see see them as choices that are mutually exclusive. One result of Joyce's global appeal is that he's also claimed by many different constituencies and territories. Bloomsday is celebrated in numerous cities around the world to numerous and to list, but just to mention a few Sao Paulo, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City and Sydney, all of which have very busy Bloomsday programs tomorrow. In Dublin now perhaps we see ourselves as having a particular stake in Joyce and his work, but in effect, Joyce is a global phenomenon and belongs to a community of international readers performers and translators and artists. Joyce is a shared commodity. Many stake rights in him, but he does not belong exclusively exclusively to anyone country or political position or indeed anyone reader. I would argue that Joyce exceeds any label that we attached to him, and that his work, which is transnational and polylingual that is with multiple languages situates itself at the intersection between multiple places, countries and tongues. Ulysses encourages us to identify as readers with the central triad of protagonists, Leopold Bloom, Stephen Daedalus and Molly Bloom. But they are all for different reasons, many things at once. There are Dubliners, Irish citizens, Europeans and outsiders. Leopold Bloom, as is well known, provocatively claims Irish citizenship when put under duress in the Cyclops episode set in the highly charged politicized atmosphere of Barney Kiernan's pub. But in the course of the same conversation, and Bloom also underlines his Jewish background, which is cross associated with a history of persecution, both in Ireland and Europe. So Bloom is underscoring his Irishness on the one hand and his Europeanness and otherness on the other. Reflecting on Joyce's obsession with the Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, Richard Elman wringingly pronounced in his biography of Joyce, and I quote, before Ibsen's letter, Joyce was an Irish man. After it, he was European. Elman is referring here to Ibsen's letter of thanks to Joyce, in which he acknowledges Joyce's precocious and enthusiastic review of his play, When We Dead Awakened, published in the fortnightly review in April 1900. And Joyce publishes this essay when he's still a student at UCD. Joyce, we know, learned Norwegian in order to be able to read the plays of Ibsen that had not yet been translated into English. Elman's declaration makes it seem that being European and Irish are competing identities and that becoming European in Joyce's case supersedes and cancels out being Irish. Elman never defines what being European means, but it's clear that he links it with a more open, mature cosmopolitan and cultured outlook for Joyce. Interestingly too, Elman sees being European as a process of transformation on Joyce's part and not something that is a given. I'll move to a passage in Joyce's work, his play Exiles, which often gets ignored. In this play, the two male protagonists at one moment, Richard Rohn and Robert Hans, who are friends but rivals, think about European identity in related terms to the ones that Elman poses for us. But they think about the connection between Europe and Ireland differently. And it's Robert Hans who is speaking here. He's a journalist. He's just been given a cigar by his friend Richard and this is a sign that the two are cultured and cosmopolitan. And this is what Hans says, talking confidantly to his friend, the writer, Richard in Dublin. These cigars Europeanize me. If Ireland is to become a new Ireland, she must first become European. That is what you're here for Richard. Some day we'll have to choose between England and Europe. Never were there more prophetic words. I'm a descendant of the dark foreigners. That is why I like to be here. I may be childish, but where else in Dublin can I get a banded cigar like this are a cup of black coffee. The man who drinks black coffee is going to conquer Ireland. Count of things being European is politically charged. Richard declares that Ireland should become European first and then become properly Irish afterwards. The habit of drinking black coffee is seen as a continental one and is ironically proposed as a facet of a new Europeanized independent Ireland. And in fact, a council passage from the play Richard declares that when you can get a good cup of black coffee in Ireland, then you will know that Ireland is truly European. And so for Joyce then being European and Irish shade into each other, or at least for his characters here. But there are also aspects of what makes Ireland different, particularly different to England. But we also need to be wary of what European might mean as because I'll show now being European is a weapon for instance, in the citizens racist and ultra nationalist assault on the English in the Cyclops episode. The citizen vehemently declares that the English have no civilization in one of his many tirades in this episode, and that they most definitely are not European. I'm quoting from Cyclops, and this is the citizen in full stride. George says the citizen to hell with the bloody brutal Sasanocs and their path to all. So JJ puts in a word, doing the talk about about one story was good to be heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation and balloon trying to back him up on moderation and moderation and their colonies and their civilization. The civilization you mean says the citizen to hell with them, the curse of a God for nothing God like sideways to the bloody thick block sons of horse kids. No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilization they have, they stole from us tongue tight sons of bastards ghosts. European families as JJ. They're not European says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris, you wouldn't see a trace of them or their language, any fire in Europe, except in a cabinet they saw that means in a toilet. So when used by the citizen very patiently, the term European has a very different meaning. This is not Elman's refined notion of Joyce becoming European. This is an open in the battle between Ireland and England being European bolsters the citizens nationalism, troculants and racism. The citizen makes being European synonymous with Irishness for sure, but he also makes it an exclusive category, and a very problematic mark of Irish superiority. He went into exile in Europe. It was a self chosen exile, even if dictated by the political and economic circumstances in Ireland, as well as by personal pressures in Joyce's family circumstances. Richard Elman argues that Joyce and I quote needed exile as a reproach to others and a justification of himself. Aparting from Ireland, Joyce was modeling himself on several writers, such as Dante, who of course was forced into exile, and indeed Henry Gibson, a contemporary role model who lived outside of Norway for many years. Going to Europe was a reproach and a part of his quarrel with Ireland for Joyce, but it also fulfilled a time honored recourse and higher calling. Joyce saw himself as following in the footsteps of the Irish saints who had traveled to Europe, bringing learning and artistry with them. In an essay which was originally a lecture that he gave in Trieste, Ireland, Ireland of saints and sages, Joyce says, it may seem strange that an island such as Ireland should have become a school for apostles by which he means saints. However, even a superficial view shows us that the Irish nation's desire to create its own civilization is not so much a desire of a young nation wishing to link itself to Europe's concert. But the desire by an ancient nation to renew in modern form the glories of past civilization. And after these two statements, Joyce lists for us the many apostles, as he calls them, the saints who set up monasteries, foundations of learning all across Europe, including saints like Saint Gaul and Saint Columbanus amongst many, many others. Conceived like this, Irish and European identity are for Joyce and folded into each other, as well as being badges of civilization, of division, areas of conflict, and maybe partly irreconcilable. European is for Joyce is part of an ancient legacy that Ireland in at the beginning of the 20th century was reconnecting with not something that was being claimed afresh, even though this was happening too. And I'll finish Joyce is writing or just as I think to ponder identity categories to rethink easy binaries and false oppositions. Melissa's ends with Molly Bloom's poetic, but combative monologue in the middle of the night. And she's in bed in number seven Eccl Street, but imaginatively she is in several time zones and none. She recalls her young girlhood and trists with the soldier Malvi on the rock of Gibraltar, and in the Alameda Gardens in Gibraltar. She overlays these memories with moving a moving recollection of a sexual encounter with Leopold Bloom her husband on the the Hill of Hope, and their mutual marriage proposal to each other. We are at once recessed in time, looking out on the RFC and the Mediterranean in a cosmic open space, and in the immediate material reality of an inconsequential day that has passed into night in Dublin on 16th of June, early morning 17th of June, 1904. The Spanish Gibraltarian Molly fuses with the Dublin woman, and with an archetypal female identity that spills over and undermines all of these categories, but also puts them in position as well. For Joyce to be European is a quintessential aspect of Irish identity that he worked through his art to reclaim being Irish and being European were warring categories for Joyce. But his work takes advantage of the friction between identities and the political possibilities that reside in being Irish multinational, and ultimately a citizen of nowhere, except of the artistic imagination. Molly's yes, I said yes, I will yes, and that runs out beautifully runs out you will say is often read as wapsodic and affirmative. It is also, however, I like to think a yes that embraces openness, multiplicity and hybrid identity, being Irish being European being nothing and being everything all at once. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Foglia was absolutely wonderful. I'm going to pass on to a vast moll hall and I'm really interested to know Dan what you were looking for on your bookshelf there and if you found it. I actually didn't find it because I only found my my three German editions of of Ulysses which wouldn't be that much value in this context but I think my five or six English language editions I have are all upstairs but anyway, I'm down here because of the Wi-Fi. So I'm speaking from the from the emcee residence here and we'll be having a bloomsday here tomorrow evening in the garden with lots of readers and singers and was what so looking forward to that but just to say that I, I was, I'm considering this session to be, I'm calling it international Joyce, right, and I thought I should give you a little an odyssey kind of my own odyssey if you like with this great novel. And I, I'm starting in Kansas City of all places in 1974, and I'm finishing off in Washington DC in 2022. So, 1974, I was a student, and I was spending my J1 summer in Kansas City of all places. I was staying at a Jesuit university there called Rockers College, because it was an Irish American that I had some connection with, who are John J. John J. Jr., who was a banker and also the president of the college. And he got us myself and my traveling companion the infinitely another UCC student from Waterford, and we ended up in Kansas City. And one day, I wandered into the bookshop at Rockhurst, and I saw a copy of Ulysses. And even though I studied literature and history at UCC, I'd never actually read Ulysses I'd heard about it. I'd never actually appeared on our curriculum in UCC, even though I did a BA in English and had some very good lecturers there, Sean Lucy, John Montague, Colbert Kearney and so on but Ulysses somehow didn't make the list of things that we were encouraged to study. So I picked up Ulysses, and I started to read this. And the first two chapters I read that night in my student accommodation and I thought, Oh, what's the fuss about these are, this is quite straightforward I can I can deal with this quite easily. And then I reached episode three, ineluctable modality of the visible. And on Sandy Mountain Strand, I got stuck in the sand, and I didn't get much further and I put aside that book. And I, but I didn't throw it away. I kept it. I still have it, because I brought it to India with me. It was one of the small consignment of personal effects that I had when I left Ireland for India in 1980. And one of those was the copy of Ulysses that I had bought in Kansas City in 1974. And in Delhi, I had bound in leather, which means that I still have that volume because I you know you know you don't throw away a leather bound a book. Most of the books that I had, a lot of the books that I had bound in those days in Delhi, I'm kind of embarrassed that I had to bound because I no longer value them in the way that I did at that stage clearly. But the Ulysses copy I have bound in leather is certainly one of these treasures that I that I have kept over the years. This book has traveled around the world with me to my eight postings, eight different postings over the last 44 years. In Delhi in 1982, I was invited to speak at the all India English teachers annual conference. Now that I remember turning up at this auditorium at the University of Delhi, and there were 1500 people at the conference, because, of course, India is a huge country and a lot of English teachers and this attracted a huge number of people so I spoke to this is still the largest audience I've ever addressed because there aren't many indoor venues that I would be able to speak at which would could hold that number of people. But I remember that time I didn't speak about Ulysses, I spoke about a portrait of the artist young man. I spoke about the nets of language literature and nationality, because guess what those nets were very relevant in India at that time, because there were debates about, you know, what the language of India should be should be Hindi should be English. And some of the regional languages of the subcontinent nationality was an issue about Indian nationality what it meant, and of course religion, a huge issue with Muslim Christian Hindu communities seek communities all living together somehow managing to get on together, but religion was a big issue. And there were, you know, religious issues cropped up quite a bit when I was there there would be incidents that would occur that would they would inflame tensions and so on so I remember thinking, Joyce, although he was writing about the Ireland of the early 20th century, what he was writing about was relevant to the India of the 1980s when I was there as a young diplomat. And I remember meeting a young woman from the state of Assam up in the northeast of India. It's a tribal area where the people there are are different from people who live on the plains. And this young woman told me she was teaching a portrait of the arts as a young man to her pupils up in Assam, but she never actually possessed the copy of the book. She was working from stencils. So I gave her my copy. And I somehow hope that copy proved to be useful to that teacher in the years that followed up in that remote part of India, Assam and the northeast of India. Turn the turn forward or turn the clock forward to 1999. Bloom's Day 1999. I was consul general in Edinburgh. And I decided to organize a Bloom's Day event. And that was when I really came to terms with Ulysses, because in the years between 1970s when I bought the book in Kansas City, I read it in New Delhi in 1980s. But I didn't really come to terms with the property. But when I was in Edinburgh and organizing for the first time a Bloom's Day, I spent a few months before that Bloom's Day, getting myself fully acquainted with the novel, because I knew I was going to be hosting an event. And the people I had there, Alistair Gray, the famous Scottish novelist, the author of Lanark. And Alistair came along, and he indulged himself a little bit, maybe too much in the burgundy that we had at lunchtime in Edinburgh in 1999. But when he stood up to read the passage from Oxen of the Sun, which is a parody of Carlisle, he was absolutely brilliant. It was the best reading I've heard of that particular chapter of Ulysses, which doesn't get read very much, but he did it brilliantly because it was parody Carlisle. And he did it in a Scottish accent, reminiscent of what Carlisle would have been like. And then there as well, we had Bernard McCleverty, the Irish writer, Lucie Glasgow, he was reading with Owen Dudley Edwards, the academic son of Robin Dudley Edwards, one of the founders really of the modern traditions of Irish historiography. So that was an eye-opener for me. And it was also an eye-opener how so many Scots came along, enthusiastic to be part of this literary celebration. Because their equivalent would be Bern's Day. So we had this Bloomsday. And from then on, everywhere I've been, I've organized the Bloomsday. And this evening I'm in New York at the New York Irish Center. Tomorrow I'm at politics and prose independent independent bookshop here in Washington DC. And then tomorrow evening we have our Bloomsday function here at the embassy. Hopefully the weather will be good and we can have it in the garden and we can accommodate the maximum number of people. I turned the clock forward to Germany in 2008 when I was there. And when I was in Germany, I constantly reminded people of the relevance of Joyce's work to Germany. And for example, I always quoted the phrase that Bloom uses in Cyclops when he's asked, what is your nation, Mr. Bloom? And he replied, Ireland, I was born here, Ireland. And I said to those German audiences and it resonated strongly with them. I said, had Germany adopted that definition of nationality. You could have avoided some of the greatest tragedies of modern history, the Holocaust, because most of those people who perished in the Holocaust were born in Germany, or were born in places that were connected with Germany. They were born in a German speaking environment, and yet they perished because of a definition of nationality that was far narrower than the definition that Bloom advocates there or the Joyce advocates, truly upon Bloom. So I turned the clock forward, and I say that resonated very strongly. And then in 2011, when Ulysses went out of copyrights, two German radio stations immediately produced a full reading of Ulysses. Over a 24 hour period, they devoted the station 100% to a reading of Ulysses in German. And the other one did a dramatized version of Ulysses over a period of about three months, with one episode a day for three months. The National Radio, two stations competing to celebrate this great novel, demonstrating to me, this novel had an extraordinary resonance, well outside of our island of the European coast of the coast of mainland Europe. I turned the clock forward to 2018. I was ambassador here, just arrived. My first Bloomsday, I was invited by the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia, which houses the original manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses. I was shown the manuscript. I read from it, read from the original manuscript, recorded myself reading from that original manuscript. And then that day, outside, they closed the whole streets. They set up a street festival. And for 10 hours, Philadelphians turn up in numbers and sit there and listen to James Joyce's Ulysses being read. So many stars of readings, interspersed with songs and so forth, but a wonderful celebration of Ireland, a celebration of James Joyce's Ulysses, and therefore I think a celebration of Ireland, which I as ambassador was delighted to be part of. And it convinced me that Ulysses and Joyce is a global phenomenon, that people in Philadelphia rallied around and tomorrow in Philadelphia. A real event will take place. And people will turn up in their thousands throughout the day. Some people will sit there the whole 10 hours. Others will come and go. Others will come for lunch or come in the evening after work, but they'll be there because they want to connect with James Joyce's Ulysses. As a dean, I was at Georgetown University. The Joyce scholar, Colleen Parsons, invited me to speak to his class. I gave my lecture. I opened it for questions. It's a graduate class on Joyce's Ulysses. The first question from the student was, Ambassador, what would James Joyce have made of Brexit? And my answer was, one of the last three words of Ulysses. The answer that everyone would give is, I will, yes. No. The last three words are Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. Therefore, and by the way, you don't have to write that. If you look at novels, most novels do not tell you where they were written. You have to imagine it. They were written in some space, somewhere. Probably in a study, in a writer's study. But no Joyce's novel was written in those three European cities, thereby claiming its status as a European novel. And last year, the year before, I had six European ambassadors read the bits of Ulysses that referred to their countries, the Italian ambassador, the French ambassador, the German ambassador, the Cypriot ambassador, who read the piece about the most Hellenized Ireland, and then the European ambassador. I gave him the honor of reading the Cyclops bit where Bloom defines his idea of nationality and his idea of how the world should run. So, I turn the clock, and I said to the student, I said, given the story, given Joyce's story, which Professor Fogarty has retorted, I think James Joyce would have voted against Brexit. And he would have had a vote because he's a British passport holder living abroad. He would have had a vote in the Brexit referendum. He definitely would have voted against Brexit because he was against the narrow nationalism, be it in Ireland, in Europe, or he would have been against the kind of narrow nationalism that produced the Brexit referendum vote in 2016 when I was ambassador to the UK. It wasn't my fault, by the way, hands up. I wasn't able to stop it, but I did my best to argue against it. And finally, I come to Washington 2021-2022, when Joe Biden was leaving Delaware on the 19th of January 1921, sorry, 2021, heading for Washington D.C. to be sworn in the following day as America's 46th President. He used the following words. He said, James Joyce said that when he died, Dublin would be written on his heart. When I die, he said, Delaware will be written on my heart. I remember thinking, isn't that amazing? Here's a man, of course, who famously says, frequently. I don't quote a Irish poetry because I'm Irish. I quote them because they're the best poets. He quotes Yates and Heaney all the time. So, for me, that was another revelation of how James Joyce lives in today's world. And finally, in 2022, on the 2nd of February, on the 1st of February, I published a piece in The Washington Post, where I made the point that all this is a 100-year-old novel. It's not an antiquarian oddity. It's actually a novel for today. And my proof of that, which sadly has become even more prescient, even more relevant today than it was in February, I quoted Bloom's comment when he finally cuts loose and hits back against those who are perpetuating national hatred among nations. He says, force hatred, history, all that. That is no life for men and for women. When it's the opposite of that, that's really life. What's this, Alf? Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. Then, of course, the citizen scoffs at Bloom and Bloom leaves and says, he's the right pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. And I made the point in my Washington Post piece that that argument, those values that Joyce has Bloom stand up for or stand up against, more particularly, are values that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago. And let's think about this, Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has unleashed force against Ukraine because he believes that force is the ultimate arbiter in world affairs. He has unleashed hatred against Ukrainians. Look at the number of what looked like war crimes that have been committed by Russians against Ukrainians, propped up by this hatred unleashed by the Kremlin. And then history. What to say here is not history as a study by historians, but it's rather the misuse of history and Vladimir Putin having a version of history. That in his mind, justifies unleashing force and hatred on the people of Ukraine. So that's my little depiction of my odyssey with this book, James Joyce's Ulysses, that I've carried now through 10 countries over the last 45 years, 44 years, and we'll continue to carry it for as long as I'm around. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ambassador. That was most of our events and research and activities as you both know pertain usually to politics and society. So this is really just a rare treat, and it's been really wonderful hearing you both. I could do it all day. What I'd like to do is I have one question for each of you, which I'm going to put to you, but I should also say as well this is a fairly informal environment if either Ambassador Mulhall or Professor Robert, anybody want to put questions to each other please do. But I'm going to put a question to each of you and I'll hand over to Alex, my colleague who's going to go through some further questions. So first of all to Professor Fogarty, Ambassador Mulhall did mention this as well, and may want to come in but you both refer to the citizen and Cyclops. And Leopold Bloom also said to the citizen, a nation is the same people living in the same place. And then you spoke about Joyce and nation but to Professor Fogarty. Can you also speak at all about Joyce's understanding of what a nation is, what were the features of a nation for Joyce is it to be defined in terms of geography, culture, ethnicity or is there anything else you can give to the conversation and if you wish to pass the question on to Dan, that's no problem. Yeah, a good question. All the things you mentioned and for Joyce, I think a nation is an area of debate, a place of the imagination. It's those lively conflicts that he gives us is he imagines the citizen as well as Leopold Bloom so Joyce's vision is both and always. So he's looking at the areas of tension and he stages them in Ulysses and indeed even Leopold Bloom and Stephen Duddle is going home to Eccles Street at the end of the day. That doesn't become a grand scene of reconciliation either. It's kind of clashing personalities. Yes, for Joyce it's culture, language for sure, but oddly not the Irish language. It seems to be almost any language but Irish, Irish features certainly in Joyce's tax, but it became disaffected. Very symbolically, he studied Irish for a brief period in University College and what we now know as UCD with Podrick Pierce, but they clashed in their views of the English language versus the Irish language. So, he, I would agree with with Ambassador Mulhall that Joyce certainly doesn't think about nationality in exclusive terms, but he was certainly in favour of Irish freedom and Irish independence from the very beginning from composing Dubliners. His huge, huge aim was to liberate a people that he saw as oppressed by outside forces, but inside forces as well. Stephen Duddle set the start to Ulysses talks about being the servant of two masters, maybe three masters, and one of them British Empire for sure, but the Irish Catholic Church, the third master is uncertain. So you don't know what else it may be Stephen's own vocation. It could be his family, his circumstances. So he wants to liberate the Irish from the political setup in 1904, the ongoing dominance of England in Ireland, but also from the aftermath of colonialism and what the Irish were doing to themselves. And in some ways now and into the future. So, yes. I just say that just briefly. Of course, you have to remember that Joyce lived a big part of his life interest, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that was a melting pot of people's it was a kind of a version of the European Union you could say in that it had people from all over the place, living in that in that city. And, you know, he once referred to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He said it's called a ramshackle empire. But he said, but, you know, wouldn't it be better if more empires were like that so he did seem to have more affection for the diversity of Trieste than he had for efforts to impose conformity, whether they be in Ireland, or in other parts of Europe. Wild Cyclops appears to be a kind of a lampoon of narrow minded Irish nationalism. I think Joyce also was referring to the nationalisms of the European mainland, which at that time when he was busy writing were killing each other in their millions, vindicating national views of the superiority of their nation over the others. And there does feel like something very fitting about him being associated with Trieste, which is still feels like a liminal place, you know, feels like between places. And I'm sure we've all thought about what lunchtime was like when Pearson Joyce for studying together. There's just a very quick follow up fresh for me and then I'll put something else to down but just on the question of the language that's something I've heard tell about before. That like, it was such an accomplished linguist. And this comes through in his work. Is it merely by association do you think you kind of spoke to a book anything further about his lack of grow for the Irish language upon attendance. Is there anything more you can say about that was it by association with the things in Ireland he didn't like or was there something more that you can, that you can talk about. I think it is the way that the Irish language was being weaponized in the period, not Irish culture. So he is Joyce obviously is very ready to embrace Irish mythology, the ancient medieval legacy of Ireland, which is hugely important to him. But he had only a smattering of Irish, not many people would have studied Irish anyway in the period. It was deeply personal as well as portrait of the artist shows. You see their learning learning Irish with with a priest and so on. So yes, he has this very dark troubled relationship with Irish which is something very Irish about that as well we all recognize aspects of it. Yes, was something to do with something imposed on him, but there's a good deal of Irish in Finnegan's wake, particularly when he's representing the mom trust and emerges and so on. And she cross associates himself with my mother's Joyce a monolingual speaker who shares his surname and in some ways he's saying he kind of shares that object conditions. In the end I'd somewhat up by saying he is divided I mean he seems to be kind of vociferous in his rejection, or forthright in his rejection of Irish in the first instance, but he reclaims like all other languages for himself in other ways. There's Irish throughout all of the texts in Dublin or as you will say and Finnegan's wake. So it's always there. It doesn't vanish, but he ultimately he fuses Irish with all the languages of the world and Finnegan's wake. So there is something many people on the call can relate to about that attitude towards Irish. I'm sure. And first of all, a vast amount of hold is to move on to a study different tack. And you spoke about this a bit with your experience in India which I thought was really, really vivid describing your early career. Is literary training part of training for diplomats in any formal way. And if not, what would diplomats learn from being literate. And no and no is my answer to that. It's not and nor should it be my own view of these things is that every ambassador every dip match do the job in their own unique and different ways, because it were not clones right and I would expect my successor to do the job and I would do it here. It would be silly if she tried to exactly match everything I do. I would say to my colleagues when they arrive at a mission I say, Okay, if in four years time you leave, and you only have the contacts that your predecessor had you failed. If you have none of your predecessors contacts you've also failed. Indeed, if you have a mix, if you build on what your predecessor achieved, and build it out in different directions build various annexes onto it, because we have to spread our message in different ways to different audiences. So, I don't believe that literary approaches to diplomacy are should be paramount, but they are very useful. I discovered that in my career, because it's open doors for me. For example, when I was in Germany, I toured a Yates exhibition around Germany for a year almost. Every time I gave a talk I would say by the way, I'm going to talk about Yates now but before I do, let me tell you about the Irish economy I know you're reading about the banks and all these problems we're having but I can tell you now. Here's the story, and I would give them two minutes on the Irish economy and then I would move on to Yates so it is a door opener for us and it's certainly one, and you find that this, this, this week, all over the world. That door is being used vigorously by Irish diplomats, people who are joicing enthusiasts themselves and people who have no interest in Joyce but are recognized the value of being able to piggyback on something like Joyce's fame around the world, because there are very few books of this caliber that actually have a relevance 100 years after they were published. I can't even, I can't even think of any book that kind of has a centenary celebration devoted to it. In fact, Ulysses has had several centenaries, because in 1982 was when I was in Delhi and that was the first time I remember when we had an exhibition on Joyce which we showed around India at the time and, and then 2004, which was the centenary of, of the actual day when, when the novel is set and now this year we have the centenary of the publication of Ulysses so I think we've used that. I think we've taken advantage of the book and I hate using the word take advantage of because, because I love the book for its own sake but I also recognize that it has a value to it. Of course, yeah, we'll find something else to centenarise I'm sure, but wouldn't it wouldn't be fun to travel. This is more well prized next year is what I think we have to look at from think about. It'll be fun to travel back in space. If you had any idea how relevant his book would be in all these different four hours, I'd love to know what his response would be. I'm delighted now to pass over to my colleague Alex, our EU researcher here at the Institute and Alex has prepared some questions as well which he's going to put to the panelists before handing back to me. Thanks a lot, Professor Robert E and Ambassador Mulholland. Thanks very much, Barry. And I'd just like to thank both of our speakers today for excellent discussion and as a recovering bookseller. This is something close to my own. I'd be remiss of me to say as the EU affairs researcher that the EU, my question is related to the EU, but I just want to say the ambassador that my dad also did a J1 in Kansas City. So it's funny to hear that for dough for dough, but he was an ice cream man. So I don't know if you're in a similar gig. Hamburgers are my specialty. But no, my question is related to two comments that you've both made there. Professor Pogarty, you talked about nation as a place of debate and of imagination. And Ambassador, you were talking about Joyce's relationship with Austro-Hungary as a kind of former or EU, I've only left for kind of a ramshackle empire. And in the Cersei episode, you know, we get this idea of blue musulm or blue musulm of a, you know, a ideal place or nation or empire with a universal language and universal brotherhood. And can we see the EU kind of fitness Joyce's idea of a new blue musulm or what would you have made of the EU as a kind of ramshackle empire in its own regard. I don't know if that Professor Pogarty. I mean, I mean, I hope the choice would have been a critic, because I think writers who are kind of, you know, too satisfied with the world around them are not likely to be very good writers. So I think the satisfaction and being a kind of a dissident, being a sort of a being a critic of all the world around you is part of the writerly profession. And I think it would be wrong to to think about Joyce as someone who would be, would be up there clapping and cheering for today's Ireland. He would find fault with it. Of course he would. And that's what would probably drive his writing. So, but as far as, as far as the Joyce's, you know, what Joyce's view of modern Ireland would be, I think he would be satisfied. When I gave that talk at Georgetown, it would be satisfied that today's Ireland has, if you like, followed some of his advice at least and has embraced its European identity. I hope we can, we can somehow reconcile that with, you know, maintaining the close and cooperative relationship with our nearest neighbor at the moment. That's proving quite difficult because of circumstances that we all know about. But I, I mean, my own view is that Joyce was essentially a Parnellite. And he took that from his father. And, you know, he left Ireland. I mean, I've, in stuff I've written and talked about here, I fantasized about what if Parnell had actually delivered home, what if he'd survived and delivered home rule to Ireland say in 1900, which is possible to imagine. At that stage, you know, John Joyce could have been a major figure in a Parnellite Ireland. And conceivably, young James might have become part of the new establishment in home rule Ireland. Also, you have to wonder, had Joyce stayed on an Ireland. I mean, he left in 1904. The Gallic League was only really taking off. I mean, Thomas McDonald didn't join the Gallic League until probably 1908 or thereabouts. Joyce was an exact contemporary member of even devil era and near contemporary of Patrick Pierce and Thomas McDonald. And a lot of the people who fought in the Easter Rising and in the struggle that went on after that, you know, we're not very different from from James Joyce and their orientation. So, you know, had he stayed in Ireland, you couldn't rule out that he would have, you know, he would have become a little more of a with the the kind of zeitgeist at that time, which was definitely this kind of emphasizing Ireland's Irishness and its difference from Britain. And it's what I mean, then we would have lost an important witness that could examine Ireland from a from afar and give us a far more candid portrait of ourselves that he would have been able to give that he'd been living amongst us, I think. I agree with everything Ambassador Mulhall just said, starting with the EU, Joyce was never a chair, so he certainly would have been a vociferous critic of the EU rather than a supporter. He embraced certainly a vision of Europe. But any kind of utopian moment, Alex, you mentioned the blue Muslim always gets punctured and undermined anyway, and as part of the the fantasy of Circe and which bloom rolls out all of these. This view of bloom cottage blue Muslim improving schemes for Ireland which was part all part of politics in the period. Joyce and Ireland now certainly I think he would have been happy that more of us are reading Joyce Joyce's own works that he's he's not being ignored anymore in Ireland. And secondly, that they the country is is more open and enlightened that it was in his area era, but I don't think he wants us to feel superior to the past either. He always wants us to reckon with multiple different positions. And that's the whole purpose of us is is putting on the page, all of these minor characters from Dublin life that are partly literally taken from life as many, many people have shown, particularly Vivian I go in in her grand lexicon to the characters. These are just little people belonging to the lower middle class, and they have no grand role to play in history yet for Joyce they are historical. And, Dan you mentioned that line that Joyce uses to Hannah she he when she visits him in in Paris about when I died, and Dublin will be engraved on my heart. The original statement was made by Mary, the first, the only Catholic Tudor monarch, and she said when I died Philip and Calais will be engraved on my heart. So she's both talking romantically and about a British loss of Calais of European territory. So there's something very symbolic about his twisting of that whole statement appropriating it. I don't think President Biden knows about that history. Yes. Yeah, but I like that to mention because I think also it is the both and enjoys you know he's not he doesn't reject English culture, either like he's taking it all in. He's making a kind of supremely Irish comment about, you know, Dublin belongs to him so that he can't lose it he's always been there. But it's also, as ever with Joyce a total overstatement of things where you should come back at him and question it. I mean that's what he wants us to do people usually read. Again as Professor Ambassador Mulhall was showing people normally enjoy Joyce particularly on Bloomsday in a common context. He's somehow a social writer he brings people together. You meet friends through Joyce you meet other people strangers become friends or strangers come come together often people read illicit in groups and even nowadays if you're reading Joyce alone. You always do it in the company of others, annotated editions websites and so on. Everyone is helping everyone else out to read Joyce. I'm an international symposium from which I'm absent at the current moment taking place in Trinity College Dublin and UCD this week. And once again, it's an extraordinary multinational gathering and brings the generations together as well. There are new fresh researchers young graduate students attending undergraduate students, and then all of the generations of Joyceians from many, many different universities around the world, and we do recognize that we're being joined and Joyce, but we're also debating things. So he gives us space to disagree with each other and that that must happen to. I think he's a political writer in as well in that sense. Thanks so much Professor property. Unfortunately, we're against the clock. Really been unbelievably enjoyable and well, I fully believe how enjoyable it has been I'm going to put one final volley of questions to you there too and they're short. And they come from Francis Jacobs formerly of the European Parliament and friend of me. And it goes as follows question the first Joyce wrote almost exclusively about Dublin, while in exile in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. And the origins view from in Zurich, but did Joyce ever actually write about his own experiences in those cities, either directly or indirectly so perhaps that's a short enough answer, potentially from Professor property. And the second question I'll put to Ambassador Mulhall Joyce clearly has a universal appeal to Francis Jacobs. What does Joyce resonate more in some countries than in others do you know, and if so why. Joyce didn't keep Darry's I mean what we know about him actually comes to correspondence and postcards that he exchanged exchanges with others very actively, and that does give us snapshots often particularly in his early years when he's in Trieste. But the other cities and places just like the endings of the text that I alluded to infiltrate the text as well. So they're Ulysses is full of borrowings from the different cities in which Joyce is writing Joyce also writes forward in time Ulysses is set in 1904, but he's anticipating future events changes and Dublin and so on. And just one example from Ulysses do glass the butcher that Leopold Bloom goes to early in the morning in the Calypso episode is is a Trieste and friend of Joyce's. And it's the only kind of non Irish shopkeeper, but he imports them into Dublin. And of course people argue that Leopold Bloom himself is composite. He's, he's a Dublin Jew, but he's also modeled on on Jewish friends, maybe it's a little slave or that Joyce knew in Trieste. And so he's fusing all his his experience of Dublin, and his experience of the other cities in everything that she wrote, and all the more so in phoenix break. Yeah, I mean, certainly across Europe. There's a great interest. I mentioned Germany. We once when I was in Berlin we combined one year with the Hungarian Institute because they have an interest in him because of blooms Hungarian origins. So I think, overall, the knowledge and interest in Joyce across Europe is not saying it's a popular figure by no means but he's still a figure that is that is you know this recognized and recognizable. And that I think is a is a value to our own because they, one of the, the default experiences are fates of a small countries to be ignored. And Joyce is one of the reasons why we can't be ignored as readily as we would if we didn't have Joyce and yet some other writers like that to represent us globally. I found there was a resident there was an interest in Joyce in New Delhi in India because of course India has a has a has an extraordinary English language culture as well I mean many Indians probably English is our first language in reality, although they also speak their India and I suppose the place where maybe it was more surprising to find an interest in Joyce was in Malaysia, you know, which after all, you know, is an Islamic country, and you know, here you have a, you have a book which is about a man with a Jewish background which is something that that that that that that readily appeals to, to some parts of the Islamic world at least but in Malaysia I find again, you know, I did events with with the National Museum of Malaysia or the National Library of Malaysia they were very, very keen to, to, you know, to embrace. You know, so I think there's always a way of connecting Joyce, because there's so much in Ulysses, you can always find bits of pieces. For you know that bill that will connect with people in different parts of the world and I've always found a way of finding an entree into wherever I've been. And I mean, what was in Malaysia. You know, my, you know, the focus there was on Joyce as a master of the English language and the English language was a big issue and the fact that they was perception that they were failing. Somehow, in their standards of English was it was a political issue and I managed to piggyback on that to kind of, you know, highlight Ireland's status as an English speaking country as a country with an excellence in English and proving that through the to do I'm very, very conscious of everyone's time. It's just, I think it was something Professor Bogarty said about, you know, the notion of there's different attitudes towards nationhood and nation around the world and I wonder at places that are kind of more or less inclusive of vis-a-vis their view of the nation whether Joyce resonates more or less. But maybe that's something we can discuss the next time because this has been in an order of pleasure. And that's just finally down to me to thank our speakers, Professor Arnbogarty and Ambassador Dan Mulhall, and indeed Alex Conway, our tech team and our commerce team for the event together. And indeed you are audience for being with us. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks all. Happy Bloomsday and see you next time.