Ireland
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Ep. 34 – Translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese (w/ Kenji Hayakawa)
Kelly and Dermot are joined by translator Kenji Hayakawa to discuss the gargantuan task of translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese. We discuss Naoki Yanase’s translation of Joyce’s classic novel into Japanese, creating special software Japanese characters to tackle Joyce’s various coinages, why Japanese is an ideal language in which to read Finnegans Wake, why only…
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Decoding Dedalus: Full Fathom Five
“I haven’t let this young man off very lightly, have I? Many writers have written about themselves. I wonder if any one of them has been as candid as I have?” – James Joyce to Frank Budgen This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and …
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Ep. 33 – Nuncle Richie
Stephen contemplates the horror of a visit to his Aunt Sara and Uncle Richie’s house. We discuss parallels in this scene with Joyce’s real life aunt and uncle, why Joyce’s Aunt Josephine gave away her first edition of Ulysses, the intractable Dubliner/culchie divide, middle class pretension, Hiberno-English, Wilde’s Requiescat, and the difficulty of parsing conversations…
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Ep. 32 – James Joyce Tower & Museum
Dermot and Kelly get an insider’s view of the Sandycove Martello Tower – the Omphalos of Dublin itself! Maggie Fitzgerald, James Holohan and Andrew Basquille give Blooms & Barnacles a tour of all the museum’s nooks and crannies. Discussions include the Joycean historical items on display in the museum, the history of the tower, what…
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The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. On page 49 of “Proteus,” Stephen Dedalus spends a paragraph thinking about his shoes, which feels appropriate rounding out an episode that consists of walking on the shore: His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs, nebeneinander. He counted…
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Ep. 31 – Contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality
Let’s have fun with consubstantiality! Kelly and Dermot untangle Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts on the dual nature of God the Father and God the Son, the Nicene Creed, the difference between being made and being begotten, the death of Arius, seahorses, a shocking fact about the Star Wars cantina and an even more shocking fact about…
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Ep. 29 – Gaze in Your Omphalos
In this installment of Blooms & Barnacles, Kelly and Dermot engage in some good, old-fashioned navel gazing. Discussion topics include working class life in Edwardian Dublin, the poetry of Algernon Swinburne, the perils of childbirth during the same period, gothic horror, whether Adam and Eve had bellybuttons, and why Kelly thinks people in antiquity had…
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Ep. 28 – Dermot O Connor
Ineluctable modality of the animated! On a Very Special Episode of Blooms & Barnacles, we get to know your favorite Irish podcast host – Dermot O Connor. Kelly and Dermot talk about his work as the illustrator of the Blooms & Barnacles blog, how to illustrate a blog about Ulysses when you’ve never read Ulysses,…
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The Word Known to All Men
To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. “Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.” The lines above appear towards the…
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Ep. 27 – Nacheinander and Nebeneinander
Real talk: why are there no seagulls on Sandymount Strand in Ulysses? Have we stumbled onto a historical seagull-based conspiracy? Stay tuned to find out! Additionally, we’ll also continue discussing how Stephen’s walk on the beach is influenced by Berkeleyan idealism, Stephen’s perception of space and time, how blind people perceive the world and the…