General >> Events >> Cultural Programs >> Bloomsday

Every year, on June 16, the Nabokov Museum celebrates Bloomsday with a series of literary, artistic, and musical events dedicated to James Joyce and Leopold Bloom, the hero of Joyce's Ulysses.

The Bloomsday celebration usually includes an art exhibition, a reading of Ulysses, a theater production, an evening of live Irish music, and a beer party sponsored by Shamrock.

James Joyce festivals at the Nabokov Museum started in 1999 with a program "Joyce's Visit to Nabokov." It was the first Bloomsday at the Nabokov Museum and, most likely, the first literary event dedicated to James Joyce of such scope in Russia. The Irish Embassy in Moscow, the Cultural Committee of Ireland supported the event. About 300 people attended the Museum on the day of the program. Inspired by the success, the Nabokov Museum staff decided to celebrate Bloomsday every year, on June 16, in accordance with the international literary tradition.

Now the program is supported by The Irish Embassy, by The Government of St. Petersburg, by Culture Ireland and by Shamrock.

Tradition of Bloomsday

The tradition to celebrate Bloomsday started in Dublin and spread around the world. Bloomsday, named so after Leopold Bloom, the main character of James Joyce's Ulysses, is usually a literary event that takes place on June 16, in memory of June 16, 1904, the day in which most episodes of the novel take place. In various theaters, literary cafes, and other auditoriums, people read Ulysses, recite their own poetry, and share their impressions about the genius of James Joyce and about literature in general. The Nabokov Museum joined in this outstanding literary tradition to express its admiration of the literary taste of Vladimir Nabokov who placed James Joyce above many other 20th Century writers.

Joyce and Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov taught Ulysses in his literature classes when he worked at American universities and colleges.

Nabokov wrote an essay about James Joyce, which became part of his Lectures on Literature. (Ed. Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanowich / Bruccoli Clark, 1980.)

In 1938, James Joyce attended a reading which Nabokov gave at a Paris literary club.

Vladimir Nabokov wanted to translate Ulysses into Russian and even sought Joyce's permission to do so.

In the 1960s, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce and The Defence by Nabokov were among the books smuggled to Russia as part of the CIA's "propaganda lit" program.