James Joyce Tower And Museum
The James Joyce Tower and Museum is a Martello tower in Sandycove, Dublin, where James Joyce spent six nights in 1904. The tower was leased from the British War Office by Joyce's university friend Oliver St. John Gogarty, with the purpose of "Hellenising" Ireland. Joyce left after an incident in which Gogarty fired a gun in his direction.
The opening scenes of Ulysses are set the morning after this incident. Gogarty is immortalised as "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan" (the opening words of the novel).
The tower now contains a museum dedicated to Joyce and displays some of his possessions and other ephemera associated with Ulysses (e.g. an empty pot of "Plumtree's Potted Meat"). The living space is set up to resemble its 1904 appearance (with a ceramic panther to represent one seen in a dream by a resident). It is a place of pilgrimage for Joyce enthusiasts, especially on Bloomsday.
The Tower became a museum through the efforts of the Dublin artist, John Ryan. Ryan also rescued the front door to 7 Eccles Street (now at the James Joyce Centre) from demolition and organised, with Brian O'Nolan, the first Bloomsday Celebration in 1954.
Read more about James Joyce Tower And Museum: Further Reading, Opening Hours
Famous quotes containing the words james, joyce, tower and/or museum:
“Mankind’s common instinct for reality ... has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in John, 15:13.
In Ulysses, James Joyce wrote, “Greater love than this ... no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend.”
“The tower said, “One!”
And then a steeple.
They spoke to themselves....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“A fine-looking mill, but no machinery inside.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1702, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)