The first item on the agenda for the day was a visit to Glasnevin Cemetery on the north side of Dublin. A cemetery may not seem like a quintessentially literary place to visit . . . but Glasnevin is, in more ways than one. The one that was centermost in some of our minds was its importance to the "Hades" episode in James Joyce's Ulysses. That episode starts with the funeral cortege for Leopold Bloom's friend Paddy Dignam winding its way from Sandymount on the south side of the River Liffey then through the heart of the city and on to Glasnevin. Along the way, the cortege crosses the Grand Canal, the Dodder River, the Liffey, and the Grand Canal, representing four of the rivers one crosses on the descent into the underworld in classical literature. The one Dublin river the cortege does not cross is the Tolka--representing Lethe . . . the river of forgetfulness that needs to be crossed for full passage into Hades. Irishmen don't forget. One of the most frequently quoted lines in all of Irish literature belongs to Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." In "Hades," Leopold Bloom, too, would like to awake from his personal nightmares of history--his infant son's death and his father's suicide--but he cannot forget. . . . But I digress (sort of).
To cut to the chase . . . we did not follow the route of the cortege; instead we took the #83 bus via another route . . . and spent a "happy" hour-and-a-half wandering through the vast and densely populated cemetery. We were on the lookout for particular graves related to our class reading list and our survey of modern Irish history. We had a lot of success, finding the graves of (among others): Brendan Behan, Roger Casement, Michael Collins, Eamon De Valera, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Stanislaus Joyce (James Joyce's father), Maud Gonne McBride, Daniel O'Connell, and Charles Stewart Parnell. We were walking in the land of the dead--those gone but not forgotten. . . .
When we came up for air, we naturally felt the need for food and drink as well . . . so we hopped back on the #83 and returned to the Liffey. Crossing that bridge when we got to it (a metaphor made literal!), we went back in time--to the year 1182, to be exact--when we entered The Brazen Head, "the oldest pub in Ireland." Well, at least it's the site of the oldest pub: the current premises could hardly be more than 300 years old! We had a relaxing lunch there, and then three of our students shared with their classmates their "explications/reviews" of some of our activities so far. We commandeered a back room of The Brazen Head for this occasion and had a fine around-the-room discussion. . . .
At that point we had just one more little item on the day's list of essential group activities: we were going to walk a few hundred yards down the River Liffey to Usher's Island Quay to snap the facade of the house (#15) in which Joyce set his iconic short story "The Dead." When we got to the doorstep there was no sign of life (aptly!)--as far as I knew, the house was in disrepair and unused. But there was lettering on the fanlight above the front door, indicating that there was some sort of James Joyce association associated with the place. I gave the door a touch but it was locked. Then, as I lifted the mail slot to see if I could get a glimpse inside, the door opened and a young fellow invited us in! He then asked us if we'd like to look around. Well, sure . . . and then I told him that a long time ago (13 years ago, it seems), I had an email--utterly out of the blue--from the fellow who had just then bought the property: we did not know each other--I assume he just found me online via my Irish Studies label and guessed that I would be interested! I recall that he told me at the time how excited he was and that he planned to rehab the place and to host dinners there. He invited me to drop in sometime when I might be in Dublin. I know that I replied to him at the time, thanking him for the invitation . . . but that was all so long ago. Still, when I told the story, the young fellow--let's call him by his proper name, Keith--said, "That would be Brendan Kilty--he's upstairs and I'm sure he'd like to meet you."
3+ hours later . . . we staggered out after a roof to basement tour of the place, tea and biscuits in the dining room (with me playing Gabriel Conroy at the head of the table!) and everyone else feeling just as personally welcome as the Morkan sisters' guests in "The Dead."
Our most gracious host, Brendan Kilty, was speechless (for a minute) when I reminded him of the email invitation he had sent to me all those years earlier. As it turns out, Brendan is a Senior Counsellor in the Irish Courts (he is one of those fellows who wears robes and a wig); he is also a diehard Joycean, and he described the "epiphany" he experienced in 1979 in which he foresaw himself, a newly minted law school grad at the time, one day owning and restoring the decrepit house of "The Dead." Twenty years later--in 1999--he realized that vision and since then he has been gradually returning the home to its modest grandeur of 1904, when the story is set.
The tour of the house that Brendan gave us was informative and entertaining--and more: I think we would all agree that this experience far exceeded anything we would have imagined happening during our Irish adventure. This raises the notion of "enrichment" to an entirely new level! And it sure made Tuesday, July 3rd, one "Hades" of a memorable day . . .
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