Joycean scholars abound. They gather at the National Library to get the first peek of James Joyce's "Circe" manuscript, which is now open for viewing on the first floor. Wine and canapΘs are served. No sign of fried kidneys with bread and butter or a cup of tea, though.
The manuscript is "a previously unknown early draft of the "Circe" episode in Ulysses," S∅le de Valera, the minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands tells us.
The moustached Peter Costello, a Joycean biographer, who is wearing a yellow tie, says it's great the manuscript has "come to Dublin at last, it'll never go cheap again." He chats to Mary Rose Callaghan, whose novel, The Visitors' Book, will be published by Brandon Press in October. Costello is currently working on a book about Liam O'Flaherty's post-Ulysses Dublin of the 1920s and 1930s. Sheila Kulkarni, of the Chester Beatty Library, is here too. And Danis Rose, the Joycean scholar, is also present.
Ken Monaghan, nephew of James Joyce, a retired banker who now works as cultural director in the James Joyce Centre, says: "I grew up in a time when Joyce was a dirty word. Although we didn't deny him, my mother used to tell us we didn't have to advertise our family connection." Sister Margaret MacCurtain, the former UCD historian who knew his mother, May Monaghan (nΘe Joyce), has come along to view the manuscript also.
Terence Killeen, Joycean scholar and consultant on the exhibition, is here with his wife, Noreen O'Donohue. Meanwhile, Billy Mundow, says his link with Joyce is that he lives on Tritonville Road, which is mentioned in Ulysees in the `Nausicaa'/Gerty MacDowell section.
The evening finishes early but Robert Nicholson, curator of the James Joyce Museum at the Martello Tower in Sandycove, says next Saturday, which is Bloomsday, "all hell will break loose".