Sandymount Green rightly hosts a fine bust of William Butler Yeats, one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. His father had lived in Castleville, beside the Green, and when he got married he moved around the corner to Sandymount Avenue, where William was born.

We in this unique village of Dublin can be justifiably proud of our association with the Great Man. But there is another equally famous penman, whose reputation is amongst the most famous in the canon of Irish and world writers, and in whose works Sandymount has achieved a universal recognition, and who I believe should be appropriately honoured with a similar bust in our Green. I refer of course to James Joyce.

Of Joyce’s three major novels: Portrait of the Artist, Finnegan’s Wake, and Ulysses, it is the latter which has probably gained the most world-wide renown because of its universal all-human-life-is-there theme, its ability to reduce its readers to tears of laughter or tears of emotion because of its perceptiveness, and its vast range of classical and literary styles and allusions which frighten off the faint-hearted.

But Ulysses is also the book which puts Sandymount on the lips of professors and plumbers alike, though they may never have trod the leafy avenues of Dublin Four. The book deals with the peregrinations of Mr. Leopold Bloom, and a thousand other characters, throughout Dublin on one day, and is liberally sprinkled with references to and incidents taking place in and around Sandymount.

Of the three main scenarios set in our hallowed suburb, the first takes place about mid morning. Stephen Dedalus has parted company after a row with stately, plump Buck Mulligan out in Sandycove, and has walked along the coast towards the city, the final part of his journey being along Sandymount Strand. Here he stops to think.

This is the first chapter in Ulysses in which Joyce makes extensive use of his famous device, the stream of consciousness. His long and vivid description of the strand: sea spawn and sea wrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot, snotgreen, bluesilver, rust, crackling mast and razor shells, sandflats breathing upward sewage breath, a porter bottle stood up in the sandy dough, a dog further out chasing a low skimming gull, could have been written last week, let alone a hundred years ago. And Stephen asks himself that immortal question: Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?

At about the same time, and about half a mile away, Mr. Bloom is stepping into a carriage with Simon Dedalus, Stephen’s father, Martin Cunningham and Mr. Power, outside Number Nine, Newbridge Avenue, from where poor Paddy Dignam, who died from drink-induced apoplexy, is to be brought in his horse drawn hearse to Glasnevin Cemetery.

Joyce traces in some detail the route: Tritonville Road, Irishtown, Ringsend Road, tram tracks, Watery Lane, Wallace Bros. Botttleworks, Dodder bridge, Gasworks, and on through the city. But it is not just a litany of familiar road names. It is Mr. Bloom’s inner thoughts and comments on the places passed which etch them into vivid life.

Dusk on a warm summer’s evening, and Mr.Bloom is back in Sandymount, this time down on the Strand behind the Star of the Sea Church, whose East gable wall in those days was only feet from the sea wall.

The men’s temperance retreat is concluding with rosary, sermon and benediction celebrated by Canon O’Hanlon, and the Tantum Ergo is audible over the strand wall. Cissy Caffrey, Edy Boardman and Gertie McDowell are sitting on the sand minding the twins Tommy and Jacky, and Baby Boardman. They too, and Bloom resting on a rock a little away from them, can hear the hymn and smell the incense wafting out of the open church.

Gertie, unwittingly, reveals more leg and stocking and thigh as she leans back to watch the sky, Bloom becomes more aroused, until the fireworks display from the bazaar in Ballsbridge climaxes with a Roman candle stream of golden rain in the sky above them.

Most of this chapter is written in the flowery, simpering style of the novelettes and magazines of the day, yet it encompasses a vast range of conflicting and complementary conditions including sex, religion, innocence and carnality, and all with that superb use of language, parody, satire and the understanding of human nature.

These chapters contain more than just incidents that happen to be set in a particular location, namely Sandymount. As he did with the whole of Dublin, Joyce brings the real Sandymount, living and breathing, into the reader’s congnizance.

Of course, it is not just in Ulysses that Sandymount features frequently. A Painful Case, one of his Dubliners series of stories, features Mrs. Emily Sinico, who was knocked down and killed by the engine of the ten o’clock slow train from Kingstown, while attempting to cross the tracks at Sydney Parade Station.

One could continue fine combing Joyce’s works for such references, but I think it sufficient to say that the incidents, anecdotes and characters portrayed, fictional though they may have been, have given a more lively vitality to Sandymount in the mind’s eye of generations of his readers than many other real-life writings.

Yeats is rightly honoured here, but in truth Sandymount always had more of a Joycean flavour than a Yeatsean one. Every Bloomsday for quite some years, a dedicated group of enthusiasts have paid homage to Joyce and entertained the assembled crowd in the heart of our village. Is it now time to consider honouring James Joyce with a matching bust in Sandymount Green?
Above: Spectators enjoy Bloomsday activities on Sandymount Green in June, while ‘James Joyce’ gives voice.