Now Officially Out of Synch with My U.S. Friends, And. . .
On Greenwich Mean Time.
And so today I went to see the Book of Kells--yes, it's overpriced and touristy, but it helps to support the college library and I did get to see two full spreads of the original. It is a book and it is important.
Afterwards toured Dublin Castle. As with most of these things, the locals are singularly unimpressed, but I can tell you that I enjoyed it. The plasterwork alone was worth the price of admission--that and seeing the Poddle River--it was in part the confluence of the Poddle and the Liffey that gave rise to the Black Pool from which the Anglo name for Dublin is derived. (The Irish do not call the city the Irish spelling of Dubhlinn--they call it something else entirely--I can't even spell it and have no notion how it is pronounced.)
So after Mass this morning in a Church run by Discalced Carmelites, I finished the day with sung, choral evensong at Christ Church Cathedral. I was floored both by the beauty of the service and the beauty of the Church itself.
Walking back to the hotel there was a bookfair in Temple Bar--it's not like I can't buy books in the states, but two of these I could not have gotten:
Oliver St. John Gogarty (Stately Plump Buck Mulligan Himself) Sackville Street--possibly dreadful, but it goes into the Joyceana.
Signed Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
Very nice haul. Get back to my hotel and recall that there is a sports network or some such here in Ireland called Setanta--it always amuses me--if I recall correctly Setanta is the name of Cu Chulainn before he became Cu Chulainn. I said something about this last trip to one of my Irish hosts and she looked at me like I'd just crawled out of a flying saucer. But when I flipped over the plaques in the street with quotations from Ulysses. Today I did as I promised and walked under the Rougish Finger three or four times and took a friend for a quick run by Davy Byrnes.
Okay--so this is probably terribly writte and rife with errors. I doubt even rereading I'll be able to see them all as I'm in my marathon stay-up to get up in Irish time.
And so today I went to see the Book of Kells--yes, it's overpriced and touristy, but it helps to support the college library and I did get to see two full spreads of the original. It is a book and it is important.
Afterwards toured Dublin Castle. As with most of these things, the locals are singularly unimpressed, but I can tell you that I enjoyed it. The plasterwork alone was worth the price of admission--that and seeing the Poddle River--it was in part the confluence of the Poddle and the Liffey that gave rise to the Black Pool from which the Anglo name for Dublin is derived. (The Irish do not call the city the Irish spelling of Dubhlinn--they call it something else entirely--I can't even spell it and have no notion how it is pronounced.)
So after Mass this morning in a Church run by Discalced Carmelites, I finished the day with sung, choral evensong at Christ Church Cathedral. I was floored both by the beauty of the service and the beauty of the Church itself.
Walking back to the hotel there was a bookfair in Temple Bar--it's not like I can't buy books in the states, but two of these I could not have gotten:
Oliver St. John Gogarty (Stately Plump Buck Mulligan Himself) Sackville Street--possibly dreadful, but it goes into the Joyceana.
Signed Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture
Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
Very nice haul. Get back to my hotel and recall that there is a sports network or some such here in Ireland called Setanta--it always amuses me--if I recall correctly Setanta is the name of Cu Chulainn before he became Cu Chulainn. I said something about this last trip to one of my Irish hosts and she looked at me like I'd just crawled out of a flying saucer. But when I flipped over the plaques in the street with quotations from Ulysses. Today I did as I promised and walked under the Rougish Finger three or four times and took a friend for a quick run by Davy Byrnes.
Okay--so this is probably terribly writte and rife with errors. I doubt even rereading I'll be able to see them all as I'm in my marathon stay-up to get up in Irish time.
Comments
Post a Comment