Re-Joyce in Dublin

Even if most of these writers didn't much fancy Dublin, monuments in their honor appear around nearly every corner. Busts of Swift in St. Patrick's Cathedral and the library at Trinity College are particularly impressive. The statue of Wilde reclining on a rock in Merrion Square is fittingly whimsical. And bronze plaques showing whereYeats lived are a reminder of his ubiquitous presence in the city in the early 20th century.

One side trip took me through the Dublin Writers Museum, a painstakingly restored Georgian mansion on Parnell Square in central Dublin. It includes exhibits detailing colorful episodes throughout Ireland's emotional, often raucous literary history, from the riots caused by the first staging of "The Playboy of the Western World" to 20th-century novelist Brendan Behan's tossing his typewriter out of a pub window. (The typewriter is displayed in a showcase.) Another night, I attended the Pavilion Theatre in the suburb of Dun Laoghaire, where readings by three poets left much of the audience alternating between emotional weeps and outbursts of laughter.

For a first-time visitor, touring the venues elevated to larger-than-life status by Ireland's leading scribes turned out to be a worthy introduction to the city. Since most of the key stops are centrally located, it's an approach easy for a newcomer to undertake with a couple of good maps and a transport pass.

"What Dublin is about is finely crafted words," said Chris Agee, an American-born poet and editor of the Belfast literary magazine Irish Pages. "People live and breathe literature here."

The Joyce Museum, in a brick 19th-century tower eight miles south of Dublin on the coast, features first editions of Joyce's tomes, as well as letters and manuscripts. There are relics, too, including Joyce's death mask and a piano and a guitar he once played. Upstairs is a re-creation of the room he briefly sublet in August 1904.

Students of "Ulysses" will recognize the place. The opening page of the novel describes how Buck Mulligan, one of the colorful characters, appears on the narrow winding stairs that lead to the upper part of the tower.

With its dank smell and dark atmosphere, the room seemed hardly changed since Joyce's day. One of several Martello Towers built to withstand Napoleon's threatened invasion of Ireland in the early 1800s, it is an impressive structure with a lovely view of Dublin and the surrounding harbor from the top deck. Although Joyce lived there only for a short time, the place apparently stayed with him enough to describe it in detail in the opening scene of "Ulysses." It will be the setting for a number of Bloomsday events, including the inevitable reading from the novel.

An hour later I was in Glasnevin Cemetery -- Dublin's answer to Paris's Pere Lachaise -- where Bloom attended the burial of a friend. His journey was in a horse-drawn funeral carriage; mine was in a city bus.

The past century has brought changes along the route Joyce described: Elvery's Elephant House, once a pub, now houses a Kentucky Fried Chicken. But the cemetery seemed just as Bloom might have seen it. With the towering O'Connell Monument at the center, it extends into a magnificent sprawl of headstones, tombs and crosses.

The cemetery is the resting place of some of Ireland's leading historical figures, including 19th-century activist Daniel O'Connell. Among the major literary figures buried here are Maud Gonne, the actress and Irish revolutionary who inspired much of Yeats's poetry, and Behan.