Dubh Linn

It means "Black Pool" and it's an intense place, at least the way we have experienced it so far. Having written my undergraduate thesis on Ulysses and taught it several times, I feel like I'm in the novel--the street names, some of the pubs and eating establishments, statues, buildings are all here and we keep unintentionally stumbling over them, even walking the same routes as Bloom over the H'penny Bridge towards O'Connell Street, for example. We're staying right on Wellington Quay on the Liffey a few blocks down from the house that's the focus of Joyce's story, "The Dead" (and where John Huston made a film of it).

I know, I know. I'm still geeking out, but I really can't help it. Sites seen: the exhibit Dublinia (about Viking and medieval Dublin), bus-ride through the city for an overview, Christ Church Cathedral (another 13-century edifice; we are certainly learning our flying buttresses).

Last night Philip and I got a babysitter and went to a production of Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars at The Abbey. We simply lucked out--there's no more appropriate play to see at The Abbey, founded by Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats in 1904. The first performance of the play in 1925 (at The Abbey where it premiered) caused a riot--the play's refusal to romanticize the Easter 1916 Rising along with the appearance onstage of both the Tricolour flag and a prostitute raised quite a ruckus. The eeriest thing (and there were many eerie moments) was that the play stages the action just a few blocks from the GPO where the Rising began--and the theater itself is just a few blocks from the GPO. Tightly and powerfully performed, the play well illustrated the complexities of the time.

Awed and a little stunned afterward, Philip and I walked back to the southside past O'Connell Street (where it all happened) over the H'penny Bridge and back to The Clarence Hotel where we are staying. It is owned, I kid you not, by Bono and The Edge.