Szombathely Mural 2024

We are thrilled to share images of Mark Joyce’s @_markjoyce_ mural commission, created for in Szombathely, Hungary with the support of the DFA and Szombathely City Council. The mural features the phrase ‘Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past’ from Episode 9 of Ulysses appears here with a mosaic motif.

The artist’s statement explains:

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗘𝗡𝗘

Scylla and Charybdis takes place in the National Library of Ireland. Stephen Daedalus is theorising on Shakespeare’s life to assembled literary men, Leopold Bloom is looking at back issues of provincial newspapers and when he goes to leave, he passes between Stephen and Buck Mulligan, just as Odysseus sailed between the mythical sea monsters.
The episode is a rich mosaic of literary, historical and biographical conversational fragments under the classical portico of the library. Incidentally, they are standing on a mosaic floor designed by Ludwig Oppenheimer of Manchester, born in 1830 in Braunschweig who was sent to Manchester to learn English, there he fell in love, converted from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, after which his family cut all ties and he learnt a new trade making Mosaics.

𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗛𝗥𝗔𝗦𝗘

The phrase ‘Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past’ happens early in the chapter.
What is the here and now? or THE NOW, THE HERE, through which all future is flowing into the past. The classical view of time would say that the future doesn’t exist and the past exists only in memory. This phrase exerts us to hold onto the present, even as it speeds into the past, this is just one of the many propositions in Episode 9.

That every life is made up of many individual days, passing, day after day, experienced uniquely and individually, with inner monologues and external exchanges and events, at the juncture of our past and our future, Bloomsday is one such d

Szombathely’s annual Bloomsday project attempts to map the various references to Leopold Bloom (the protagonist of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses) in the city of Szombathely, Hungary. According to the book, Bloom’s father, Rudolf Virág, is from the city. This reference has given rise to a number of cultural projects that draw on this fictional history and try to enact real-world connections: to Ireland and to the artistic legacies of the 20th-century avant-garde.

This project is a collaboration between the Department of Foreign Affairs, Project Arts Centre Dublin, and the city of Szombathely.