Leopold

Leopold Bloom is the protagonist of James Joyce’s masterpiece of modern literature, Ulysses, first published in serial form and in its initial book form by Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1922. The subject of multiple attacks of obscenity charges, Ulysses has come to be accepted for what it is – a classic. At its heart are the ruminations and observations of the wandering Jew, Leopold Bloom, as he walks about Dublin in the course of a single day, June 16, 1904. Leopold is Everyman – a person with troubles, heartbreaks, disappointments. He and his wife Molly lost their only son when an infant, and since that time Leopold has been unable to have marital relations with her. At the same time, he knows that she is finding questionable comfort in the arms of another man. He is such a fair man that he cannot hold her in contempt for her actions. Indeed, Leopold either sympathizes or empathizes with most of mankind, so non-judgmental is he, and so lacking in the single-minded national fervor that grips the nation of which he is at once a native and an outsider. Leopold is very comfortable in his skin; he is a creature of the earth and does not so much revel in that earthiness as dwell in it. He loves to eat, to drink, to talk – indeed, all the bodily functions are embraced wholeheartedly by him. He holds women in special regard and dreams of following through on his sexual fantasies, although that is as far as he will take it. In the face of all that life has to serve to him, Leopold remains in essence a good and gentle man, one for whom the very nature of existence can be distilled into one word - “love” – in all its manifestations.