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By BETTY LOWRYWriters from a dozen centuries have drawn inspiration from this city where ordinary citizens on the street morph into impromptu guides for booklovers.
DUBLIN, Ireland - I was consulting a map on a street corner here when a voice asked: "Are you Yeats or Joyce?"
"What?" I replied.
"Surely neither Swift nor Behan?"
"Oh," I said, then added quickly, "Yeats."
"Thought so. The Abbey Theatre is that way - not the same one, you know - and he wouldn't have liked this one as much."
My informant, the first of many helpful sorts, vanished into the passersby.
Dublin can claim its share of writers past and present - as well as many of their characters.
It scarcely matters that James Joyce (1882-1941) finished Ulysses in Paris and so his recollections of Dublin's cityscape were sometimes vague. For instance, the disappearance of that book's "No. 7 Eccles Street," home of the fictional Leopold Bloom, is mourned as a lost landmark - yet there is little concern about the 16 addresses at which Joyce actually lived at one time or another.
Fortunately, Dublin is a walker's city, and for book-lovers in general - and former English-lit majors in particular - the literary paths here are irresistible. Visitors arriving by plane are introduced to this piece of history at the airport, where quotes from the witty and famous decorate some walls. (A few years ago copies of the nearly indecipherable handwriting of Joyce were woven into the fabric covering some airplane seats, at least in economy class.)
In Trinity College Library, the ninth century Book of Kells has been exhibited seven days a week since 1992, with full-color, wall-size enlargements of some pages.
Someone looking over my shoulder at the great manuscript murmured that it used to be kept "where you could see it close to." That had been in the college's Long Room, the study hall used by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), Thomas Moore (1779-1852) and Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878-1957), among other luminaries.
While Swift, the great satirist, may have been formally educated at Trinity, he belongs to the medieval part of this city. I was seeking a good angle from which to photograph his massive church when another passerby informed me that "an interested person like yourself" need only look around to envision Swift's Dublin as it was "before the grandeur" of the Palladian architecture was added.
The man who gave us Gulliver's Travels was born here ("in Hoey's Court which is, alas, no more" my new guide volunteered) and was a middling student. Swift moved to England, where he wrote political pamphlets for the Tories before he returned to Dublin to spend the rest of his life as dean of its St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Swift's brilliance and eccentricities startled even the Irish. Yet such outrageous proposals as population control by cannibalism (in his A Modest Proposal) are now explained as the result of those years misspent in London. His wit and passion are claimed as Irish birthrights. Swift's body lies at St. Patrick's, next to his beloved mistress - or was she his wife? - "Stella."
For modern literary pilgrims, the city's orientation point is O'Connell Street Bridge, one of nine over the River Liffey. The Liffey divides Dublin into north and south, and when I paused to look from the bridge, yet another passerby said, "The north side belongs to Sean O'Casey" (1880-1964).
Because it was apparent I needed directions, this Dubliner told me the old book shops cluster "along the quays (the wharfs) upriver."
For those who appreciate being shown the way, literary "pub crawls" may be the city's most popular guided tours. Typically they are led by off-duty actors who enliven their quotes with flights of dialect.
At McDaid's pub in Harry Street, it was assumed I had come to see the corner where Brendan Behan (1923-1964) sat with his typewriter in order to "be close to his inspiration." But Behan also is known to have frequented other pubs that include the Lincoln Inn, Neary's, Sinnot's, The White Horse, Silver Swan and the Pearl.
It is somewhat easier for fans of Frank O'Connor (1903-1966); they only need seek out Mooney's, at the Baggot Street Bridge. Gogarty drank in The Bailey, where you can also see "the authentic door from No. 7 Eccles Street" held in honor of Leopold Bloom more than his creator, Joyce.
The bar in Jury's Hotel evokes Brooklyn-born J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, though credit is also claimed by Bowe's on Fleet Street.
A bit out from the heart of the city, but on the bus line, is Kilmainham Gaol, the prison restored as a museum-memorial to the 20th century fight to free Ireland from British rule. Behan's The Quare Fellow was filmed there; many writer-activists were interned there; and the tour includes its execution grounds.
The collection of Irish civil war memorabilia in the Dublin National Gallery surprised me until someone reminded me that many of those who shone in the "Golden Age" of Irish literature had been involved in the struggle. Today's Irish national anthem was written by Peter Kearney (1883-1942) as the marching song for the revolutionary Volunteers of 1916.
James Stephens (1882-1950) worked in the National Gallery at one point and is presumed to have honed his feeling for both Irish prose fantasy and mythology on the premises. The Crock of Gold and Traditional Irish Fairy Tales may have begun here, where the works of Irish artists are on permanent display
It's the intertwining of history and literature, of art and candor, that comes alive in Dublin.
My paperback copy of The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an unexpected guidebook. I took it out in the General Post Office to reread Easter 1916. The Hugh Lane Collection of art is given perspective by Yeats' scathing To a Wealthy Man Who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery If It Were Proved the People Wanted Pictures.
The Lane Collection may be the world's only "commuting" set of major paintings. It's shared 50-50 with London's Tate Gallery.
Yeats may not have lived to see the rebuilding of the Abbey Theatre, but the plays he wrote and promoted for the 1920s Irish Literary Renaissance are performed there still.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, Yeats also sat in the Irish Senate, radically advocating a change in the divorce laws. He headed the committee to choose the designs of Irish coins and, without a blush, selected symbols taken from his own poems. The euro now is the official currency, but the Irish punt bore James Joyce's face and a quotation.
It is considered impolite to note that Dublin played midwife for many noted writers who had to move away to find fame and fortune: Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) went to London, Joyce to Trieste, Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, to Paris.
While Dublin claims 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, he was born in County Derry in 1939, taught at the University of California Berkeley and at Harvard, and is a regular on the college commencement circuit in the United States.
The Dublin Writer's Museum, located in two restored Georgian townhouses at 18-19 Parnell Square, includes an early Gaelic translation of the Old Testament, portraits of writers, rare books and signed copies of first editions, and even Joyce's piano and Gogarty's aviation goggles.
Nearby is the James Joyce Centre, 35 Great Georges St., where every June 16 the fictional "Bloomsday" is celebrated with a wake. On the south of town, the Victorian terrace house at 33 Synge St., birthplace of Shaw, is open to the public. Shaw also won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1925, but turned down the money.
Although never honored with a Nobel or any national awards, Bram Stoker (1847-1912) is remembered in a Heritage Centre on the Clontarf Road and is the best-selling Irish author ever. Yet his Dracula was written in London - "as you might imagine," still one other unofficial literary adviser mentioned to me.
Betty Lowry is a freelance writer living in Wayland, Mass.
If you goGETTING THERE: There is direct air service between Tampa Bay and London, connecting service from there to Dublin, and direct flights to Dublin from other U.S. cities.
GETTING AROUND: Joyce fans can pick up a "Ulysses Map of Dublin" along with other information at the Tourist Information Centres in the city.
The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl sets off nightly at 7:30, from the Duke Pub, 9 Duke St. It costs about $13 adults, $10.40 students, depending on exchange rates. For more information call, from the U.S., 011-353-670-5602 or go to www.dublinpubcrawl.com
STAYING THERE: Dublin is a national capital, tourist destination and university town, so accommodations are plentiful, including many national chains and all price ranges. Among the places I can recommend:
Hotel St. George, 7 Parnell Square, is a modest three-star in a good location; prices start about $169, double occupancy, including breakfast. Call from the U.S. 011-353-1-874-5611; www.stgeorgehoteldublin.com
Stauntons on the Green, 83 St. Stephen's Green S, is a guest house on the city park of Dublin; rates from $164 double, with breakfast. Call 011-353-1-478-2300; www.stauntonsonthegreen.ie
Schoolhouse Hotel, 2-8 Northumberland, Ballsbridge, has 31 rooms named for Irish writers, in a converted, 19th century parochial school; from $233, double, with breakfast. Call 011-353-1-667-5014; www.schoolhousehotel.com
If you arrive without a reservation, the Tourist Information Centre likely can find you a room.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact Tourism Ireland in New York City at toll-free 1-800-223-6470; www.tourismireland.com and www.visitdublin.com