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June 16, 2006

Bloomsday

June 16, Bloomsday.

Today's Ulysses tidbit: Moses Dlugacz, pork butcher.

Another Triestine name which would reappear in Ulysses was that of Moses Dlugacz, Joyce's student from 1912 to 1915. Dlugacz, a cashier with the Cunard Line in Trieste, was an ardent Zionist who was born on 12 January 1884 in Galizia, ordained rabbi when he was fifteen, and was was well-known for his efforts to promote the teaching of Hebrew. During the First World War Dlugacz worked in Trieste as a provisions merchant in a small shop on via Torrebianca, which supplied cheese and meat to the Austrian army fighting along the Isonzo river near Trieste, a fact, this, which induced Joyce to rather roguishly have him appear in Ulysses as the "ferret eyed pork butcher" of Upper Dorset Street, the only shopkeeper in the book who is not listed in Dublin's Thorn's Directory. Significantly, Dlugacz keeps advertisements in his shop for the model farm at Kinnereth, and Molly mentions him as that "queerlookingman in the porkbutchers" who "is a great rogue"(U 18.911-912).