{"id":4958,"date":"2006-06-16T08:19:17","date_gmt":"2006-06-16T12:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2015-05-22T07:16:36","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T11:16:36","slug":"bloomsday-i-prepare-myself-for-a-sacrament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=4958","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI prepare myself for a sacrament\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philippe Soupault:<\/i><\/p>\n

Together we went often to the theatre, which, like all good Irishmen, he loved. It was the theatre as theatre that he loved. I mean that he was attracted less by the play than by the atmosphere, the footlights and spotlights, the spectators, the kind of solemnity in a theatre. He preferred opera. When he had decided to go, he was happy as a child. He chose a companion, refused to dine (I prepare myself for a sacrament, he told me, explaining this abstinence), and after the performance he had supper at a restaurant, where he had arranged to have his favorite white wines. At the theatre, seated in the first row — presumably because of his very bad eyesight — he carefully watched the actionn and listened closely to the performers. Only children are as passionately attentive as Joyce was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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