Why we must let the flower of Scotland's sensuality bloom

This Friday is Bloomsday, a celebration of literature's great liberator, James Joyce. We would do well to learn from the values he espoused, believes Willy Maley Samuel Beckett once remarked that Ireland "never gave a fart in its corduroys for any form of art". Like many modern Irish writers, Beckett resented the pettiness, prejudice and prudery of his country of birth. And, like James Joyce, he left home to pursue a literary career abroad.

Have things changed? I just received an invitation from the Consulate General of Ireland in Edinburgh to attend the first Bloomsday of the 21st century, which falls this Friday. Named after the hero of Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, Bloomsday is globally marketed as a day of celebration, a tribute to Ireland's finest literary genius. Milked for all it's worth by an Irish establishment that rejected Joyce's radical views on sexuality - and which even today maintains a repressive hold over issues of the body - Bloomsday is an ambiguous event. What exactly is being celebrated?

Let's face facts: Joyce's work was trashed in Ireland, deemed too hot too handle, and Ulysses remains one of the naughtiest - and knottiest - novels ever written, an explosive epic that blew up in the faces of Church and state alike. It caused mass perturbation in Ireland and had the whole country in a flap when it was published - and no wonder. It starts with a shave and a shifting of bowels and ends in a torrent of self-abuse.

Every year on June 16, Joyce aficionados convene to pay their respects to Ireland's answer to Shakespeare. His more refined admirers will have for lunch what Bloom consumed - Burgundy and gorgonzola. Whether they do what Bloom did afterwards - fart with great gusto - is a matter for them.

It was on June 16, 1904, that Joyce met in Dublin the great love of his life, Galway girl Nora Barnacle. Joyce was living hand over fist at the time, and Nora gave him the support he needed. She taught him a thing or two about sex and the city, and soon had him wrapped round her little finger, tight as a barnacle.

Their intimate first date meant so much to Joyce that he made it the fulcrum of his finest work. With the flick of a wrist, in the wink of an eye, Joyce had his motivation and his muse. His relationship with Nora is the subject of a new film, but it is his line on sexuality that makes him a man of the moment.

Joyce saw Ireland suffering under a double yoke - British and Roman. He was convinced that the Catholic Church's repressive line on sexuality must abate before the country could ever truly be free, and that the Irish writer must berate those opposed to sexual enlightenment. Joyce complained of Ireland's "sexless intellect". His master-stroke - and it is amazing that he managed to pull it off at all - was to show that nationality and sexuality were intimately bound up. A sexist society would remain enslaved, irrespective of how it was ruled. Misogyny, homophobia, machismo - all were tentacles that choked the life out of the nation. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Joyce was hell-bent on poking fun at the powers that be. His two- pronged attack on conservative, moral and political values is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago. All those hypocrites who say the debate on Section 28 is "peripheral" - even as their intolerant outpourings ensure that it remains central - are right about one thing. Like it or not, sex and the nation go hand-in-gland. It is an index of censorship's staying power that Joyce can be affirmed and celebrated as a great artist in a context where his enlightened and - yes - liberal views are traduced.

There is a touchy subject at the heart of Ulysses, made manifest in many ways. In one notorious scene a barmaid strokes a beer pump suggestively while a customer croons his heart out. Molly Bloom - who should be the real focus of Bloomsday - has a ring on her finger but she is by no means under her husband's thumb.

As she reclines, reminiscing in her boudoir, at the novel's thrilling denouement, offering a stimulating account of her past, she puts her finger on the crux of the matter. Molly says yes to sexuality - her own and others'. Joyce said yes too, promoting sensuality while opposing sexism, endorsing desire while divorcing it from discrimination.

Cardinal Winning wouldn't approve, but then the whole of Joyce's project was dedicated to "promoting" precisely those liberal attitudes to which the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland is so opposed. Ironically, nobody has done more for the institution of masturbation - a stable relationship if ever there was one - than the Church of Rome.

Those who have their bloomers in a twist over the proposed repeal of a piece of discriminatory legislation should read Joyce. In these turbulent and testing times, Ulysses is a work that comes in handy as a celebration - indeed, an affirmation - of human sexuality, and it is one whose ripples are still being felt to this day.

That is its real relevance, and not its iconic status as a museum piece in the literary heritage trail. Yes! Let a hundred blooms flower, and may there be a bloom on the thistle this coming Friday.

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