Ulysses Playing Cards

Ulysses Playing Cards

These Ulysses playing cards were published by Presage International in 1989. Here’s the description given on one of the spare cards:

The Vau-de-ville of James Joyce’s Ulysses encircles and condenses into a pictorial form the adventures of a single day, June 16, 1904. Each image is part of a puzzle in which past, present, future, naturalism, symbolism, reality, [and] hallucination are superimposed and interwoven.

Mock heroic exaggeration and pomposity explode into laughter through visions, fantasies, and internal monologues.

Hearts are emotional.

Clubs are physical.

Diamonds are spiritual.

Spades are symbolical.

R. Fanto created the drawings and divised the scheme based on many useful hints given by Richard Ellman, Joyce’s biographer.

I have a number of favorites, including Martello Tower, INRI-IHS, Pen, Crossed Mirror and Razor, and Joyce and Nora as the Jokers.