Irish €0 Banknote: Strangely, some companies are licensed across Europe to print banknotes that look very similar to actual euro notes.
These zero Euro notes are printed in the same facility that presses Euro banknotes for the E.U. They have the same look, feel and quality of standard Euro currency bills you are used to paying with. They have a watermark, microprint, and metal stripe, are printed on banknote quality paper, and even have the same UV-sensitive security features that you can only see if you hold the banknotes under UV light.
In Ireland, a company called Euro Note Souvenir is the exclusive license-holder of zero Euro notes in Ireland. This gives the company the ability to create commemorative Euro notes with the look and feel of real Euro currency.
The company has honored iconic Irish mainstays on their notes so far. This includes the city of Dublin, revolutionary political figures like Michael Collins and Bobby Sands, Kilkenny Castle, and the Cliffs of Moher.
Now, they are releasing a commemorative note of James Joyce.
Irish €0 Banknote and the Ulysses
On February 2, 1922, Irish novelist James Joyce’s seminal work “Ulysses” was first published in its entirety. 100 years later, Joyce will be getting a reprint of a different sort: as the face of a commemorative zero Euro note by Euro Note Souvenir.
By the time the book was published in 1922, the modernist retelling of Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” through the lives and faults and struggles of ordinary contemporary Irish characters had already ignited intrigue and controversy. A chapter in the story where one of the protagonists commits a lewd act scandalized readers and publishers for a generation, leading to public burnings of The Little Review, the literary magazine that first published it between 1914 and 1921.
Undeterred, Joyce swore that he would get the book published by his 40th birthday, and sure enough, the first copies of the first edition reached the publisher on February 2, 1922. The threat of the book’s publication led to a frenzy of obscenity legal battles that continued into the 1960s.
Ultimately, the book was allowed to be distributed. A century later, Joyce’s sprawling epic remains one of the most celebrated literary achievements of its day, and one of the most widely read examples of effective stream-of-consciousness writing.
Irish €0 Banknote – Depictions of Ireland
The interweaving of the prosaic trials and tribulations of its main characters with the overtones of a classic Greek tragedy still inspires modernist writers to this day to look beyond the ordinary. Its depictions of Ireland in the early 20th century vaulted locations like Sandymount Strand and the National Library into locations of mythical significance, to the point where some of the businesses mentioned in the work now proudly advertise passages that mention their business on their storefronts.
Said Peter Schneider, Founder of Euro Note Souvenir, “James Joyce’s work and life embodied what it means to be Irish in a way we had not seen before. His virtuosity, tenacity, and vision deserve to be celebrated, and the 100th anniversary of ‘Ulysses’ seemed the perfect time to give James Joyce fans the chance to celebrate his struggle and ultimate success.”
The James Joyce Zero Euro Note features a portrait of the iconic Joyce with his cockeyed hat, cane, and glasses, encircled by a ring of stars. Just 5,000 of these limited-edition notes will be printed.
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