He drained his third cup of watery tea to the dregs and set to chewingthe crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring intothe dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out likea boghole and the pool under it brought back to his memory the darkturf-coloured water of the bath in Clongowes. The box of pawn ticketsat his elbow had just been rifled and he took up idly one after anotherin his greasy fingers the blue and white dockets, scrawled and sandedand creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Man's Pants.
Then he put them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box,speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely:--How much is the clock fast now?His mother straightened the battered alarm clock that was lying on itsside in the middle of the mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarterto twelve and then laid it once more on its side.--An hour and twenty-five minutes, she said. The right time now istwenty past ten. The dear knows you might try to be in time for yourlectures.--Fill out the place for me to wash, said Stephen.--Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.--Boody, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.--I can't, I'm going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggy.When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink andthe old washing glove flung on the side of it he allowed his mother toscrub his neck and root into the folds of his ears and into theinterstices at the wings of his nose.--Well, it's a poor case, she said, when a university student is sodirty that his mother has to wash him.--But it gives you pleasure, said Stephen calmly.An ear-splitting whistle was heard from upstairs and his mother thrusta damp overall into his hands, saying:--Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls tothe foot of the staircase.--Yes, father?--Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?--Yes, father.--Sure?--Yes, father.--Hm!The girl came back, making signs to him to be quick and go out quietlyby the back. Stephen laughed and said:--He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine.--Ah, it's a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, andyou'll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know howit has changed you.--Good morning, everybody, said Stephen, smiling and kissing the tipsof his fingers in adieu.The lane behind the terrace was waterlogged and as he went down itslowly, choosing his steps amid heaps of wet rubbish, he heard a madnun screeching in the nuns' madhouse beyond the wall.--Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus!He shook the sound out of his ears by an angry toss of his head andhurried on, stumbling through the mouldering offal, his heart alreadybitten by an ache of loathing and bitterness. His father's whistle, hismother's mutterings, the screech of an unseen maniac were to him now somany voices offending and threatening to humble the pride of his youth.He drove their echoes even out of his heart with an execration; but, ashe walked down the avenue and felt the grey morning light falling abouthim through the dripping trees and smelt the strange wild smell of thewet leaves and bark, his soul was loosed of her miseries.The rain-laden trees of the avenue evoked in him, as always, memoriesof the girls and women in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann; and thememory of their pale sorrows and the fragrance falling from the wetbranches mingled in a mood of quiet joy. His morning walk across thecity had begun, and he foreknew that as he passed the sloblands ofFairview he would think of the cloistral silver-veined prose of Newman;that as he walked along the North Strand Road, glancing idly at thewindows of the provision shops, he would recall the dark humour ofGuido Cavalcanti and smile; that as he went by Baird's stonecuttingworks in Talbot Place the spirit of Ibsen would blow through him like akeen wind, a spirit of wayward boyish beauty; and that passing a grimymarine dealer's shop beyond the Liffey he would repeat the song by BenJonson which begins:I was not wearier where I lay.
His mind when wearied of its search for the essence of beauty amid thespectral words of Aristotle or Aquinas turned often for its pleasure tothe dainty songs of the Elizabethans. His mind, in the vesture of adoubting monk, stood often in shadow under the windows of that age, tohear the grave and mocking music of the lutenists or the frank laughterof waist-coateers until a laugh too low, a phrase, tarnished by time,of chambering and false honour stung his monkish pride and drove him onfrom his lurking-place.The lore which he was believed to pass his days brooding upon so thatit had rapt him from the companionship of youth was only a garner ofslender sentences from Aristotle's poetics and psychology and aSYNOPSIS PHILOSOPHIAE SCHOLASTICAE AD MENTEM DIVI THOMAE. His thinkingwas a dusk of doubt and self-mistrust, lit up at moments by thelightnings of intuition, but lightnings of so clear a splendour that inthose moments the world perished about his feet as if it had beenfire-consumed; and thereafter his tongue grew heavy and he met the eyesof others with unanswering eyes, for he felt that the spirit of beautyhad folded him round like a mantle and that in revery at least he hadbeen acquainted with nobility. But when this brief pride ofsilence upheld him no longer he was glad to find himselfstill in the midst of common lives, passing on his way amid the squalorand noise and sloth of the city fearlessly and with a light heart.Near the hoardings on the canal he met the consumptive man with thedoll's face and the brimless hat coming towards him down the slope ofthe bridge with little steps, tightly buttoned into his chocolateovercoat, and holding his furled umbrella a span or two from him like adivining rod. It must be eleven, he thought, and peered into a dairy tosee the time. The clock in the dairy told him that it was five minutesto five but, as he turned away, he heard a clock somewhere near him,but unseen, beating eleven strokes in swift precision. He laughed as heheard it for it made him think of McCann, and he saw him a squat figurein a shooting jacket and breeches and with a fair goatee, standing inthe wind at Hopkins' corner, and heard him say:--Dedalus, you're an antisocial being, wrapped up in yourself. I'mnot. I'm a democrat and I'll work and act for social liberty andequality among all classes and sexes in the United States of the Europeof the future.Eleven! Then he was late for that lecture too. What day of the week wasit? He stopped at a newsagent's to read the headline of a placard.Thursday. Ten to eleven, English; eleven to twelve, French; twelve toone, physics. He fancied to himself the English lecture and felt, evenat that distance, restless and helpless. He saw the heads of hisclassmates meekly bent as they wrote in their notebooks the points theywere bidden to note, nominal definitions, essential definitions andexamples or dates of birth or death, chief works, a favourable and anunfavourable criticism side by side. His own head was unbent for histhoughts wandered abroad and whether he looked around the little classof students or out of the window across the desolate gardens of thegreen an odour assailed him of cheerless cellar-damp and decay. Anotherhead than his, right before him in the first benches, was poisedsquarely above its bending fellows like the head of a priest appealingwithout humility to the tabernacle for the humble worshippers abouthim. Why was it that when he thought of Cranly he could never raisebefore his mind the entire image of his body but only the image of thehead and face? Even now against the grey curtain of the morning he sawit before him like the phantom of a dream, the face of a severed heador death-mask, crowned on the brows by its stiff black upright hair asby an iron crown. It was a priest-like face, priest-like in its palor,in the wide winged nose, in the shadowings below the eyes and along thejaws, priest-like in the lips that were long and bloodless and faintlysmiling; and Stephen, remembering swiftly how he had told Cranly of allthe tumults and unrest and longings in his soul, day after day andnight by night, only to be answered by his friend's listening silence,would have told himself that it was the face of a guilty priest whoheard confessions of those whom he had not power to absolve but that hefelt again in memory the gaze of its dark womanish eyes.Through this image he had a glimpse of a strange dark cavern ofspeculation but at once turned away from it, feeling that it was notyet the hour to enter it. But the nightshade of his friend'slistlessness seemed to be diffusing in the air around him a tenuous anddeadly exhalation and He found himself glancing from one casual word toanother on his right or left in stolid wonder that they had been sosilently emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legendbound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled upsighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of deadlanguage. His own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brainand trickling into the very words themselves which set to band anddisband themselves in wayward rhythms:The ivy whines upon the wall,
And whines and twines upon the wall,
The yellow ivy upon the wall,
Ivy, ivy up the wall.
Did anyone ever hear such drivel? Lord Almighty! Who ever heard of ivywhining on a wall? Yellow ivy; that was all right. Yellow ivory also.And what about ivory ivy?The word now shone in his brain, clearer and brighter than any ivorysawn from the mottled tusks of elephants. IVORY, IVOIRE, AVORIO, EBUR.One of the first examples that he had learnt in Latin had run:INDIA MITTIT EBUR; and he recalled the shrewd northern face of therector who had taught him to construe the Metamorphoses of Ovid in acourtly English, made whimsical by the mention of porkers and potsherdsand chines of bacon. He had learnt what little he knew of the laws ofLatin verse from a ragged book written by a Portuguese priest.Contrahit orator, variant in carmine vates.The crises and victories and secessions in Roman history were handed onto him in the trite words IN TANTO DISCRIMINE and he had tried to peerinto the social life of the city of cities through the words IMPLEREOLLAM DENARIORUM which the rector had rendered sonorously as thefilling of a pot with denaries. The pages of his time-worn Horace neverfelt cold to the touch even when his own fingers were cold; they werehuman pages and fifty years before they had been turned by the humanfingers of John Duncan Inverarity and by his brother, William MalcolmInverarity. Yes, those were noble names on the dusky flyleaf and, evenfor so poor a Latinist as he, the dusky verses were as fragrant asthough they had lain all those years in myrtle and lavender andvervain; but yet it wounded him to think that he would never be but ashy guest at the feast of the world's culture and that the monkishlearning, in terms of which he was striving to forge out an estheticphilosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived in than the subtleand curious jargons of heraldry and falconry.The grey block of Trinity on his left, set heavily in the city'signorance like a dull stone set in a cumbrous ring, pulled his minddownward and while he was striving this way and that to free his feetfrom the fetters of the reformed conscience he came upon the drollstatue of the national poet of Ireland.He looked at it without anger; for, though sloth of the body and of thesoul crept over it like unseen vermin, over the shuffling feet and upthe folds of the cloak and around the servile head, it seemed humblyconscious of its indignity. It was a Firbolg in the borrowed cloak of aMilesian; and he thought of his friend Davin, the peasant student. Itwas a jesting name between them, but the young peasant bore with itlightly:--Go on, Stevie, I have a hard head, you tell me. Call me what youwill.The homely version of his christian name on the lips of his friend hadtouched Stephen pleasantly when first heard for he was as formal inspeech with others as they were with him. Often, as he sat in Davin'srooms in Grantham Street, wondering at his friend's well-made bootsthat flanked the wall pair by pair and repeating for his friend'ssimple ear the verses and cadences of others which were the veils ofhis own longing and dejection, the rude Firbolg mind of his listenerhad drawn his mind towards it and flung it back again, drawing it by aquiet inbred courtesy of attention or by a quaint turn of old Englishspeech or by the force of its delight in rude bodily skill--for Davinhad sat at the feet of Michael Cusack, the Gael--repelling swiftly andsuddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a bluntness of feeling orby a dull stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul of a starvingIrish village in which the curfew was still a nightly fear.Side by side with his memory of the deeds of prowess of his uncle MatDavin, the athlete, the young peasant worshipped the sorrowful legendof Ireland. The gossip of his fellow-students which strove to renderthe flat life of the college significant at any cost loved to think ofhim as a young fenian. His nurse had taught him Irish and shaped hisrude imagination by the broken lights of Irish myth. He stood towardsthe myth upon which no individual mind had ever drawn out a line ofbeauty and to its unwieldy tales that divided against themselves asthey moved down the cycles in the same attitude as towards the Romancatholic religion, the attitude of a dull-witted loyal serf. Whatsoeverof thought or of feeling came to him from England or by way of Englishculture his mind stood armed against in obedience to a password; and ofthe world that lay beyond England he knew only the foreign legion ofFrance in which he spoke of serving.Coupling this ambition with the young man's humour Stephen had oftencalled him one of the tame geese and there was even a point ofirritation in the name pointed against that very reluctance of speechand deed in his friend which seemed so often to stand between Stephen'smind, eager of speculation, and the hidden ways of Irish life.One night the young peasant, his spirit stung by the violent orluxurious language in which Stephen escaped from the cold silence ofintellectual revolt, had called up before Stephen's mind a strangevision. The two were walking slowly towards Davin's rooms through thedark narrow streets of the poorer jews.--A thing happened to myself, Stevie, last autumn, coming on winter,and I never told it to a living soul and you are the first person now Iever told it to. I disremember if it was October or November. It wasOctober because it was before I came up here to join the matriculationclass.Stephen had turned his smiling eyes towards his friend's face,flattered by his confidence and won over to sympathy by the speaker'ssimple accent.--I was away all that day from my own place over in Buttevant.--I don't know if you know where that is--at a hurling match betweenthe Croke's Own Boys and the Fearless Thurles and by God, Stevie, thatwas the hard fight. My first cousin, Fonsy Davin, was stripped to hisbuff that day minding cool for the Limericks but he was up with theforwards half the time and shouting like mad. I never will forget thatday. One of the Crokes made a woeful wipe at him one time with hiscaman and I declare to God he was within an aim's ace of getting it atthe side of his temple. Oh, honest to God, if the crook of it caughthim that time he was done for.--I am glad he escaped, Stephen had said with a laugh, but surelythat's not the strange thing that happened you?--Well, I suppose that doesn't interest you, but leastways there wassuch noise after the match that I missed the train home and I couldn'tget any kind of a yoke to give me a lift for, as luck would have it,there was a mass meeting that same day over in Castletownroche andall the cars in the country were there. So there was nothing for itonly to stay the night or to foot it out. Well, I started to walkand on I went and it was coming on night when I got into the Ballyhourahills, that's better than ten miles from Kilmallock and there's along lonely road after that. You wouldn't see the sign of a christianhouse along the road or hear a sound. It was pitch dark almost. Onceor twice I stopped by the way under a bush to redden my pipe and onlyfor the dew was thick I'd have stretched out there and slept. At last,after a bend of the road, I spied a little cottage with a light in thewindow. I went up and knocked at the door. A voice asked who wasthere and I answered I was over at the match in Buttevant and waswalking back and that I'd be thankful for a glass of water. Aftera while a young woman opened the door and brought me out a big mugof milk. She was half undressed as if she was going to bed when Iknocked and she had her hair hanging and I thought by her figure andby something in the look of her eyes that she must be carrying achild. She kept me in talk a long while at the door, and I thoughtit strange because her breast and her shoulders were bare. Sheasked me was I tired and would I like to stop the night there.She said she was all alone in the house and that her husband hadgone that morning to Queenstown with his sister to see her off. And allthe time she was talking, Stevie, she had her eyes fixed on my face andshe stood so close to me I could hear her breathing. When I handed herback the mug at last she took my hand to draw me in over the thresholdand said: 'COME IN AND STAY THE NIGHT HERE. YOU'VE NO CALL TO BEFRIGHTENED. THERE'S NO ONE IN IT BUT OURSELVES...' I didn't go in,Stevie. I thanked her and went on my way again, all in a fever. At thefirst bend of the road I looked back and she was standing at the door.The last words of Davin's story sang in his memory and the figure ofthe woman in the story stood forth reflected in other figures of thepeasant women whom he had seen standing in the doorways at Clane as thecollege cars drove by, as a type of her race and of his own, a bat-likesoul waking to the consciousness of itself in darkness and secrecy andloneliness and, through the eyes and voice and gesture of a womanwithout guile, calling the stranger to her bed.A hand was laid on his arm and a young voice cried:--Ah, gentleman, your own girl, sir! The first handsel today, gentleman.Buy that lovely bunch. Will you, gentleman?The blue flowers which she lifted towards him and her young blue eyesseemed to him at that instant images of guilelessness, and he haltedtill the image had vanished and he saw only her ragged dress and dampcoarse hair and hoydenish face.--Do, gentleman! Don't forget your own girl, sir!--I have no money, said Stephen.--Buy them lovely ones, will you, sir? Only a penny.--Did you hear what I said? asked Stephen, bending towards her. I told youI had no money. I tell you again now.--Well, sure, you will some day, sir, please God, the girl answeredafter an instant.--Possibly, said Stephen, but I don't think it likely.He left her quickly, fearing that her intimacy might turn to jibingand wishing to be out of the way before she offered her ware toanother, a tourist from England or a student of Trinity. GraftonStreet, along which he walked, prolonged that moment of discouragedpoverty. In the roadway at the head of the street a slab was set to thememory of Wolfe Tone and he remembered having been present with hisfather at its laying. He remembered with bitterness that scene oftawdry tribute. There were four French delegates in a brake and one, aplump smiling young man, held, wedged on a stick, a card on which wereprinted the words: VIVE L'IRLANDE!But the trees in Stephen's Green were fragrant of rain and therain-sodden earth gave forth its mortal odour, a faint incense risingupward through the mould from many hearts. The soul of the gallantvenal city which his elders had told him of had shrunk with time to afaint mortal odour rising from the earth and he knew that in a momentwhen he entered the sombre college he would be conscious of acorruption other than that of Buck Egan and Burnchapel Whaley.It was too late to go upstairs to the French class. He crossed the halland took the corridor to the left which led to the physics theatre. Thecorridor was dark and silent but not unwatchful. Why did he feel thatit was not unwatchful? Was it because he had heard that in BuckWhaley's time there was a secret staircase there? Or was the jesuithouse extra-territorial and was he walking among aliens? The Ireland ofTone and of Parnell seemed to have receded in space.He opened the door of the theatre and halted in the chilly grey lightthat struggled through the dusty windows. A figure was crouching beforethe large grate and by its leanness and greyness he knew that it wasthe dean of studies lighting the fire. Stephen closed the door quietlyand approached the fireplace.--Good morning, sir! Can I help you?The priest looked up quickly and said:--One moment now, Mr Dedalus, and you will see. There is an art inlighting a fire. We have the liberal arts and we have the useful arts.This is one of the useful arts.--I will try to learn it, said Stephen.--Not too much coal, said the dean, working briskly at his task, thatis one of the secrets.He produced four candle-butts from the side-pockets of his soutane andplaced them deftly among the coals and twisted papers. Stephen watchedhim in silence. Kneeling thus on the flagstone to kindle the fire andbusied with the disposition of his wisps of paper and candle-butts heseemed more than ever a humble server making ready the place ofsacrifice in an empty temple, a levite of the Lord. Like a levite'srobe of plain linen the faded worn soutane draped the kneeling figureof one whom the canonicals or the bell-bordered ephod would irk andtrouble. His very body had waxed old in lowly service of the Lord--intending the fire upon the altar, in bearing tidings secretly, inwaiting upon worldlings, in striking swiftly when bidden--and yet hadremained ungraced by aught of saintly or of prelatic beauty. Nay, hisvery soul had waxed old in that service without growing towards lightand beauty or spreading abroad a sweet odour of her sanctity--amortified will no more responsive to the thrill of its obedience thanwas to the thrill of love or combat his ageing body, spare and sinewy,greyed with a silver-pointed down.The dean rested back on his hunkers and watched the sticks catch.Stephen, to fill the silence, said:--I am sure I could not light a fire.--You are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancingup and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creationof the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.He rubbed his hands slowly and drily over the difficulty.--Can you solve that question now? he asked.--Aquinas, answered Stephen, says PULCRA SUNT QUAE VISA PLACENT.--This fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye.Will it therefore be beautiful?--In so far as it is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose meanshere esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also saysBONUM EST IN QUOD TENDIT APPETITUS. In so far as it satisfies theanimal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell, however, it is anevil.--Quite so, said the dean, you have certainly hit the nail on the head.He rose nimbly and went towards the door, set it ajar and said:--A draught is said to be a help in these matters.As he came back to the hearth, limping slightly but with a brisk step,Stephen saw the silent soul of a jesuit look out at him from the paleloveless eyes. Like Ignatius he was lame but in his eyes burned nospark of Ignatius's enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of thecompany, a craft subtler and more secret than its fabled books ofsecret subtle wisdom, had not fired his soul with the energy ofapostleship. It seemed as if he used the shifts and lore and cunning ofthe world, as bidden to do, for the greater glory of God, without joyin their handling or hatred of that in them which was evil but turningthem, with a firm gesture of obedience back upon themselves and for allthis silent service it seemed as if he loved not at all the master andlittle, if at all, the ends he served. SIMILITER ATQUE SENIS BACULUS,he was, as the founder would have had him, like a staff in an old man'shand, to be leaned on in the road at nightfall or in stress of weather,to lie with a lady's nosegay on a garden seat, to be raised in menace.The dean returned to the hearth and began to stroke his chin.--When may we expect to have something from you on the estheticquestion? he asked.--From me! said Stephen in astonishment. I stumble on an idea once afortnight if I am lucky.--These questions are very profound, Mr Dedalus, said the dean. It islike looking down from the cliffs of Moher into the depths. Many godown into the depths and never come up. Only the trained diver can godown into those depths and explore them and come to the surface again.--If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I also am sure thatthere is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking mustbe bound by its own laws.--Ha!--For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or twoideas of Aristotle and Aquinas.--I see. I quite see your point.--I need them only for my own use and guidance until I have donesomething for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells Ishall try to trim it. If it does not give light enough I shall sell itand buy another.--Epictetus also had a lamp, said the dean, which was sold for a fancyprice after his death. It was the lamp he wrote his philosophicaldissertations by. You know Epictetus?--An old gentleman, said Stephen coarsely, who said that the soul isvery like a bucketful of water.--He tells us in his homely way, the dean went on, that he put an ironlamp before a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole thelamp. What did the philosopher do? He reflected that it was in thecharacter of a thief to steal and determined to buy an earthen lampnext day instead of the iron lamp.A smell of molten tallow came up from the dean's candle butts and fuseditself in Stephen's consciousness with the jingle of the words, bucketand lamp and lamp and bucket. The priest's voice, too, had a hardjingling tone. Stephen's mind halted by instinct, checked by thestrange tone and the imagery and by the priest's face which seemed likean unlit lamp or a reflector hung in a false focus. What lay behind itor within it? A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of thethundercloud, charged with intellection and capable of the gloom ofGod?--I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.--Undoubtedly, said the dean.--One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to knowwhether words are being used according to the literary tradition oraccording to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence ofNewman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detainedin the full company of the saints. The use of the word in themarketplace is quite different. I HOPE I AM NOT DETAINING YOU.--Not in the least, said the dean politely.--No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean----Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point:DETAIN.He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.--To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a niceproblem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when youpour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel canhold.--What funnel? asked Stephen.--The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.--That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?--What is a tundish?--That. The... funnel.--Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heardthe word in my life.--It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing,where they speak the best English.--A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interestingword. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at theEnglish convert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parablemay have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake ofclamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to haveentered on the stage of jesuit history when that strange play ofintrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been allbut given through--a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had he setout? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeingsalvation in Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of theestablishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid thewelter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, sixprinciple men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsariandogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding upto the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning uponinsufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the HolyGhost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like thatdisciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door ofsome zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?The dean repeated the word yet again.--Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!--The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting.What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps ofearth, said Stephen coldly.The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of hissensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with asmart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was acountryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:--The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. Howdifferent are the words HOME, CHRIST, ALE, MASTER, on his lips and onmine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. Hislanguage, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquiredspeech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them atbay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.--And to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the deanadded, to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty. And toinquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of the various arts.These are some interesting points we might take up.Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the dean's firm, dry tone, wassilent; and through the silence a distant noise of many boots andconfused voices came up the staircase.--In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, thereis, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must takeyour degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little bylittle, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in lifeand in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr Moonan.He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.--I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.--You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is inus. I most certainly should not be despondent. PER ASPERA AD ASTRA.He left the hearth quickly and went towards the landing to oversee thearrival of the first arts' class.Leaning against the fireplace Stephen heard him greet briskly andimpartially every Student of the class and could almost see the franksmiles of the coarser students. A desolating pity began to fall likedew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful serving-man ofthe knightly Loyola, for this half-brother of the clergy, more venalthan they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom hewould never call his ghostly father; and he thought how this man andhis companions had earned the name of worldlings at the hands not ofthe unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, duringall their history, at the bar of God's justice for the souls of the laxand the lukewarm and the prudent.The entry of the professor was signalled by a few rounds of Kentishfire from the heavy boots of those students who sat on the highest tierof the gloomy theatre under the grey cobwebbed windows. The calling ofthe roll began and the responses to the names were given out in alltones until the name of Peter Byrne was reached.--Here!A deep bass note in response came from the upper tier, followed bycoughs of protest along the other benches.The professor paused in his reading and called the next name:--Cranly!No answer.--Mr Cranly!A smile flew across Stephen's face as he thought of his friend'sstudies.--Try Leopardstown! Said a voice from the bench behind.Stephen glanced up quickly but Moynihan's snoutish face, outlined on thegrey light, was impassive. A formula was given out. Amid the rustling ofthe notebooks Stephen turned back again and said:--Give me some paper for God's sake.--Are you as bad as that? asked Moynihan with a broad grin.He tore a sheet from his scribbler and passed it down, whispering:--In case of necessity any layman or woman can do it.The formula which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper, thecoiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the spectre-likesymbols of force and velocity fascinated and jaded Stephen's mind. Hehad heard some say that the old professor was an atheist freemason. Othe grey dull day! It seemed a limbo of painless patient consciousnessthrough which souls of mathematicians might wander, projecting longslender fabrics from plane to plane of ever rarer and paler twilight,radiating swift eddies to the last verges of a universe ever vaster,farther and more impalpable.--So we must distinguish between elliptical and ellipsoidal. Perhaps someof you gentlemen may be familiar with the works of Mr W. S. Gilbert. Inone of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who is condemned toplay:On a cloth untrue
With a twisted cue
And elliptical billiard balls.
--He means a ball having the form of the ellipsoid of the principalaxes of which I spoke a moment ago.Moynihan leaned down towards Stephen's ear and murmured:--What price ellipsoidal balls! chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry!His fellow student's rude humour ran like a gust through the cloisterof Stephen's mind, shaking into gay life limp priestly vestments thathung upon the walls, setting them to sway and caper in a sabbath ofmisrule. The forms of the community emerged from the gust-blownvestments, the dean of studies, the portly florid bursar with his capof grey hair, the president, the little priest with feathery hair whowrote devout verses, the squat peasant form of the professor ofeconomics, the tall form of the young professor of mental sciencediscussing on the landing a case of conscience with his class like agiraffe cropping high leafage among a herd of antelopes, the gravetroubled prefect of the sodality, the plump round-headed professor ofItalian with his rogue's eyes. They came ambling and stumbling,tumbling and capering, kilting their gowns for leap frog, holding oneanother back, shaken with deep false laughter, smacking one anotherbehind and laughing at their rude malice, calling to one another byfamiliar nicknames, protesting with sudden dignity at some rough usage,whispering two and two behind their hands.The professor had gone to the glass cases on the side wall, from ashelf of which he took down a set of coils, blew away the dust frommany points and, bearing it carefully to the table, held a finger on itwhile he proceeded with his lecture. He explained that the wires inmodern coils were of a compound called platinoid lately discovered byF. W. Martino.He spoke clearly the initials and surname of the discoverer. Moynihanwhispered from behind:--Good old Fresh Water Martin!--Ask him, Stephen whispered back with weary humour, if he wants asubject for electrocution. He can have me.Moynihan, seeing the professor bend over the coils, rose in his benchand, clacking noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to callwith the voice of a slobbering urchin.--Please teacher! This boy is after saying a bad word, teacher.--Platinoid, the professor said solemnly, is preferred to Germansilver because it has a lower coefficient of resistance by changes oftemperature. The platinoid wire is insulated and the covering of silkthat insulates it is wound on the ebonite bobbins just where my fingeris. If it were wound single an extra current would be induced in thecoils. The bobbins are saturated in hot paraffin wax...A sharp Ulster voice said from the bench below Stephen:--Are we likely to be asked questions on applied science?The professor began to juggle gravely with the terms pure science andapplied science. A heavy-built student, wearing gold spectacles, staredwith some wonder at the questioner. Moynihan murmured from behind inhis natural voice:--Isn't MacAlister a devil for his pound of flesh?Stephen looked coldly on the oblong skull beneath him overgrown withtangled twine-coloured hair. The voice, the accent, the mind of thequestioner offended him and he allowed the offence to carry him towardswilful unkindness, bidding his mind think that the student's fatherwould have done better had he sent his son to Belfast to study and havesaved something on the train fare by so doing.The oblong skull beneath did not turn to meet this shaft of thought andyet the shaft came back to its bowstring; for he saw in a moment thestudent's whey-pale face.--That thought is not mine, he said to himself quickly. It came fromthe comic Irishman in the bench behind. Patience. Can you say withcertitude by whom the soul of your race was bartered and its electbetrayed--by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience. RememberEpictetus. It is probably in his character to ask such a question atsuch a moment in such a tone and to pronounce the word SCIENCE as amonosyllable.The droning voice of the professor continued to wind itself slowlyround and round the coils it spoke of, doubling, trebling, quadruplingits somnolent energy as the coil multiplied its ohms of resistance.Moynihan's voice called from behind in echo to a distant bell:--Closing time, gents!The entrance hall was crowded and loud with talk. On a table near thedoor were two photographs in frames and between them a long roll ofpaper bearing an irregular tail of signatures. MacCann went briskly toand fro among the students, talking rapidly, answering rebuffs andleading one after another to the table. In the inner hall the dean ofstudies stood talking to a young professor, stroking his chin gravelyand nodding his head.Stephen, checked by the crowd at the door, halted irresolutely. Fromunder the wide falling leaf of a soft hat Cranly's dark eyes werewatching him.--Have you signed? Stephen asked.Cranly closed his long thin-lipped mouth, communed with himself aninstant and answered:--EGO HABEO.--What is it for?--QUOD?--What is it for?Cranly turned his pale face to Stephen and said blandly and bitterly:--PER PAX UNIVERSALIS.Stephen pointed to the Tsar's photograph and said:--He has the face of a besotted Christ.The scorn and anger in his voice brought Cranly's eyes back from a calmsurvey of the walls of the hall.--Are you annoyed? he asked.--No, answered Stephen.--Are you in bad humour?--No.--CREDO UT VOS SANGUINARIUS MENDAX ESTIS, said Cranly, QUIA FACIESVOSTRA MONSTRAT UT VOS IN DAMNO MALO HUMORE ESTIS.Moynihan, on his way to the table, said in Stephen's ear:--MacCann is in tiptop form. Ready to shed the last drop. Brand newworld. No stimulants and votes for the bitches.Stephen smiled at the manner of this confidence and, when Moynihan hadpassed, turned again to meet Cranly's eyes.--Perhaps you can tell me, he said, why he pours his soul so freelyinto my ear. Can you?A dull scowl appeared on Cranly's forehead. He stared at the tablewhere Moynihan had bent to write his name on the roll, and then saidflatly:--A sugar!--QUIS EST IN MALO HUMORE, said Stephen, EGO AUT VOS?Cranly did not take up the taunt. He brooded sourly on his judgementand repeated with the same flat force:--A flaming bloody sugar, that's what he is!It was his epitaph for all dead friendships and Stephen wonderedwhether it would ever be spoken in the same tone over his memory. Theheavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stone through aquagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling itsheaviness depress his heart. Cranly's speech, unlike that of Davin, hadneither rare phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turnedversions of Irish idioms. Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublingiven back by a bleak decaying seaport, its energy an echo of thesacred eloquence of Dublin given back flatly by a Wicklow pulpit.The heavy scowl faded from Cranly's face as MacCann marched brisklytowards them from the other side of the hall.--Here you are! said MacCann cheerily.--Here I am! said Stephen.--Late as usual. Can you not combine the progressive tendency with arespect for punctuality?--That question is out of order, said Stephen. Next business.His smiling eyes were fixed on a silver-wrapped tablet of milk chocolatewhich peeped out of the propagandist's breast-pocket. A little ring oflisteners closed round to hear the war of wits. A lean student witholive skin and lank black hair thrust his face between the two, glancingfrom one to the other at each phrase and seeming to try to catch eachflying phrase in his open moist mouth. Cranly took a small grey handballfrom his pocket and began to examine it closely, turning it over and over.--Next business? said MacCann. Hom!He gave a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice atthe straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin.--The next business is to sign the testimonial.--Will you pay me anything if I sign? asked Stephen.--I thought you were an idealist, said MacCann.The gipsy-like student looked about him and addressed the onlookers inan indistinct bleating voice.--By hell, that's a queer notion. I consider that notion to be amercenary notion.His voice faded into silence. No heed was paid to his words. He turnedhis olive face, equine in expression, towards Stephen, inviting him tospeak again.MacCann began to speak with fluent energy of the Tsar's rescript, ofStead, of general disarmament arbitration in cases of internationaldisputes, of the signs of the times, of the new humanity and the newgospel of life which would make it the business of the community tosecure as cheaply as possible the greatest possible happiness of thegreatest possible number.The gipsy student responded to the close of the period by crying:--Three cheers for universal brotherhood!--Go on, Temple, said a stout ruddy student near him. I'll stand you apint after.--I'm a believer in universal brotherhood, said Temple, glancing abouthim out of his dark oval eyes. Marx is only a bloody cod.Cranly gripped his arm tightly to check his tongue, smiling uneasily,and repeated:--Easy, easy, easy!Temple struggled to free his arm but continued, his mouth flecked by athin foam:--Socialism was founded by an Irishman and the first man in Europe whopreached the freedom of thought was Collins. Two hundred years ago. Hedenounced priestcraft, the philosopher of Middlesex. Three cheers forJohn Anthony Collins!A thin voice from the verge of the ring replied:--Pip! pip!Moynihan murmured beside Stephen's ear:--And what about John Anthony's poor little sister:Lottie Collins lost her drawers;
Won't you kindly lend her yours?
Stephen laughed and Moynihan, pleased with the result, murmured again:--We'll have five bob each way on John Anthony Collins.--I am waiting for your answer, said MacCann briefly.--The affair doesn't interest me in the least, said Stephen wearily.You know that well. Why do you make a scene about it?--Good! said MacCann, smacking his lips. You are a reactionary, then?--Do you think you impress me, Stephen asked, when you flourish yourwooden sword?--Metaphors! said MacCann bluntly. Come to facts.Stephen blushed and turned aside. MacCann stood his ground and said withhostile humour:--Minor poets, I suppose, are above such trivial questions as thequestion of universal peace.Cranly raised his head and held the handball between the two studentsby way of a peace-offering, saying:--PAX SUPER TOTUM SANGUINARIUM GLOBUM.Stephen, moving away the bystanders, jerked his shoulder angrily in thedirection of the Tsar's image, saying:--Keep your icon. If we must have a Jesus let us have a legitimateJesus.--By hell, that's a good one! said the gipsy student to those abouthim, that's a fine expression. I like that expression immensely.He gulped down the spittle in his throat as if he were gulping down thephrase and, fumbling at the peak of his tweed cap, turned to Stephen,saying:--Excuse me, sir, what do you mean by that expression you uttered justnow?Feeling himself jostled by the students near him, he said to them:--I am curious to know now what he meant by that expression.He turned again to Stephen and said in a whisper:--Do you believe in Jesus? I believe in man. Of course, I don't knowif you believe in man. I admire you, sir. I admire the mind of manindependent of all religions. Is that your opinion about the mind ofJesus?--Go on, Temple, said the stout ruddy student, returning, as was hiswont, to his first idea, that pint is waiting for you.--He thinks I'm an imbecile, Temple explained to Stephen, because I'm abeliever in the power of mind.Cranly linked his arms into those of Stephen and his admirer and said:--NOS AD MANUM BALLUM JOCABIMUS.Stephen, in the act of being led away, caught sight of MacCann'sflushed blunt-featured face.--My signature is of no account, he said politely. You are right to goyour way. Leave me to go mine.--Dedalus, said MacCann crisply, I believe you're a good fellow butyou have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility ofthe human individual.A voice said:--Intellectual crankery is better out of this movement than in it.Stephen, recognizing the harsh tone of MacAlister's voice did not turnin the direction of the voice. Cranly pushed solemnly through thethrong of students, linking Stephen and Temple like a celebrantattended by his ministers on his way to the altar.Temple bent eagerly across Cranly's breast and said:--Did you hear MacAlister what he said? That youth is jealous of you.Did you see that? I bet Cranly didn't see that. By hell, I saw that atonce.As they crossed the inner hall, the dean of studies was in the act ofescaping from the student with whom he had been conversing. He stood atthe foot of the staircase, a foot on the lowest step, his threadbaresoutane gathered about him for the ascent with womanish care, noddinghis head often and repeating:--Not a doubt of it, Mr Hackett! Very fine! Not a doubt of it!In the middle of the hall the prefect of the college sodality wasspeaking earnestly, in a soft querulous voice, with a boarder. As hespoke he wrinkled a little his freckled brow and bit, between hisphrases, at a tiny bone pencil.--I hope the matric men will all come. The first arts' men are prettysure. Second arts, too. We must make sure of the newcomers.Temple bent again across Cranly, as they were passing through thedoorway, and said in a swift whisper:--Do you know that he is a married man? he was a married man beforethey converted him. He has a wife and children somewhere. By hell, Ithink that's the queerest notion I ever heard! Eh?His whisper trailed off into sly cackling laughter. The moment theywere through the doorway Cranly seized him rudely by the neck and shookhim, saying:--You flaming floundering fool! I'll take my dying bible there isn't abigger bloody ape, do you know, than you in the whole flaming bloodyworld!Temple wriggled in his grip, laughing still with sly content, whileCranly repeated flatly at every rude shake:--A flaming flaring bloody idiot!They crossed the weedy garden together. The president, wrapped in aheavy loose cloak, was coming towards them along one of the walks,reading his office. At the end of the walk he halted before turning andraised his eyes. The students saluted, Temple fumbling as before at thepeak of his cap. They walked forward in silence. As they neared thealley Stephen could hear the thuds of the players' hands and the wetsmacks of the ball and Davin's voice crying out excitedly at eachstroke.The three students halted round the box on which Davin sat to followthe game. Temple, after a few moments, sidled across to Stephen andsaid:--Excuse me, I wanted to ask you, do you believe that Jean-JacquesRousseau was a sincere man?Stephen laughed outright. Cranly, picking up the broken stave of a caskfrom the grass at his feet, turned swiftly and said sternly:--Temple, I declare to the living God if you say another word, do youknow, to anybody on any subject, I'll kill you SUPER SPOTTUM.--He was like you, I fancy, said Stephen, an emotional man.--Blast him, curse him! said Cranly broadly. Don't talk to him at all.Sure, you might as well be talking, do you know, to a flamingchamber-pot as talking to Temple. Go home, Temple. For God's sake, gohome.--I don't care a damn about you, Cranly, answered Temple, moving out ofreach of the uplifted stave and pointing at Stephen. He's the only manI see in this institution that has an individual mind.--Institution! Individual! cried Cranly. Go home, blast you, foryou're a hopeless bloody man.--I'm an emotional man, said Temple. That's quite rightly expressed.And I'm proud that I'm an emotionalist.He sidled out of the alley, smiling slyly. Cranly watched him with ablank expressionless face.--Look at him! he said. Did you ever see such a go-by-the-wall?His phrase was greeted by a strange laugh from a student who loungedagainst the wall, his peaked cap down on his eyes. The laugh, pitchedin a high key and coming from a so muscular frame, seemed like thewhinny of an elephant. The student's body shook all over and, to easehis mirth, he rubbed both his hands delightedly over his groins.--Lynch is awake, said Cranly.Lynch, for answer, straightened himself and thrust forward his chest.--Lynch puts out his chest, said Stephen, as a criticism of life.Lynch smote himself sonorously on the chest and said:--Who has anything to say about my girth?Cranly took him at the word and the two began to tussle. When theirfaces had flushed with the struggle they drew apart, panting. Stephenbent down towards Davin who, intent on the game, had paid no heed tothe talk of the others.--And how is my little tame goose? he asked. Did he sign, too?David nodded and said:--And you, Stevie?Stephen shook his head.--You're a terrible man, Stevie, said Davin, taking the short pipefrom his mouth, always alone.--Now that you have signed the petition for universal peace, saidStephen, I suppose you will burn that little copybook I saw in yourroom.As Davin did not answer, Stephen began to quote:--Long pace, fianna! Right incline, fianna! Fianna, by numbers,salute, one, two!--That's a different question, said Davin. I'm an Irish nationalist,first and foremost. But that's you all out. You're a born sneerer,Stevie.--When you make the next rebellion with hurleysticks, said Stephen,and want the indispensable informer, tell me. I can find you a few inthis college.--I can't understand you, said Davin. One time I hear you talk againstEnglish literature. Now you talk against the Irish informers. What withyour name and your ideas--Are you Irish at all?--Come with me now to the office of arms and I will show you the treeof my family, said Stephen.--Then be one of us, said Davin. Why don't you learn Irish? Why did youdrop out of the league class after the first lesson?--You know one reason why, answered Stephen.Davin tossed his head and laughed.--Oh, come now, he said. Is it on account of that certain young ladyand Father Moran? But that's all in your own mind, Stevie. They wereonly talking and laughing.Stephen paused and laid a friendly hand upon Davin's shoulder.--Do you remember, he said, when we knew each other first? The firstmorning we met you asked me to show you the way to the matriculationclass, putting a very strong stress on the first syllable. Youremember? Then you used to address the jesuits as father, you remember?I ask myself about you: IS HE AS INNOCENT AS HIS SPEECH?--I'm a simple person, said Davin. You know that. When you told methat night in Harcourt Street those things about your private life,honest to God, Stevie, I was not able to eat my dinner. I was quitebad. I was awake a long time that night. Why did you tell me thosethings?--Thanks, said Stephen. You mean I am a monster.--No, said Davin. But I wish you had not told me.A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen'sfriendliness.--This race and this country and this life produced me, he said Ishall express myself as I am.--Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In heart you are an Irish manbut your pride is too powerful.--My ancestors threw off their language and took another Stephen said.They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I amgoing to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for?--For our freedom, said Davin.--No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you hislife and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those ofParnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviledhim and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'dsee you damned first.--They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will comeyet, believe me.Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant.--The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told youof. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of thebody. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are netsflung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality,language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.Davin knocked the ashes from his pipe.--Too deep for me, Stevie, he said. But a man's country comes first.Ireland first, Stevie. You can be a poet or a mystic after.--Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with cold violence.Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.Davin rose from his box and went towards the players, shaking his headsadly. But in a moment his sadness left him and he was hotly disputingwith Cranly and the two players who had finished their game. A match offour was arranged, Cranly insisting, however, that his ball should beused. He let it rebound twice or thrice to his hand and struck it stronglyand swiftly towards the base of the alley, exclaiming in answer to itsthud:--Your soul!Stephen stood with Lynch till the score began to rise. Then he pluckedhim by the sleeve to come away. Lynch obeyed, saying:--Let us eke go, as Cranly has it.Stephen smiled at this side-thrust.They passed back through the garden and out through the hall where thedoddering porter was pinning up a hall notice in the frame. At the footof the steps they halted and Stephen took a packet of cigarettes fromhis pocket and offered it to his companion.--I know you are poor, he said.--Damn your yellow insolence, answered Lynch.This second proof of Lynch's culture made Stephen smile again.--It was a great day for European culture, he said, when you made upyour mind to swear in yellow.They lit their cigarettes and turned to the right. After a pauseStephen began:--Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. I say--Lynch halted and said bluntly:--Stop! I won't listen! I am sick. I was out last night on a yellowdrunk with Horan and Goggins.Stephen went on:--Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence ofwhatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it withthe human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in thepresence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings andunites it with the secret cause.--Repeat, said Lynch.Stephen repeated the definitions slowly.--A girl got into a hansom a few days ago, he went on, in London. Shewas on her way to meet her mother whom she had not seen for many years.At the corner of a street the shaft of a lorry shivered the window ofthe hansom in the shape of a star. A long fine needle of the shiveredglass pierced her heart. She died on the instant. The reporter calledit a tragic death. It is not. It is remote from terror and pityaccording to the terms of my definitions.--The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towardsterror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I usethe word ARREST. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or ratherthe dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by improper art arekinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go tosomething; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The artswhich excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improperarts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is thereforestatic. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.--You say that art must not excite desire, said Lynch. I told you thatone day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus ofPraxiteles in the Museum. Was that not desire?--I speak of normal natures, said Stephen. You also told me that whenyou were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces ofdried cowdung.Lynch broke again into a whinny of laughter and again rubbed both hishands over his groins but without taking them from his pockets.--O, I did! I did! he cried.Stephen turned towards his companion and looked at him for a momentboldly in the eyes. Lynch, recovering from his laughter, answered hislook from his humbled eyes. The long slender flattened skull beneaththe long pointed cap brought before Stephen's mind the image of ahooded reptile. The eyes, too, were reptile-like in glint and gaze. Yetat that instant, humbled and alert in their look, they were lit by onetiny human point, the window of a shrivelled soul, poignant andself-embittered.--As for that, Stephen said in polite parenthesis, we are all animals.I also am an animal.--You are, said Lynch.--But we are just now in a mental world, Stephen continued. The desireand loathing excited by improper esthetic means are really not estheticemotions not only because they are kinetic in character but alsobecause they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what itdreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purelyreflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we areaware that the fly is about to enter our eye.--Not always, said Lynch critically.--In the same way, said Stephen, your flesh responded to the stimulusof a naked statue, but it was, I say, simply a reflex action of thenerves. Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotionwhich is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens,or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis,an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, andat last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty.--What is that exactly? asked Lynch.--Rhythm, said Stephen, is the first formal esthetic relation of partto part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part orparts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part.--If that is rhythm, said Lynch, let me hear what you call beauty;and, please remember, though I did eat a cake of cowdung once, that Iadmire only beauty.Stephen raised his cap as if in greeting. Then, blushing slightly, helaid his hand on Lynch's thick tweed sleeve.--We are right, he said, and the others are wrong. To speak of thesethings and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it,to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again,from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape andcolour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beautywe have come to understand--that is art.They had reached the canal bridge and, turning from their course, wenton by the trees. A crude grey light, mirrored in the sluggish water anda smell of wet branches over their heads seemed to war against thecourse of Stephen's thought.--But you have not answered my question, said Lynch. What is art? Whatis the beauty it expresses?--That was the first definition I gave you, you sleepy-headed wretch,said Stephen, when I began to try to think out the matter for myself.Do you remember the night? Cranly lost his temper and began to talkabout Wicklow bacon.--I remember, said Lynch. He told us about them flaming fat devils ofpigs.--Art, said Stephen, is the human disposition of sensible orintelligible matter for an esthetic end. You remember the pigs andforget that. You are a distressing pair, you and Cranly.Lynch made a grimace at the raw grey sky and said:--If I am to listen to your esthetic philosophy give me at leastanother cigarette. I don't care about it. I don't even care aboutwomen. Damn you and damn everything. I want a job of five hundred ayear. You can't get me one.Stephen handed him the packet of cigarettes. Lynch took the last onethat remained, saying simply:--Proceed!--Aquinas, said Stephen, says that is beautiful the apprehension ofwhich pleases.Lynch nodded.--I remember that, he said, PULCRA SUNT QUAE VISA PLACENT.--He uses the word VISA, said Stephen, to cover esthetic apprehensions ofall kinds, whether through sight or hearing or through any other avenue ofapprehension. This word, though it is vague, is clear enough to keepaway good and evil which excite desire and loathing. It means certainlya stasis and not a kinesis. How about the true? It produces also astasis of the mind. You would not write your name in pencil across thehypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.--No, said Lynch, give me the hypotenuse of the Venus of Praxiteles.--Static therefore, said Stephen. Plato, I believe, said that beautyis the splendour of truth. I don't think that it has a meaning, but thetrue and the beautiful are akin. Truth is beheld by the intellect whichis appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible;beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the mostsatisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the directionof truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself,to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire systemof philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think,rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same timeand in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject.The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frameand scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of estheticapprehension. Is that clear?--But what is beauty? asked Lynch impatiently. Out with anotherdefinition. Something we see and like! Is that the best you and Aquinascan do?--Let us take woman, said Stephen.--Let us take her! said Lynch fervently.--The Greek, the Turk, the Chinese, the Copt, the Hottentot, saidStephen, all admire a different type of female beauty. That seemsto be a maze out of which we cannot escape. I see, however,two ways out. One is this hypothesis: that every physical qualityadmired by men in women is in direct connexion with the manifoldfunctions of women for the propagation of the species. It may be so.The world, it seems, is drearier than even you, Lynch, imagined. For mypart I dislike that way out. It leads to eugenics rather than toesthetic. It leads you out of the maze into a new gaudy lecture-roomwhere MacCann, with one hand on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES and the other handon the new testament, tells you that you admired the great flanks ofVenus because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring andadmired her great breasts because you felt that she would give goodmilk to her children and yours.--Then MacCann is a sulphur-yellow liar, said Lynch energetically.--There remains another way out, said Stephen, laughing.--To wit? said Lynch.--This hypothesis, Stephen began.A long dray laden with old iron came round the corner of Sir PatrickDun's hospital covering the end of Stephen's speech with the harsh roarof jangled and rattling metal. Lynch closed his ears and gave out oathafter oath till the dray had passed. Then he turned on his heel rudely.Stephen turned also and waited for a few moments till his companion'sill-humour had had its vent.--This hypothesis, Stephen repeated, is the other way out: that,though the same object may not seem beautiful to all people, all peoplewho admire a beautiful object find in it certain relations whichsatisfy and coincide with the stages themselves of all estheticapprehension. These relations of the sensible, visible to you throughone form and to me through another, must be therefore the necessaryqualities of beauty. Now, we can return to our old friend saint Thomasfor another pennyworth of wisdom.Lynch laughed.--It amuses me vastly, he said, to hear you quoting him time aftertime like a jolly round friar. Are you laughing in your sleeve?--MacAlister, answered Stephen, would call my esthetic theory appliedAquinas. So far as this side of esthetic philosophy extends, Aquinaswill carry me all along the line. When we come to the phenomena ofartistic conception, artistic gestation, and artistic reproduction Irequire a new terminology and a new personal experience.--Of course, said Lynch. After all Aquinas, in spite of his intellect,was exactly a good round friar. But you will tell me about the newpersonal experience and new terminology some other day. Hurry up andfinish the first part.--Who knows? said Stephen, smiling. Perhaps Aquinas would understandme better than you. He was a poet himself. He wrote a hymn for MaundyThursday. It begins with the words PANGE LINGUA GLORIOSI. They say itis the highest glory of the hymnal. It is an intricate and soothinghymn. I like it; but there is no hymn that can be put beside thatmournful and majestic processional song, the VEXILLA REGIS of VenantiusFortunatus.Lynch began to sing softly and solemnly in a deep bass voice:IMPLETA SUNT QUAE CONCINIT
DAVID FIDELI CARMINE
DICENDO NATIONIBUS
REGNAVIT A LIGNO DEUS.
--That's great! he said, well pleased. Great music!They turned into Lower Mount Street. A few steps from the corner a fatyoung man, wearing a silk neckcloth, saluted them and stopped.--Did you hear the results of the exams? he asked. Griffin wasplucked. Halpin and O'Flynn are through the home civil. Moonan gotfifth place in the Indian. O'Shaughnessy got fourteenth. The Irishfellows in Clark's gave them a feed last night. They all ate curry.His pallid bloated face expressed benevolent malice and, as he hadadvanced through his tidings of success, his small fat-encircled eyesvanished out of sight and his weak wheezing voice out of hearing.In reply to a question of Stephen's his eyes and his voice came forthagain from their lurking-places.--Yes, MacCullagh and I, he said. He's taking pure mathematics and I'mtaking constitutional history. There are twenty subjects. I'm takingbotany too. You know I'm a member of the field club.He drew back from the other two in a stately fashion and placed a plumpwoollen-gloved hand on his breast from which muttered wheezing laughterat once broke forth.--Bring us a few turnips and onions the next time you go out, saidStephen drily, to make a stew.The fat student laughed indulgently and said:--We are all highly respectable people in the field club. LastSaturday we went out to Glenmalure, seven of us.--With women, Donovan? said Lynch.Donovan again laid his hand on his chest and said:--Our end is the acquisition of knowledge. Then he said quickly:--I hear you are writing some essays about esthetics.Stephen made a vague gesture of denial.--Goethe and Lessing, said Donovan, have written a lot on thatsubject, the classical school and the romantic school and all that. TheLaocoon interested me very much when I read it. Of course it isidealistic, German, ultra-profound.Neither of the others spoke. Donovan took leave of them urbanely.--I must go, he said softly and benevolently, I have a strongsuspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that my sister intended tomake pancakes today for the dinner of the Donovan family.--Goodbye, Stephen said in his wake. Don't forget the turnips for meand my mate.Lynch gazed after him, his lip curling in slow scorn till his faceresembled a devil's mask:--To think that that yellow pancake-eating excrement can get a goodjob, he said at length, and I have to smoke cheap cigarettes!They turned their faces towards Merrion Square and went for a little insilence.--To finish what I was saying about beauty, said Stephen, the mostsatisfying relations of the sensible must therefore correspond to thenecessary phases of artistic apprehension. Find these and you find thequalities of universal beauty. Aquinas says: AD PULCRITUDINEM TRIAREQUIRUNTUR INTEGRITAS, CONSONANTIA, CLARITAS. I translate it so: THREETHINGS ARE NEEDED FOR BEAUTY, WHOLENESS, HARMONY, AND RADIANCE. Dothese correspond to the phases of apprehension? Are you following?--Of course, I am, said Lynch. If you think I have an excrementitiousintelligence run after Donovan and ask him to listen to you.Stephen pointed to a basket which a butcher's boy had slung inverted onhis head.--Look at that basket, he said.--I see it, said Lynch.--In order to see that basket, said Stephen, your mind first of allseparates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is notthe basket. The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawnabout the object to be apprehended. An esthetic image is presented tous either in space or in time.What is audible is presented in time, what is visible is presented inspace. But, temporal or spatial, the esthetic image is first luminouslyapprehended as selfbounded and selfcontained upon the immeasurablebackground of space or time which is not it. You apprehended it as ONEthing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its wholeness. That isINTEGRITAS.--Bull's eye! said Lynch, laughing. Go on.--Then, said Stephen, you pass from point to point, led by its formallines; you apprehend it as balanced part against part within itslimits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. In other words, thesynthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis ofapprehension. Having first felt that it is ONE thing you feel now thatit is a THING. You apprehend it as complex, multiple, divisible,separable, made up of its parts, the result of its parts and their sum,harmonious. That is CONSONANTIA.--Bull's eye again! said Lynch wittily. Tell me now what is CLARITASand you win the cigar.--The connotation of the word, Stephen said, is rather vague. Aquinasuses a term which seems to be inexact. It baffled me for a long time.It would lead you to believe that he had in mind symbolism or idealism,the supreme quality of beauty being a light from some other world, theidea of which the matter is but the shadow, the reality of which it isbut the symbol. I thought he might mean that CLARITAS is the artisticdiscovery and representation of the divine purpose in anything or aforce of generalization which would make the esthetic image auniversal one, make it outshine its proper conditions. But that isliterary talk. I understand it so. When you have apprehended thatbasket as one thing and have then analysed it according to its form andapprehended it as a thing you make the only synthesis which islogically and esthetically permissible. You see that it is that thingwhich it is and no other thing. The radiance of which he speaks in thescholastic QUIDDITAS, the WHATNESS of a thing. This supreme quality isfelt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in hisimagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likenedbeautifully to a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme qualityof beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehendedluminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness andfascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of estheticpleasure, a spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition whichthe Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase almost asbeautiful as Shelley's, called the enchantment of the heart.Stephen paused and, though his companion did not speak, felt that hiswords had called up around them a thought-enchanted silence.--What I have said, he began again, refers to beauty in the widersense of the word, in the sense which the word has in the literarytradition. In the marketplace it has another sense. When we speak ofbeauty in the second sense of the term our judgement is influenced inthe first place by the art itself and by the form of that art. Theimage, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of theartist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this inmemory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into threeforms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyricalform, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediaterelation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents hisimage in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form,the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.--That you told me a few nights ago, said Lynch, and we began thefamous discussion.--I have a book at home, said Stephen, in which I have written downquestions which are more amusing than yours were. In finding theanswers to them I found the theory of esthetic which I am trying toexplain. Here are some questions I set myself: IS A CHAIR FINELY MADETRAGIC OR COMIC? IS THE PORTRAIT OF MONA LISA GOOD IF I DESIRE TO SEEIT? IF NOT, WHY NOT?--Why not, indeed? said Lynch, laughing.--IF A MAN HACKING IN FURY AT A BLOCK OF WOOD, Stephen continued, MAKETHERE AN IMAGE OF A COW, IS THAT IMAGE A WORK OF ART? IF NOT, WHY NOT?--That's a lovely one, said Lynch, laughing again. That has the truescholastic stink.--Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues towrite of. The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spokeof distinguished clearly one from another. Even in literature, thehighest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. Thelyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant ofemotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulledat the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is moreconscious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeling emotion.The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literaturewhen the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of anepical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotionalgravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. Thenarrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artistpasses into the narration itself, flowing round and round the personsand the action like a vital sea. This progress you will see easily inthat old English ballad TURPIN HERO which begins in the first personand ends in the third person. The dramatic form is reached when thevitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills everyperson with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper andintangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at first a cryor a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finallyrefines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak.The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in andreprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic, likethat of material creation, is accomplished. The artist, like the God ofcreation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork,invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring hisfingernails.--Trying to refine them also out of existence, said Lynch.A fine rain began to fall from the high veiled sky and they turned intothe duke's lawn to reach the national library before the shower came.--What do you mean, Lynch asked surlily, by prating about beauty andthe imagination in this miserable Godforsaken island? No wonder theartist retired within or behind his handiwork after having perpetratedthis country.The rain fell faster. When they passed through the passage besideKildare house they found many students sheltering under the arcade ofthe library. Cranly, leaning against a pillar, was picking his teethwith a sharpened match, listening to some companions. Some girls stoodnear the entrance door. Lynch whispered to Stephen:--Your beloved is here.Stephen took his place silently on the step below the group ofstudents, heedless of the rain which fell fast, turning his eyestowards her from time to time. She too stood silently among hercompanions. She has no priest to flirt with, he thought with consciousbitterness, remembering how he had seen her last. Lynch was right. Hismind emptied of theory and courage, lapsed back into a listless peace.He heard the students talking among themselves. They spoke of twofriends who had passed the final medical examination, of the chances ofgetting places on ocean liners, of poor and rich practices.--That's all a bubble. An Irish country practice is better.--Hynes was two years in Liverpool and he says the same. A frightfulhole he said it was. Nothing but midwifery cases.--Do you mean to say it is better to have a job here in the countrythan in a rich city like that? I know a fellow...--Hynes has no brains. He got through by stewing, pure stewing.--Don't mind him. There's plenty of money to be made in a big commercialcity.--Depends on the practice.--EGO CREDO UT VITA PAUPERUM EST SIMPLICITER ATROX, SIMPLICITERSANGUINARIUS ATROX, IN LIVERPOOLIO.Their voices reached his ears as if from a distance in interruptedpulsation. She was preparing to go away with her companions.The quick light shower had drawn off, tarrying in clusters of diamondsamong the shrubs of the quadrangle where an exhalation was breathedforth by the blackened earth. Their trim boots prattled as they stoodon the steps of the colonnade, talking quietly and gaily, glancing atthe clouds, holding their umbrellas at cunning angles against the fewlast raindrops, closing them again, holding their skirts demurely.And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary ofhours, her life simple and strange as a bird's life, gay in themorning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple andwilful as a bird's heart?Towards dawn he awoke. O what sweet music! His soul was all dewy wet.Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves of light had passed. He laystill, as if his soul lay amid cool waters, conscious of faint sweetmusic. His mind was waking slowly to a tremulous morning knowledge, amorning inspiration. A spirit filled him, pure as the purest water,sweet as dew, moving as music. But how faintly it was inbreathed, howpassionlessly, as if the seraphim themselves were breathing upon him!His soul was waking slowly, fearing to awake wholly. It was thatwindless hour of dawn when madness wakes and strange plants open to thelight and the moth flies forth silently.An enchantment of the heart! The night had been enchanted. In a dreamor vision he had known the ecstasy of seraphic life. Was it an instantof enchantment only or long hours and years and ages?The instant of inspiration seemed now to be reflected from all sides atonce from a multitude of cloudy circumstances of what had happened orof what might have happened. The instant flashed forth like a point oflight and now from cloud on cloud of vague circumstance confused formwas veiling softly its afterglow. O! In the virgin womb of theimagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph had come to thevirgin's chamber. An afterglow deepened within his spirit, whence thewhite flame had passed, deepening to a rose and ardent light. That roseand ardent light was her strange wilful heart, strange that no man hadknown or would know, wilful from before the beginning of the world; andlured by that ardent rose-like glow the choirs of the seraphim werefalling from heaven.Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.
The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over,he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle pass through them. Therose-like glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise,raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men andangels: the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart.Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat.And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world.Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim
Tell no more of enchanted days.
Smoke went up from the whole earth, from the vapoury oceans, smoke ofher praise. The earth was like a swinging swaying censer, a ball ofincense, an ellipsoidal fall. The rhythm died out at once; the cry ofhis heart was broken. His lips began to murmur the first verses overand over; then went on stumbling through half verses, stammering andbaffled; then stopped. The heart's cry was broken.The veiled windless hour had passed and behind the panes of the nakedwindow the morning light was gathering. A bell beat faintly very faraway. A bird twittered; two birds, three. The bell and the bird ceased;and the dull white light spread itself east and west, covering theworld, covering the roselight in his heart.Fearing to lose all, he raised himself suddenly on his elbow to lookfor paper and pencil. There was neither on the table; only the soupplate he had eaten the rice from for supper and the candlestick withits tendrils of tallow and its paper socket, singed by the last flame.He stretched his arm wearily towards the foot of the bed, groping withhis hand in the pockets of the coat that hung there. His fingers founda pencil and then a cigarette packet. He lay back and, tearing open thepacket, placed the last cigarette on the window ledge and began towrite out the stanzas of the villanelle in small neat letters on therough cardboard surface.Having written them out he lay back on the lumpy pillow, murmuring themagain. The lumps of knotted flock under his head reminded him of thelumps of knotted horsehair in the sofa of her parlour on which he usedto sit, smiling or serious, asking himself why he had come, displeasedwith her and with himself, confounded by the print of the Sacred Heartabove the untenanted sideboard. He saw her approach him in a lull ofthe talk and beg him to sing one of his curious songs. Then he sawhimself sitting at the old piano, striking chords softly from itsspeckled keys and singing, amid the talk which had risen again in theroom, to her who leaned beside the mantelpiece a dainty song of theElizabethans, a sad and sweet loth to depart, the victory chant ofAgincourt, the happy air of Greensleeves. While he sang and shelistened, or feigned to listen, his heart was at rest but when thequaint old songs had ended and he heard again the voices in the room heremembered his own sarcasm: the house where young men are called bytheir christian names a little too soon.At certain instants her eyes seemed about to trust him but he hadwaited in vain. She passed now dancing lightly across his memory as shehad been that night at the carnival ball, her white dress a littlelifted, a white spray nodding in her hair. She danced lightly in theround. She was dancing towards him and, as she came, her eyes were alittle averted and a faint glow was on her cheek. At the pause in thechain of hands her hand had lain in his an instant, a soft merchandise.--You are a great stranger now.--Yes. I was born to be a monk.--I am afraid you are a heretic.--Are you much afraid?For answer she had danced away from him along the chain of hands,dancing lightly and discreetly, giving herself to none. The white spraynodded to her dancing and when she was in shadow the glow was deeper onher cheek.A monk! His own image started forth a profaner of the cloister, aheretic franciscan, willing and willing not to serve, spinning likeGherardino da Borgo San Donnino, a lithe web of sophistry andwhispering in her ear.No, it was not his image. It was like the image of the young priest inwhose company he had seen her last, looking at him out of dove's eyes,toying with the pages of her Irish phrase-book.--Yes, yes, the ladies are coming round to us. I can see it every day.The ladies are with us. The best helpers the language has.--And the church, Father Moran?--The church too. Coming round too. The work is going ahead there too.Don't fret about the church.Bah! he had done well to leave the room in disdain. He had done wellnot to salute her on the steps of the library! He had done well toleave her to flirt with her priest, to toy with a church which was thescullery-maid of christendom.Rude brutal anger routed the last lingering instant of ecstasy from hissoul. It broke up violently her fair image and flung the fragments onall sides. On all sides distorted reflections of her image started fromhis memory: the flower girl in the ragged dress with damp coarse hairand a hoyden's face who had called herself his own girl and begged hishandsel, the kitchen-girl in the next house who sang over the clatterof her plates, with the drawl of a country singer, the first bars of BYKILLARNEY'S LAKES AND FELLS, a girl who had laughed gaily to see himstumble when the iron grating in the footpath near Cork Hill had caughtthe broken sole of his shoe, a girl he had glanced at, attracted by hersmall ripe mouth, as she passed out of Jacob's biscuit factory, who hadcried to him over her shoulder:--Do you like what you seen of me, straight hair and curly eyebrows?And yet he felt that, however he might revile and mock her image, hisanger was also a form of homage. He had left the classroom in disdainthat was not wholly sincere, feeling that perhaps the secret of herrace lay behind those dark eyes upon which her long lashes flung aquick shadow. He had told himself bitterly as he walked through thestreets that she was a figure of the womanhood of her country, a bat-likesoul waking to the consciousness of itself in darkness and secrecy andloneliness, tarrying awhile, loveless and sinless, with her mild lover andleaving him to whisper of innocent transgressions in the latticed ear of apriest. His anger against her found vent in coarse railing at herparamour, whose name and voice and features offended his baffled pride: apriested peasant, with a brother a policeman in Dublin and a brother apotboy in Moycullen. To him she would unveil her soul's shy nakedness, toone who was but schooled in the discharging of a formal rite rather thanto him, a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily breadof experience into the radiant body of everliving life.The radiant image of the eucharist united again in an instant hisbitter and despairing thoughts, their cries arising unbroken in a hymnof thanksgiving.Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.
He spoke the verses aloud from the first lines till the music andrhythm suffused his mind, turning it to quiet indulgence; then copiedthem painfully to feel them the better by seeing them; then lay back onhis bolster.The full morning light had come. No sound was to be heard; but he knewthat all around him life was about to awaken in common noises, hoarsevoices, sleepy prayers. Shrinking from that life he turned towards thewall, making a cowl of the blanket and staring at the great overblownscarlet flowers of the tattered wallpaper. He tried to warm hisperishing joy in their scarlet glow, imagining a roseway from where helay upwards to heaven all strewn with scarlet flowers. Weary! Weary! Hetoo was weary of ardent ways.A gradual warmth, a languorous weariness passed over him descendingalong his spine from his closely cowled head. He felt it descend and,seeing himself as he lay, smiled. Soon he would sleep.He had written verses for her again after ten years. Ten years beforeshe had worn her shawl cowlwise about her head, sending sprays of herwarm breath into the night air, tapping her foot upon the glassy road.It was the last tram; the lank brown horses knew it and shook theirbells to the clear night in admonition. The conductor talked with thedriver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. They stoodon the steps of the tram, he on the upper, she on the lower. She cameup to his step many times between their phrases and went down again andonce or twice remained beside him forgetting to go down and then wentdown. Let be! Let be!Ten years from that wisdom of children to his folly. If he sent her theverses? They would be read out at breakfast amid the tapping ofegg-shells. Folly indeed! Her brothers would laugh and try to wrest thepage from each other with their strong hard fingers. The suave priest,her uncle, seated in his arm-chair, would hold the page at arm'slength, read it smiling and approve of the literary form.No, no; that was folly. Even if he sent her the verses she would notshow them to others. No, no; she could not.He began to feel that he had wronged her. A sense of her innocencemoved him almost to pity her, an innocence he had never understood tillhe had come to the knowledge of it through sin, an innocence which shetoo had not understood while she was innocent or before the strangehumiliation of her nature had first come upon her. Then first her soulhad begun to live as his soul had when he had first sinned, and atender compassion filled his heart as he remembered her frail pallorand her eyes, humbled and saddened by the dark shame of womanhood.While his soul had passed from ecstasy to languor where had she been?Might it be, in the mysterious ways of spiritual life, that her soul atthose same moments had been conscious of his homage? It might be.A glow of desire kindled again his soul and fired and fulfilled all hisbody. Conscious of his desire she was waking from odorous sleep, thetemptress of his villanelle. Her eyes, dark and with a look of languor,were opening to his eyes. Her nakedness yielded to him, radiant, warm,odorous and lavish-limbed, enfolded him like a shining cloud, enfoldedhim like water with a liquid life; and like a cloud of vapour or likewaters circumfluent in space the liquid letters of speech, symbols ofthe element of mystery, flowed forth over his brain.Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.
Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.
Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.
And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.
What birds were they? He stood on the steps of the library to look atthem, leaning wearily on his ashplant. They flew round and round thejutting shoulder of a house in Molesworth Street. The air of the lateMarch evening made clear their flight, their dark quivering bodiesflying clearly against the sky as against a limp-hung cloth of smokytenuous blue.He watched their flight; bird after bird: a dark flash, a swerve, aflutter of wings. He tried to count them before all their dartingquivering bodies passed: six, ten, eleven: and wondered were they oddor even in number. Twelve, thirteen: for two came wheeling down from theupper sky. They were flying high and low but ever round and round instraight and curving lines and ever flying from left to right, circlingabout a temple of air.He listened to the cries: like the squeak of mice behind the wainscot:a shrill twofold note. But the notes were long and shrill and whirring,unlike the cry of vermin, falling a third or a fourth and trilled asthe flying beaks clove the air. Their cry was shrill and clear and fineand falling like threads of silken light unwound from whirring spools.The inhuman clamour soothed his ears in which his mother's sobs andreproaches murmured insistently and the dark frail quivering bodieswheeling and fluttering and swerving round an airy temple of thetenuous sky soothed his eyes which still saw the image of his mother'sface.Why was he gazing upwards from the steps of the porch, hearing theirshrill twofold cry, watching their flight? For an augury of good orevil? A phrase of Cornelius Agrippa flew through his mind and thenthere flew hither and thither shapeless thoughts from Swedenborg on thecorrespondence of birds to things of the intellect and of how thecreatures of the air have their knowledge and know their times andseasons because they, unlike man, are in the order of their life andhave not perverted that order by reason.And for ages men had gazed upward as he was gazing at birds in flight.The colonnade above him made him think vaguely of an ancient temple andthe ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of anaugur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of hisweariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk-like man whosename he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier-woven wings, ofThoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet andbearing on his narrow ibis head the cusped moon.He smiled as he thought of the god's image for it made him think of abottle-nosed judge in a wig, putting commas into a document which heheld at arm's length, and he knew that he would not have remembered thegod's name but that it was like an Irish oath. It was folly. But was itfor this folly that he was about to leave for ever the house of prayerand prudence into which he had been born and the order of life out ofwhich he had come?They came back with shrill cries over the jutting shoulder of thehouse, flying darkly against the fading air. What birds were they? Hethought that they must be swallows who had come back from the south.Then he was to go away for they were birds ever going and coming,building ever an unlasting home under the eaves of men's houses andever leaving the homes they had built to wander.Bend down your faces, Oona and Aleel.
I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes
Upon the nest under the eave before
He wander the loud waters.
A soft liquid joy like the noise of many waters flowed over his memoryand he felt in his heart the soft peace of silent spaces of fadingtenuous sky above the waters, of oceanic silence, of swallows flyingthrough the sea-dusk over the flowing waters.A soft liquid joy flowed through the words where the soft long vowelshurtled noiselessly and fell away, lapping and flowing back and evershaking the white bells of their waves in mute chime and mute peal, andsoft low swooning cry; and he felt that the augury he had sought in thewheeling darting birds and in the pale space of sky above him had comeforth from his heart like a bird from a turret, quietly and swiftly.Symbol of departure or of loneliness? The verses crooned in the ear ofhis memory composed slowly before his remembering eyes the scene of thehall on the night of the opening of the national theatre. He was aloneat the side of the balcony, looking out of jaded eyes at the culture ofDublin in the stalls and at the tawdry scene-cloths and human dollsframed by the garish lamps of the stage. A burly policeman sweated behindhim and seemed at every moment about to act. The catcalls and hisses andmocking cries ran in rude gusts round the hall from his scattered fellowstudents.--A libel on Ireland!--Made in Germany.--Blasphemy!--We never sold our faith!--No Irish woman ever did it!--We want no amateur atheists.--We want no budding buddhists.A sudden swift hiss fell from the windows above him and he knew thatthe electric lamps had been switched on in the reader's room. He turnedinto the pillared hall, now calmly lit, went up the staircase andpassed in through the clicking turnstile.Cranly was sitting over near the dictionaries. A thick book, opened atthe frontispiece, lay before him on the wooden rest. He leaned back inhis chair, inclining his ear like that of a confessor to the face ofthe medical student who was reading to him a problem from the chesspage of a journal. Stephen sat down at his right and the priest at theother side of the table closed his copy of THE TABLET with an angrysnap and stood up.Cranly gazed after him blandly and vaguely. The medical student went onin a softer voice:--Pawn to king's fourth.--We had better go, Dixon, said Stephen in warning. He has gone tocomplain.Dixon folded the journal and rose with dignity, saying:--Our men retired in good order.--With guns and cattle, added Stephen, pointing to the titlepage ofCranly's book on which was printed DISEASES OF THE OX.As they passed through a lane of the tables Stephen said:--Cranly, I want to speak to you.Cranly did not answer or turn. He laid his book on the counter andpassed out, his well-shod feet sounding flatly on the floor. On thestaircase he paused and gazing absently at Dixon repeated:--Pawn to king's bloody fourth.--Put it that way if you like, Dixon said.He had a quiet toneless voice and urbane manners and on a finger of hisplump clean hand he displayed at moments a signet ring.As they crossed the hall a man of dwarfish stature came towards them.Under the dome of his tiny hat his unshaven face began to smile withpleasure and he was heard to murmur. The eyes were melancholy as thoseof a monkey.--Good evening, gentlemen, said the stubble-grown monkeyish face.--Warm weather for March, said Cranly. They have the windows openupstairs.Dixon smiled and turned his ring. The blackish, monkey-puckered facepursed its human mouth with gentle pleasure and its voice purred:--Delightful weather for March. Simply delightful.--There are two nice young ladies upstairs, captain, tired of waiting,Dixon said.Cranly smiled and said kindly:--The captain has only one love: sir Walter Scott. Isn't that so,captain?--What are you reading now, captain? Dixon asked. THE BRIDE OFLAMMERMOOR?--I love old Scott, the flexible lips said, I think he writes somethinglovely. There is no writer can touch sir Walter Scott.He moved a thin shrunken brown hand gently in the air in time to hispraise and his thin quick eyelids beat often over his sad eyes.Sadder to Stephen's ear was his speech: a genteel accent, low andmoist, marred by errors, and, listening to it, he wondered was thestory true and was the thin blood that flowed in his shrunken framenoble and come of an incestuous love?The park trees were heavy with rain; and rain fell still and ever inthe lake, lying grey like a shield. A game of swans flew there and thewater and the shore beneath were fouled with their green-white slime.They embraced softly, impelled by the grey rainy light, the wetsilent trees, the shield-like witnessing lake, the swans. They embracedwithout joy or passion, his arm about his sister's neck. A grey woollencloak was wrapped athwart her from her shoulder to her waist and herfair head was bent in willing shame. He had loose red-brown hair andtender shapely strong freckled hands. Face? There was no face seen. Thebrother's face was bent upon her fair rain-fragrant hair. The handfreckled and strong and shapely and caressing was Davin's hand.He frowned angrily upon his thought and on the shrivelled mannikin whohad called it forth. His father's jibes at the Bantry gang leaped outof his memory. He held them at a distance and brooded uneasily on hisown thought again. Why were they not Cranly's hands? Had Davin'ssimplicity and innocence stung him more secretly?He walked on across the hall with Dixon, leaving Cranly to take leaveelaborately of the dwarf.Under the colonnade Temple was standing in the midst of a little groupof students. One of them cried:--Dixon, come over till you hear. Temple is in grand form.Temple turned on him his dark gipsy eyes.--You're a hypocrite, O'Keeffe, he said. And Dixon is a smiler. Byhell, I think that's a good literary expression.He laughed slyly, looking in Stephen's face, repeating:--By hell, I'm delighted with that name. A smiler.A stout student who stood below them on the steps said:--Come back to the mistress, Temple. We want to hear about that.--He had, faith, Temple said. And he was a married man too. And all thepriests used to be dining there. By hell, I think they all had a touch.--We shall call it riding a hack to spare the hunter, said Dixon.--Tell us, Temple, O'Keeffe said, how many quarts of porter have youin you?--All your intellectual soul is in that phrase, O'Keeffe, said Templewith open scorn.He moved with a shambling gait round the group and spoke to Stephen.--Did you know that the Forsters are the kings of Belgium? he asked.Cranly came out through the door of the entrance hall, his hat thrustback on the nape of his neck and picking his teeth with care.--And here's the wiseacre, said Temple. Do you know that about theForsters?He paused for an answer. Cranly dislodged a figseed from his teeth onthe point of his rude toothpick and gazed at it intently.--The Forster family, Temple said, is descended from Baldwin theFirst, king of Flanders. He was called the Forester. Forester andForster are the same name. A descendant of Baldwin the First, captainFrancis Forster, settled in Ireland and married the daughter of thelast chieftain of Clanbrassil. Then there are the Blake Forsters.That's a different branch.--From Baldhead, king of Flanders, Cranly repeated, rooting againdeliberately at his gleaming uncovered teeth.--Where did you pick up all that history? O'Keeffe asked.--I know all the history of your family, too, Temple said, turning toStephen. Do you know what Giraldus Cambrensis says about your family?--Is he descended from Baldwin too? asked a tall consumptive studentwith dark eyes.--Baldhead, Cranly repeated, sucking at a crevice in his teeth.--PERNOBILIS ET PERVETUSTA FAMILIA, Temple said to Stephen.The stout student who stood below them on the steps farted briefly. Dixonturned towards him, saying in a soft voice:--Did an angel speak?Cranly turned also and said vehemently but without anger:--Goggins, you're the flamingest dirty devil I ever met, do you know.--I had it on my mind to say that, Goggins answered firmly. It did noone any harm, did it?--We hope, Dixon said suavely, that it was not of the kind known toscience as a PAULO POST FUTURUM.--Didn't I tell you he was a smiler? said Temple, turning right andleft. Didn't I give him that name?--You did. We're not deaf, said the tall consumptive.Cranly still frowned at the stout student below him. Then, with a snortof disgust, he shoved him violently down the steps.--Go away from here, he said rudely. Go away, you stinkpot. And you are astinkpot.Goggins skipped down on to the gravel and at once returned to his placewith good humour. Temple turned back to Stephen and asked:--Do you believe in the law of heredity?--Are you drunk or what are you or what are you trying to say? askedCranly, facing round on him with an expression of wonder.--The most profound sentence ever written, Temple said withenthusiasm, is the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction isthe beginning of death.He touched Stephen timidly at the elbow and said eagerly:--Do you feel how profound that is because you are a poet?Cranly pointed his long forefinger.--Look at him! he said with scorn to the others. Look at Ireland's hope!They laughed at his words and gesture. Temple turned on him bravely,saying:--Cranly, you're always sneering at me. I can see that. But I am asgood as you any day. Do you know what I think about you now as comparedwith myself?--My dear man, said Cranly urbanely, you are incapable, do you know,absolutely incapable of thinking.--But do you know, Temple went on, what I think of you and of myselfcompared together?--Out with it, Temple! the stout student cried from the steps. Get itout in bits!Temple turned right and left, making sudden feeble gestures as he spoke.--I'm a ballocks, he said, shaking his head in despair. I am and Iknow I am. And I admit it that I am.Dixon patted him lightly on the shoulder and said mildly:--And it does you every credit, Temple.--But he, Temple said, pointing to Cranly, he is a ballocks, too, likeme. Only he doesn't know it. And that's the only difference I see.A burst of laughter covered his words. But he turned again to Stephenand said with a sudden eagerness:--That word is a most interesting word. That's the only English dualnumber. Did you know?--Is it? Stephen said vaguely.He was watching Cranly's firm-featured suffering face, lit up now by asmile of false patience. The gross name had passed over it like foulwater poured over an old stone image, patient of injuries; and, as hewatched him, he saw him raise his hat in salute and uncover the blackhair that stood stiffly from his forehead like an iron crown.She passed out from the porch of the library and bowed across Stephenin reply to Cranly's greeting. He also? Was there not a slight flush onCranly's cheek? Or had it come forth at Temple's words? The light hadwaned. He could not see.Did that explain his friend's listless silence, his harsh comments, thesudden intrusions of rude speech with which he had shattered so oftenStephen's ardent wayward confessions? Stephen had forgiven freely forhe had found this rudeness also in himself. And he remembered anevening when he had dismounted from a borrowed creaking bicycle to prayto God in a wood near Malahide. He had lifted up his arms and spoken inecstasy to the sombre nave of the trees, knowing that he stood on holyground and in a holy hour. And when two constabulary men had come intosight round a bend in the gloomy road he had broken off his prayer towhistle loudly an air from the last pantomime.He began to beat the frayed end of his ashplant against the base of apillar. Had Cranly not heard him? Yet he could wait. The talk about himceased for a moment and a soft hiss fell again from a window above. Butno other sound was in the air and the swallows whose flight he hadfollowed with idle eyes were sleeping.She had passed through the dusk. And therefore the air was silent savefor one soft hiss that fell. And therefore the tongues about him hadceased their babble. Darkness was falling.Darkness falls from the air.
A trembling joy, lambent as a faint light, played like a fairy hostaround him. But why? Her passage through the darkening air or the versewith its black vowels and its opening sound, rich and lutelike?He walked away slowly towards the deeper shadows at the end of thecolonnade, beating the stone softly with his stick to hide his reveryfrom the students whom he had left: and allowed his mind to summon backto itself the age of Dowland and Byrd and Nash.Eyes, opening from the darkness of desire, eyes that dimmed thebreaking east. What was their languid grace but the softness ofchambering? And what was their shimmer but the shimmer of the scum thatmantled the cesspool of the court of a slobbering Stuart. And he tastedin the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs,the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen inCovent Garden wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths and thepox-fouled wenches of the taverns and young wives that, gaily yieldingto their ravishers, clipped and clipped again.The images he had summoned gave him no pleasure. They were secret andinflaming but her image was not entangled by them. That was not the wayto think of her. It was not even the way in which he thought of her.Could his mind then not trust itself? Old phrases, sweet only with adisinterred sweetness like the figseeds Cranly rooted out of hisgleaming teeth.It was not thought nor vision though he knew vaguely that her figurewas passing homeward through the city. Vaguely first and then moresharply he smelt her body. A conscious unrest seethed in his blood.Yes, it was her body he smelt, a wild and languid smell, the tepidlimbs over which his music had flowed desirously and the secret softlinen upon which her flesh distilled odour and a dew.A louse crawled over the nape of his neck and, putting his thumb andforefinger deftly beneath his loose collar, he caught it. He rolled itsbody, tender yet brittle as a grain of rice, between thumb and fingerfor an instant before he let it fall from him and wondered would itlive or die. There came to his mind a curious phrase from CORNELIUS ALAPIDE which said that the lice born of human sweat were not created byGod with the other animals on the sixth day. But the tickling of theskin of his neck made his mind raw and red. The life of his body, illclad, ill fed, louse-eaten, made him close his eyelids in a suddenspasm of despair and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodiesof lice falling from the air and turning often as they fell. Yes, andit was not darkness that fell from the air. It was brightness.Brightness falls from the air.He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line. All the images it hadawakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice bornof the sweat of sloth.He came back quickly along the colonnade towards the group of students.Well then, let her go and be damned to her! She could love some cleanathlete who washed himself every morning to the waist and had blackhair on his chest. Let her.Cranly had taken another dried fig from the supply in his pocket andwas eating it slowly and noisily. Temple sat on the pediment of apillar, leaning back, his cap pulled down on his sleepy eyes. A squatyoung man came out of the porch, a leather portfolio tucked under hisarmpit. He marched towards the group, striking the flags with the heelsof his boots and with the ferrule of his heavy umbrella. Then, raisingthe umbrella in salute, he said to all:--Good evening, sirs.He struck the flags again and tittered while his head trembled with aslight nervous movement. The tall consumptive student and Dixon andO'Keeffe were speaking in Irish and did not answer him. Then, turningto Cranly, he said:--Good evening, particularly to you.He moved the umbrella in indication and tittered again. Cranly, who wasstill chewing the fig, answered with loud movements of his jaws.--Good? Yes. It is a good evening.The squat student looked at him seriously and shook his umbrella gentlyand reprovingly.--I can see, he said, that you are about to make obvious remarks.--Um, Cranly answered, holding out what remained of the half chewedfig and jerking it towards the squat student's mouth in sign that heshould eat.The squat student did not eat it but, indulging his special humour,said gravely, still tittering and prodding his phrase with hisumbrella:--Do you intend that...?He broke off, pointed bluntly to the munched pulp of the fig, and saidloudly:--I allude to that.--Um, Cranly said as before.--Do you intend that now, the squat student said, as IPSO FACTO or,let us say, as so to speak?Dixon turned aside from his group, saying:--Goggins was waiting for you, Glynn. He has gone round to the Adelphito look for you and Moynihan. What have you there? he asked, tappingthe portfolio under Glynn's arm.--Examination papers, Glynn answered. I give them monthly examinationsto see that they are profiting by my tuition.He also tapped the portfolio and coughed gently and smiled.--Tuition! said Cranly rudely. I suppose you mean the barefootedchildren that are taught by a bloody ape like you. God help them!He bit off the rest of the fig and flung away the butt.--I suffer little children to come unto me, Glynn said amiably.--A bloody ape, Cranly repeated with emphasis, and a blasphemousbloody ape!Temple stood up and, pushing past Cranly, addressed Glynn:--That phrase you said now, he said, is from the new testament aboutsuffer the children to come to me.--Go to sleep again, Temple, said O'Keeffe.--Very well, then, Temple continued, still addressing Glynn, and ifJesus suffered the children to come why does the church send them allto hell if they die unbaptized? Why is that?--Were you baptized yourself, Temple? the consumptive student asked.--But why are they sent to hell if Jesus said they were all to come?Temple said, his eyes searching Glynn's eyes.Glynn coughed and said gently, holding back with difficulty the nervoustitter in his voice and moving his umbrella at every word:--And, as you remark, if it is thus, I ask emphatically whence comesthis thusness.--Because the church is cruel like all old sinners, Temple said.--Are you quite orthodox on that point, Temple? Dixon said suavely.--Saint Augustine says that about unbaptized children going to hell,Temple answered, because he was a cruel old sinner too.--I bow to you, Dixon said, but I had the impression that limboexisted for such cases.--Don't argue with him, Dixon, Cranly said brutally. Don't talk to himor look at him. Lead him home with a sugan the way you'd lead ableating goat.--Limbo! Temple cried. That's a fine invention too. Like hell.--But with the unpleasantness left out, Dixon said.He turned smiling to the others and said:--I think I am voicing the opinions of all present in saying so much.--You are, Glynn said in a firm tone. On that point Ireland is united.He struck the ferrule of his umbrella on the stone floor of thecolonnade.--Hell, Temple said. I can respect that invention of the grey spouseof Satan. Hell is Roman, like the walls of the Romans, strong and ugly.But what is limbo?--Put him back into the perambulator, Cranly, O'Keeffe called out.Cranly made a swift step towards Temple, halted, stamping his foot,crying as if to a fowl:--Hoosh!Temple moved away nimbly.--Do you know what limbo is? he cried. Do you know what we call anotion like that in Roscommon?--Hoosh! Blast you! Cranly cried, clapping his hands.--Neither my arse nor my elbow! Temple cried out scornfully. Andthat's what I call limbo.--Give us that stick here, Cranly said.He snatched the ashplant roughly from Stephen's hand and sprang downthe steps: but Temple, hearing him move in pursuit, fled through thedusk like a wild creature, nimble and fleet-footed. Cranly's heavyboots were heard loudly charging across the quadrangle and thenreturning heavily, foiled and spurning the gravel at each step.His step was angry and with an angry abrupt gesture he thrust the stickback into Stephen's hand. Stephen felt that his anger had another causebut, feigning patience, touched his arm slightly and said quietly:--Cranly, I told you I wanted to speak to you. Come away.Cranly looked at him for a few moments and asked:--Now?--Yes, now, Stephen said. We can't speak here. Come away.They crossed the quadrangle together without speaking. The bird callfrom SIEGFRIED whistled softly followed them from the steps of theporch. Cranly turned, and Dixon, who had whistled, called out:--Where are you fellows off to? What about that game, Cranly?They parleyed in shouts across the still air about a game of billiardsto be played in the Adelphi hotel. Stephen walked on alone and out intothe quiet of Kildare Street opposite Maple's hotel he stood to wait,patient again. The name of the hotel, a colourless polished wood, andits colourless front stung him like a glance of polite disdain. Hestared angrily back at the softly lit drawing-room of the hotel inwhich he imagined the sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housedin calm. They thought of army commissions and land agents: peasantsgreeted them along the roads in the country; they knew the names ofcertain French dishes and gave orders to jarvies in high-pitchedprovincial voices which pierced through their skin-tight accents.How could he hit their conscience or how cast his shadow over theimaginations of their daughters, before their squires begat upon them,that they might breed a race less ignoble than their own? And under thedeepened dusk he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which hebelonged flitting like bats across the dark country lanes, under treesby the edges of streams and near the pool-mottled bogs. A woman hadwaited in the doorway as Davin had passed by at night and, offering hima cup of milk, had all but wooed him to her bed; for Davin had the mildeyes of one who could be secret. But him no woman's eyes had wooed.His arm was taken in a strong grip and Cranly's voice said:--Let us eke go.They walked southward in silence. Then Cranly said:--That blithering idiot, Temple! I swear to Moses, do you know, thatI'll be the death of that fellow one time.But his voice was no longer angry and Stephen wondered was he thinkingof her greeting to him under the porch.They turned to the left and walked on as before. When they had gone onso for some time Stephen said:--Cranly, I had an unpleasant quarrel this evening.--With your people? Cranly asked.--With my mother.--About religion?--Yes, Stephen answered.After a pause Cranly asked:--What age is your mother?--Not old, Stephen said. She wishes me to make my easter duty.--And will you?--I will not, Stephen said.--Why not? Cranly said.--I will not serve, answered Stephen.--That remark was made before, Cranly said calmly.--It is made behind now, said Stephen hotly.Cranly pressed Stephen's arm, saying:--Go easy, my dear man. You're an excitable bloody man, do you know.He laughed nervously as he spoke and, looking up into Stephen's facewith moved and friendly eyes, said:--Do you know that you are an excitable man?--I daresay I am, said Stephen, laughing also.Their minds, lately estranged, seemed suddenly to have been drawncloser, one to the other.--Do you believe in the eucharist? Cranly asked.--I do not, Stephen said.--Do you disbelieve then?--I neither believe in it nor disbelieve in it, Stephen answered.--Many persons have doubts, even religious persons, yet they overcomethem or put them aside, Cranly said. Are your doubts on that point toostrong?--I do not wish to overcome them, Stephen answered.Cranly, embarrassed for a moment, took another fig from his pocket andwas about to eat it when Stephen said:--Don't, please. You cannot discuss this question with your mouth fullof chewed fig.Cranly examined the fig by the light of a lamp under which he halted.Then he smelt it with both nostrils, bit a tiny piece, spat it out andthrew the fig rudely into the gutter.Addressing it as it lay, he said:--Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!Taking Stephen's arms, he went on again and said:--Do you not fear that those words may be spoken to you on the day ofJudgement?--What is offered me on the other hand? Stephen asked. An eternity ofbliss in the company of the dean of studies?--Remember, Cranly said, that he would be glorified.--Ay, Stephen said somewhat bitterly, bright, agile, impassible and,above all, subtle.--It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, howyour mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say youdisbelieve. Did you believe in it when you were at school? I bet youdid.--I did, Stephen answered.--And were you happier then? Cranly asked softly, happier than you arenow, for instance?--Often happy, Stephen said, and often unhappy. I was someone elsethen.--How someone else? What do you mean by that statement?--I mean, said Stephen, that I was not myself as I am now, as I had tobecome.--Not as you are now, not as you had to become, Cranly repeated. Letme ask you a question. Do you love your mother?Stephen shook his head slowly.--I don't know what your words mean, he said simply.--Have you never loved anyone? Cranly asked.--Do you mean women?--I am not speaking of that, Cranly said in a colder tone. I ask youif you ever felt love towards anyone or anything?Stephen walked on beside his friend, staring gloomily at the footpath.--I tried to love God, he said at length. It seems now I failed. It isvery difficult. I tried to unite my will with the will of God instantby instant. In that I did not always fail. I could perhaps do thatstill--Cranly cut him short by asking:--Has your mother had a happy life?--How do I know? Stephen said.--How many children had she?--Nine or ten, Stephen answered. Some died.--Was your father... Cranly interrupted himself for an instant, and thensaid: I don't want to pry into your family affairs. But was your fatherwhat is called well-to-do? I mean, when you were growing up?--Yes, Stephen said.--What was he? Cranly asked after a pause.Stephen began to enumerate glibly his father's attributes.--A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shoutingpolitician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a goodfellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in adistillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of hisown past.Cranly laughed, tightening his grip on Stephen's arm, and said:--The distillery is damn good.--Is there anything else you want to know? Stephen asked.--Are you in good circumstances at present?--Do I look it? Stephen asked bluntly.--So then, Cranly went on musingly, you were born in the lap of luxury.He used the phrase broadly and loudly as he often used technicalexpressions, as if he wished his hearer to understand that they wereused by him without conviction.--Your mother must have gone through a good deal of suffering, he saidthen. Would you not try to save her from suffering more even if... or wouldyou?--If I could, Stephen said, that would cost me very little.--Then do so, Cranly said. Do as she wishes you to do. What is it foryou? You disbelieve in it. It is a form: nothing else. And you will sether mind at rest.He ceased and, as Stephen did not reply, remained silent. Then, as ifgiving utterance to the process of his own thought, he said:--Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world amother's love is not. Your mother brings you into the world, carriesyou first in her body. What do we know about what she feels? Butwhatever she feels, it, at least, must be real. It must be. What areour ideas or ambitions? Play. Ideas! Why, that bloody bleating goatTemple has ideas. MacCann has ideas too. Every jackass going the roadsthinks he has ideas.Stephen, who had been listening to the unspoken speech behind thewords, said with assumed carelessness:--Pascal, if I remember rightly, would not suffer his mother to kisshim as he feared the contact of her sex.--Pascal was a pig, said Cranly.--Aloysius Gonzaga, I think, was of the same mind, Stephen said.--And he was another pig then, said Cranly.--The church calls him a saint, Stephen objected.--I don't care a flaming damn what anyone calls him, Cranly said rudelyand flatly. I call him a pig.Stephen, preparing the words neatly in his mind, continued:--Jesus, too, seems to have treated his mother with scant courtesy inpublic but Suarez, a jesuit theologian and Spanish gentleman, hasapologized for him.--Did the idea ever occur to you, Cranly asked, that Jesus was notwhat he pretended to be?--The first person to whom that idea occurred, Stephen answered, wasJesus himself.--I mean, Cranly said, hardening in his speech, did the idea everoccur to you that he was himself a conscious hypocrite, what he calledthe jews of his time, a whited sepulchre? Or, to put it more plainly,that he was a blackguard?--That idea never occurred to me, Stephen answered. But I am curiousto know are you trying to make a convert of me or a pervert ofyourself?He turned towards his friend's face and saw there a raw smile whichsome force of will strove to make finely significant.Cranly asked suddenly in a plain sensible tone:--Tell me the truth. Were you at all shocked by what I said?--Somewhat, Stephen said.--And why were you shocked, Cranly pressed on in the same tone, if youfeel sure that our religion is false and that Jesus was not the son ofGod?--I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son ofGod than a son of Mary.--And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because youare not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may bethe body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? Andbecause you fear that it may be?--Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I also fear it.--I see, Cranly said.Stephen, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at onceby saying:--I fear many things: dogs, horses, fire-arms, the sea,thunder-storms, machinery, the country roads at night.--But why do you fear a bit of bread?--I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behindthose things I say I fear.--Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholicswould strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegiouscommunion?--The God of the Roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fearmore than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul bya false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries ofauthority and veneration.--Would you, Cranly asked, in extreme danger, commit that particularsacrilege? For instance, if you lived in the penal days?--I cannot answer for the past, Stephen replied. Possibly not.--Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?--I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that Ihad lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsakean absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which isillogical and incoherent?They had walked on towards the township of Pembroke and now, as theywent on slowly along the avenues, the trees and the scattered lights inthe villas soothed their minds. The air of wealth and repose diffusedabout them seemed to comfort their neediness. Behind a hedge of laurela light glimmered in the window of a kitchen and the voice of a servantwas heard singing as she sharpened knives. She sang, in short brokenbars:Rosie O'Grady.Cranly stopped to listen, saying:--MULIER CANTAT.The soft beauty of the Latin word touched with an enchanting touch thedark of the evening, with a touch fainter and more persuading than thetouch of music or of a woman's hand. The strife of their minds wasquelled. The figure of a woman as she appears in the liturgy of thechurch passed silently through the darkness: a white-robed figure,small and slender as a boy, and with a falling girdle. Her voice, frailand high as a boy's, was heard intoning from a distant choir the firstwords of a woman which pierce the gloom and clamour of the firstchanting of the passion:--ET TU CUM JESU GALILAEO ERAS.And all hearts were touched and turned to her voice, shining like ayoung star, shining clearer as the voice intoned the proparoxytone andmore faintly as the cadence died.The singing ceased. They went on together, Cranly repeating in stronglystressed rhythm the end of the refrain:And when we are married,
O, how happy we'll be
For I love sweet Rosie O'Grady
And Rosie O'Grady loves me.
--There's real poetry for you, he said. There's real love.He glanced sideways at Stephen with a strange smile and said:--Do you consider that poetry? Or do you know what the words mean?--I want to see Rosie first, said Stephen.--She's easy to find, Cranly said.His hat had come down on his forehead. He shoved it back and in theshadow of the trees Stephen saw his pale face, framed by the dark, andhis large dark eyes. Yes. His face was handsome and his body was strongand hard. He had spoken of a mother's love. He felt then the sufferingsof women, the weaknesses of their bodies and souls; and would shieldthem with a strong and resolute arm and bow his mind to them.Away then: it is time to go. A voice spoke softly to Stephen's lonelyheart, bidding him go and telling him that his friendship was coming toan end. Yes; he would go. He could not strive against another. He knewhis part.--Probably I shall go away, he said.--Where? Cranly asked.--Where I can, Stephen said.--Yes, Cranly said. It might be difficult for you to live here now.But is it that makes you go?--I have to go, Stephen answered.--Because, Cranly continued, you need not look upon yourself as drivenaway if you do not wish to go or as a heretic or an outlaw. There aremany good believers who think as you do. Would that surprise you? Thechurch is not the stone building nor even the clergy and their dogmas.It is the whole mass of those born into it. I don't know what you wishto do in life. Is it what you told me the night we were standingoutside Harcourt Street station?--Yes, Stephen said, smiling in spite of himself at Cranly's way ofremembering thoughts in connexion with places. The night you spent halfan hour wrangling with Doherty about the shortest way from Sallygap toLarras.--Pothead! Cranly said with calm contempt. What does he know about theway from Sallygap to Larras? Or what does he know about anything forthat matter? And the big slobbering washing-pot head of him!He broke into a loud long laugh.--Well? Stephen said. Do you remember the rest?--What you said, is it? Cranly asked. Yes, I remember it. To discover themode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself inunfettered freedom.Stephen raised his hat in acknowledgement.--Freedom! Cranly repeated. But you are not free enough yet to commita sacrilege. Tell me would you rob?--I would beg first, Stephen said.--And if you got nothing, would you rob?--You wish me to say, Stephen answered, that the rights of propertyare provisional, and that in certain circumstances it is not unlawfulto rob. Everyone would act in that belief. So I will not make you thatanswer. Apply to the jesuit theologian, Juan Mariana de Talavera, whowill also explain to you in what circumstances you may lawfully Killyour king and whether you had better hand him his poison in a goblet orsmear it for him upon his robe or his saddlebow. Ask me rather would Isuffer others to rob me, or if they did, would I call down upon themwhat I believe is called the chastisement of the secular arm?--And would you?--I think, Stephen said, it would pain me as much to do so as to berobbed.--I see, Cranly said.He produced his match and began to clean the crevice between two teeth.Then he said carelessly:--Tell me, for example, would you deflower a virgin?--Excuse me, Stephen said politely, is that not the ambition of mostyoung gentlemen?--What then is your point of view? Cranly asked.His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal anddisheartening, excited Stephen's brain, over which its fumes seemed tobrood.--Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do andwhat I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will notdo. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it callitself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to expressmyself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly asI can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence,exile, and cunning.Cranly seized his arm and steered him round so as to lead him backtowards Leeson Park. He laughed almost slyly and pressed Stephen's armwith an elder's affection.--Cunning indeed! he said. Is it you? You poor poet, you!--And you made me confess to you, Stephen said, thrilled by his touch,as I have confessed to you so many other things, have I not?--Yes, my child, Cranly said, still gaily.--You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you alsowhat I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned foranother or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid tomake a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhapsas long as eternity too.Cranly, now grave again, slowed his pace and said:--Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what thatword means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have noteven one friend.--I will take the risk, said Stephen.--And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more thana friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.His words seemed to have struck some deep chord in his own nature. Hadhe spoken of himself, of himself as he was or wished to be? Stephenwatched his face for some moments in silence. A cold sadness was there.He had spoken of himself, of his own loneliness which he feared.--Of whom are you speaking? Stephen asked at length.Cranly did not answer.MARCH 20. Long talk with Cranly on the subject of my revolt.He had his grand manner on. I supple and suave. Attacked me on thescore of love for one's mother. Tried to imagine his mother: cannot.Told me once, in a moment of thoughtlessness, his father was sixty-onewhen he was born. Can see him. Strong farmer type. Pepper and saltsuit. Square feet. Unkempt, grizzled beard. Probably attends coursingmatches. Pays his dues regularly but not plentifully to Father Dwyer ofLarras. Sometimes talks to girls after nightfall. But his mother? Veryyoung or very old? Hardly the first. If so, Cranly would not havespoken as he did. Old then. Probably, and neglected. Hence Cranly'sdespair of soul: the child of exhausted loins.MARCH 21, MORNING. Thought this in bed last night but was too lazy andfree to add to it. Free, yes. The exhausted loins are those ofElizabeth and Zacchary. Then he is the precursor. Item: he eats chieflybelly bacon and dried figs. Read locusts and wild honey. Also, whenthinking of him, saw always a stern severed head or death mask as ifoutlined on a grey curtain or veronica. Decollation they call it in thegold. Puzzled for the moment by saint John at the Latin gate. What do Isee? A decollated percursor trying to pick the lock.MARCH 21, NIGHT. Free. Soul free and fancy free. Let the dead bury thedead. Ay. And let the dead marry the dead.MARCH 22. In company with Lynch followed a sizeable hospital nurse.Lynch's idea. Dislike it. Two lean hungry greyhounds walking after aheifer.MARCH 23. Have not seen her since that night. Unwell? Sits at the fireperhaps with mamma's shawl on her shoulders. But not peevish. A nicebowl of gruel? Won't you now?MARCH 24. Began with a discussion with my mother. Subject: B.V.M.Handicapped by my sex and youth. To escape held up relations betweenJesus and Papa against those between Mary and her son. Said religionwas not a lying-in hospital. Mother indulgent. Said I have a queer mindand have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less.Then she said I would come back to faith because I had a restless mind.This means to leave church by back door of sin and re-enter through theskylight of repentance. Cannot repent. Told her so and asked forsixpence. Got threepence.Then went to college. Other wrangle with little round head rogue's eyeGhezzi. This time about Bruno the Nolan. Began in Italian and ended inpidgin English. He said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he wasterribly burned. He agreed to this with some sorrow. Then gave merecipe for what he calls RISOTTO ALLA BERGAMASCA. When he pronounces asoft O he protrudes his full carnal lips as if he kissed the vowel. Hashe? And could he repent? Yes, he could: and cry two round rogue'stears, one from each eye.Crossing Stephen's, that is, my green, remembered that his countrymenand not mine had invented what Cranly the other night called ourreligion. A quartet of them, soldiers of the ninety-seventh infantryregiment, sat at the foot of the cross and tossed up dice for theovercoat of the crucified.Went to library. Tried to read three reviews. Useless. She is not outyet. Am I alarmed? About what? That she will never be out again.Blake wrote:I wonder if William Bond will die
For assuredly he is very ill.Alas, poor William!I was once at a diorama in Rotunda. At the end were pictures of bignobs. Among them William Ewart Gladstone, just then dead. Orchestraplayed O WILLIE, WE HAVE MISSED YOU.A race of clodhoppers!MARCH 25, MORNING. A troubled night of dreams. Want to get them off mychest.A long curving gallery. From the floor ascend pillars of dark vapours.It is peopled by the images of fabulous kings, set in stone. Theirhands are folded upon their knees in token of weariness and their eyesare darkened for the errors of men go up before them for ever as darkvapours.Strange figures advance as from a cave. They are not as tall as men.One does not seem to stand quite apart from another. Their faces arephosphorescent, with darker streaks. They peer at me and their eyesseem to ask me something. They do not speak.MARCH 30. This evening Cranly was in the porch of the library,proposing a problem to Dixon and her brother. A mother let her childfall into the Nile. Still harping on the mother. A crocodile seized thechild. Mother asked it back. Crocodile said all right if she told himwhat he was going to do with the child, eat it or not eat It.This mentality, Lepidus would say, is indeed bred out of your mud bythe operation of your sun.And mine? Is it not too? Then into Nile mud with it!APRIL 1. Disapprove of this last phrase.APRIL 2. Saw her drinking tea and eating cakes in Johnston's, Mooneyand O'Brien's. Rather, lynx-eyed Lynch saw her as we passed. He tellsme Cranly was invited there by brother. Did he bring his crocodile? Ishe the shining light now? Well, I discovered him. I protest I did.Shining quietly behind a bushel of Wicklow bran.APRIL 3. Met Davin at the cigar shop opposite Findlater's church. Hewas in a black sweater and had a hurley stick. Asked me was it true Iwas going away and why. Told him the shortest way to Tara was VIAHolyhead. Just then my father came up. Introduction. Father polite andobservant. Asked Davin if he might offer him some refreshment. Davincould not, was going to a meeting. When we came away father told me hehad a good honest eye. Asked me why I did not join a rowing club. Ipretended to think it over. Told me then how he broke Pennyfeather'sheart. Wants me to read law. Says I was cut out for that. More mud,more crocodiles.APRIL 5. Wild spring. Scudding clouds. O life! Dark stream of swirlingbogwater on which apple-trees have cast down their delicate flowers.Eyes of girls among the leaves. Girls demure and romping. All fair orauburn: no dark ones. They blush better. Houpla!APRIL 6. Certainly she remembers the past. Lynch says all women do.Then she remembers the time of her childhood--and mine, if I was evera child. The past is consumed in the present and the present is livingonly because it brings forth the future. Statues of women, if Lynch beright, should always be fully draped, one hand of the woman feelingregretfully her own hinder parts.APRIL 6, LATER. Michael Robartes remembers forgotten beauty and, whenhis arms wrap her round, he presses in his arms the loveliness whichhas long faded from the world. Not this. Not at all. I desire to pressin my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.APRIL 10. Faintly, under the heavy night, through the silence of thecity which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary loverwhom no caresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the road. Not so faintlynow as they come near the bridge; and in a moment, as they pass thedarkened windows, the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. Theyare heard now far away, hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as gems,hurrying beyond the sleeping fields to what journey's end--what heart?--bearing what tidings?APRIL 11. Read what I wrote last night. Vague words for a vagueemotion. Would she like it? I think so. Then I should have to like italso.APRIL 13. That tundish has been on my mind for a long time. I looked itup and find it English and good old blunt English too. Damn the dean ofstudies and his funnel! What did he come here for to teach us his ownlanguage or to learn it from us. Damn him one way or the other!APRIL 14. John Alphonsus Mulrennan has just returned from the west ofIreland. European and Asiatic papers please copy. He told us he met anold man there in a mountain cabin. Old man had red eyes and short pipe.Old man spoke Irish. Mulrennan spoke Irish. Then old man and Mulrennanspoke English. Mulrennan spoke to him about universe and stars. Old mansat, listened, smoked, spat. Then said:--Ah, there must be terrible queer creatures at the latter end of theworld.I fear him. I fear his red-rimmed horny eyes. It is with him I muststruggle all through this night till day come, till he or I lie dead,gripping him by the sinewy throat till... Till what? Till he yield to me?No. I mean no harm.APRIL 15. Met her today point blank in Grafton Street. The crowdbrought us together. We both stopped. She asked me why I never came,said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gaintime. Asked me was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. Thisconfused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve atonce and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, inventedand patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. Talked rapidly ofmyself and my plans. In the midst of it unluckily I made a suddengesture of a revolutionary nature. I must have looked like a fellowthrowing a handful of peas into the air. People began to look at us.She shook hands a moment after and, in going away, said she hoped Iwould do what I said.Now I call that friendly, don't you?Yes, I liked her today. A little or much? Don't know. I liked her andit seems a new feeling to me. Then, in that case, all the rest, allthat I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the restbefore now, in fact... O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!APRIL 16. Away! Away!The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise ofclose embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against themoon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We arealone--come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsmen. Andthe air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman,making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terribleyouth.APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. Sheprays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from homeand friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it.Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the realityof experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreatedconscience of my race.APRIL 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in goodstead.Dublin, 1904
Trieste, 1914
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