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He drained his third cup of watery tea to the dregs ao chewing the crusts of fried bread that were scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar. The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a boghole and the pool u brought back to his memory the dark turf-coloured water of the bath in gowes. The box of pawn tickets at his elbow had just been rifled aook up idly oer another in his greasy fihe blue and white dockets, scrawled and sanded and creased and bearing the name of the pledger as Daly or MacEvoy.1 Pair Buskins.
1 D. Coat.
3 Articles and White.
1 Mans Pants.
The 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 straightehe battered alarm clock that was lying on its side in the middle of the mantelpietil its dial showed a quarter to twelve and then laid it once more on its side.
-- An hour and twenty-five minutes, she said. The right time now is twenty past ten. The dear knows you might try to be in time for your lectures.
-- Fill out the plae to wash, said Stephen.
-- Katey, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
-- Boody, fill out the place for Stephen to wash.
-- I t, Im going for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggy.
When the enamelled basin had been fitted into the well of the sink and the old washing glove flung on the side of it he allowed his mother to scrub his ned root into the folds of his ears and into the iices at the wings of his nose.
-- Well, its a poor case, she said, when a uy student is so dirty 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 thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying:
-- Dry yourself and hurry out for the love of goodness.
A sed shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the girls to the foot of the staircase.
-- Yes, father?
-- Is your lazy bitch of a bro yet?
-- Yes, father.
-- Sure?
-- Yes, father.
-- Hm!
The girl came back, making signs to him to be quid go out quietly by the back. Stephen laughed and said:
-- He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is mase.
-- Ah, its a sdalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother, and youll live to rue the day you set your foot in that place. I know how it has ged you.
-- Good m, everybody, said Stephen, smiling and kissing the tips of his fingers in adieu.
The lane behind the terrace was waterlogged and as he went down it slowly, choosing his steps amid heaps of wet rubbish, he heard a mad nun screeg 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 and hurried on, stumbling through the mouldering offal, his heart already bitten by an ache of loathing and bitterness. His fathers whistle, his mothers mutterings, the screech of an unseen maniac were to him now so many voices offending and threatening to humble the pride of his youth. He drove their echoes even out of his heart with aion; but, as he walked down the avenue ahe grey m light falling about him through the dripping trees and smelt the strange wild smell of the wet leaves and bark, his soul was loosed of her miseries.
The rain-laden trees of the avenue evoked in him, as always, memories of the girls and women in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann; and the memory of their pale sorrows and the fragrance falling from the wet branches mingled in a mood of quiet joy. His m walk across the city had begun, and he forekhat as he passed the sloblands of Fairview he would think of the cloistral silver-veined prose of Newman; that as he walked along the North Strand Road, glang idly at the windows of the provision shops, he would recall the dark humour of Guido Cavalti and smile; that as he went by Bairds stoing works in Talbot Place the spirit of Ibsen would blow through him like a keen wind, a spirit of wayward boyish beauty; and that passing a grimy marine dealers shop beyond the Liffey he would repeat the song by Ben Jonson which begins:
I was not wearier where I lay.
His mind when wearied of its search for the essence of beauty amid the spectral words of Aristotle or Aquinas turned often for its pleasure to the dainty songs of the Elizabethans. bbr></abbr>His mind, in the vesture of a doubting monk, stood often in shadow uhe windows of that age, to hear the grave and mog music of the lutenists or the frank laughter of waist-coateers until a laugh too lohrase, tarnished by time, of chambering and false honour stung his monkish pride and drove him on from his lurking-place.
The lore which he was believed to pass his days brooding upon so that it had rapt him from the panionship of youth was only a garner of slender sentences from Aristotles poetid psychology and a Synopsis Philosophiae Scholasticae ad mentem divi Thomae. His thinking was a dusk of doubt and self-mistrust, lit up at moments by the lightnings of intuition, but lightnings of so clear a splendour that in those moments the world perished about his feet as if it had been fire-ed; and thereafter his tongue grew heavy a the eyes of others with unanswering eyes, for he felt that the spirit of beauty had folded him round like a mantle and that in revery at least he had been acquainted with nobility. But when this brief pride of silence upheld him no longer he was glad to find himself still in the midst of on lives, passing on his way amid the squalor and noise and sloth of the city fearlessly and with a light heart.
he hs on the al he met the ptive man with the dolls fad the brimless hat ing towards him down the slope of the bridge with little steps, tightly buttoned into his chocolate overcoat, and holding his furled umbrella a span or two from him like a divining rod. It must be elevehought, and peered into a dairy to see the time. The clo the dairy told him that it was five mio five but, as he turned away, he heard a cloewhere near him, but unseeing eleven strokes in swift precision. He laughed as he heard it for it made him think of M, and he saw him a squat figure in a shooting jacket and breeches and with a fair goatee, standing in the wind at Hopkins er, and heard him say:
-- Dedalus, youre an antisocial being, ed up in yourself. Im not. Im a democrat and I `Il work and act for social liberty and equality among all classes and sexes in the Uates of the Europe of the future.
Eleven! Then he was late for that lecture too. What day of the week was it? He stopped at a newsagents to read the headline of a placard. Thursday. Ten to eleven, English; eleven to twelve, French; twelve to one, physics. He fao himself the English lecture a, even at that distance, restless and helpless. He saw the heads of his classmates meekly bent as they wrote in their notebooks the points they were bidden to note, nominal definitions, essential definitions and examples or dates of birth or death, chief works, a favourable and an unfavourable criticism side by side. His own head was u for his thoughts wandered abroad and whether he looked around the little class of students or out of the window across the desolate gardens of the green an odour assailed him of cheerless cellar-damp and decay. Another head than his, right before him in the first benches, oised squarely above its bending fellows like the head of a priest appealing without humility to the tabernacle for the humble worshippers about him. Why was it that whehought of ly he could never raise before his mind the entire image of his body but only the image of the head and face? Even now against the grey curtain of the m he saw it before him like the phantom of a dream, the face of a severed head or death-mask, ed on the brows by its stiff black upright hair as by an iron . It riest-like face, priest-like in its palor, in the wide winged nose, in the shadowings below the eyes and along the jaws, priest-like in the lips that were long and bloodless and faintly smiling; and Stephen, remembering swiftly how he had told ly of all the tumults and u and longings in his soul, day after day and night by night, only to be answered by his friends listening silence, would have told himself that it was the face of a guilty priest who heard fessions of those whom he had not power to absolve but that he felt again in memory the gaze of its dark womanish eyes.
Through this image he had a glimpse of a strange dark cavern of speculation but at ourned away from it, feeling that it was not yet the hour to e. But the nightshade of his friends listlessness seemed to be diffusing in the air around him a tenuous and deadly exhalation and be found himself glang from one casual word to another on his right or left in stolid wohat they had been so silently emptied of instantaneous seil every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled up sighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language. His own sciousness of language was ebbing from his brain and trig into the very words themselves which set to band and disband 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 ivy whining 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 ivory sawn 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 the rector who had taught him to strue the Metamorphoses of Ovid in a courtly English, made whimsical by the mention of porkers and potsherds and es of ba. He had learnt what little he knew of the laws of Latin verse from a ragged book written by a Puese priest.
trahit orator, variant in carmies.
The crises and victories and secessions in Roman history were handed on to him irite words in tanto discrimine and he had tried to peer into the social life of the city of cities through the words implere ollam denariorum which the rector had rendered sonorously as the filling of a pot with dehe pages of his time-worn Horaever felt cold to the touch even when his own fingers were cold; they were human pages and fifty years before they had been turned by the human fingers of John Dun Inverarity and by his brother, William Mal Inverarity. Yes, those were noble names on the dusky flyleaf and, even for so poor a Latinist as he, the dusky verses were as fragrant as though they had lain all those years in myrtle and lavender and vervain; but yet it wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the worlds culture and that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was striving te out ahetic philosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived in than the subtle and curious jargons of heraldry and falry.
The grey block of Trinity on his left, set heavily iys ignorance like a dull sto in a cumbr, pulled his mind downward and while he was striving this way and that to free his feet from the fetters of the reformed sce he came upon the droll statue of the national poet of Ireland.
He looked at it without anger; for, though sloth of the body and of the soul crept over it like unseen vermin, over the shuffli and up the folds of the cloak and around the servile head, it seemed humbly scious of its indignity. It was a Firbolg in the borrowed cloak of a Milesian; ahought of his friend Davin, the peasant student. It was a jesting ween them, but the young peasant bore with it lightly:
-- Go on, Stevie, I have a hard head, you tell me. Call me what you will.
The homely version of his christian name on the lips of his friend had touched Stephen pleasantly when first heard for he was as formal in speech with others as they were with him. Often, as he sat in Davins rooms in Grantham Street, w at his friends well-made boots that flahe air by pair aing for his friends simple ear the verses and ces of others which were the veils of his own longing aion, the rude Firbolg mind of his listener had drawn his mind towards it and flung it back again, drawing it by a quiet inbred courtesy of attention or by a quaint turn of old English speech or by the force of its delight in rude bodily skill - for Davin had sat at the feet of Michael Cusack, the Gael - repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a bluntness of feeling or by a dull stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul of a starving Irish village in which the curfew was still a nightly fear.
Side by side with his memory of the deeds of prowess of his u Davin, the athlete, the young peasant worshipped the sorrowful legend of Ireland. The gossip of his fellow-students which strove to rehe flat life of the college signifit at any cost loved to think of him as a young fenian. His nurse had taught him Irish and shaped his rude imagination by the<var>?</var> broken lights of Irish myth. He stood towards the myth upon whio individual mind had ever drawn out a line of beauty and to its unwieldy tales that divided against themselves as they moved down the cycles in the same attitude as towards the Roman catholic religion, the attitude of a dull-witted loyal serf. Whatsoever of thought or of feeling came to him from England or by way of English culture his mind stood armed against in obedieo a password; and of the world that lay beyond England he knew only the fn legion of Fran which he spoke of serving.
Coupling this ambition with the young mans humour Stephen had often called him one of the tame geese and there was even a point of irritation in the name pointed against that very reluce of speed deed in his friend which seemed so often to staween Stephens mind, eager of speculation, and the hidden ways of Irish life.
One night the young peasant, his spirit stung by the violent or luxurious language in which Stephen escaped from the cold silence of intellectual revolt, had called up before Stephens mind a strange vision. The two were walking slowly towards Davins rooms through the dark narrow streets of the poorer jews.
-- A thing happeo myself, Stevie, last autumn, ing on winter, and I old it to a living soul and you are the first person now I ever told it to. I disremember if it was October or November. It was October because it was before I came up here to joiriculation class.
Stephen had turned his smiling eyes towards his friends face, flattered by his fidend woo sympathy by the speakers simple at.
-- I was away all that day from my own place over in Buttevant.
-- I dont know if you know where that is - at a hurling match between the Crokes Own Boys and the Fearless Thurles and by God, Stevie, that was the hard fight. My first cousin, Fonsy Davin, was stripped to his buff that day minding cool for the Limericks but he with the forwards half the time and shouting like mad. I never will fet that day. One of the Crokes made a woeful wipe at him oime with his and I declare to God he was within an aims ace of getting it at the side of his temple. Oh, hoo God, if the crook of it caught him that time he was done for.
-- I am glad he escaped, Stephen had said with a laugh, but surely thats not the strahing that happened you? - Well, I suppose that doesnt i you, but leastways there was suoise after the match that I missed the train home and I could 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 and all the cars in the try were there. So there was nothing for it only to stay the night or to foot it out. Well, I started to walk and on I went and it was ing on night when I got into the Ballyhoura hills, thats better than ten miles from Kilmallod theres a long lonely road after that. You wouldhe sign of a christian house along the road or hear a sound. It itch dark almost. Once or twice I stopped by the way under a bush to redden my pipe and only for the dew was thick Id have stretched out there and slept. At last, after a bend of the road, I spied a little cottage with a light in the window. I went up and k the door. A voice asked who was there and I answered I was over at the mat Buttevant and was walking bad that Id be thankful flass of water. After a while a young ehe door and brought me out a big mug of milk. She was half undressed as if she was going to bed when I knocked and she had her hair hanging and I thought by her figure and by something in the look of her eyes that she must be carrying a child. She kept me in talk a long while at the door, and I thought it strange because her breast and her shoulders were bare. She asked 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 had gohat m to Queenstown with his sister to see her off. And all the time she was talking, Stevie, she had her eyes fixed on my fad she stood so close to me I could hear her breathing. When I handed her back the mug at last she took my hand to draw me ihe threshold and said: `e in and stay the night here. Youve no call to be frighteheres no one in it but ourselves. I didnt go in, Stevie. I thanked her a on my way again, all in a fever. At the first bend of the road I looked bad she was standing at the door.
The last words of Davins story sang in his memory and the figure of the woman iory stood forth reflected in ures of the peasant women whom he had seen standing in the doorways at e as the college cars drove by, as a type of her rad of his own, a bat-like soul waking to the sciousness of itself in darkness and secred loneliness and, through the eyes and void gesture of a woman without guile, calling the strao her bed.
A hand was laid on his arm and a young voice cried:
-- Ah, gentleman, your own girl, sir! The first haoday, gentleman. Buy that lovely bunch. Will you, gentleman?
The blue flowers which she lifted towards him and her young blue eyes seemed to him at that instant images of guilelessness, and he halted till the image had vanished and he saw only her ragged dress and damp coarse hair and hoydenish face.
-- Do, gentleman! Dont fet 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 you I had no money. I tell you again now.
-- Well, sure, you will some day, sir, please God, the girl answered after an instant.
-- Possibly, said Stephen, but I dont think it likely.
-- He left her quickly, fearing that her intimacy might turn to jibing and wishing to be out of the way before she offered her ware to another, a tourist from England or a student of Trinity. Grafton Street, along which he walked, prolohat moment of disced poverty. In the roadway at the head of the street a slab was set to the memory of Wolfe Tone and he remembered having bee with his father at its laying. He remembered with bitterhat se of tawdry tribute. There were four French delegates in a brake and one, a plump smiling young man, held, wedged on a stick, a card on which were prihe words: Vive lIrlande!
But the trees in Stephens Green were fragrant of rain and the rain-soddeh gave forth its mortal odour, a faint inse rising upward through the mould from mas. The soul of the gallant venal city which his elders had told him of had shrunk with time to a faint mortal odour rising from the earth and he khat in a moment wheered the sombre college he would be scious of a corruption other than that of Buck Egan and Burnchapel Whaley.
It was too late to go upstairs to the French class. He crossed the hall and took the corridor to the left which led to the physics theatre. The corridor was dark and silent but not unwatchful. Why did he feel that it was not unwatchful? Was it because he had heard that in Buck Whaleys time there was a secret staircase there? Or was the jesuit house extra-territorial and was he walking among aliens? The Ireland of Tone and of Parnell seemed to have receded in space.
He opehe door of the theatre and halted in the chilly grey light that struggled through the dusty windows. A figure was croug before the large grate and by its leanness and greyness he khat it was the dean of studies lighting the fire. Stephen closed the door quietly and approached the fireplace.
-- Good m, sir! I help you?
The priest looked up quickly and said:
-- One moment now, Mr Dedalus, and you will see. There is an art in lighting 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, w briskly at his task, that is one of the secrets.
He produced four dle-butts from the side-pockets of his soutane and placed them deftly among the coals and twisted papers. Stephen watched him in silence. Kneeling thus on the flagstoo kihe fire and busied with the disposition of his wisps of paper and dle-butts he seemed more than ever a humble server making ready the place of sacrifi ay temple, a levite of the Lord. Like a levites robe of plain lihe faded worn soutane draped the kneeling figure of one whom the icals or the bell-bordered ephod would irk and trouble. His very body had waxed old in lowly service of the Lord - in tending the fire upoar, in bearing tidings secretly, in waiting upon worldlings, in striking swiftly when bidden - a had remained ungraced by aught of saintly or of prelatic beauty. Nay, his very soul had waxed old in that service without growing towards light ay or spreading abroad a sweet odour of her sanctity - a mortified will no more respoo the thrill of its obediehan was to the thrill of love or bat his ageing body, spare and sinewy, greyed with a silver-pointed down.
The deaed ba 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, glang up and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.
He rubbed his hands slowly and drily over the difficulty.
-- you solve that question now? he asked.
-- Aquinas, answered Stephen, says pulcra sunt quae visa plat.
-- 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 means here esthetitelle, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also says Bo in quod tendit appetitus. In so far as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell, however, it is an evil.
-- Quite so, said the dean, you have certainly hit the nail on the head.
He rose nimbly aowards 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 pale loveless eyes. Like Ignatius he was lame but in his eyes burned no spark of Ignatiuss enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of the pany, a craft subtler and more secret than its fabled books of secret subtle wisdom, had not fired his soul with the energy of apostleship. It seemed as if he used the shifts and lore and ing of the world, as bidden to do, for the greater glory of God, without joy in their handling or hatred of that in them which was evil but turning them, with a firm gesture of obedience back upon themselves and for all this silent service it seemed as if he loved not at all the master and little, 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 mans hand, to be leaned on in the road at nightfall or in stress of weather, to lie with a ladys nosegay on a garde, to be raised in menace.
The deauro the hearth and began to stroke his .
-- When may we expect to have something from you ohetic question? he asked.
-- From me! said Stephen in astonishment. I stumble on an idea once a fht if I am lucky.
-- These questions are very profound, Mr Dedalus, said the dean. It is like looking down from the cliffs of Moher into the depths. Many go down into the depths and never e up. Only the trained diver go down into those depths and explore them and e to the surface again.
-- If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws.
-- Ha!
-- For my purpose I work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas.
-- I see. I quite see your point.
-- I hem only for my own use and guidail I have done something for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells I shall try to trim it. If it does not give light enough I shall sell it and buy another.
-- Epictetus also had a lamp, said the dean, which was sold for a fancy price after his death. It was the lamp he wrote his philosophical dissertations by. You ketus?
-- An old gentleman, said Stephen coarsely, who said that the soul is very like a bucketful of water.
-- He tells us in his homely way, the dea on, that he put an iron lamp before a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole the lamp. What did the philosopher do? He reflected that it was in the character of a thief to steal aermio buy ahen lamp day instead of the iron lamp.
A smell of molten tallow came up from the deans dle butts and fused itself in Stephens sciousness with the jingle of the words, bucket and lamp and lamp and bucket. The priests voice, too, had a hard jingling toephens mind halted by instinct, checked by the straone and the imagery and by the priests face which seemed like an unlit lamp or a reflector hung in a false focus. What lay behind it or within it? A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of the thundercloud, charged with intelle and capable of the gloom of God?
-- I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.
-- Undoubtedly, said the dean.
-- One difficulty, said Stephen, ihetic discussion is to know whether words are being used acc to the literary tradition or acc to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of Newmans in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained in the full pany of the saints. The use of the word in the marketplace 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 nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel hold.
-- What funnel? asked Stephen.
-- The fuhrough 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. Thefunnel.
-- Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.
-- It is called a tundish in Lower Drumdra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.
-- A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most iing word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.
His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the English vert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake of clamorous versions, a plishman in Ireland, he seemed to have entered oage of jesuit history when that strange play of intrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been all but given through - a late-er, a tardy spirit. From what had he set out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in Jesus only and abh the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of , as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?
The deaed the word yet again.
-- Tundish! Well now, that is iing!
-- The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more iing. What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth, said Stephen coldly.
-- The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart of deje that the man to whom he eaking was a tryman of Ben Jonsohought:
-- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I ot speak or write these words without u of spirit. His language, so familiar and sn, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.
-- And to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the dean added, to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty. And to inquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of the various arts. These are some iing points we might take up.
Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the deans firm, dry tone, was silent; and through the silence a distant noise of many boots and fused voices came up the staircase.
-- In pursuing these speculations, said the dean clusively, there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take yree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and 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 say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despo. Per aspera ad astra.
He left the hearth quickly aowards the landing to oversee the arrival of the first arts class.
Leaning against the fireplace Stephen heard him greet briskly and impartially every Student of the class and could almost see the frank smiles of the coarser students. A desolating pity began to fall like dew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful serving-man of the knightly Loyola, for this half-brother of the clergy, more venal than they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom he would never call his ghostly father; ahought how this man and his panions had earhe name of worldlings at the hands not of the unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, during all their history, at the bar of Gods justice for the souls of the lax and the lukewarm and the prudent.
The entry of the professor was signalled by a few rounds of Kentish fire from the heavy boots of those students who sat on the highest tier of the gloomy theatre uhe grey cobwebbed windows. The calling of the roll began and the respoo the names were given out in all tones until the name of Peter Byrne was reached.
-- Here!
A deep bass note in response came from the upper tier, followed by coughs of protest along the other benches.
The professor paused in his reading and called the name:
-- ly!
No answer.
-- Mr ly!
A smile flew across Stephens face as he thought of his friends studies.
-- Try Leopardstown! Said a voice from the bench behind. Stephen glanced up quickly but Moynihans snoutish
face, outlined on the grey light, was impassive. A formula was given out. Amid the rustling of the notebooks Stephen turned back again and said:
-- Give me some paper fods 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 y any layman or woman do it.
The formula which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper, the coiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the spectre-like symbols of ford velocity fasated and jaded Stephens mind. He had heard some say that the old professor was an atheist freemason. O the grey dull day! It seemed a limbo of painless patient scioushrough which souls of mathematis might wander, projeg long slender fabrics from plao 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 some of you gentlemen may be familiar with the works of Mr W. S. Gilbert. In one of his songs he speaks of the billiard sharp who is o play:
On a cloth untrue
With a twisted cue
And elliptical billiard balls.
-- He means a ball having the form of the ellipsoid of the principal axes of which I spoke a moment ago.
Moynihan leaned down towards Stephens ear and murmured:
-- rice ellipsoidal balls! chase me, ladies, Im in the cavalry!
His fellow students rude humour ran like a gust through the cloister of Stephens mind, shaking into gay life limp priestly vestments that hung upon the walls, setting them to sway and caper in a sabbath of misrule. The forms of the unity emerged from the gust-blowments, the dean of studies, the portly florid bursar with his cap of grey hair, the president, the little priest with feathery hair who wrote devout verses, the squat peasant form of the professor of eics, the tall form of the young professor of mental sce discussing on the landing a case of sce with his class like a giraffe cropping high leafage among a herd of antelopes, the grave troubled prefect of the sodality, the plump round-headed professor of Italian with his rogues eyes. They came ambling and stumbling, tumbling and capering, kilting their gowns for leap frog, holding one another back, shaken with deep false laughter, smag one another behind and laughing at their rude malice, calling to one another by familiar niames, protesting with sudden dignity at sh usage, whispering two and two behind their hands.
The professor had goo the glass cases on the side wall, from a shelf of which he took down a set of coils, blew away the dust from many points and, bearing it carefully to the table, held a finger on it while he proceeded with his lecture. He explaihat the wires in modern coils were of a pound called platinoid lately discovered by F. W. Martino.
He spoke clearly the initials and surname of the discoverer. Moynihan whispered from behind:
-- Good old Fresh Water Martin!
-- Ask him, Stephen whispered back with weary humour, if he wants a subject for electrocution. He have me.
Moynihan, seeing the professor bend over the coils, rose in his bend, clag noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to call with the voice of a sl ur.
-- Please teacher! This boy is after saying a bad word, teacher.
-- Platinoid, the professor said solemnly, is preferred to German silver because it has a lower coeffit of resistance by ges of temperature. The platinoid wire is insulated and the c of silk that insulates it is wound on the ebonite bobbins just where my finger is. If it were wound single ara current would be induced in the coils. 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 sce?
The professan to juggle gravely with the terms pure sd applied sce. A heavy-built student, wearing gold spectacles, stared with some wo the questioner. Moynihan murmured from behind in his natural voice:
-- Isnt MacAlister a devil for his pound of flesh?
Stephen looked coldly on the oblong Skull beh him rown with tawine-coloured hair. The voice, the at, the mind of the questioner offended him and he allowed the offeo carry him towards wilful unkindness, bidding his mind think that the students father would have doer had he sent his son to Belfast to study and have saved something orain fare by so doing.
The oblong skull beh did not turn to meet this shaft of thought ahe shaft came back to its b; for he saw in a moment the students whey-pale face.
-- That thought is not mine, he said to himself quickly. It came from the ic Irishman in the bench behind. Patience. you Say with certitude by whom the soul of your race was bartered and its elect betrayed - by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience. Remember Epictetus. It is probably in his character to ask such a question at such a moment in such a tone and to pronouhe word sce as a monosyllable.
The droning voice of the professor tio wind itself slowly round and round the coils it spoke of, doubling, trebling, quadrupling its som energy as the ultiplied its ohms of resistance.
Moynihans 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 he door were two photographs in frames aween them a long roll of paper bearing an irregular tail of signatures. Ma went briskly to and fro among the students, talking rapidly, answering rebuffs and leading oer ao the table. In the inner hall the dean of studies stood talking to a young professor, stroking his gravely and nodding his head.
Stephen, checked by the crowd at the door, halted irresolutely. From uhe wide falling leaf of a soft hat lys dark eyes were watg him.
-- Have you signed? Stephen asked.
ly closed his long thin-lipped mouth, uned with himself an instant and answered:
-- Ego habeo.
-- What is it for?
-- Quod?
-- What is it for?
ly turned his pale face to Stephen and said blandly and bitterly:
-- Per pax universalis.
-- Stephen poio the Tsars photograph and said:
-- He has the face of a besotted Christ.
The s and anger in his voice brought lys eyes back from a calm survey 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 ly, quia facies vostra monstrat ut vos in damno malo humore estis.
Moynihan, on his way to the table, said in Stephens ear:
-- Ma is in tiptop form. Ready to shed the last drop. Brand new world. No stimulants and votes for the bitches.
Stephen smiled at the manner of this fidend, when Moynihan had passed, turned again to meet lys eyes.
-- Perhaps you tell me, he said, why he pours his soul so freely into my ear. you?
A dull scoeared on lys forehead. He stared at the table where Moynihan had bent to write his name on the roll, and then said flatly:
-- A sugar!
-- Quis est in malo humore, said Stephen, ego aut vos?
ly did not take up the taunt. He brooded sourly on his judgement aed with the same flat force:
-- A flaming bloody sugar, thats what he is!
It was his epitaph for all dead friendships and Stephen wondered whether it would ever be spoken in the same tone over his memory. The heavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stohrough a quagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling its heaviness depress his heart. lys speech, uhat of Davin, had her rare phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned versions of Irish idioms. Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublin given back by a bleak deg seaport, its energy an echo of the sacred eloquence of Dublin given back flatly by a Wicklow pulpit.
The heavy scowl faded from lys face as Ma marched briskly towards them from the other side of the hall.
-- Here you are! said Ma cheerily.
-- Here I am! said Stephen.
-- Late as usual. you not bihe progressive tendency with a respect for punctuality?
-- That question is out of order, said Stephe business. His smiling eyes were fixed on a silver-ed tablet
of milk chocolate which peeped out of the propagandists breast-pocket. A little ring of listeners closed round to hear the war of wits. A lean student with olive skin and lank black hair thrust his face betweewo, glang from oo the other at each phrase and seeming to try to catch each flying phrase in his open moist mouth. ly took a small grey handball from his pocket and began to exami closely, turning it over and over.
-- business? said Ma. Hom!
He gave a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at the straw-coatee which hung from his blunt .
-- The business is to sigestimonial.
-- Will you pay me anything if I sign? asked Stephen.
-- I thought you were an idealist, said Ma.
The gipsy-like student looked about him and addressed the onlookers in an indistinct bleating voice.
-- By hell, thats a queer notion. I sider that notion to be a merary notion.
His voice faded into sileno heed aid to his words. He turned his olive face, equine in expression, towards Stephen, inviting him to speak again.
Ma began to speak with fluent energy of the Tsars rescript, of Stead, of general disarmament arbitration in cases of iional disputes, of the signs of the times, of the new humanity and the new gospel of life which would make it the business of the unity to secure as cheaply as possible the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number.
The gipsy student respoo the close of the period by g:
-- Three cheers for universal brotherhood!
-- Go on, Temple, said a stout ruddy student near him. Ill stand you a pint after.
-- Im a believer in universal brotherhood, said Temple, glang about him out of his dark oval eyes. Marx is only a bloody cod.
ly gripped his arm tightly to check his tongue, smiling uneasily, aed:
-- Easy, easy, easy!
Temple struggled to free his arm but tinued, his mouth flecked by a thin foam:
-- Socialism was founded by an Irishman and the first man in Europe who preached the freedom of thought was Collins. Two hundred years ago. He denounced priestcraft, the philosopher of Middlesex. Three cheers for John Anthony Collins!
A thin voice from the verge of the ring replied:
-- Pip! pip!
Moynihan murmured beside Stephens ear:
-- And what about John Anthonys poor little sister:
Lottie Collins lost her drawers;
Wont you kindly lend her yours?
Stephen laughed and Moynihan, pleased with the result, murmured again:
-- Well have five bob each way on John Anthony Collins.
-- I am waiting for your answer, said Ma briefly.
-- The affair doesnt i me in the least, said Stephen wearily. You know that well. Why do you make a se about it?
-- Good! said Ma, smag his lips. You are a reaary, then?
-- Do you think you impress me, Stephen asked, when you flourish your wooden sword?
-- Metaphors! said Ma bluntly. e to facts. Stephen blushed and turned aside. Ma stood his ground and said with hostile humour:
-- Minor poets, I suppose, are above such trivial questions as the question of universal peace.
ly raised his head ahe handball betweewo students by way of a peace-, saying:
-- Pax super totum sanguinarium globum.
Stephen, moving away the bystanders, jerked his shoulder angrily in the dire of the Tsars image, saying:
-- Keep your i. If we must have a Jesus let us have a legitimate Jesus.
-- By hell, thats a good one! said the gipsy student to those about him, thats a fine expression. I like that expression immensely.
He gulped down the spittle in his throat as if he were gulping down the phrase and, fumbling at the peak of his tweed cap, turo Stephen, saying:
-- Excuse me, sir, what do you mean by that expression you uttered just now?
Feeling himself jostled by the students near him, he said to them:
-- I am curious to knohat 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 dont know if you believe in man. I admire you, sir. I admire the mind of man indepe of all religions. Is that your opinion about the mind of Jesus?
-- Go on, Temple, said the stout ruddy student, returning, as was his wont, to his first idea, that pint is waiting for you. - He thinks Im an imbecile, Temple explaio Stephen, because Im a believer in the power of mind.
ly linked his arms into those of Stephen and his admirer and said:
-- Nos ad manum ballum jocabimus.
Stephen, i of being led away, caught sight of Mas flushed bluured face.
-- My signature is of no at, he said politely. You are right to go your way. Leave me to go mine.
-- Dedalus, said Ma crisply, I believe youre a good fellow but you have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility of the human individual.
A voice said:
-- Intellectual kery is better out of this movement than in it.
Stephen, reizing the harsh tone of MacAlisters voice did not turn in the dire of the voice. ly pushed solemnly through the throng of students, linking Stephen and Temple like a celebrant attended by his ministers on his way to the altar.
Temple bent eagerly across lys breast and said:
-- Did you hear MacAlister what he said? That youth is jealous of you. Did you see that? I bet ly didhat. By hell, I saw that at once.
As they crossed the inner hall, the dean of studies was i of esg from the student with whom he had been versing. He stood at the foot of the staircase, a foot on the lowest step, his threadbare soutahered about him for the ast with womanish care, nodding his head often aing:
-- Not a doubt of it, Mr Hackett! Very fine! Not a doubt of it!
I n the middle of the hall the prefect of the college sodality eaking early, in a soft querulous voice, with a boarder. As he spoke he wrinkled a little his freckled brow and bit, between his phrases, at a tiny bone pencil.
-- I hope the matri will all e. The first arts men are pretty sure. Sed arts, too. We must make sure of the newers.
Temple bent again across ly, as they were passing through the doorway, and said in a swift whisper:
-- Do you know that he is a married man? he was a married man before they verted him. He has a wife and children somewhere. By hell, I think thats the queerest notion I ever heard! Eh?
His whisper trailed off into sly cag laughter. The moment they were through the doorway ly seized him rudely by the ned shook him, saying:
-- You flaming floundering fool! Ill take my dying bible there isnt a bigger bloody ape, do you know, than you in the whole flaming bloody world!
Temple wriggled in his grip, laughing still with sly tent, while ly repeated flatly at every rude shake:
-- A flaming flaring bloody idiot!
They crossed the weedy garden together. The president, ed in a heavy loose cloak, was ing towards them along one of the walks, reading his office. At the end of the walk he halted before turning and raised his eyes. The students saluted, Temple fumbling as before at the peak of his cap. They walked forward in silence. As they he alley Stephen could hear the thuds of the players hands and the wet smacks of the ball and Davins voice g out excitedly at each stroke.
The three students halted round the box on which Davin sat to follow the game. Temple, after a few moments, sidled across to Stephen and said:
-- Excuse me, I wao ask you, do you believe that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a sincere man?
Stephen laughed ht. ly, pig up the broken stave of a cask from the grass at his feet, turned swiftly and said sternly:
-- Temple, I declare to the living God if you say another word, do you know, to anybody on any subject, Ill kill you super spottum.
-- He was like you, I fancy, said Stephen, aional man.
-- Blast him, curse him! said ly broadly. Dont talk to him at all. Sure, you might as well be talking, do you know, to a flaming chamber-pot as talking to Temple. Go home, Temple. Fods sake, go home.
-- I dont care a damn about you, ly, answered Temple, moving out of reach of the uplifted stave and pointing at Stephehe only man I see in this institution that has an individual mind.
-- Institution! Individual! cried ly. Go home, blast you, for youre a hopeless bloody man.
-- Im aional man, said Temple. Thats quite rightly expressed. And Im proud that Im aionalist.
He sidled out of the alley, smiling slyly. ly watched him with a blank 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 lounged against the wall, his peaked cap down on his eyes. The laugh, pitched in a high key and ing from a So muscular frame, seemed like the whinny of an elephant. The students body shook all over and, to ease his mirth, he rubbed both his hands delightedly over his groins.
-- Lynch is awake, said ly.
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?
ly took him at the word and the two began to tussle. When their faces had flushed with the struggle they dreart, panting. Stephe down towards Davin who, i on the game, had paid o the 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.
-- Youre a terrible man, Stevie, said Davin, taking the short pipe from his mouth, always alone.
-- Now that you have sighe petition for universal peace, said Stephen, I suppose you will burn that little copybook I saw in your room.
As Davin did not answer, Stephen began to quote:
-- Long pace, fianna! Right ine, fianna! Fianna, by numbers, salute, owo!
-- Thats a different question, said Davin. Im an Irish nationalist, first and foremost. But thats you all out. Youre a born sneerer, Stevie.
-- When you make the rebellion with hurleysticks, said Stephen, and want the indispensable informer, tell me. I find you a few in this college.
-- I t uand you, said Davin. Oime I hear you talk against English literature. Now you talk against the Irish informers. What with your name and your ideas - Are you Irish at all?
-- e with me now to the office of arms and I will show you the tree of my family, said Stephen.
-- Then be one of us, said Davin. Why dont you learn Irish? Why did you drop out of the league class after the first lesson?
-- You know one reason why, answered Stephen. Davin toss his head and laughed.
-- Oh, e now, he said. Is it on at of that certain young lady and Father Moran? But thats all in your own mind, Stevie. They were only talking and laughing.
Stephen paused and laid a friendly hand upon Davins shoulder.
-- Do you remember, he said, when we knew each other first? The first m we met you asked me to show you the way to the matriculation class, putting a very strong stress on the first syllable. You remember? Then you used to address the jesuits as father, you remember? I ask myself about you: Is he a i as his speech?
-- Im a simple person, said Davin. You know that. When you told me that night in Harcourt Street those things about your private life, hoo God, Stevie, I was not able to eat my dinner. I was quite bad. I was awake a long time that night. Why did you tell me those things?
-- Thanks, said Stephen. You mean I am a monster.
-- No, said Davin. But I wish you had not told me.
A tide began te beh the calm surface of Stephens friendliness.
-- This rad this try and this life produced me, he said I shall express myself as I am.
-- Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. I you are an Irish man but your pride is too powerful.
-- My aors threw off their language and took aephen said. They allowed a handful of fo subject them. Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and persos they made? What for?
-- For our freedom, said Davin.
-- No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affes from the days of Too those of Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him a him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. Id see you damned first.
-- They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will e yet, 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 you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this try there are s flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those s.
Davin khe ashes from his pipe.
-- Too deep for me, Stevie, he said. But a mans try es first. Ireland first, Stevie. You 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 aowards the players, shaking his head sadly. But in a moment his sadness left him and he was hotly disputing with ly and the two players who had fiheir game. A match of four was
arranged, ly insisting, however, that his ball should be used. He let it rebound twice or thrice to his hand and struck it strongly and swiftly towards the base of the alley, exclaiming in ao its thud:
-- Your soul!
Stephen stood with Lynch till the score began to rise. Then he plucked him by the sleeve to e away. Lynch obeyed, saying:
-- Let us eke go, as ly has it.
Stephen smiled at this side-thrust.
They passed back through the garden and out through the hall where the d porter inning up a hall noti the frame. At the foot of the steps they halted and Stephen took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to his panion.
-- I know you are poor, he said.
-- Damn your yellow insolence, answered Lynch.
This sed proof of Lynchs culture made Stephen smile again.
-- It was a great day for European culture, he said, when you made up your mind to swear in yellow.
They lit their cigarettes and turo the right. After a pause Stephen began:
-- Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. I say Lynch halted and said bluntly:
-- Stop! I wont listen! I am sick. I was out last night on a yellow drunk with Horan and Goggins.
Stephe on:
-- Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and stant in human sufferings and u with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and stant in human sufferings and u with the secret cause.
-- Repeat, said Lynch.
Stepheed the definitions slowly.
-- A girl got into a hansom a few days ago, he went on, in London. She was on her way to meet her mother whom she had not seen for many years. At the er of a street the shaft of a lorry shivered the window of the hansom in the shape of a star. A long fine needle of the shivered glass pierced her heart. She died on the instant. The reporter called it a tragic death. It is not. It is remote from terror and pity acc to the terms of my definitions.
-- The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I use the word arrest. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or rather the dramatic emotion is. The feelied by improper art are kiic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, praphical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.
-- You say that art must e desire, said Lynch. I told you that one day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of Praxiteles in the Museum. Was that not desire?
-- I speak of normal natures, said Stephen. You also told me that when you were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces of dried cowdung.
Lynch broke again into a whinny of laughter and again rubbed both his hands over his groins but without taking them from his pockets.
-- O, I did! I did! he cried.
Stephen turowards his panion and looked at him for a moment boldly in the eyes. Lynch, rec from his laughter, answered his look from his humbled eyes. The long slender flattened skull beh the long pointed cap brought before Stephens mind the image of a hooded reptile. The eyes, too, were reptile-like in glint and gaze. Yet at that instant, humbled and alert in their look, they were lit by oiny human point, the window of a shrivelled soul, poignant and self-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 tihe desire and loathied by improper esthetic means are really hetic emotions not only because they are kii character but also because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex a of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about to enter our eye.
-- Not always, said Lynch critically.
-- In the same way, said Stephen, your flesh respoo the stimulus of a atue, but it was, I say, simply a reflex a of the nerves. Beauty expressed by the artist ot awaken in us aion which is kiic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, ht to awaken, or induces, ht to induce, ahetic stasis, an ideal pity or aerror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at 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 part to part in ahetic whole or of ahetic whole to its part or parts 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 ohat I admire only beauty.
Stephen raised his cap as if iing. Then, blushing slightly, he laid his hand on Lynchs thick tweed sleeve.
--We are right, he said, and the others are wrong. To speak of these things and to try to uand their nature and, having uood it, to try slowly and humbly and stantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have e to uand - that is art.
They had reached the al bridge and, turning from their course, went on by the trees. A crude grey light, mirrored in the sluggish water and a smell of wet branches over their heads seemed tainst the course of Stephens thought.
-- But you have not answered my question, said Lynch. What is art? What is 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? ly lost his temper and began to talk about Wicklow ba.
-- I remember, said Lynch. He told us about them flaming fat devils of pigs.
-- Art, said Stephen, is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for ahetid. You remember the pigs and fet that. You are a distressing pair, you and ly.
Lynch made a grimace at the raw grey sky and said:
-- If I am to listen to your esthetic philosophy give me at least anarette. I dont care about it. I dont even care about women. Damn you and damhing. I want a job of five hundred a year. You t get me one.
Stephen handed him the packet of cigarettes. Lynch took the last ohat remained, saying simply:
-- Proceed!
-- Aquinas, said Stephen, says that is beautiful the apprehension of which pleases.
Lynodded.
-- I remember that, he said, Pulcra sunt quae visa plat. - He uses the word visa, said Stephen, to cover esthetic apprehensions of all kinds, whether through sight or hearing or through any other avenue of apprehension. This word, though it is vague, is clear enough to keep away good and evil which excite desire and loathing. It meaainly a stasis and not a kinesis. How about the true? It produces also a stasis of the mind. You would not write your name in pencil across the hypotenuse of a right-ariangle.
-- No, said Lynch, give me the hypotenuse of the Venus of Praxiteles.
-- Static therefore, said Stephen. Plato, I believe, said that beauty is the splendour of truth. I dont think that it has a meaning, but the true and the beautiful are akin. Truth is beheld by the intellect which is appeased by the most satisfyiions of the intelligible; beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most satisfyiions of the sensible. The first step in the dire of truth is to uand the frame and scope of the intellect itself, to prehend the act itself of intelle. Aristotles entire system of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute ot at the same time and in the same exion belong to and not belong to the same subject. The first step in the dire of beauty is to uand the frame and scope of the imagination, to prehend the act itself of esthetic apprehension. Is that clear?
-- But what is beauty? asked Lynch impatiently. Out with another definition. Something we see and like! Is that the best you and Aquinas do?
-- Let us take woman, said Stephen. -- Let us take her! said Lynch fervently. -- The Greek, the Turk, the ese, the Copt, the Hottentot, said Stephen, all admire a different type of female beauty. That seems to be a maze out of which we ot escape. I see, however, two ways out. One is this hypothesis: that every physical quality admired by men in women is in direct exion with the manifold funs of women for the propagation of the species. It may be so. The world, it seems, is drearier than even you, Lynch, imagined. For my part I dislike that way out. It leads to eugenics rather than to esthetic. It leads you out of the maze into a new gaudy lecture-room where Ma, with one hand on The Orion of Species and the other hand on the estament, tells you that you admired the great flanks of Venus because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring and admired her great breasts because you felt that she would give good milk to her children and yours.
-- Then Ma is a sulphur-yellow liar, said Lynergetically.
-- 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 er of Sir Patrick Duns hospital c the end of Stephens speech with the harsh roar of jangled and rattlial. Lynch closed his ears and gave out oath after oath till the dray had passed. Theurned on his heel rudely. Stephen turned also and waited for a few moments till his panions ill-humour had had its vent.
-- This hypothesis, Stepheed, is the other way out: that, though the same object may not seem beautiful to all people, all people who admire a beautiful object find in it certaiions which satisfy and cide with the stages themselves of all esthetic apprehension. These relations of the sensible, visible to you through one form and to me through another, must be therefore the necessary qualities of beauty. Now, we return to our old friend saint Thomas for another pennyworth of wisdom.
Lynch laughed.
-- It amuses me vastly, he said, to hear you quoting him time after time like a jolly round friar. Are you laughing in your sleeve?
-- MacAlister, answered Stephen, would call my esthetic theory applied Aquinas. So far as this side of esthetic philosophy extends, Aquinas will carry me all along the line. When we e to the phenomena of artistiception, artistic gestation, and artistic reprodu I require a erminology 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 new personal experiend erminology some other day. Hurry up and finish the first part.
-- Who knows? said Stephen, smiling. Perhaps Aquinas would uater than you. He oet himself. He wrote a hymn for Maundy Thursday. It begins with the words Pange lingua gloriosi. They say it is the highest glory of the hymnal. It is an intricate and soothing hymn. I like it; but there is no hymn that be put beside that mournful and majestic processional song, the Vexilla Regis of Venantius Fortunatus.
Lynch began to sing softly and solemnly in a deep bass voice:
Impleta sunt quae it
David fideli carmine
Dido nationibus
Regnavit a ligno Deus.
-- Thats great! he said, well pleased. Great music!
They turned into Lower Mount Street. A few steps from the er a fat young man, wearing a silk neckcloth, saluted them and stopped.
-- Did you hear the results of the exams? he asked. Griffin lucked. Halpin and OFlynhrough the home civil. Moonan got fifth pla the Indian. OShaughnessy got fourteenth. The Irish fellows in Clarks gave them a feed last night. They all ate curry.
His pallid bloated face expressed benevolent malid, as he had advahrough his tidings of success, his small fat-encircled eyes vanished out of sight and his weak wheezing voice out of hearing.
In reply to a question of Stephens his eyes and his voice came forth again from their lurking-places.
-- Yes, MacCullagh and I; he said. Hes taking pure mathematid Im taking stitutional history. There are twenty subjects. Im taking botany too. You know Im a member of the field club.
He drew back from the other two in a stately fashion and placed a plump woollen-gloved hand on his breast from which muttered wheezing laughter at once broke forth.
-- Bring us a few turnips and onions the ime you go out, said Stephen drily, to make a stew.
The fat student laughed indulgently and said:
-- We are all highly respectable people in the field club. Last Saturday 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 that subject, the classical school and the romantic school and all that. The Lao ied me very much when I read it. Of course it is idealistic, German, ultra-profound.
her of the others spoke. Donovan took leave of them urbanely.
-- I must go, he said softly and benevolently, I have a strong suspi, amounting almost to a vi, that my sister inteo make paoday for the dinner of the Donovan family.
-- Goodbye, Stephen said in his wake. Dont fet the turnips for me and my mate.
Lynch gazed after him, his lip curling in slow s till his face resembled a devils mask:
-- To think that that yellow paing excrement get a good job, he said at length, and I have to smoke cheap cigarettes!
They turheir faces towards Merrion Square a for a little in silence.
-- To finish what I was saying about beauty, said Stephen, the most satisfyiions of the sensible must therefore correspond to the necessary phases of artistic apprehension. Find these and you find the qualities of universal beauty. Aquinas says: Ad pulcritudiria requiruntur ias, sonantia, claritas. I translate it so: Three things are needed for beauty, wholeness, harmony, and radiance. Do these correspond to the phases of apprehension? Are you following?
-- Of course, I am, said Lynch. If you think I have an excrementitious intelligence run after Donovan and ask him to listen to you.
Stephen poio a basket which a butchers boy had slung ied on his head.
-- Look at that basket, he said.
-- I see it, said Lynch.
-- In order to see that basket, said Stephen, your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not the basket. The first phase of apprehension is></a> a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended. Ahetic image is preseo us either in space or in time. What is audible is presented in time, what is visible is presented in space. But, temporal or spatial, the esthetic image is first luminously apprehended as selfbounded and selftained upon the immeasurable background of space or time which is not it. You apprehe as ohing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its wholeness. That is ias.
-- Bulls eye! said Lynch, laughing. Go on.
-- Then, said Stephen, you pass from point to point, led by its formal lines; you apprehend it as balanced part against part within its limits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. In other words, the synthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis of apprehension. Having first felt that it is ohing you feel now that it is a thing. You apprehend it as plex, multiple, divisible, separable, made up of its parts, the result of its parts and their sum, harmonious. That is sonantia.
-- Bulls eye again! said Lynch wittily. Tell me now what is claritas and you win the cigar.
-- The otation of the word, Stephen said, is rather vague. Aquinas uses a term which seems to be i. 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, the idea of which the matter is but the shadow, the reality of which it is but the symbol. I thought he might mean that claritas is the artistic discovery and representation of the divine purpose in anything or a force of generalization which would make the esthetic image a universal one, make it outshis proper ditions. But that is literary talk. I uand it so. When you have apprehehat basket as ohing and have then analysed it acc to its form and apprehe as a thing you make the only synthesis which is logically ahetically permissible. You see that it is that thing which it is and no other thing. The radiance of which he speaks in the scholastic quidditas, the whatness of a thing. This supreme quality is felt by the artist whehetic image is first ceived in his imagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fasated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a spiritual state very like to that cardiadition which the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase almost as beautiful as Shelleys, called the entment of the heart.
Stephen paused and, though his panion did not speak, felt that his words had called up around them a thought-ented silence.
-- What I have said, he began again, refers to beauty in the wider sense of the word, in the sense which the word has ierary tradition. In the marketplace it has another sense. When we speak of beauty in the sed sense of the term our judgement is influenced in the first place by the art itself and by the form of that art. The image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from oo the . These forms are: the lyrical form, the form whereiist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image ie relation to himself and to others; the dramati, 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 the famous discussion.
-- I have a book at home, said Stephen, in which I have written dowions which are more amusing than yours were. In finding the ao them I found the theory of esthetic which I am trying to explain. Here are some questions I set myself: Is a chair finely made tragic or ic? Is the portrait of Mona Lisa good if I desire to see it? If not, why not?
-- Why not, indeed? said Lynch, laughing.
-- If a man hag in fury at a block of wood, Stephen tinued, make there an image of a cow, is that image a work of art? If not, why not?
-- Thats a lovely one, said Lynch, laughing again. That has the true scholastic stink.
-- Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues to write of. The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spoke of distinguished clearly one from another. Even in literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often fused. The lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled at the oar ed stones up a slope. He who utters it is more scious of the instant of emotion than of himself as feeliion. The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature wheist prolongs and broods upon himself as the tre of an epical event and this form progresses till the tre of emotional gravity is equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the a like a vital sea. This progress you will see easily in that old English ballad Turpin Hero which begins in the first person and ends ihird person. The dramati is reached wheality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills every person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a ce or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally refi.99lｉｂ?self out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak. The esthetic image in the dramati is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic, like that of material creation, is aplished. The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
-- Trying to refihem also out of existence, said Lynch.
A fine rain began to fall from the high veiled sky and they turned into the dukes lawn to reach the national library before the shower came.
-- What do you mean, Lynch asked surlily, by prating about beauty and the imagination in this miserable Godforsaken island? No wohe artist retired within or behind his handiwork after havirated this try.
The rain fell faster. When they passed through the passage beside Kildare house they found many students sheltering uhe arcade of the library. ly, leaning against a pillar, ig his teeth with a sharpened match, listening to some panions. Some girls stood he entrance door. Lynch whispered to Stephen:
-- Your beloved is here.
Stephen took his place silently oep below the group of students, heedless of the rain which fell fast, turning his eyes towards her from time to time. She too stood silently among her panions. She has no priest to flirt with, he thought with scious bitterness, remembering how he had seen her last. Lynch was right. His miied of theory and ce, lapsed bato a listless peace.
He heard the students talking among themselves. They spoke of two friends who had passed the final medical examination, of the ces of getting places on o liners, of poor and rich practices.
-- Thats all a bubble. An Irish try practice is better.
-- Hynes was two years in Liverpool and he says the same. A frightful hole he said it was. Nothing but midwifery cases.
-- Do you mean to say it is better to have a job here in the try than in a rich city like that? I know a fellow.
-- Hynes has no brains. He got through by stewing, pure stewing.
-- Dont mind him. Theres plenty of moo be made in a big ercial City.
-- Depends on the practice.
-- Ego credo ut vita pauperum est simpliciter atrox, simpliciter sanguinarius atrox, in Liverpoolio.
Their voices reached his ears as if from a distan interrupted pulsation. She reparing to go away with her panions.
The quick light shower had drawn off, tarrying in clusters of diamonds among the shrubs of the quadrangle where an exhalation was breathed forth by the blaed earth. Their trim boots prattled as they stood oeps of the alking quietly and gaily, glang at the clouds, holding their umbrellas at ing angles against the few last raindrops, closing them again, holding their skirts demurely.
And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a birds life, gay in the m, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her heart simple and wilful as a birds heart?
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