by James Joyce
— For your mother’s sake.
— I don’t see why I should.
— Your mother will suffer very much. You say you do not believe. The Host for you is a piece of ordinary bread. Would you not eat a piece of ordinary bread to avoid causing your mother pain?
— I would in many cases.
— And why not in this case? Have you any reluctance to commit a sacrilege? If you do not believe you should not have any.
— Wait a minute, said Stephen. At present I have a reluctance to commit a sacrilege. I am a product of Catholicism; I was sold to Rome before my birth. Now I have broken my slavery but I cannot in a moment destroy every feeling in my nature. That takes time. However if it were a case of needs must — for my life, for instance — I would commit any enormity with the host.
— Many Catholics would do the same, said Cranly, if their lives were at stake.
— Believers?
— Ay, believers. So by your own showing you are a believer.
— It is not from fear that I refrain from committing a sacrilege.
— Why then?
— I see no reason for committing sacrilege.
— But you have always made your Easter Duty. Why do you change? The thing for you is mockery, mummery.
— If I mum it is an act of submission, a public act of submission to the Church. I will not submit to the Church.
— Even so far as to mum?
— It is mumming with an intention. The outward show is nothing but it means a good deal.
— Again you are speaking like a Catholic. The host is nothing in outward show — a piece of bread.
— I admit: but all the same I insist on disobeying the Church. I will not submit any longer.
— But could you not be more diplomatic? Could you not rebel in your heart and yet conform out of contempt? You could be a rebel in spirit.
— That cannot be done for long by anyone who is sensitive. The Church knows the value of her services: her priest must hypnotise himself every morning before the tabernacle. If I get up every morning, go to the looking-glass and say to myself “You are the Son of God” at the end of twelve months I will want disciples.
— If you could make your religion pay like Christianity I would advise you to get up every morning and go to the looking-glass.
— That would be good for my vicars on earth but I would find crucifixion a personal inconvenience.
— But here in Ireland by following your new religion of unbelief you may be crucifying yourself like Jesus — only socially not physically.
— There is this difference. Jesus was good-humoured over it. I will die hard.
— How can you propose such a future to yourself and yet be afraid to trust yourself to perform even the simplest mumming in a church? said Cranly.
— That is my business, said Stephen, tapping at his forehead.
When they had come to the Green they crossed the streets and began to walk round the enclosure inside the chains. A few mechanics and their sweethearts were sitting on the swinging- chains turning the shadows to account. The footpath was deserted except for the metallic image of a distant policeman who had been posted well in the gaslight as an admonition. When the two young men passed the college they both looked up at the same moment towards the dark windows.
— May I ask you why you left the Church? asked Cranly.
— I could not observe the precepts.
— Not even with grace?
— No.
— Jesus gives very simple precepts. The Church is severe.
— Jesus or the Church — it’s all the same to me. I can’t follow him. I must have liberty to do as I please.
— No man can do as he pleases.
— Morally.
— No, not morally either.
— You want me, said Stephen, to toe the line with those sycophants and hypocrites in the college. I will never do so.
— No. I mentioned Jesus.
— Don’t mention him. I have made it a common noun. They don’t believe in him; they don’t observe his precepts. In any case let us leave Jesus aside. My sight will only carry me as far as his lieutenant in Rome. It is quite useless: I will not be frightened into paying tribute in money or in thought.
—You told me — do you remember the evening we were standing at the top of the staircase talking about …
— Yes, yes, I remember, said Stephen who hated Cranly’s « method of remembering » the past, what did I tell you?
— You told me the idea you had of Jesus on Good Friday, an ugly misshapen Jesus. Did it ever strike you that Jesus may have been a conscious impostor?
— I have never believed in his chastity — that is since I began to think about him. I am sure he [is] was no eunuch priest. His interest in loose women is too persistently humane. All the women associated with him are of dubious character.
— You don’t think he was God?
— What a question! Explain it: explain the hypostatic union: tell me if the figure which « that policeman worships » as the Holy Ghost is intended for a spermatozoon with wings added. What a question! He makes general remarks on life, that’s all I know: and I disagree with them.
— For example?
— For example … Look here, I cannot talk on this subject. I am not a scholar and I receive no pay as a minister of God. I want to live, do you understand. McCann wants air and food: I want them and a hell of a lot of other things too. I don’t care whether I am right or wrong. There is always that risk in human affairs, I suppose. But even if I am wrong at least I shall not have to endure Father Butt’s company for eternity.
Cranly laughed.
— Remember he would be glorified.
— Heaven for climate, isn’t that it, and hell for society … the whole affair is too damn idiotic. Give it up. I am very young. When I have a beard to my middle I will study Hebrew and then write to you about it.
— Why are you so impatient with the Jesuits? asked Cranly.
Stephen did not answer and, when they arrived in the next region of light Cranly exclaimed:
— Your face is red!
— I feel it, said Stephen.
— Most people think you are self-restrained, said Cranly after a pause.
— So I am, said Stephen.
— Not on this subject. Why do you get so excited: I can’t understand that. It is a thing for you to think out.
— I can think out things when I like. I have thought this affair out very carefully though you may not believe me when I tell you. But my escape excites me: I must talk as I do. I feel a flame in my face. I feel a wind rush through me.
— ‘Like a mighty wind rushing,’ said Cranly.
— You urge me to postpone life — till when? Life is now — this is life: if I postpone it I may never live. To walk nobly on the surface of the earth, to express oneself without pretence, to acknowledge one’s own humanity! You mustn’t think I rhapsodise: I am quite serious. I speak from my soul.
— Soul?
— Yes: from my soul, my spiritual nature. Life is not a yawn. Philosophy, love, art will not disappear from my world because I no longer believe that by entertaining an emotion of desire for the tenth part of a second I prepare for myself an eternity of torture. I am happy.
— Can you say that?
— Jesus is sad. Why is he so sad? He is solitary … I say, you must feel the truth of what I say. You are holding up the Church against me …
— Allow me …
— But what is the Church? It is not Jesus, the magnificent solitary with his inimitable abstinences. The Church is made by me and my like* — her services, legends, practices, paintings, music, traditions. These her artists gave her. They made her what she is. They accepted Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle as the Word of God and made her what she is.
— And why will you not help her to be so still — you as an artist?
— I see you recognise the truth of what I say though you won’t admit it.
— Enough! said Stephen gripping his companion’s arm. You need not defend me. I will take the odds as they are.
They paced along three sides of the Green in silence while the couples began to leave the chains and return meekly to their modest resting-places and after a while Cranly began to explain to Stephen how he too had felt a desire for life — a life of freedom and happiness — when he had been younger and how at that time he too had been about to leave the Church in search of happiness but that many considerations had restrained him.
*Among Joyce’s notes [Gorman, p. 137] under the heading ‘Byrne’ — i.e. Cranly — is listed: “Brutal ‘bloody’ ‘flamin’.’”
*In the MS. the words “made by me and my like” are added in red crayon.
-XXII-
Cranly went to Wicklow at the end of the week leaving Stephen to find another auditor. Luckily Maurice was enjoying his holidays and though Stephen spent a great deal of his time roaming through the slums of the city while Maurice was out on the Bull the two brothers often met and discoursed. Stephen reported his long conversations with Cranly of which Maurice made full notes. The younger sceptic did not seem to share his brother’s high opinion of Cranly though he said little. It was not from jealousy but rather from an over-estimate of Cranly’s rusticity that Maurice allowed himself this prejudice. To be rustic, in his eyes, was to be a mass of cunning and stupid and cowardly habits. He had spoken with Cranly only once but he had often seen him. He gave it as his opinion that Cranly never thought until someone spoke to him and then he [gives] gave birth to some commonplace which he would have liked to have been able to disbelieve. Stephen thought this exaggerated [and] saying that Cranly was daringly commonplace, that he « could talk like a pint, » and that it was possible to credit him with a certain perverse genius. Cranly’s undue scepticism and his heavy feet moved Maurice « to hit the rustic » in him with a name. He called him Thomas Squaretoes * and he would not even admit that [Cranly] he had to a certain extent the grand manner. Cranly, in his opinion, went to Wicklow because it was necessary for him to « play the god to an audience. » He will grow to dislike you, said the shrewd young heathen, when you begin to play the god to someone else. He will give you nothing in exchange for what you give him whether he has it or not because his [nature] character is naturally overbearing. He cannot possibly understand half of what you say to him and yet he would like to be thought the only one who could understand you. He wants to become more and more necessary to you until he can have you in his power. Be careful never to show any weakness to him when you are together. You can have him in your power so long as you hold the whip-hand. Stephen replied that he thought this was a very novel conception of friendship which could not be proved true or false by debate alone but that he was himself the conscious possessor of an intuitive instrument which might be trusted to register any enmity as soon as it appeared. He defended his friend and his friendship at the same time.
The summer was dull and warm. « Nearly every day Stephen wandered through the slums watching the sordid lives of the inhabitants. He read all the street-ballads which were stuck in the dusty windows of the Liberties. He read the racing names and prices scrawled in blue pencil outside the dingy tobacco-shops, the windows of which were adorned with scarlet police journals. He examined all the book-stalls which offered old directories and volumes of sermons and unheard-of treatises [for] at the rate of a penny each or three for twopence. He often posted himself opposite one of the factories in old Dublin at two o’clock to watch the hands coming out to dinner — » principally young boys and girls with colourless, expressionless faces, who seized the opportunity to be gallant in their way. He drifted in and out of interminable chapels in which an old man dozed on a bench or a clerk dusted the woodwork or an old woman prayed before the candle she had lighted. As he walked slowly through the maze of poor streets he stared proudly in return for the glances of stupid wonder that he received and watched from under his eyes the great cow-like trunks of police constables swing slowly round after him as he passed them. These wanderings filled him with deep-seated anger and whenever he encountered a burly black-vested priest taking a stroll of pleasant inspection through these warrens full of swarming and cringing believers he cursed the farce of Irish Catholicism: an island [whereof] the inhabitants of which entrust their wills and minds to others that they may ensure for themselves a life of spiritual paralysis, an island in which all the power and riches are in the keeping of those whose kingdom is not of this world, an island in which Caesar [professes] confesses Christ and Christ confesses Caesar that together they may wax fat upon a starveling rabblement which is bidden ironically to take to itself this consolation in hardship “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
This mood of indignation which was not guiltless of a certain superficiality was undoubtedly due to the excitement of release and it was hardly countenanced by him before he realised the dangers of being a demagogue. The attitude which was constitutional with him was a silent self-occupied, contemptuous manner and his intelligence, moreover, persuaded him that the tomahawk, as an effective instrument of warfare, had become obsolete. He acknowledged to himself in honest egoism that he could not take to heart the distress of a nation, the soul of which was antipathetic to his own, so bitterly as the indignity of a bad line of verse: but at the same time he was nothing in the world so little as an amateur artist. He wished to express his nature freely and fully for the benefit of a society which he would enrich and also for his own benefit, seeing that it was part of his life to do so. It was not part of his life to undertake an extensive alteration of society but he felt the need to express himself such an urgent need, such a real need, that he was determined no conventions of a society, however plausibly mingling pity with its tyranny, should be allowed to stand in his way, and though a taste for elegance and detail unfitted him for the part of demagogue, [in] from his general attitude he might have been supposed not unjustly an ally of the collectivist politicians, who are often very seriously upbraided by [believers] opponents who believe in Jehovahs, and decalogues and judgments [for] with sacrificing the reality to an abstraction.
That kind of Christianity which is called Catholicism seemed to him to stand in his way and forthwith he removed it. He had been brought up in the belief of the Roman supremacy and to cease to be a Catholic for him meant to cease to be a Christian. The idea that the power of an empire is weakest at its borders requires some modification for everyone knows that the Pope cannot govern Italy as he governs Ireland nor is the Tsar as terrible an engine to the tradesmen of S. Petersburg as he is to the little Russian of the Steppes. In fact in many cases the government of an empire is strongest at its borders and it is invariably strongest there in the case when its power at the centre is on the wane. The waves of the rise and fall of empires do not travel with the rapidity of waves of light and it will be perhaps a considerable time before Ireland will be able to understand that the Papacy is no longer going through a period of anabolism.* The bands of pilgrims who are shepherded safely across the continent by their Irish pastors must shame the jaded reactionaries of the eternal city by their stupefied intensity of worship in much the same way as the staring provincial newly arrived from Spain or Africa may have piqued the loyalty of some smiling Roman for whom [the his past had but] the future of his race was becoming uncertain as its past had already become obvious. Though it is evident on the one hand that this persistence of Catholic power in Ireland must intensify very greatly the loneliness of the Irish Catholic who voluntarily outlaws himself yet on the other hand the force which he must generate to propel himself out of so strong and intricate a tyranny may often be sufficient to place him beyond the region of re-attraction. It was, in fact, the very fervour of Stephen’s former religious life which sharpened for him now the pains of hi
s solitary position and at the same time hardened into a less pliable, a less appeasable enmity molten rages and glowing transports on which the emotions of helplessness and loneliness and despair had first acted as chilling influences.
The tables in the Library were deserted during the summer months and whenever Stephen wandered in there he found few faces that he knew. Cranly’s friend [O’Neill] Glynn, the clerk from [the Custom House] Guinness’, was one of these familiar faces: he was very busy all the summer reading philosophical handbooks. Stephen had the misfortune to be captured one night by [O’Neill] Glynn, who at once attempted a conversation on the modern school of Irish writers — a subject of which Stephen knew nothing — and he had to listen to an inconstant stream of literary opinions. These opinions were not very interesting: Stephen, for instance, [was] grew rather weary of [O’Neill’s] Glynn’s telling him what beautiful poetry Byron and Shelley and Wordsworth and Coleridge and Keats and Tennyson wrote, and of hearing that Ruskin and Newman and Carlyle and Macaulay were the greatest modern English prose stylists. At last when [O’Neill] Glynn was about to begin an account of a literary paper which his sister had read to the Girls’ Debating Society in Loreto Convent Stephen thought he was justified in putting a closure on the conversation, « somewhat in Cranly’s manner, by asking [O’Neill] Glynn very pointedly » could he manage to get him a ‘pass’ to see the Brewery. The request was made in such a tone of subdued thirsty curiosity that [O’Neill] Glynn was too discouraged to continue his literary criticism and promised to do his best to get the ‘pass.’ Another reader in the Library who seemed to wish to be very friendly with Stephen was a young student named Moynihan who had been elected Auditor of the Literary and Historical Society for the following year. He had to read his inaugural address in November and he had chosen as his subject “Modern Unbelief and Modern Democracy.” He was an extremely [small] ugly young man with a wide mouth which gave the idea that it was under his chin until the face was seen at close quarters, eyes of an over-washed olive green colour set viciously close together, and large rigid ears standing far apart. He took a most agitated interest in the success of his paper as he was going to be a solicitor and he relied on this inaugural address to make his name known. He had not yet developed the astuteness of the legal mind in as much as he imagined that Stephen shared his agitated interest concerning the inaugural address. Stephen came upon him one night while he was busily ‘making-up’ his subject. He had some bulky volumes by Lecky at his side and he was reading and making notes upon an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica under the heading of ‘Socialism.’ He desisted from his labours when he saw Stephen and began to explain the preparations which the committee were making. He showed the letters which had been received from various public men who had been written to by the committee to know if they would speak. He showed the patterns of the cards of invitation which they had decided to have printed and he showed a copy of the notice which was to be sent to all the papers. Stephen who did not know Moynihan very well was surprised at all these confidences. Moynihan said he was sure Stephen would be the auditor who would be elected after him and added how much he had admired the style of Stephen’s paper. After this he began to discuss his own and Stephen’s prospects for the degree. He said German was more useful than Italian (though, of course, Italian was more beautiful as a language) and that he had always studied it for that reason. When Stephen rose to go Moynihan said he might as well go too and put up his books. He came along Nassau St to catch his tram for Palmerston Park and on the way, the night being wet and the streets black and glistening with rain, he united himself still more intimately with his successor-designate by little ejaculations and glances in the wake of a hospital nurse who wore brown stockings and pink petticoats. Stephen was not at all displeased by the spectacle which he had been quietly observing for a long time before Moynihan had caught sight of it but Moynihan’s [ejaculatory desi] desirous ejaculations reminded him of the clicking of a type-writing machine. Moynihan who by this time was on famous terms with him said he would like to know Italian on account of Boccaccio and the other Italian writers. He told Stephen that if he wanted to read something ‘smutty’ [that] the Decameron took the biscuit for ‘smut.’
