by James Joyce
— I was sorry to hear of the death of your sister … sorry we didn’t know in time … to have been at the funeral.
Stephen released his hand gradually and said:
— O, she was very young … a girl.
McCann released his hand at the same rate of release, and said:
— Still … it hurts.
The acme of unconvincingness seemed to Stephen to have been reached at that moment.
The second year of Stephen’s University life opened early in October. His godfather had made no comment on the result of the first year but Stephen was told that this opportunity would be the last given him. He chose Italian as his optional subject, partly from a desire to read Dante seriously, and partly to escape the crush of French and German lectures. No-one else in the college studied Italian and every second morning he came to the college at ten o’clock and went up to Father Artifoni’s bedroom. Father Artifoni was an intelligent little moro, who came from Bergamo, a town in Lombardy. He had clean lively eyes and a thick full mouth. Every morning when Stephen rapped at his door [he] there was the noise of chairs being disarranged before the “Avanti!” The little priest never read in the sitting posture and the noise which Stephen heard was the noise of an improvised lectern returning to its constituent parts, namely, two cane chairs and a stiff blotting-pad. The Italian lessons often extended beyond the hour and much less grammar and literature was discussed than philosophy. The teacher probably knew the doubtful reputation of his pupil but for this very reason he adopted a language of ingenuous piety, not that he was himself Jesuit enough to lack ingenuousness but that he was Italian enough to enjoy a game of belief and unbelief. He reproved his pupil once for an admiring allusion to the author of The Triumphant Beast.
— You know, he said, the writer, Bruno, was a terrible heretic.
— Yes, said Stephen, and he was terribly burned.
But the teacher was a poor inquisitor.* He told Stephen very slyly that when he and his clerical companions attended public lectures in the University the lecturer was shrewd enough to add a trifle of salt to his criticisms. Father Artifoni accepted the salt with a relish. He was unlike many of the citizens of the third Italy in his want of affection for the English and he was inclined to be lenient towards the audacities of his pupil, which, he supposed, must have been the outcome of too fervid Irishism. He was unable to associate audacity of thought with any temper but that of the irredentist.
Father Artifoni had to admit one day to Stephen that the most reprehensible moment of human delight in as much as it had given pleasure to a human being was good in the sight of God. The conversation had been about an Italian novel. A priest in the house had read the novel and condemned it to the dinner-table. It was bad, he said. Stephen urged that it had given him at least esthetic pleasure and that, for that reason, it could be said to be good:
— Father Byrne does not think so.
— But God?
— For God it might be … good.
— Then I prefer to side against Father Byrne.
They argued very acutely of the beautiful and the good. Stephen wished to amend or to clarify scholastic terminology: a contrast between the good and the beautiful was not necessary. Aquinas had defined the good as that towards the possession of which an appetite tended, the desirable. But the true and the beautiful were desirable, were the highest, most persistent orders of the desirable, truth being desired by the intellectual [appeased] appetite which was appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible, beauty being desired by the esthetic appetite which was appeased by the most satisfying relations of the sensible. Father Artifoni admired very much the whole-hearted manner in which Stephen vivified philosophic generalisations and encouraged the young man to write a treatise on esthetic. It must have been a surprise for him to find in such latitudes a young man who could not conceive a divorce between art and nature and that not for reasons of climate or temperament but for intellectual reasons. For Stephen art was neither a copy nor an imitation of nature: the artistic process was a natural process. In all his talk about artistic perfection it was impossible to detect an artificial accent. To talk about the perfection of one’s art was not for him to talk about something agreed upon as sublime but in reality no more than a sublime convention but rather to talk about a veritably sublime process of one’s nature which had a right to examination and open discussion.
It was exactly this vivid interest which kept him away from such places of uncomely dalliance as the debating society and the warmly cushioned sodality. Mr Moynihan’s inaugural address was held in the Aula Maxima in November. The President took the chair, surrounded by his professors. The platform was given up to notabilities and the body of the hall to the irregular intellectuals who go from address to address during the winter season and never miss attendance at the theatre when the play is not played in English. The end of the hall was packed with the students of the college. Nine-tenths of them were very serious and nine-tenths of the remainder were serious at intervals. Before the paper was read Whelan received from the president a gold medal for oratory, and one of Mr Daniel’s sons a silver medal for oratory. Mr Moynihan was in evening dress and the front of his hair was curled. [The president clapped him] When he stood up to read his paper the president clapped him and then the hall clapped. Moynihan’s paper showed that the true consoler of the afflicted was not the self-seeking demagogue with his ignorance and lax morality but the Church and that the true way to better the lot of the working classes was not by teaching them to disbelieve in a spiritual and material order, working together in harmony, but by teaching them to follow in humility the life of One who was the friend of all humanity, great and lowly, rich and poor, just and unjust, lettered and unlettered, of One who though above all other men was Himself the meekest of men. Moynihan alluded also to the strange death of a French atheistic writer and implied that Emmanuel had chosen to revenge himself on the unhappy gentleman by privily tampering with his gas-stove.
Among the speakers who followed Moynihan were a County Court Judge and a retired colonel of reactionary sympathies. All the speakers praised the work done by the Jesuits in training the youth of Ireland for the higher walks of life. The essayist of the night was adduced as an example. From his post beside Cranly in an angle of the hall Stephen glanced along the ranks of students. The faces which were now composed to seriousness all bore the same stamp of Jesuit training. For the most part they were free from the more blatant crudities of youth; they were not without a certain inoffensive « genuine distaste for the vices of youth. » * They admired Gladstone, physical science and the tragedies of Shakespeare: and they believed in the adjustment of Catholic teaching to everyday needs, in the Church diplomatic. Without displaying an English desire for an aristocracy of substance they held violent measures to be unseemly and in their relations among themselves and towards their superiors they displayed a nervous and (whenever there was question of authority) a very English liberalism. They respected spiritual and temporal authorities, the spiritual authorities of Catholicism and of patriotism, and the temporal authorities of the hierarchy and the government. The memory of Terence MacManus was not less revered by them than the memory of Cardinal Cullen.* If the call to a larger and nobler life ever came to visit them they heard it with secret gladness but always they decided to defer their lives until a favourable moment because they felt unready. They listened to all the speakers attentively and applauded whenever there was an allusion to the President, to Ireland or to the faith. Temple shambled into the hall in the middle of the proceeding and introduced a friend of his to Stephen:
— ’Scuse me, this is Fitz, decent fellow. He admires you. ’Scuse me for introducing him, decent fellow.
Stephen shook hands with Fitz, a grey-headed young man with a puzzled flushed face. Fitz and Temple stood against the wall for support as they were both a little unsteady. Fitz began to doze quietly.
— He’s a revolutionist, said Temple to Stephen and Cranly. D
’ye know what, Cranly, I believe you’re a revolutionist too. Are you a revolutionist … Ah, by hell, you don’t like answering that … I’m a revolutionist.
At this moment a speaker was applauded for mentioning the name of John Henry Newman.
— Who is he, said Temple to everyone near him, who’s this chap?
— Colonel Russell.
— O, is this Colonel … What did he say? What was it he said?
Nobody answered him so he shambled through a few more incoherent questions and at last, unable to satisfy himself as to the Colonel’s way of thinking, called out “Hurrah for the Mad Mullah” and then asked Cranly did he not think the Colonel was a ‘bloody cod.’
Stephen studied even less regularly during the second year than he had done during the first. He attended lectures oftener but he seldom went to the Library to read. The Vita Nuova of Dante suggested to him that he should make his scattered love-verses into a perfect wreath and he explained to Cranly at great length the difficulties of the verse-maker. His love-verses gave him pleasure: he wrote them at long intervals and when he wrote it was always a mature and reasoned emotion which urged him. But in his expressions of love he found himself compelled to use what he called the feudal terminology and as he could not use it with the same faith and purpose as animated the feudal poets themselves he was compelled to express his love a little ironically. This suggestion of relativity, he said, mingling itself with so immune a passion is a modern note: we cannot swear or expect eternal fealty because we recognise too accurately the limits of every human energy. It is not possible for the modern lover to think the universe an assistant at his love-affair and modern love, losing somewhat of its fierceness, gains also somewhat in amiableness. Cranly would not hear of this: for him a distinction between ancient and modern was a trick of words because he had in his own mind reduced past and present to a level of studious ignobility. Stephen tried to sustain against him that though humanity may not change beyond recognition during the short eras known as the ages of man yet these ages are the preys of different ideas in accordance with which every activity, even the least, which they engender is conceived and directed. The distinction, he argued, between the feudal spirit and the spirit of humanity at present is not a phrase of the men of letters. Cranly, like many cynical romanticists, held that the civil life affected in no way the individual life and that it was possible for men to preserve ancient superstitions and prejudices in the midst of a machinery of modernity, just as it was possible for men to live in the medley of machines a life of conformity and yet to be in his heart a rebel against the order he upheld: human nature was a constant quantity. As for the scheme of making a wreath of songs in praise of love he thought that if such a passion really existed it was incapable of being expressed.
— We are not likely to know whether it exists or not if no man tries to express it, said Stephen. We have nothing to test it by.
— What can you test it by? said Cranly. [Jesus] The Church says the test of friendship is to see if a man will lay down his life for a friend.
— You do not believe that, surely?
— No; bloody fools of people will die for different things. McCann, for instance, would die out of sheer obstinacy.
— Renan says a man is a martyr only for things of which he is not quite sure.
— Men die for two sticks put crosswise even in this modern age. What is a cross but two common sticks?
— Love, said Stephen, is a name, if you like, for something inexpressible … but no, I won’t admit that … I believe it might be a test of love to see what exchanges it offers. What do people give when they love?
— A wedding breakfast, said Cranly.
— Their bodies, isn’t it: that, at the very least. It is something to give one’s body even for hire.
— Then you think that women who give their bodies for hire, as you say, love the people they give them to?
— When we love, we give. In a way they love too. We give something, a tall hat or a book of music or one’s time and labour or one’s body, in exchange for love.
— I’d a damn sight sooner them women gave me a tall hat than their bodies.
— A matter of taste. You may like tall hats. I don’t.
— My dear man, said Cranly, you know next to nothing about human nature.
— I know a few elementary things and I express them in words. I feel emotions and I express them in rhyming lines. Song is the simple rhythmic liberation of an emotion. Love can express itself in part through song.
— You idealise everything.
— You make me think of Hughes when you say that.
— You imagine that people are capable of all these … all this beautiful imaginary business. They’re not. Look at the girls you see every day. Do you think they would understand what you say about love?
— I don’t know really, said Stephen. I do not idealise the girls I see every day. I regard them as marsupials * … But still I must express my nature.
— Write the verses, anyway, said Cranly.
— I feel rain, said Stephen stopping under a branch and waiting for the fall of raindrops.
Cranly stood beside him and watched his pose with an expression of bitter satisfaction on his face.
During his wanderings Stephen came on an old library in the midst of those sluttish streets which are called old Dublin. The library had been founded by Archbishop Marsh and though it was open to the public few people seemed aware of its existence. The librarian, [was] delighted at the prospect of a reader, showed Stephen niches and nooks inhabited by dusty brown volumes. Stephen went there a few times in the week to read old Italian books of the Trecento. He had begun to be interested in Franciscan literature. He appreciated not without pitiful feelings the legend of the mild heresiarch of Assisi. He knew, by instinct, that S. Francis’ love-chains would not hold him very long but the Italian was very quaint. Elias and Joachim also relieved the naïf history. He had found on one of the carts of books near the river an unpublished book containing two stories by W. B. Yeats. One of these stories was called The Tables of the Law and in it was mentioned the fabulous preface which Joachim, abbot of Flora, is said to have prefixed to his Eternal Gospel. This discovery, coming so aptly upon his own researches, induced him to follow his Franciscan studies with vigour. He went every Sunday evening to the church of the Capuchins whither he had once carried the disgraceful burden of his sins to be eased of it. He was not offended by the processions of artizans and labourers round the church and the sermons of the priests were grateful to him inasmuch as the speakers did not seem inclined to make much use of their rhetorical and elocutionary training nor anxious to reveal themselves, in theory, at least, men of the world. He thought, in an Assisan mood, that these men might be nearer to his purpose than others: and one evening while talking with a Capuchin, he had over and over to restrain an impulse which urged him to take the priest by the arm, lead him up and down the chapel-yard and deliver himself boldly of the whole story of The Tables of the Law, every word of which he remembered. Considering Stephen’s general attitude towards the Church, there was certainly a profound infection in such an impulse which it needed great efforts of his intelligent partner to correct. He satisfied himself by leading Lynch round the enclosure of Stephen’s Green and making that young man very awkward by reciting Mr Yeats’s story with careful animation. Lynch said he didn’t know what the story was about but, afterwards, when safely secluded in a ‘snug’ he said that the recitation had given him immense pleasure.
— These monks are worthy men, said Stephen.
— Full, round men, said Lynch.
— Worthy men. I went a few days ago to their library. I had great trouble getting in: all the monks came out of different corners to spy at me. Father [Abbot] Guardian asked me what I wanted. Then he brought me in and gave himself a great deal of trouble going over books. Mind you, he was a fat priest and he had just dined so he really was good-natured.
— Good worthy man.
— He didn’t know in the least what I wanted or why I wanted it but he went up one page and down the next with his finger looking for the name and puffing and humming to himself “Jacopone, Jacopone, Jacopone, Jacopone.” Haven’t I a sense of rhythm, eh?
Stephen was still a lover of the deformations wrought by dusk. Late autumn and winter in Dublin are always seasons of damp gloomy weather. He went through the streets at night intoning phrases to himself. He repeated often the story of The Tables of the Law and the story of the Adoration of the Magi. The atmosphere of these stories was heavy with incense and omens and the figures of the monk-errants, Ahern and Michael Robartes strode through it with great strides. Their speeches were like the enigmas of a disdainful Jesus; their morality was infrahuman or superhuman: the ritual they laid such store by was so incoherent and heterogeneous, so strange a mixture of trivialities and sacred practices that it could be recognised as the ritual of men who had received from the hands of high priests, [who had been] anciently guilty of some arrogance of the spirit, a confused and dehumanised tradition, a mysterious ordination. Civilisation may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws but the least protest against the existing order is made by the outlaws whose creed and manner of life is not renewable even so far as to be reactionary. These inhabit a church apart; they lift their thuribles wearily before their deserted altars; they live beyond the region of mortality, having chosen to fulfil the law of their being. A young man like Stephen in such a season of damp and unrest [had] has no pains to believe in the reality of their existence. They lean pitifully [above] towards the earth, like vapours, desirous of sin, remembering the pride of their origin, calling to others to come to them. Stephen was fondest of repeating to himself this beautiful passage from The Tables of the Law: Why do you fly from our torches which were made out of the wood of the trees under which Christ wept in the gardens of Gethsemane? Why do you fly from our torches which were made of sweet wood after it had vanished from the world and come to us who made it of old tunes with our breath?
