“A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
everchanging forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.
—Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries?
John Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid
for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.
—She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She
saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She
bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids
closed when he lay on his deathbed.
Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this
world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. _Liliata
rutilantium._
I wept alone.
John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got
out of it as quickly and as best he could.
—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His
errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian,
softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.
—A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of
discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn
from Xanthippe?
—Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts
into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (_absit
nomen!_), Socratididion’s Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever
know. But neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelectures saved him
from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
—But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem
to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remind, to
chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard,
guiltless though maligned.
—He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.
He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling
_The girl I left behind me.
“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”
From what had it proceeded? From his aunt’s
supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the
merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the
walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon
be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had
caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was
singing _Arrayed for the Bridal_. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in
that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees.
The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside
him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He
would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and
would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very
soon.
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself
cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by
one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other
world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally
with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her
heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told
her that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that
himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.
The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness
he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping
tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where
dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not
apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was
fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which
these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and
dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had
begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,
falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to
set out on his journey westward.
“Well and whats cheese? Corpse of milk”
Put on poor old greatgrandfather.
Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain
hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph
reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn’t remember the face after
fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that
died when I was in Wisdom Hely’s.
Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!
He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he
goes.
An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey
alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it.
Good hidingplace for treasure.
Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was
buried here by torchlight, wasn’t he? Making his rounds.
Tail gone now.
One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones
clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat
gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that
_Voyages in China_ that the Chinese say a white man smells like a
corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the
other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the
plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to
ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by
birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See
your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can’t
bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the news
go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communication.
We learned that from them. Wouldn’t be surprised. Regular square feed
for them. Flies come before he’s well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They
wouldn’t care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of
corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.
The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.
Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time.
“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”
sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the
earth to this day.
On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit
silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures.
Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and
unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their
zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would
scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on.
Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the
dishonours of their flesh.
—Who has not? Stephen said.
—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from
me.
—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
—That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
—What? Mr Deasy asked.
—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked
between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no
better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten
years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the
strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman,
O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many
errors, many failures but not the one sin.
“We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping youre well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the frying pan of life into the fire of purgatory.”
Weighing them up perhaps to see which
will go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s the moment
you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake
must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I
haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering
around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and
wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His
sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose
pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the
pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he’s doomed. Devil in
that picture of sinner’s death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace
her in his shirt. Last act of _Lucia. Shall I nevermore behold thee_?
Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you.
Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers. Even
Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one
after the other.
We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and
not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the
fire of purgatory.
Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do
when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy’s warning.
Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma,
poor mamma, and little Rudy.
The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in
on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all
the time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of
course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some
law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a
telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of
distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well
to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there’s no.
The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.
The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of
it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves
without show.
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.
In the hall the children who had stayed latest were putting on their
things: the party was over. She had thrown a shawl about her and, as
they went together towards the tram, sprays of her fresh warm breath
flew gaily above her cowled head and her shoes tapped blithely on the
glassy road.
It was the last tram. The lank brown horses knew it and shook their
bells to the clear night in admonition. The conductor talked with the
driver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. On the empty
seats of the tram were scattered a few coloured tickets. No sound of
footsteps came up or down the road. No sound broke the peace of the
night save when the lank brown horses rubbed their noses together and
shook their bells.
They seemed to listen, he on the upper step and she on the lower. She
came up to his step many times and went down to hers again between
their phrases and once or twice stood close beside him for some moments
on the upper step, forgetting to go down, and then went down. His heart
danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her
eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim
past, whether in life or reverie, he had heard their tale before. He
saw her urge her vanities, her fine dress and sash and long black
stockings, and knew that he had yielded to them a thousand times. Yet a
voice within him spoke above the noise of his dancing heart, asking him
would he take her gift to which he had only to stretch out his hand.
And he remembered the day when he and Eileen had stood looking into the
hotel grounds, watching the waiters running up a trail of bunting on
the flagstaff and the fox terrier scampering to and fro on the sunny
lawn, and how, all of a sudden, she had broken out into a peal of
laughter and had run down the sloping curve of the path. Now, as then,
he stood listlessly in his place, seemingly a tranquil watcher of the
scene before him.
—She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. That’s why she came
with me to the tram. I could easily catch hold of her when she comes up
to my step: nobody is looking. I could hold her and kiss her.
But he did neither: and, when he was sitting alone in the deserted
tram, he tore his ticket into shreds and stared gloomily at the
corrugated footboard.
You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.
His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and
disheartening, excited Stephen’s brain, over which its fumes seemed to
brood.
—Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what
I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do.
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call
itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express
myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as
I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to
use—silence, exile and cunning.
Cranly seized his arm and steered him round so as to lead him back
towards Leeson Park. He laughed almost slily and pressed Stephen’s arm
with an elder’s affection.
—Cunning indeed! he said. Is it you? You poor poet, you!
—And you made me confess to you, Stephen said, thrilled by his touch,
as I have confessed to you so many other things, have I not?
—Yes, my child, Cranly said, still gaily.
—You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also
what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for
another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to
make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps
as long as eternity too.
Cranly, now grave again, slowed his pace and said:
—Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that
word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not
even one friend.
—I will take the risk, said Stephen.
—And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than a
friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.
His words seemed to have struck some deep chord in his own nature. Had
he spoken of himself, of himself as he was or wished to be? Stephen
watched his face for some moments in silence. A cold sadness was there.
He had spoken of himself, of his own loneliness which he feared.
—Of whom are you speaking? Stephen asked at length.
Cranly did not answer.
_March_ 20. Long talk with Cranly on the subject of my revolt.
He had his grand manner on. I supple and suave. Attacked me on the
score of love for one’s mother. Tried to imagine his mother: cannot.
Told me once, in a moment of thoughtlessness, his father was sixtyone
when he was born.
and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Or if
Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his
tea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We
waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained,
we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was
waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened
door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the
railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the
soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her
door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I
could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I
ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown
figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our
ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened
morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few
casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish
blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On
Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some
of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by
drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the
shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’
cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a _come-all-you_
about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native
land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I
imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her
name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which
I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could
not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself
out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know
whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I
could tell her of my confused adoration.
Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?
He was
standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a
man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face,
fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he
called out to the man at the furnace:
“Is the fire hot, sir?”
But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just
as well. He might have answered rudely.
A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing
in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments
of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of,
broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those
moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together
and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had
not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her
household cares had not quenched all their souls’ tender fire. In one
letter that he had written to her then he had said: “Why is it that
words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no
word tender enough to be your name?”
Like distant music these words that he had written years before were
borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When
the others had gone away, when he and she were in their room in the
hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:
“Gretta!”
Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then
something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at
him....
At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its
rattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out
of the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words,
pointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily
under the murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his
heels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the
boat, galloping to their honeymoon.
As the cab drove across O’Connell Bridge Miss O’Callaghan said:
“They say you never cross O’Connell Bridge without seeing a white
horse.
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see
the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the
earth to this day.
On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting
prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud,
uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit
silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures.
Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and
unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their
zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would
scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on.
Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the
dishonours of their flesh.
—Who has not? Stephen said.
—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.
He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from
me.
—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
—That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
—What? Mr Deasy asked.
—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked
between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.
—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and
many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no
better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten
years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the
strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman,
O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many
errors, many failures but not the one sin.
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
The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical
literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the
centre of an epical event and this form progresses till the centre 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 action 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 in the third person. The dramatic form is reached
when the vitality 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 cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally
refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak.
The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and
reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic, like
that of material creation, is accomplished. 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 refine them also out of existence, said Lynch.
A fine rain began to fall from the high veiled sky and they turned into
the duke’s 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 wonder the artist
retired within or behind his handiwork after having perpetrated this
country.
The rain fell faster. When they passed through the passage beside
Kildare house they found many students sheltering under the arcade of
the library. Cranly, leaning against a pillar, was picking his teeth
with a sharpened match, listening to some companions. Some girls stood
near the entrance door. Lynch whispered to Stephen:
—Your beloved is here.
Stephen took his place silently on the step 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
companions.
God spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.
It is they, the foul demons,
who are made in hell the voices of conscience. Why did you sin? Why did
you lend an ear to the temptings of friends? Why did you turn aside
from your pious practices and good works? Why did you not shun the
occasions of sin? Why did you not leave that evil companion? Why did
you not give up that lewd habit, that impure habit? Why did you not
listen to the counsels of your confessor? Why did you not, even after
you had fallen the first or the second or the third or the fourth or
the hundredth time, repent of your evil ways and turn to God who only
waited for your repentance to absolve you of your sins? Now the time
for repentance has gone by. Time is, time was, but time shall be no
more! Time was to sin in secrecy, to indulge in that sloth and pride,
to covet the unlawful, to yield to the promptings of your lower nature,
to live like the beasts of the field, nay worse than the beasts of the
field, for they, at least, are but brutes and have no reason to guide
them: time was, but time shall be no more. God spoke to you by so many
voices, but you would not hear. You would not crush out that pride and
anger in your heart, you would not restore those ill-gotten goods, you
would not obey the precepts of your holy church nor attend to your
religious duties, you would not abandon those wicked companions, you
would not avoid those dangerous temptations. Such is the language of
those fiendish tormentors, words of taunting and of reproach, of hatred
and of disgust. Of disgust, yes! For even they, the very devils, when
they sinned, sinned by such a sin as alone was compatible with such
angelical natures, a rebellion of the intellect: and they, even they,
the foul devils must turn away, revolted and disgusted, from the
contemplation of those unspeakable sins by which degraded man outrages
and defiles the temple of the Holy Ghost, defiles and pollutes himself.
—O, my dear little brothers in Christ, may it never be our lot to hear
that language! May it never be our lot, I say! In the last day of
terrible reckoning I pray fervently to God that not a single soul of
those who are in this chapel today may be found among those miserable
beings whom the Great Judge shall command to depart for ever from His
sight, that not one of us may ever hear ringing in his ears the awful
sentence of rejection: _Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels!
God and religion before every thing! Dante cried. God and religion before the world. Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve. Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb. No God for Ireland! he cried, We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God!
He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily, protruded one
finger after another.
—Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union when
Bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess
Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of
their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they
denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confession box?
And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of Terence Bellew MacManus?
His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his
own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw
of coarse scorn.
—O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of
God’s eye!
Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:
—Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion
come first.
Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:
—Mrs Riordan, don’t excite yourself answering them.
—God and religion before everything! Dante cried. God and religion
before the world.
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with
a crash.
—Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for
Ireland!
—John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled
up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the
air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside
a cobweb.
—No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too much God in Ireland.
Away with God!
—Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost
spitting in his face.
Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again,
talking to him from both sides reasonably. He stared before him out of
his dark flaming eyes, repeating:
—Away with God, I say!
Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table, upsetting
her napkinring which rolled slowly along the carpet and came to rest
against the foot of an easychair. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed
her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently and
shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage:
—Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!
The door slammed behind her.
Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on
his hands with a sob of pain.
—Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!
He sobbed loudly and bitterly.
Stephen, raising his terrorstricken face, saw that his father’s eyes
were full of tears.
“A mans errors are his portals of discovery.”
“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.”
“Men are governed by lines of intellect - women: by curves of emotion”
“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”
“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.”
“Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of anothers soul.”
“Be slow to fall into friendship, but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
