A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (58 page)

178.5
Merrion Square
: Georgian square in central Dublin.

178.10–11
Aquinas says: ad pulcritudinem tria requiruntur, integritas, consonantia, claritas
: Latin: Stephen’s definition is accurate; he paraphrases Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae
, Part I, Question 39, Article 8: ‘For beauty includes three conditions:
integrity
or perfection, since those things which are impaired are by that very fact ugly; due proportion or
harmony
; and lastly, brightness, or
clarity
, whence things are called beautiful which have an elegant colour’ (trans. Shapcote, i. 211, italics added).

178.24–6
esthetic image … is presented in space
: after Lessing’s distinction (see 177.32 n.).

179.1–8
claritas … reality of which it is but the symbol
: Joyce to his translator: ‘A reference to Plato’s theory of ideas, or more strictly speaking to Neo-Platonism, two philosophical tendencies with which the speaker at that moment is not in sympathy’ (
LIII
132).

179.16–17
radiance … whatness of a thing
: in his emphasis on the object as it is apprehended (or ‘conceived in [the artist’s] imagination’), Stephen shifts Aquinas’s meaning slightly; for the latter
claritas
is not a matter of how a thing is perceived, it is a characteristic of the thing itself, its form, hence its
quidditas
.

179.19–20
the mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal
: Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (80.33 n.): ‘A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from
within’ (
The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd, 2 vols. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1912), 32). Joyce uses the phrase in both his essay (1902) and his lecture (1907) on James Clarence Mangan (
CW
78, 182 and
KB
57, 133) and in
U
186.

179.25–6
Luigi Galvani
: (1737–98), Italian physiologist, Catholic hero of sorts since he resigned his position at the university in Bologna rather than risk compromising his religious beliefs.

179.27
the enchantment of the heart
: Galvani uses the phrase to describe the effect of the insertion of a needle into a frog’s heart (it briefly ceases beating).

179.38–180.4
art … relation to others
: Victor Hugo in his ‘Preface’ to his play
Cromwell
(1827) also distinguishes the lyrical, epical, and dramatic, but on historical and cultural, rather than formal grounds. Cf. the young Joyce’s use of the distinction in his Paris notebook (6 Mar. 1903) (
CW
145). Aubert contends that ‘Joyce’s actual inspiration’ is S. H. Butcher, who in discussing Greek drama suggests that ‘
mimesis
[has] three objects …
pathos
,
ethos
and
praxis
—or, in his reformulation, the immediate lyrical experience born from
pathos
, the epical mediation as staging an
ethos
, and dramatic
praxis
as the truly symbolic act as of the subject’ (Aubert, 88; Butcher,
Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art
(1895; rev. edn. London: Macmillan, 1902)).

180.10–13
Is a chair … why not?
: compare Stephen’s questions with those of Joyce in his Paris notebook (
CW
146).

180.11
Mona Lisa
: the famous painting (
c
. 1503–5) by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) of Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

180.12
Sir Philip Crampton
: Crampton (1777–1858): famous Dublin surgeon; the bust stood above a drinking fountain outside Trinity College; the inscription is self-critical, saying that the statue ‘but feebly represents’ Crampton’s gifts (
JSA
quotes in full (255)).

180.20
Lessing … statues
: see 177.32 n.

180.35
Turpin Hero
: yes, an old English ballad, sometimes called ‘Dick Turpin’ after the eighteenth-century highwayman who was hanged in 1739; various versions exist, at least one of which moves from first to third person; most are in the third person throughout.

181.1
lambent
: playing lightly and brilliantly over (from Latin
lambere
: ‘lick’).

181.5–8
The artist … paring his fingernails
: cf. Flaubert’s comparison of the artist to the god of creation in his 1857 letter (see 174.37–8 n.): ‘L’artiste doit être dans son oeuvre comme Dieu dans la Création, invisible et tout-puissant, qu’on le sente partout, mais qu’on ne le voie pas’ (‘An artist must be in his work like God in the creation, invisible and all-powerful, everywhere felt but never seen’) (
CW
141 n. 1 and
WD
248).

181.11
the duke’s lawn
: small park near Leinster House, originally Kildare House, built (1745) by James Fitzgerald, 20th Earl of Kildare, later (1766) Duke of Leinster (J. T. Gilbert,
A History of the City of Dublin
, 3 vols. (Dublin: McGlashan and Gill, 1859), iii. 275–7).

181.11
the national library
: west of Leinster House in the same complex of buildings.

181.18
Kildare house
: most previous editions have ‘royal Irish academy’; but Joyce sent a letter to Harriet Weaver in 1917 when she was collating corrections to be made to the next printing of
Portrait
asking her to make the change; it is correct in the 1918 and 1924 editions, which resolves the conundrum noted by several previous annotators: the ‘royal Irish academy’ is not on the route Stephen and Lynch are taking, but some 300 yards away—an absolutely uncharacteristic geographical mistake by Joyce. By changing it to ‘Kildare house’ (see 181.11 n.) Joyce corrects his ‘mistake’ (British Library Add. MS 57345, fo. 126; Joyce to Harriet Weaver, 16 Nov. 1917).

181.34
Liverpool
: nearest large English city to Ireland; has a considerable Irish population.

181.35–6
Half a crown cases
: ‘half a crown’: two shillings and sixpence; so, charity cases.

181.39
stewing
: slang: dogged study by someone not naturally gifted.

182.4–5
Ego credo … in Liverpoolio
: schoolboy Latin: ‘I believe that the life of the poor is simply frightful, simply bloody frightful, in Liverpool’; perhaps, but not a patch on the ‘life of the poor’ in Dublin. See F. S. L. Lyons,
Ireland Since the Famine
, 2nd edn. (London: Fontana, 1973), 277–8, for a description of the Dublin slums of the time in which 30% of Dubliners then lived.

182.8–14
The quick light shower … skirts demurely
: cf. Joyce’s ‘epiphany’, no. 25 (
PSW
185).

182.9
quadrangle
: between the arcades of the National Library and the National Museum.

182.25
seraphim
: the highest order of angels (see 95.36–9 n.).

182.29
An enchantment of the heart
: see 179.27 n.

182.37–183.1
In the virgin womb of the imagination … made flesh
: cf.
Ulysses
: ‘In woman’s womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away’ (
U
373) and Joyce to Nora Barnacle Joyce: ‘thinking of the book I have written, the child which I have carried for years and years in the womb of the imagination as you carried in your womb the children you love, and of how I had fed it day after day out of my brain and my memory’ (21 Aug. 1912 (
SL
202–3)).

183.1–2
Gabriel … virgin’s chamber
: the archangel Gabriel (having been promoted by Stephen) came to announce to Mary (the ‘annunciation’) the forthcoming birth of Jesus (Luke 1: 26–38), which announcing represents the moment that ‘the Word was made flesh’ (John 1: 1) (see 100.7 n.).

183.6–7
lured … falling from heaven
: Stephen at his most arcane, picking up on various medieval heresies which suggest that Lucifer and his cohort fell as a result of lusting after Mary.

183.12
villanelle
: nineteen-line poem comprising five three-line and one final four-line stanzas; the first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas and as the penultimate line of the last stanza; the last line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third
and fifth stanzas and the final line of the entire poem; all of which Stephen’s poem does; often regarded as a precious, self-conscious poetic form.

184.18
Sacred Heart
: one of the representations of Jesus: exposing his heart as an emblem of his love; first seen in a vision by Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–90), a French Visitandine nun.

184.23–4
sad and sweet loth to depart
: a song typically sung on taking leave of friends.

184.24
victory chant of Agincourt
: ‘The Agincourt Song’, a popular fifteenth-century song celebrating the victory of the English over the French at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). (
G
quotes.)

184.24–5
air of Greensleeves
: sixteenth-century ballad sung to lady Greensleeves who has ‘wrongly’ and ‘discourteously’ refused the love of the singer.

184.28
called by their christian names
: see 151.25–6 n.

184.31–5
She passed now dancing … on her cheek
: cf. Joyce’s ‘epiphany’, no. 26 (
PSW
186).

184.32
carnival ball
: one given just before the beginning of the Lenten season.

185.7–9
a heretic franciscan … Gherardino da Borgo San Donnino
: Gherardino (d. 1276) led the ‘Spirituals’, a group within the Franciscans desiring to return the order to its original strictness (see 119.34 n.), condemned as a heretic. Cf. ‘Portrait’ (
PSW
214).

185.13
her Irish phrasebook
: from her ‘league class’; see 170.4 n.

185.22
scullerymaid
: the lowliest of servants.

185.28
handsel
: see 154.6 n.

185.30
By Killarney’s Lakes and Fells
: ballad from
Inisfallen
, an opera by Michael Balfe (1808–70).

185.30–2
a girl … shoe
: cf. Joyce in his Trieste notebook: ‘girls laughing when he stumbled in the street were unchaste’ (
WD
94).

185.32
Cork Hill
: side street running alongside City Hall.

185.34
Jacob’s biscuit factory
: W. and R. Jacob & Co., Steam Biscuit Bakery, west of St Stephen’s Green.

186.7
latticed ear of a priest
: because pressed against the lattice separating the one confessing from the one receiving the confession in the confession box.

186.10
a potboy
: one who serves pots of ale in a pub.

186.10
Moycullen
: village in County Galway.

186.12–14
priest of the eternal imagination … everliving life
: see 182.37–

183.1 and 183.1–2 nn., though note that Stephen substitutes the alchemical ‘transmutation’ for the Eucharistic ‘transubstantiation’ and cf. ‘Portrait’: ‘Like an alchemist he bent upon his handiwork, bringing together the mysterious elements, separating the subtle from the gross’ (
PSW
214).

186.22
The chalice flowing to the brim
: cf. D’Annunzio’s image in his
Il Fuoco
(see 143.13–15 n.) of a woman momentarily blinded by the impact of a painting; she has experienced ‘a filling up of the chalice to the brim’ (
G
). Cf.
The Flame
(ed. Bassnett), 5, and
WD
277.

186.32
great overblown scarlet flowers
: cf. D’Annunzio’s image in his
Il Piacere
(see 143.13–15 n.) where the hero faces a similar image: ‘some men were
taking down the hangings from the walls, disclosing a paper with great vulgar flowers, torn here and there and hanging in strips’ (
G
).

187.4
tram; the lank brown horses
: see 57.33 ff. and n.

187.25
strange humiliation of her nature
: her menstrual period; its characterization as ‘humiliation’ has a long history in Western religion. Cf. Joyce in his Trieste notebook (
WD
95).

188.4–22
Tell no more of enchanted days
: cf. this villanelle with the one written by Joyce (
c
. 1898) and dubbed by his brother Stanislaus ‘The Villanelle of the Temptress’ (
PSW
72); ‘he’ in ‘Portrait’ also writes ‘tributary verses’ (
PSW
216). See ‘Introduction’ n. 48.