Complete Works of James Joyce (267 page)

A certain extravagance began to tinge his life. He was aware that though he was nominally in amity with the order of society into which he had been born, he would not be able to continue so. The life of an errant seemed to him far less ignoble than the life of one who had accepted the tyranny of the mediocre because the cost of being exceptional was too high. The young generation which he saw growing up about him regarded his manifestations of spiritual activity as something more than unseemly and he knew that, under their air of fearful amiableness, the representatives of authority cherished the hope that his unguided nature would bring him into such a lamentable conflict with actuality that they would one day have the pleasure of receiving him officially into some hospital or asylum. This would have been no unusual end for the high emprise of youth often [leads] brings one to premature senility and [De Nerval’s] a poet’s boldness [was] is certainly proved an ill keeper of promises when it induces him to lead a lobster by a bright blue ribbon along the footpath reserved for the citizens. He felt acutely the insidious dangers which conceal themselves under the guise of extravagance but he was convinced also that a dull discharge of duties, neither understood nor congenial, was far more dangerous and far less satisfactory.

 
— The Church believes that in every act a man does he seeks some good, said Cranly. The publican wants to make money, Whelan wants to become a County Court judge, that girl I saw you talking to yesterday .

 
— Miss Clery?

 
— She wants a man and a little house to live in. The missioner wants to make heathens [into] Christian, the librarian of the National Library wants to make the Dublin people [into] students and readers. [What good I understand the good which these men seek but what do you seek?

 
— The Church differentiates between the good which this man seeks and the good which I seek. There is a . Then men you mention seek a good of that kind because they are impelled by [direct] passions which are direct even if they are menial: lust, ambition, gluttony. I seek a .

 
— It might be a very much . I don’t think you know, said Cranly.

XX
IV

About this time there was some agitation in the political world concerning the working of the Royal University. It was proposed to institute a commission to examine into the matter. The Jesuits were accused of working the machine for their own ends without a just sense of impartiality. To parry the charge of obscurantism a monthly review was started under the editorship of McCann. The new editor was in high spirits over this event.

 
— I have got nearly all the ‘copy’ for the first number, he said to Stephen. I’m sure it will be a success. I want you to write us something for the second number — but something we can understand. Condescend a little. You can’t say we are such barbarians now: we have a paper of our own. We can express our views. You will write us something, won’t you? We have an article by Hughes in this month.

 
— Of course there is a censor? said Stephen.

 
— Well, said McCann, the person who originated the idea of the paper in the first instance was Father Cummins.

 
— The director of your sodality?

 
— Yes. He originated the idea so you see he acts as a kind of sponsor to us.

 
— He is the Censor then?

 
— He has discretionary powers but he is not at all narrow-minded. You needn’t be afraid of him.

 
— I see. And tell me, will I be paid?

 
— I thought you were an idealist, said McCann.

 
— Good luck to the paper, said Stephen waving his hand in adieu.

The first number of McCann’s paper contained a long article by Hughes on . It contained also an article in Irish by Glynn’s sister and an editorial article by McCann in which was narrated the history of the inception of the paper. The article began “It was a happy thought of the director of our sodality to unite the various elements of our college life by affording them the opportunity of interchanging ideas and criticisms through the medium of a University magazine. Thanks to the zeal and enterprise of Father Cummins the initial difficulties have been surmounted and we make our bow to the public in the expectation that the public will give us a hearing.” The paper also contained several pages of notes from various sporting and intellectual societies in which celebrities were ‘chaffed’ under the thin disguise of their Latinised surnames. The “Medical Memoes” which were signed “H20” [and] consisted of several congratulatory paragraphs about medicoes who had passed their final examinations and a few complimentary paragraphs about the genial professors of the medical school. The paper also contained some verses: : (a swallow-flight of song) which were signed “Toga Girilis.”

Stephen was shown the new review in the Library by Cranly who seemed to have read it from the first line to the last. Cranly took his friend from one item to another with great persistence, paying no heed to Stephen’s exclamations of impatience. At the “Medical Memoes” Stephen execrated with such smothered fervour that Cranly began to laugh between the pages of the paper and a red-faced priest who was sitting opposite stared indignantly across his copy of . In the porch of the Library were a little knot of young men and a little knot of young women, all provided with copies of the new review. All were laughing and talking, making the rain an excuse for lingering under shelter. McCann, brisk and heated with his cycling-cap sideways on his head, went to and fro between the groups. When he saw Stephen he approached with an air of expectancy.

 
— Well? Have you seen . . . ?

 
— It is a great day for Ireland, said Stephen, seizing the Editor’s hand and shaking it gravely.

 
— Well . . . it is something, said McCann with a suffused forehead.

Stephen leaned against one of the stone pillars and regarded the farther group. She stood in a ring of her companions, laughing and talking with them. The anger with which the new review had filled him gradually ebbed away and he chose to contemplate the spectacle which she and her companions offered him. As on his entrance into the grounds of Clonliffe College a sudden sympathy arose out of a sudden reminiscence, a reminiscent sympathy toward a [sheltered] protected seminarist life the very virtues of which seemed to be set provokingly before the wild gaze of the world, so provokingly that only the strength of walls and watchdogs held them in a little circle of modish and timid ways. Though their affectations often lacked grace and their vulgarity wanted only lungs to be strident the rain brought him charity. The babble of the young students reached him as if from a distance, in broken pulsations, and lifting his eyes he saw the high rain-clouds retreating across the rain-swept country. The quick light shower was over, tarrying, a cluster of diamonds, among the shrubs of the quadrangle where an exhalation ascended from the blackened earth. The company in the colonnade was leaving shelter, with many a doubting glance, with a prattle of trim boots, a pretty rescue of petticoats, under umbrellas, a light armoury, upheld at cunning angles. He saw them returning to the convent — demure corridors and simple dormitories, a quiet rosary of hours — while the rain-clouds retreated towards the west and the babble of the young men reached him in regular pulsations. He saw far away amid a flat rain-swept country a high plain building with windows that filtered the obscure daylight. Three hundred boys, noisy and hungry, sat at long tables eating beef fringed with green fat like blubber and junks of white damp bread, and one young boy, leaning upon his elbows, opened and closed the flaps of his ears while the noise of the diners reached him rhythmically as the wild gabble of animals.

 
— There should be an art of gesture, said Stephen one night to Cranly.

 
— Yes?

 
— Of course I don’t mean art of gesture in the sense that the elocution professor understands the word. For him a gesture is an emphasis. I mean a rhythm. You know the song “Come unto these yellow sands?”

 
— No.

 
— This is it, said the youth making a graceful anapaestic gesture with each arm. That’s the rhythm, do you see?

 
— Yes.

 
— I would like to go out into Grafton St some day and make gestures in the middle of the street.

 
— I’d like to see that.

 
— There is no reason why life should lose all grace and nobility even though Columbus discovered America. I will live a free and noble life.

 
— Yes?

 
— My art will proceed from a free and noble source. It is too troublesome for me to adopt the manners of these slaves. I refuse to be terrorised into stupidity. Do you believe that one line of verse can immortalise a man?

 
— Why not one word?

—’Sitio’ is a classical cry. Try [and] to improve on it.

 
— Do you think that Jesus when he hung on the cross appreciated what you would call the rhythm of that remark? Do you think that Shakespeare when he wrote a song went out into the street to make gestures for the people?

 
— It is evident that Jesus was unable to illustrate his remark by a correspondingly magnificent gesture but I do not imagine he uttered it in a matter-of-fact voice. Jesus had a very pure tragic manner: his conduct during his trial was admirable. Do you imagine the Church could have erected such elaborately artistic sacraments about his legend unless the original figure had been one of a certain tragic majesty?

 
— And Shakespeare . . . ?

 
— I don’t believe he wanted to go out into the street but I am sure he appreciated his own music. I don’t believe that beauty is fortuitous. A man might think for seven years at intervals and all at once write a quatrain which would immortalise him seemingly without thought or care — seemingly. Then the groundling will say: “O, he could write poetry”: and if I ask “How was that?” the groundling will answer “Well, he just wrote it, that’s all.”

 
— In my opinion you imagine all this about rhythm and gesture. A poet according to you, is a terribly mixed-up fellow.

 
— The reason you say that is because you have never seen a poet in action before.

 
— How do you know that?

 
— You think my theorising very high-flown and fantastical, don’t you?

 
— Yes, I do.

 
— Well, I tell you you think me fantastical simply because I am modern.

 
— My dear man, that’s rubbish. You’re always talking about “modern.” Have you any idea of the age of the earth? You say you’re emancipated but, in my opinion, you haven’t got beyond the first book of Genesis yet. There is no such thing as “modern” or “ancient”: it’s all the same.

 
— What’s all the same?

 
— Ancient and modern.

 
— O, yes, I know, everything is the same as everything else. Of course I know the word ‘modern’ is only a word. But when I use it I use it with a certain meaning . . .

 
— What do you mean, for instance?

 
— The modern spirit is vivisective. Vivisection itself is the most modern process one can conceive. The ancient spirit accepted phenomena with a bad grace. The ancient method investigated law with the lantern of justice, morality with the lantern of revelation, art with the lantern of tradition. But all these lanterns have magical properties: they transform and disfigure. The modern method examines its territory by the light of day. Italy has added a science to civilisation by putting out the lantern of justice and considering the criminal in [action] production and in action. All modern political and religious criticism dispenses with presumptive States, [and] presumptive Redeemers and Churches. [and] It examines the entire community in action and reconstructs the spectacle of redemption. If you were an esthetic philosopher you would take note of all my vagaries because here you have the spectacle of the esthetic instinct in action. The philosophic college should spare a detective for me.

 
— I suppose you know that Aristotle founded the science of biology.

 
— I would not say a word against Aristotle for the world but I think his spirit would hardly do itself justice in treating of the inexact” sciences.

 
— I wonder what Aristotle would have thought of you as a poet?

 
— I’m damned if I would apologise to him at all. Let him examine me if he is able. Can you imagine a handsome lady saying “O, excuse me, my dear Mr Aristotle, for being so beautiful”?

 
— He was a very wise man.

 
— Yes but I do not think he is the special patron of those who proclaim the usefulness of a stationary march.

 
— What do you mean?

 
— Have you not noticed what a false and unreal sound abstract terms have on the lips of those ancients in the college? You see what talk they have now about their new paper. McCann is supposed to lead them out of captivity. Doesn’t that paper of theirs make you say to yourself “O Lord, I’m glad I had no hand in this”? The toy life which the Jesuits permit these docile young men to live is what I call a stationary march. The marionette life which the Jesuit himself lives as a dispenser of illumination and rectitude is another variety of the stationary march. And yet both these classes of puppets think that Aristotle has apologised for them before the eyes of the world. Kindly remember the monstrous legend upon which all their life is regulated — how Aristotelian it is! Kindly remember the minute bylaws they have for estimating the exact amount of salvation in any good work — what an Aristotelian invention !

A week or so before Christmas Stephen was standing one night in the porch of the Library when Emma came out. She stopped to talk with him. She was dressed cosily in warm tweeds and the long even coils of her white boa presented her smiling face to the wintry air. Any young man of reasonable sanity, seeing so happy and so glowing a figure in a cheerless landscape, would have longed to take it in his arms. She wore a little brown fur cap which made her look like a Christmas doll and her incorrigible eyes seemed to say “Wouldn’t you like to fondle me?” She began to chatter at once. She knew the girl that had written — an awfully smart girl at that kind of thing. They had a magazine in her convent too; she wrote “skits” for it.