ch18

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Ch18
TS69-75, 76-98
?MS605-659
finished 15Mar 1905 (while writing this chapter, JAJ and Nora relocated from Pola to Trieste)
TS75 notes Joyce's later indication "End of Second Episode of V" (and Spencer unwisely edits this as if a chapter break in SH).
cf Mangan essay [info] [etext]
since Nov 1904, Joyce had been reading Aquinas looking for ways to frame SD's defense in Thomistic terms-- there's no sign he'd worked this out any earlier [cw146]
Newman/Kingsley background

ibsen ebook



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Stephen's paper was fixed for the second Saturday in March. Between Christmas and that date he had therefore an ample space of time wherein to perform preparative abstinences. His forty days were consumed in aimless solitary walks during which he forged out his sentences.


25Dec to 01Jan = 7
01Jan to 31Jan = 31
01Feb to 28Feb = 28
2nd Sat = 8 or more
total = 74 days


In this manner he had his whole essay in his mind from the first word to the last before he had put any morsel of it on paper. In thinking or constructing the form of the essay he found himself much a hampered by the sitting posture. His body disturbed him and he adopted the expedient of appeasing it by gentle promenading. Sometimes during his walks he lost the train of his thought and whenever the void of his mind seemed irreclaimable he forced order upon it by ejaculatory fervours. His morning walks were critical, his evening walks imaginative and whatever had seemed plausible in the evening was always rigorously examined in the light of day. These wanderings in the desert were reported from different points and Mr Daedalus once asked his son what the hell had brought him out to Dolphin's Barn. Stephen said he had gone part of the way home with a fellow from the college whereupon Mr Daedalus remarked that the fellow from the college should have gone all the way into the county Meath to live as his hand was in. Any acquaintances that were encountered during these walks were never allowed to intrude on the young man's meditations by commonplace conversation — a fact which they seemed to recognise in advance by a deferent salute. Stephen was therefore very much surprised one evening as he was walking past the Christian Brothers' School in North Richmond St to feel his arm seized from behind and to hear a voice say somewhat blatantly:



— Hello, Daedalus, old man, is that you?



Stephen turned round and saw a tall young man with many eruptions on his face dressed completely in heavy black. He stared for a few moments, trying to recall the face.



— Don't you remember me? I knew you at once.

— O, yes now I do, said Stephen. But you've changed.

— Think so?

— I wouldn't know you... Are you... in mourning?

Wells laughed.



— By Jove, that's a good one. Evidently you don't know your Church when you see it.



— What? You don't mean to say...?



— Fact, old man. I'm in Clonliffe at present. Been down in Balbriggan today on leave: the boss is very bad. Poor old chap!


map


— O, indeed!



— You're over in the Green now, Boland told me. Do you know him? He said you were at Belvedere with him.



— Is he in too? Yes I know him.



— He has a great opinion of you. He says you're a litterateur now.



Stephen smiled and did not know what subject to suggest next. He wondered how far this loud-voiced student intended to accompany him.



— See me down a bit of the way, will you? I've just come off the train at Amiens St. I'm making for dinner.



— Certainly.



So they walked on side by side.



— Well, and what have you been doing with yourself? Having a good time, I suppose? Down in Bray?



— Ah, the usual thing, said Stephen.



— I know: I know. After the esplanade girls, isn't that it? Silly game, old man, silly game! Get tired of it.



— You have, evidently.



— Should think so: time too... Ever see any of the Clongowes fellows?



— Never one.



— That's the way. We all lose sight of each other after we leave. You remember Roth?



— Yes.



— Out in Australia now — bushranger or something. You're going in for literature, I suppose.



— I don't know really what I'm going in for.



— I know: I know. On the loose, isn't that it? I've been there myself.



— Well, not exactly... began Stephen.



— O, of course not! said Wells quickly with a loud laugh.






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Passing down Jones's Road they saw a gaudy advertisement in strong colours for a melodramatic play. Wells asked Stephen had he read Trilby.

— Haven't you? Famous book, you know; style would suit you, I think. Of course it's a bit... blue.



— How is that?



— O, well, you know... Paris, you know... artists.



— O, is that the kind of book it is?



— Nothing very wrong in it that I could see. Still some people think it's a bit immoral.



— You haven't it in the library in Clonliffe?



— No, not likely... Don't I wish I was out of the show!



— Are you thinking of leaving?



— Next year — perhaps this year — I go to Paris for my theology.



— You won't be sorry, I suppose.



— You bet. Rotten show, this place. Food is not so bad but so dull, you know.



— Are there many students in it now?



— O, yes... I don't mix much with them, you know... There are a good lot.



— I suppose you'll be a parish priest one of these days.



— I hope so. You must come and see me when I am.



— Very good.



— When you're a great writer yourself — as the author of a second Trilby or something of that sort... Won't you come in?



— Is it allowed?



— O, with me... you come in, never mind.


college [wiki] [1909 map] [1901 census]


The two young men went into the grounds of the College and along the circular carriage-drive. It was a damp evening and rather dark. In the uncertain light a few of the more adventurous were to be seen vigorously playing handball in a little side-alley, the smack of the wet ball against the concrete wall of the alley alternating with their lusty shouts. For the most part the students were walking in little groups through the ground, some with their berretas pushed far back to the nape of their necks and others holding their soutanes up as women do with their skirts when they cross a muddy street.



— Can you go with anyone you like? asked Stephen.



— Companions are not allowed. You must join the first group you meet.



— Why didn't you go to the Jesuit order?



— Not likely, my boy. Sixteen years of noviciate and no chance of ever settling down. Here today, there tomorrow.



As Stephen looked at the big square block of masonry looming before them through the faint daylight, he re-entered again in thought the seminarist life which he had led for so many years, to the understanding of the narrow activities of which he could now in a moment bring the spirit of an acute sympathetic alien. He recognised at once the martial mind of the Irish Church in the style of this ecclesiastical barracks. He looked in vain at the faces and figures which passed him for a token of moral elevation: all were cowed without being humble, modish without being simple-mannered. Some of the students saluted Wells but got scanty thanks for the courtesy. Wells wished Stephen to gather that he despised his fellow-students and that it was not his fault if they regarded him as an important person. At the foot of the stone steps he turned to Stephen:



— I must go in to see the Dean for a minute. I'm afraid it's too late for me to show you round the show this evening...



— O, not at all. Another time.



— Well, will you wait for me. Stroll along there towards the chapel. I won't be a minute.





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chapel

He nodded at Stephen for a temporary farewell and sprang up the steps. Stephen wandered on towards the chapel meditatively kicking a white flat stone along the grey pebbly path. He was not likely to be deceived by Wells' words into an acceptance of that young man as a quite vicious person. He knew that Wells had exaggerated his airs in order to hide his internal sense of mortification at meeting one who had not forsaken the world, the flesh and the devil and he suspected that, if there were any tendency to oscillation in the soul of the free-spoken young student, the iron hand of the discipline of the Church would firmly intervene to restore equipoise. At the same time Stephen felt somewhat indignant that anyone should expect him to entrust spiritual difficulties to such a confessor or to receive with pious feelings any sacrament or benediction from the hands of the young students whom he saw walking through the grounds. It was not any personal pride which would prevent him but a recognition of the incompatibility of two natures, one trained to repressive enforcement of a creed, the other equipped with a vision the angle of which would never adjust itself for the reception of hallucinations and with an intelligence which was as much in love with laughter as with combat.



The mist of the evening had begun to thicken into slow fine rain and Stephen halted at the end of a narrow path beside a few laurel bushes, watching at the end of a leaf a tiny point of rain form and twinkle and hesitate and finally take the plunge into the sodden clay beneath. He wondered was it raining in Westmeath. He remembered seeing the cattle standing together patiently in the hedges and reeking in the rain. A little band of students passed at the other side of the laurel bushes: they were talking among themselves:



— But did you see Mrs Bergin?



— O, I saw her... with a black and white boa.

ostrich feathers

— And the two Miss Kennedys were there.



— Where?



— Right behind the Archbishop's Throne.

Archbishop William Walsh [wiki]

1901

— O, I saw her — one of them. Hadn't she a grey hat with a bird in it?

— That was her! She's very lady-like, isn't she.



The little band went down the path. In a few minutes another little band passed behind the bushes. One student was talking and the others were listening.



— Yes and an astronomer too: that's why he had that observatory built over there at the side of the palace. I heard a priest say once that the three greatest men in Europe were Gladstone, Bismarck (the great German statesman) and our own Archbishop — as all-round men. He knew him at Maynooth. He said that in Maynooth...

in 1891 Pope Leo XIII built an observatory at the Vatican [wiki]


The speaker's words were lost in the crunch of the heavy boots on the gravel. The rain was spreading and increasing and the vagrant bands of students were all turning their steps towards the college. Stephen still waited at his post and at last saw Wells coming down the path quickly: he had changed his outdoor dress for a soutane. He was very apologetic and not quite so familiar in manner. Stephen wanted him to go in with the others but he insisted on seeing his visitor to the gate. They took a short cut down beside the wall and were soon opposite the lodge. The side-door was shut and Wells called out loudly to the lodge-woman to open it and let the gentleman out. Then he shook hands with Stephen and pressed him to come again. The lodge-woman opened the side-door and Wells looked out for a second or two almost enviously. Then he said:



— Well, goodbye, old man. Must run in now. Awfully glad to see you again — see any of the old Clongowes set, you know. Be good now: I must run. Goodbye.



As he tucked up his soutane high and ran awkwardly up the drive he looked a strange, almost criminal, fugitive in the dreary dusk. Stephen's eyes followed the running figure for a moment: and as he passed through the door into the lamplit street he smiled at his own impulse of pity.





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He smiled because it seemed to him so unexpected a ripeness in himself — this pity — or rather this impulse of pity for he had no more than entertained it. But it was the actual achievement of his essay which had allowed him so mature a pleasure as the sensation of pity for another. Stephen had a thorough-going manner in many things: his essay was not in the least the exhibition of polite accomplishments. It was on the contrary very seriously intended to define his own position for himself. He could not persuade himself that, if he wrote round about his subject with facility or treated it from any standpoint of impression, good would come of it. On the other hand he was persuaded that no-one served the generation into which he had been born so well as he who offered it, whether in his art or in his life, the gift of certitude. The programme of the patriots filled him with very reasonable doubts; its articles could obtain no intellectual assent from him. He knew, moreover, that concordance with it would mean for him a submission of everything else in its interest and that he would thus be obliged to corrupt the springs of speculation at their very source. He refused therefore to set out for any task if he had first to prejudice his success by oaths to his patria and this refusal resulted in a theory of art which was at once severe and liberal. His Esthetic was in the main applied Aquinas, and he set it forth plainly with a naif air of discovering novelties. This he did partly to satisfy.his own taste for enigmatic roles and partly from a genuine predisposition in favour of all but the premisses of scholasticism. He proclaimed at the outset that art was the human disposition of intelligible or sensible matter for an esthetic end, and he announced further that all such human dispositions must fall into the division of three distinct natural kinds, lyrical, epical and dramatic. Lyrical art, he said, is the art whereby the artist sets forth his image in immediate relation to himself; epical art is the art whereby the artist sets forth his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; and dramatic art is the art whereby the artist sets forth his image in immediate relations to others. The various forms of art, such as music, sculpture, literature, do not offer this division with the same clearness and he concluded from this that those forms of art which offered the division most clearly were to be called the most excellent forms: and he was not greatly perturbed because he could not decide for himself whether a portrait was a work of epical art or not or whether it was possible for an architect to be a lyrical, epical or dramatic poet at will. Having by this simple process established the literary form of art as the most excellent he proceeded to examine it in favour of his theory, or, as he rendered it, to establish the relations which must subsist between the literary image, the work of art itself, and that energy which had imagined and fashioned it, that centre of conscious re-acting, particular life, the artist.


"programme of the patriots" = United Irish League? [wiki]


The artist, he imagined, standing in the position of mediator between the world of his experience and the world of his dreams — a mediator, consequently gifted with twin faculties, a selective faculty and a reproductive faculty. To equate these faculties was the secret of artistic success: the artist who could disentangle the subtle soul of the image from its mesh of defining circumstances most exactly and re-embody it in artistic circumstances chosen as the most exact for it in its new office, he was the supreme artist. This perfect coincidence of the two artistic faculties Stephen called poetry and he imagined the domain of an art to be cone-shaped. The term 'literature' now seemed to him a term of contempt and he used it to designate the vast middle region which lies between apex and base, between poetry and the chaos of unremembered writing. Its merit lay in its portrayal of externals; the realm of its princes was the realm of the manners and customs of societies — a spacious realm. But society is itself, he conceived, the complex body in which certain laws are involved and overwrapped and he therefore proclaimed as the realm of the poet the realm of these unalterable laws. Such a theory might easily have led its deviser to the acceptance of spiritual anarchy in literature had he not at the same time insisted on the classical style. A classical style, he said, is the syllogism of art, the only legitimate process from one world to another. Classicism is not the manner of any fixed age or of any fixed country: it is a constant state of the artistic mind. It is a temper of security and satisfaction and patience. The romantic temper, so often and so grievously misinterpreted and not more by others than by its own, is an insecure, unsatisfied, impatient temper which sees no fit abode here for its ideals and chooses therefore to behold them under insensible figures. As a result of this choice it comes to disregard certain limitations. Its figures are blown to wild adventures, lacking the gravity of solid bodies, and the mind that has conceived them ends by disowning them. The classical temper on the other hand, ever mindful of limitations, chooses rather to bend upon these present things and so to work upon them and fashion them that the quick intelligence may go beyond them to their meaning which is still unuttered. In this method the sane and joyful spirit issues forth and achieves imperishable perfection, nature assisting with her goodwill and thanks. For so long as this place in nature is given us it is right that art should do no violence to the gift.



Between these two conflicting schools the city of the arts had become marvellously unpeaceful. To many spectators the dispute had seemed a dispute about names, a battle in which the position of the standards could never be foretold for a minute. Add to this internecine warfare — the classical school fighting the materialism that must attend it, the romantic school struggling to preserve coherence — and behold from what ungentle manners criticism is bound to recognise the emergence of all achievement. The critic is he who is able, by means of the signs which the artist affords, to approach the temper which has made the work and to see what is well done therein and what it signifies. For him a song by Shakespeare which seems so free and living, as remote from any conscious purpose as rain that falls in a garden or as the lights of evening, discovers itself as the rhythmic speech of an emotion otherwise incommunicable, or at least not so fitly. But to approach the temper which has made art is an act of reverence before the performance of which many conventions must be first put off for certainly that inmost region will never yield its secret to one who is enmeshed with profanities.



Chief among these profanities Stephen set the antique principle that the end of art is to instruct, to elevate, and to amuse. "I am unable to find even a trace of this Puritanic conception of the esthetic purpose in the definition which Aquinas has given of beauty" he wrote "or in anything which he has written concerning the beautiful. The qualifications he expects for beauty are in fact of so abstract and common a character that it is quite impossible for even the most violent partizan to use the Aquinatian theory with the object of attacking any work of art that we possess from the hand of any artist whatsoever." This recognition of the beautiful in virtue of the most abstract relations afforded by an object to which the term could be applied so far from giving any support to a commandment of Noli Tangere was itself no more than a just sequence from the taking-off of all interdictions from the artist. The limits of decency suggest themselves somewhat too readily to the modern speculator and their effect is to encourage the profane mind to very futile jurisdiction. For it cannot be urged too strongly on the public mind that the tradition of art is with the artists and that even if they do not make it their invariable practice to outrage these limits of decency the public mind has no right to conclude therefrom that they do not arrogate for themselves an entire liberty to do so if they choose. It is as absurd, wrote the fiery-hearted revolutionary, for a criticism itself established upon homilies to prohibit the elective courses of the artist in his revelation of the beautiful as it would be for a police-magistrate to prohibit the sum of any two sides of a triangle from being together greater than the third side.



In fine the truth is not that the artist requires a document of licence from householders entitling him to proceed in this or that fashion but that every age must look for its sanction to its poets and philosophers. The poet is the intense centre of the life of his age to which he stands in a relation than which none can be more vital. He alone is capable of absorbing in himself the life that surrounds him and of flinging it abroad again amid planetary music. When the poetic phenomenon is signalled in the heavens, exclaimed this heaven-ascending essayist, it is time for the critics to verify their calculations in accordance with it. It is time for them to acknowledge that here the imagination has contemplated intensely the truth of the being of the visible world and that beauty, the splendour of truth, has been born. The age, though it bury itself fathoms deep in formulas and machinery, has need of these realities which alone give and sustain life and it must await from those chosen centres of vivification the force to live, the security for life which can come to it only from them. Thus the spirit of man makes a continual affirmation.





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Except for the eloquent and arrogant peroration Stephen's essay was a careful exposition of a carefully meditated theory of esthetic. When he had finished it he found it necessary to change the title from "Drama and Life" to "Art and Life" for he had occupied himself so much with securing the foundations that he had not left himself space enough to raise the complete structure. This strangely unpopular manifesto was traversed by the two brothers phrase by phrase and word by word and at last pronounced flawless at all points. It was then safely laid by until the time should come for its public appearance. Besides Maurice two other well-wishers had an advance view of it; these were Stephen's mother and his friend Madden. Madden had not asked for it directly but at the end of a conversation in which Stephen had recounted sarcastically his visit to Clonliffe College he had vaguely wondered what state of mind could produce such irreverences and Stephen had at once offered him the manuscript saying "This is the first of my explosives." The following evening Madden had returned the manuscript and praised the writing highly. Part of it had been too deep for him, he said, but he could see that it was beautifully written.



— You know Stevie, he said (Madden had a brother Stephen and he sometimes used this familiar form) you always told me I was a country buachail and I can't understand you mystical fellows.

Jimmy?


— Mystical? said Stephen.



— About the planets and the stars, you know. Some of the fellows in the League belong to the mystical set here. They'd understand quick enough.



— But there's nothing mystical in it I tell you. I have written it carefully...



— O, I can see you have. It's beautifully written. But I'm sure it will be above the heads of your audience.



— You don't mean to tell me, Madden, you think it's a 'flowery' composition!



— I know you've thought it out. But you are a poet, aren't you?



— I have... written verse... if that's what you mean.



— Do you know Hughes is a poet too?



— Hughes!



— Yes. He writes for our paper, you know. Would you like to see some of his poetry?



— Why, could you show me any?



— It so happens I have one in my pocket. There's one in this week's Sword too. Here it is: read it.



Stephen took the paper and read a piece of verse entitled Mo Naire Tu (My shame art thou). There were four stanzas in the piece and each stanza ended with the Irish phrase — Mo Naire Tu, the last word, of course, rhyming to an English word in the corresponding line. The piece began:

What! Shall the rippling tongue of Gaels
Give way before the Saxon slang!

and in lines full of excited patriotism proceeded to pour scorn upon the Irishman who would not learn the ancient language of his native land. Stephen did not remark anything in the lines except the frequency of such contracted forms as "e'en" "ne'er" and "thro'" instead of "even" "never" and "through" and he handed back the paper to Madden without offering any comment on the verse.

— I suppose you don't like that because it's too Irish but you'll like this, I suppose, because it's that mystical, idealistic kind of writing you poets indulge in. Only you mustn't say I let you see...



— O, no.



Madden took from his inside pocket a sheet of foolscap folded in four on which was inscribed a piece of verse, consisting of four stanzas of eight lines each, entitled "My Ideal." Each stanza began with the words "Art thou real?" The poem told of the poet's troubles in a 'vale of woe' and of the 'heart-throbs' which these troubles caused him. It told of 'weary nights' and 'anxious days' and of an 'unquenchable desire' for an excellence beyond that 'which earth can give.' After this mournful idealism the final stanza offered a certain consolatory, hypothetical alternative to the poet in his woes: it began somewhat hopefully:

Art thou real, my Ideal?
Wilt thou ever come to me
In the soft and gentle twilight
With your baby on your knee?

The effect of this apparition on Stephen was a long staining blush of anger. The tawdry lines, the futile change of number, the ludicrous waddling approach of Hughes's "Ideal" weighed down by an inexplicable infant combined to cause him a sharp agony in the sensitive region. Again he handed back the verse without saying a word of praise or of blame but he decided that attendance in Mr Hughes's class was no longer possible for him and he was foolish enough to regret having yielded to the impulse for sympathy from a friend.




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When a demand for intelligent sympathy goes unanswered he is a too stern disciplinarian who blames himself for having offered a dullard an opportunity to participate in the warmer movement of a more highly organised life. So Stephen regarded his loans of manuscripts as elaborate flag-practices with phrases. He did not consider his mother a dullard but the result of his second disappointment in the search for appreciation was that he was enabled to place the blame on the shoulders of others — not on his own: he had enough responsibilities thereon already, inherited and acquired. His mother had not asked to see the manuscript: she had continued to iron the clothes on the kitchen-table without the least suspicion of the agitation in the mind of her son. He had sat on three or four kitchen chairs, one after another, and had dangled his legs unsuccessfully from all free corners of the table. At last, unable to control his agitation, he asked her point-blank would she like him to read out his essay.



— O, yes, Stephen — if you don't mind my ironing a few things...



— No, I don't mind.



Stephen read out the essay to her slowly and emphatically and when he had finished reading she said it was very beautifully written but that as there were some things in it which she couldn't follow, would he mind reading it to her again and explaining some of it. He read it over again and allowed himself a long exposition of his theories garnished with many crude striking allusions with which he hoped to drive it home the better. His mother who had never suspected probably that "beauty" could be anything more than a convention of the drawingroom or a natural antecedent to marriage and married life was surprised to see the extraordinary honour which her son conferred upon it. Beauty, to the mind of such a woman, was often a synonym for licentious ways and probably for this reason she was relieved to find that the excesses of this new worship were supervised by a recognised saintly authority. However as the essayist's recent habits were not very re-assuring she decided to combine a discreet motherly solicitude with an interest, which without being open to the accusation of factitiousness was at first intended as a compliment. While she was nicely folding a handkerchief she said:



— What does Ibsen write, Stephen?



— Plays.



— I never heard of his name before. Is he alive at present?



— Yes, he is. But, you know, in Ireland people don't know much about what is going on out in Europe.



— He must be a great writer from what you say of him.



— Would you like to read some of his plays, mother? I have some.



— Yes. I would like to read the best one. What is the best one?



— I don't know... But do you really want to read Ibsen?



— I do, really.



— To see whether I am reading dangerous authors or not, is that why?



— No, Stephen, answered his mother with a brave prevarication. I think you're old enough now to know what is right and what is wrong without my dictating to you what you are to read.



— I think so too... But I'm surprised to hear you ask about Ibsen. I didn't imagine you took the least interest in these matters.



Mrs Daedalus pushed her iron smoothly over a white petticoat in time to the current of her memory.



— Well, of course, I don't speak about it but I'm not so indifferent... Before I married your father I used to read a great deal. I used to take an interest in all kinds of new plays.



— But since you married neither of you so much as bought a single book!



— Well, you see, Stephen, your father is not like you: he takes no interest in that sort of thing... When he was young he told me he used to spend all his time out after the hounds or rowing on the Lee. He went in for athletics.



— I suspect what he went in for, said Stephen irreverently. I know he doesn't care a jack straw about what I think or what I write.



— He wants to see you make your way, get on in life, said his mother defensively. That's his ambition. You shouldn't blame him for that.



— No, no, no. But it may not be my ambition. That kind of life I often loathe: I find it ugly and cowardly.



— Of course life isn't what I used to think it was when I was a young girl. That's why I would like to read some great writer, to see what ideal of life he has — amn't I right in saying "ideal"?



— Yes, but...



— Because sometimes — not that I grumble at the lot Almighty God has given me and I have more or less a happy life with your father — but sometimes I feel that I want to leave this actual life and enter another — for a time.



— But that is wrong: that is the great mistake everyone makes. Art is not an escape from life!



— No?



— You evidently weren't listening to what I said or else you didn't understand what I said. Art is not an escape from life. It's just the very opposite. Art, on the contrary, is the very central expression of life. An artist is not a fellow who dangles a mechanical heaven before the public. The priest does that. The artist affirms out of the fulness of his own life, he creates... Do you understand?



And so on. A day or two afterwards Stephen gave his mother a few of the plays to read. She read them with great interest and found Nora Helmer a charming character. Dr Stockmann she admired but her admiration was naturally checked by her son's light-heartedly blasphemous description of that stout burgher as 'Jesus in a frock-coat.' But the play which she preferred to all others was the Wild Duck. Of it she spoke readily and on her own initiative: it had moved her deeply. Stephen, to escape a charge of hot-headedness and partizanship, did not encourage her to an open record of her feelings.



— I hope you're not going to mention Little Nell in the Old Curiosity Shop.



— Of course I like Dickens too but I can see a great difference between Little Nell and that poor little creature — what is her name?...



— Hedvig Ekdal?



— Hedvig, yes... It's so sad: it's terrible to read it even... I quite agree with you that Ibsen is a wonderful writer.



— Really?



— Yes, really. His plays have impressed me very much.



— Do you think he is immoral?



— Of course, you know, Stephen, he treats of subjects... of which I know very little myself... subjects...



— Subjects which, you think, should never be talked about?



— Well, that was the old people's idea but I don't know if it was right. I don't know if it is good for people to be entirely ignorant.



— Then why not treat them openly?



— I think it might do harm to some people — uneducated, unbalanced people. People's natures are so different. You perhaps...



— O, never mind me... Do you think these plays are unfit for people to read?



— No, I think they're magnificent plays indeed.



— And not immoral?



— I think that Ibsen... has an extraordinary knowledge of human nature... And I think that human nature is a very extraordinary thing sometimes.



Stephen had to be contented with this well-worn generality as he recognised in it a genuine sentiment. His mother, in fact, had so far evangelised herself that she undertook the duties of missioner to the heathen; that is to say, she offered some of the plays to her husband to read. He listened to her praises with a somewhat startled air, observing no feature of her face, his eyeglass screwed into an astonished eye and his mouth poised in naif surprise. He was always interested in novelties, childishly interested and receptive, and this new name and the phenomena it had produced in his house were novelties for him. He made no attempt to discredit his wife's novel development but he resented both that she should have achieved it unaided by him and that she should be able thereby to act as intermediary between him and his son. He condemned as inopportune but not discredited his son's wayward researches into strange literature and, though a similar taste was not discoverable in him, he was prepared to commit that most pious of heroisms namely the extension of one's sympathies late in life in deference to the advocacy of a junior. Following the custom of certain old-fashioned people who can never understand why their patronage or judgments should put men of letters into a rage he chose his play from the title. A metaphor is a vice that attracts the dull mind by reason of its aptness and repels the too serious mind by reason of its falsity and danger so that, after all, there is something to be said, nothing voluminous perhaps, but at least a word of concession for that class of society which in literature as in everything else goes always with its four feet on the ground. Mr Daedalus, anyhow, suspected that A Doll's House would be a triviality in the manner of Little Lord Fauntleroy and, as he had never been even unofficially a member of that international society which collects and examines psychical phenomena, he decided that Ghosts would probably be some uninteresting story about a haunted house. He chose the League of Youth in which he hoped to find the reminiscences of like-minded roysterers and, after reading through two acts of provincial intrigue, abandoned the enterprise as tedious. He had promised himself, arguing from the alienated attitudes and half-deferential half-words of pressmen at the mention of the name, a certain extravagance, perhaps an anomalous torridity of the North and though the name beneath Ibsen's photograph never failed to reawaken his sense of wonder, the upright line of the "b" running so strangely beside the initial letter as to suspend the mind amid incertitudes for some oblivious instants, the final impression made upon him by the figure to which the name was affixed, a figure which he associated with a solicitor's or a stockbroker's office in Dame St, was an impression of relief mixed with disappointment, the relief for his son's sake prevailing dutifully over his own slight but real disappointment. So that from neither of Stephen's parents did respectability get full allegiance.




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A week before the date fixed for the reading of the paper Stephen consigned a small packet covered with neat characters into the Auditor's hands. McCann smacked his lips and put the manuscript into the inside pocket of his coat:



— I'll read this tonight and I'll see you here at the same hour tomorrow. I think I know all that is in it beforehand.



The next afternoon McCann reported:



— Well, I've read your paper.



— Well?



— Brilliantly written — a bit strong, it seems to me. However I gave it to the President this morning to read.



— What for?



— All the papers must be submitted to him first for approval, you know.



— Do you mean to say, said Stephen scornfully, that the President must approve of my paper before I can read it to your society!



— Yes. He's the Censor.



— What a valuable society!



— Why not?



— It's only child's play, man. You remind me of children in the nursery.



— Can't be helped. We must take what we can get.



— Why not put up the shutters at once?



— Well, it is valuable. It trains young men for public speaking — for the bar and the political platform.



— Mr Daniel could say as much for his charades.



— I daresay he could.



— So this Censor of yours is inspecting my essay?



— Well. He's liberal-minded.



— Ay.



While the two young men were holding this conversation on the steps of the Library, Whelan, the College orator came up to them. This suave rotund young man, who was the Secretary of the Society, was reading for the Bar. His eyes regarded Stephen now with mild, envious horror and he forgot all his baggage from Attica:



— Your essay is tabu, Daedalus.



— Who said so?



— The Very Reverend Dr Dillon.



The delivery of this news was followed by a silence during which Whelan slowly moistened his lower lip with saliva from his tongue and McCann made ready to shrug his shoulders.



— Where is the damned old fool? said the essayist promptly.



Whelan blushed and pointed his thumb over his shoulder. Stephen in a moment was half across the quadrangle. McCann called after him:



— Where are you going?



Stephen halted but, discovering that he was too angry to trust himself to speak, he merely pointed in the direction of the College, and went forward quickly.



So after all his trouble, thinking out his essay and composing his periods, this old fogey was about to prohibit it! His indignation settled into a mood of politic contempt as he crossed the Green. The clock in the hall of the College pointed to half past three as Stephen addressed the doddering door-porter. He had to speak twice, the second time with a distinct, separated enunciation, for the door-porter was rather stupid and deaf:



— Can — I — see — the — President?




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65yo in 1900

The President was not in his room: he was saying his office in the garden. Stephen went out into the garden and went down towards the ball-alley. A small figure wrapped in a loose Spanish-looking black cloak presented its back to him near the far end of the side-walk. The figure went on slowly to the end of the walk, halted there for a few moments, and then turning about presented to him over the edge of a breviary a neat round head covered with curly grey hair and a very wrinkled face of an indescribable colour: the upper part was the colour of putty and the lower part was shot with slate colour. The President came slowly down the side-walk, in his capacious cloak, noiselessly moving his grey lips as he said his office. At the end of the walk he halted again and looked inquiringly at Stephen. Stephen raised his cap and said "Good evening, sir." The President answered with the smile which a pretty girl gives when she receives some compliment which puzzles her — a 'winning' smile:



— What can I do for you? he asked in a rich deep calculated voice.



— I understand, said Stephen, that you wish to see me about my essay — an essay I have written for the Debating Society.



— O, you are Mr Daedalus, said the President more seriously but still agreeably.



— Perhaps I am disturbing...



— No, I have finished my office, said the President.



He began to walk slowly down the path at such a pace as implied invitation. Stephen kept therefore at his side.



— I admire the style of your paper, he said firmly, very much but I do not approve at all of your theories. I am afraid I cannot allow you to read your paper before the Society.



They walked on to the end of the path, without speaking. Then Stephen said:



— Why, sir?



— I cannot encourage you to disseminate such theories among the young men in this college.



— You think my theory of art is a false one?



— It is certainly not the theory of art which is respected in this college.



— I agree with that, said Stephen.



— On the contrary, it represents the sum-total of modern unrest and modern freethinking. The authors you quote as examples, those you seem to admire...



— Aquinas?



— Not Aquinas; I have to speak of him in a moment. But Ibsen, Maeterlinck... these atheistic writers...



— You do not like...



— I am surprised that any student of this college could find anything to admire in such writers, writers who usurp the name of poet, who openly profess their atheistic doctrines and fill the minds of their readers with all the garbage of modern society. That is not art.



— Even admitting the corruption you speak of I see nothing unlawful in an examination of corruption.



— Yes, it may be lawful — for the scientist, for the reformer...



— Why not for the poet too? Dante surely examines and upbraids society.



— Ah, yes, said the President explanatorily, with a moral purpose in view: Dante was a great poet.



— Ibsen is also a great poet.



— You cannot compare Dante and Ibsen.



— I am not doing so.



— Dante, the lofty upholder of beauty, the greatest of Italian poets, and Ibsen, the writer above and beyond all others, Ibsen and Zola, who seek to degrade their art, who pander to a corrupt taste...



— But you are comparing them!



— No, you cannot compare them. One has a high moral aim — he ennobles the human race: the other degrades it.



— The lack of a specific code of moral conventions does not degrade the poet, in my opinion.



— Ah, if he were to examine even the basest things, said the President with a suggestion of tolerance in store, it would be different if he were to examine and then show men the way to purify themselves.



— That is for the Salvationists, said Stephen.



— Do you mean...



— I mean that Ibsen's account of modern society is as genuinely ironical as Newman's account of English Protestant morality and belief.



— That may be, said the President appeased by the conjunction.



— And as free from any missionary intention.



The President was silent.



— It is a question of temper. Newman could refrain from writing his Apologia for twenty years.



— But when he came out on him! said the President with a chuckle and an expressive incompletion of the phrase. Poor Kingsley!



— It is all a question of temper — one's attitude towards society whether one is poet or critic.



— O, yes.



— Ibsen has the temper of an archangel.



— It may be: but I have always believed that he was a fierce realist like Zola with some kind of a new doctrine to preach.



— You were mistaken, sir.



— This is the general opinion.



— A mistaken one.



— I understood he had some doctrine or other — a social doctrine, free living, and an artistic doctrine, unbridled licence — so much so that the public will not tolerate his plays on the stage and that you cannot name him even in mixed society.



— Where have you seen this?



— O, everywhere... in the papers.



— This is a serious argument, said Stephen reprovingly.



The president far from resenting this hardy statement seemed to bow to its justice: no-one could have a poorer opinion of the half-educated journalism of the present day than he had and he certainly would not allow a newspaper to dictate criticism to him. At the same time there was such a unanimity of opinion everywhere about Ibsen that he imagined...




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— May I ask you if you have read much of his writing? asked Stephen.



— Well, no... I must say I...



— May I ask you if you have read even a single line?



— Well, no... I must admit...



— And surely you do not think it right to pass judgment on a writer a single line of whose writing you have never read?



— Yes, I must admit that.



Stephen hesitated after this first success. The President resumed:



— I am very interested in the enthusiasm you show for this writer. I have never had any opportunity to read Ibsen myself but I know that he enjoys a great reputation. What you say of him, I must confess, alters my view of him considerably. Some day perhaps I shall...



— I can lend you some of the plays if you like, sir, said Stephen with imprudent simplicity.



— Can you indeed?



Both paused for an instant: then —



— You will see that he is a great poet and a great artist, said Stephen.



— I shall be very interested, said the President with an amiable intention, to read some of his work for myself. I certainly shall.



Stephen had an impulse to say "Excuse me for five minutes while I send a telegram to Christiania" but he resisted his impulse. During the interview he had occasion more than once to put severe shackles on this importunate devil within him whose appetite was on edge for the farcical. The President was beginning to exhibit the liberal side of his character, but with priestly cautiousness.

Christiania = Ibsen's home in Denmark


— Yes, I shall be most interested. Your opinions are somewhat strange. Do you intend to publish this essay?



— Publish it!



— I should not care for anyone to identify the ideas in your essay with the teaching in our college. We receive this college in trust.



— But you are not supposed to be responsible for everything a student in your college thinks or says.



— No, of course not... but, reading your essay and knowing you came from our college, people would suppose that we inculcated such ideas here.



— Surely a student of this college can pursue a special line of study if he chooses.



— It is just that which we always try to encourage in our students but your study, it seems to me, leads you to adopt very revolutionary... very revolutionary theories.



— If I were to publish tomorrow a very revolutionary pamphlet on the means of avoiding potato-blight would you consider yourself responsible for my theory?



— No, no, of course not... but then this is not a school of agriculture.



— Neither is it a school of dramaturgy, answered Stephen.



— Your argument is not so conclusive as it seems, said the President after a short pause. However I am glad to see that your attitude towards your subject is so genuinely serious. At the same time you must admit that this theory you have — if pushed to its logical conclusion — would emancipate the poet from all moral laws. I notice too that in your essay you allude satirically to what you call the 'antique' theory — the theory, namely, that the drama should have special ethical aims, that it should instruct, elevate and amuse. I suppose you mean Art for Art's sake.



— I have only pushed to its logical conclusion the definition Aquinas has given of the beautiful.



— Aquinas?



— Pulcra sunt quae visa placent. He seems to regard the beautiful as that which satisfies the esthetic appetite and nothing more — that the mere apprehension of which pleases...



— But he means the sublime — that which leads man upwards.



— His remark would apply to a Dutch painter's representation of a plate of onions.

Van Gogh?

— No, no; that which pleases the soul in a state of sanctification, the soul seeking its spiritual good.



— Aquinas' definition of the good is an unsafe basis of operations: it is very wide. He seems to me almost ironical in his treatment of the "appetites."



The President scratched his head a little dubiously —



— Of course Aquinas is an extraordinary mind, he murmured, the greatest doctor of the Church: but he requires immense interpretation. There are parts of Aquinas which no priest would think of announcing in the pulpit.

(which parts?)


— But what if I, as an artist, refuse to accept the cautions which are considered necessary for those who are still in a state of original stupidity?



— I believe you are sincere but I will tell you this as an older human being than you are and as a man of some experience: the cult of beauty is difficult. Estheticism often begins well only to end in the vilest abominations of which...



— Ad pulcritudinem tria requiruntur.



— It is insidious, it creeps into the mind, little by little...



— Integritas, consonantia, claritas. There seems to me to be effulgence in that theory instead of danger. The intelligent nature apprehends it at once.



— S. Thomas of course...



— Aquinas is certainly on the side of the capable artist. I hear no mention of instruction or elevation.



— To support Ibsenism on Aquinas seems to me somewhat paradoxical. Young men often substitute brilliant paradox for conviction.



— My conviction has led me nowhere: my theory states itself.



— Ah, you are a paradoxist, said the President smiling with gentle satisfaction. I can see that... And there is another thing — a question of taste perhaps rather than anything else — which makes me think your theory juvenile. You don't seem to understand the importance of the classical drama... Of course in his own line Ibsen also may be an admirable writer...



— But, allow me, sir, said Stephen. My entire esteem is for the classical temper in art. Surely you must remember that I said...



— So far as I can remember, said the President lifting to the pale sky a faintly smiling face on which memory endeavoured to bring a vacuous amiability to book, so far as I can remember you treated the Greek drama — the classical temper — very summarily indeed, with a kind of juvenile... impudence, shall I say?



— But the Greek drama is heroic, monstruous. Eschylus is not a classical writer!



— I told you you were a paradoxist, Mr Daedalus. You wish to upset centuries of literary criticism by a brilliant turn of speech, by a paradox.



— I use the word 'classical' in a certain sense, with a certain definite meaning, that is all.



— But you cannot use any terminology you like.



— I have not changed the terms. I have explained them. By 'classical' I mean the slow elaborative patience of the art of satisfaction. The heroic, the fabulous, I call romantic. Menander perhaps, I don't know...



— All the world recognises Eschylus as a supreme classical dramatist.



— O, the world of professors whom he helps to feed...



— Competent critics, said the President severely, men of the highest culture. And even the public themselves can appreciate him. I have read, I think, in some... a newspaper, I think it was... that Irving, the great actor, Henry Irving produced one of his plays in London and that the London public flocked to see it.

Henry Irving [wiki] (I can't find any confirmation of the anecdote)

— From curiosity. The London public will flock to see anything new or strange. If Irving were to give an imitation of a hard-boiled egg they would flock to see it.


The President received this absurdity with unflinching gravity and when he had come to the end of the path, he halted for a few instants before leading the way to the house.



— I do not predict much success for your advocacy in this country, he said generally. Our people have their faith and they are happy. They are faithful to their Church and the Church is sufficient for them. Even for the profane world these modern pessimistic writers are a little too... too much.



With his scornful mind scampering from Clonliffe College to Mullingar Stephen strove to make himself ready for some definite compact. The President had carefully brought the interview into the region of chattiness.



— Yes, we are happy. Even the English people have begun to see the folly of these morbid tragedies, these wretched unhappy, unhealthy tragedies. I read the other day that some playwright had to change the last act of his play because it ended in catastrophe — some sordid murder or suicide or death.



— Why not make death a capital offence? said Stephen. People are very timorous. It would be so much simpler to take the bull by the horns and have done with it.



When they reached the hall of the College the President stood at the foot of the staircase before going up to his room. Stephen waited silently:



— Begin to look at the bright side of things, Mr Daedalus. Art should be healthy first of all.



The President gathered in his soutane for the ascent with a slow hermaphroditic gesture:

in FW, Mamalujo are hermaphroditic


— I must say you have defended your theory very well... very well indeed. I do not agree with it, of course, but I can see you have thought it all out carefully beforehand. You have thought it out carefully?



— Yes, I have.



— It is very interesting — a little paradoxical at times and a little juvenile — but I have been very interested in it. I am sure too that when your studies have brought you further afield you will be able to amend it so as to — fit in more with recognised facts; I am sure you will be able to apply it better then — when your mind has undergone a course of... regular... training and you have a larger, wider sense of... comparison.




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