ch18h

18 18a 18b 18c 18d 18e 18f 18g 18h 18i

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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