9. Scylla and Charybdis
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[8590][ 9 ]
[8591]
[8592]Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred:
[8593]
[8594]—And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister.
[8595]A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms
[8596]against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in
[8597]real life.
[8598]
[8599]He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step
[8600]backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor.
[8601]
[8602]A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a
[8603]noiseless beck.
[8604]
[8605]—Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
[8606]ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always
[8607]feels that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in the larger
[8608]analysis.
[8609]
[8610]Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door
[8611]he gave his large ear all to the attendant’s words: heard them: and
[8612]was gone.
[8613]
[8614]Two left.
[8615]
[8616]—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes
[8617]before his death.
[8618]
[8619]—Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with
[8620]elder’s gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? The Sorrows of
[8621]Satan he calls it.
[8622]
[8623]Smile. Smile Cranly’s smile.
[8624]
[8625] First he tickled her
[8626] Then he patted her
[8627] Then he passed the female catheter
[8628] For he was a medical
[8629] Jolly old medi...
[8630]—I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the
[8631]mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.
[8632]
[8633]Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought
[8634]the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed
[8635]low: a sizar’s laugh of Trinity: unanswered.
[8636]
[8637] Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood
[8638] Tears such as angels weep.
[8639] Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
[8640]He holds my follies hostage.
[8641]
[8642]Cranly’s eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed
[8643]Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house.
[8644]And one more to hail him: ave, rabbi: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow
[8645]of the glen he cooees for them. My soul’s youth I gave him, night by
[8646]night. God speed. Good hunting.
[8647]
[8648]Mulligan has my telegram.
[8649]
[8650]Folly. Persist.
[8651]
[8652]—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create
[8653]a figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare’s Hamlet
[8654]though I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.
[8655]
[8656]—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of
[8657]his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.
[8658]Clergymen’s discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal
[8659]to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a
[8660]work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of
[8661]Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley,
[8662]the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the eternal
[8663]wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of
[8664]schoolboys for schoolboys.
[8665]
[8666]A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike
[8667]me!
[8668]
[8669]—The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
[8670]Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy.
[8671]
[8672]—And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said.
[8673]One can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.
[8674]
[8675]He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.
[8676]
[8677]Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the
[8678]heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who
[8679]suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon
[8680]the altar. I am the sacrificial butter.
[8681]
[8682]Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name
[8683]Ineffable, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose identity is no
[8684]secret to adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching
[8685]to see if they can help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of
[8686]light, born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the
[8687]plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P.
[8688]must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once glimpsed our very
[8689]illustrious sister H.P.B.’s elemental.
[8690]
[8691]O, fie! Out on’t! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn’t to look, missus, so you
[8692]naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental.
[8693]
[8694]Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with
[8695]grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright.
[8696]
[8697]—That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s musings
[8698]about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant
[8699]and undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s.
[8700]
[8701]John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth:
[8702]
[8703]—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle
[8704]with Plato.
[8705]
[8706]—Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his
[8707]commonwealth?
[8708]
[8709]Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of
[8710]allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the
[8711]street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through
[8712]spaces smaller than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after
[8713]Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a
[8714]shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to
[8715]the past.
[8716]
[8717]Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.
[8718]
[8719]—Haines is gone, he said.
[8720]
[8721]—Is he?
[8722]
[8723]—I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic,
[8724]don’t you know, about Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn’t
[8725]bring him in to hear the discussion. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy it.
[8726]
[8727] Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick
[8728] To greet the callous public.
[8729] Writ, I ween, ’twas not my wish
[8730] In lean unlovely English.
[8731]—The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.
[8732]
[8733]We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green
[8734]twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.
[8735]
[8736]—People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of
[8737]Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the
[8738]world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on
[8739]the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the
[8740]living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the
[8741]sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower
[8742]of corruption in Mallarmé but the desirable life is revealed only to
[8743]the poor of heart, the life of Homer’s Phæacians.
[8744]
[8745]From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.
[8746]
[8747]—Mallarmé, don’t you know, he said, has written those wonderful
[8748]prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about
[8749]Hamlet. He says: il se promène, lisant au livre de lui-même, don’t
[8750]you know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given in a
[8751]French town, don’t you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.
[8752]
[8753]His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.
[8754]
[8755] Hamlet
[8756] ou
[8757] Le Distrait
[8758] Pièce de Shakespeare
[8759]He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown:
[8760]
[8761]—Pièce de Shakespeare, don’t you know. It’s so French. The French
[8762]point of view. Hamlet ou...
[8763]
[8764]—The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended.
[8765]
[8766]John Eglinton laughed.
[8767]
[8768]—Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but
[8769]distressingly shortsighted in some matters.
[8770]
[8771]Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.
[8772]
[8773]—A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not
[8774]for nothing was he a butcher’s son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and
[8775]spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father’s
[8776]one. Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate
[8777]to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the
[8778]concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.
[8779]
[8780]Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.
[8781]
[8782] Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none
[8783] But we had spared...
[8784]Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.
[8785]
[8786]—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for
[8787]Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our
[8788]flesh creep.
[8789]
[8790]List! List! O List!
[8791]
[8792]My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.
[8793]
[8794]If thou didst ever...
[8795]
[8796]—What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded
[8797]into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of
[8798]manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris
[8799]lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning
[8800]to the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?
[8801]
[8802]John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.
[8803]
[8804]Lifted.
[8805]
[8806]—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with
[8807]a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the
[8808]bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden.
[8809]Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the
[8810]groundlings.
[8811]
[8812]Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.
[8813]
[8814]—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and
[8815]walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed
[8816]the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of
[8817]Avon has other thoughts.
[8818]
[8819]Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!
[8820]
[8821]—The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the
[8822]castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the
[8823]ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who
[8824]has studied Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in
[8825]order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage,
[8826]the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth,
[8827]calling him by a name:
[8828]
[8829]Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit,
[8830]
[8831]bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince,
[8832]young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has
[8833]died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.
[8834]
[8835]Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in
[8836]the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words
[8837]to his own son’s name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been
[8838]prince Hamlet’s twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable
[8839]that he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those
[8840]premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your
[8841]mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?
[8842]
[8843]—But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began
[8844]impatiently.
[8845]
[8846]Art thou there, truepenny?
[8847]
[8848]—Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I
[8849]mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the
[8850]poet lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de
[8851]l’Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day,
[8852]the poet’s drinking, the poet’s debts. We have King Lear: and it is
[8853]immortal.
[8854]
[8855]Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed.
[8856]
[8857] Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan,
[8858] Mananaan MacLir...
[8859]How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
[8860]
[8861]Marry, I wanted it.
[8862]
[8863]Take thou this noble.
[8864]
[8865]Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s
[8866]daughter. Agenbite of inwit.
[8867]
[8868]Do you intend to pay it back?
[8869]
[8870]O, yes.
[8871]
[8872]When? Now?
[8873]
[8874]Well... No.
[8875]
[8876]When, then?
[8877]
[8878]I paid my way. I paid my way.
[8879]
[8880]Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe
[8881]it.
[8882]
[8883]Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got
[8884]pound.
[8885]
[8886]Buzz. Buzz.
[8887]
[8888]But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
[8889]everchanging forms.
[8890]
[8891]I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
[8892]
[8893]A child Conmee saved from pandies.
[8894]
[8895]I, I and I. I.
[8896]
[8897]A.E.I.O.U.
[8898]
[8899]—Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries?
[8900]John Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid
[8901]for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.
[8902]
[8903]—She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She
[8904]saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore
[8905]his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed
[8906]when he lay on his deathbed.
[8907]
[8908]Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into
[8909]this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata
[8910]rutilantium.
[8911]
[8912]I wept alone.
[8913]
[8914]John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
[8915]
[8916]—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got
[8917]out of it as quickly and as best he could.
[8918]
[8919]—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His
[8920]errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
[8921]
[8922]Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian,
[8923]softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.
[8924]
[8925]—A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of
[8926]discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn
[8927]from Xanthippe?
[8928]
[8929]—Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring
[8930]thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit
[8931]nomen!), Socratididion’s Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever
[8932]know. But neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelectures saved him
[8933]from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.
[8934]
[8935]—But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we
[8936]seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.
[8937]
[8938]His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remind, to
[8939]chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless
[8940]though maligned.
[8941]
[8942]—He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.
[8943]He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling
[8944]The girl I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should
[8945]know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds,
[8946]the studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis,
[8947]lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the
[8948]shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think
[8949]the writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his
[8950]eyes in the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all
[8951]Warwickshire to lie withal? Good: he left her and gained the world
[8952]of men. But his boywomen are the women of a boy. Their life, thought,
[8953]speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems
[8954]to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to
[8955]blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed
[8956]goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue
[8957]to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a
[8958]cornfield a lover younger than herself.
[8959]
[8960]And my turn? When?
[8961]
[8962]Come!
[8963]
[8964]—Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book,
[8965]gladly, brightly.
[8966]
[8967]He murmured then with blond delight for all:
[8968]
[8969] Between the acres of the rye
[8970] These pretty countryfolk would lie.
[8971]Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.
[8972]
[8973]A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its
[8974]cooperative watch.
[8975]
[8976]—I am afraid I am due at the Homestead.
[8977]
[8978]Whither away? Exploitable ground.
[8979]
[8980]—Are you going? John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked. Shall we see
[8981]you at Moore’s tonight? Piper is coming.
[8982]
[8983]—Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?
[8984]
[8985]Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.
[8986]
[8987]—I don’t know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get
[8988]away in time.
[8989]
[8990]Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried
[8991]to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec
[8992]logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The
[8993]faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout
[8994]him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them
[8995]i’the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he
[8996]thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls,
[8997]shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled,
[8998]whirling, they bewail.
[8999]
[9000] In quintessential triviality
[9001] For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
[9002]—They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian
[9003]said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering
[9004]together a sheaf of our younger poets’ verses. We are all looking
[9005]forward anxiously.
[9006]
[9007]Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces,
[9008]lighted, shone.
[9009]
[9010]See this. Remember.
[9011]
[9012]Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his
[9013]ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with
[9014]two index fingers. Aristotle’s experiment. One or two? Necessity is
[9015]that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise.
[9016]Argal, one hat is one hat.
[9017]
[9018]Listen.
[9019]
[9020]Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part.
[9021]Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked
[9022]Colum’s Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you
[9023]think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a
[9024]Grecian vase. Did he? I hope you’ll be able to come tonight. Malachi
[9025]Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear
[9026]Miss Mitchell’s joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn’s
[9027]wild oats? Awfully clever, isn’t it? They remind one of Don Quixote
[9028]and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson
[9029]says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here
[9030]in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O’Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak
[9031]the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some
[9032]clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems.
[9033]
[9034]Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir’s loneliest daughter.
[9035]
[9036]Nookshotten. Now your best French polish.
[9037]
[9038]—Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be
[9039]so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman...
[9040]
[9041]—O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much
[9042]correspondence.
[9043]
[9044]—I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.
[9045]
[9046]God ild you. The pigs’ paper. Bullockbefriending.
[9047]
[9048]Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be read?
[9049]I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you
[9050]will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.
[9051]
[9052]Stephen sat down.
[9053]
[9054]The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask said:
[9055]
[9056]—Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating.
[9057]
[9058]He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a
[9059]chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:
[9060]
[9061]—Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?
[9062]
[9063]Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?
[9064]
[9065]—Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been
[9066]first a sundering.
[9067]
[9068]—Yes.
[9069]
[9070]Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks,
[9071]from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women
[9072]he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices,
[9073]bully tapsters’ wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack
[9074]dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as
[9075]cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow
[9076]grave and unforgiven.
[9077]
[9078]—Yes. So you think...
[9079]
[9080]The door closed behind the outgoer.
[9081]
[9082]Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and
[9083]brooding air.
[9084]
[9085]A vestal’s lamp.
[9086]
[9087]Here he ponders things that were not: what Cæsar would have lived to do
[9088]had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of
[9089]the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when
[9090]he lived among women.
[9091]
[9092]Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words.
[9093]Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice
[9094]of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks.
[9095]
[9096]They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of
[9097]death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak
[9098]their will.
[9099]
[9100]—Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most
[9101]enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so
[9102]much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.
[9103]
[9104]—But Hamlet is so personal, isn’t it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a
[9105]kind of private paper, don’t you know, of his private life. I mean,
[9106]I don’t care a button, don’t you know, who is killed or who is
[9107]guilty...
[9108]
[9109]He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his
[9110]defiance. His private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim
[9111]in mo shagart. Put beurla on it, littlejohn.
[9112]
[9113]Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:
[9114]
[9115]—I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but
[9116]I may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that
[9117]Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.
[9118]
[9119]Bear with me.
[9120]
[9121]Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under
[9122]wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l’uomo l’attosca. Messer
[9123]Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.
[9124]
[9125]—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said,
[9126]from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist
[9127]weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where
[9128]it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff
[9129]time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image
[9130]of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination,
[9131]when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that
[9132]which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the
[9133]future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but
[9134]by reflection from that which then I shall be.
[9135]
[9136]Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.
[9137]
[9138]—Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
[9139]might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from
[9140]the son.
[9141]
[9142]Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.
[9143]
[9144]—That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.
[9145]
[9146]John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.
[9147]
[9148]—If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a
[9149]drug in the market. The plays of Shakespeare’s later years which Renan
[9150]admired so much breathe another spirit.
[9151]
[9152]—The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.
[9153]
[9154]—There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
[9155]sundering.
[9156]
[9157]Said that.
[9158]
[9159]—If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over
[9160]the hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida,
[9161]look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a
[9162]man, shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles,
[9163]prince of Tyre?
[9164]
[9165]Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.
[9166]
[9167]—A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.
[9168]
[9169]—The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a
[9170]constant quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but
[9171]they lead to the town.
[9172]
[9173]Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon’s wild oats. Cypherjugglers
[9174]going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good
[9175]masters? Mummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the
[9176]sun, west of the moon: Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and staved.
[9177]
[9178] How many miles to Dublin?
[9179] Three score and ten, sir.
[9180] Will we be there by candlelight?
[9181]—Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing
[9182]period.
[9183]
[9184]—Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver
[9185]his name is, say of it?
[9186]
[9187]—Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder,
[9188]Perdita, that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his
[9189]daughter’s child. My dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid.
[9190]Will any man love the daughter if he has not loved the mother?
[9191]
[9192]—The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L’art d’être
[9193]grand...
[9194]
[9195]—Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth
[9196]added, another image?
[9197]
[9198]Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all
[9199]men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus
[9200]...
[9201]
[9202]—His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard
[9203]of all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him.
[9204]The images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in
[9205]them grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.
[9206]
[9207]The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.
[9208]
[9209]—I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of
[9210]the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George
[9211]Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on
[9212]Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough
[9213]he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the
[9214]sonnets. The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own
[9215]that if the poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in
[9216]harmony with—what shall I say?—our notions of what ought not to have
[9217]been.
[9218]
[9219]Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk’s egg,
[9220]prize of their fray.
[9221]
[9222]He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost
[9223]love thy man?
[9224]
[9225]—That may be too, Stephen said. There’s a saying of Goethe’s which
[9226]Mr Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because
[9227]you will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a
[9228]buonaroba, a bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous
[9229]girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language
[9230]and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written Romeo
[9231]and Juliet. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely killed. He was
[9232]overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I should say) and he will
[9233]never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game
[9234]of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later
[9235]undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded
[9236]him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet there
[9237]remains to her woman’s invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the
[9238]words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a darker
[9239]shadow of the first, darkening even his own understanding of himself. A
[9240]like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.
[9241]
[9242]They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.
[9243]
[9244]—The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the
[9245]porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot
[9246]know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls
[9247]with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast
[9248]with two backs that urged it King Hamlet’s ghost could not know of
[9249]were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the
[9250]speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward.
[9251]Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from
[9252]Lucrece’s bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen’s breast, bare, with
[9253]its mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has
[9254]piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But,
[9255]because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished
[9256]personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he
[9257]has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind
[9258]by Elsinore’s rocks or what you will, the sea’s voice, a voice heard
[9259]only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son
[9260]consubstantial with the father.
[9261]
[9262]—Amen! was responded from the doorway.
[9263]
[9264]Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
[9265]
[9266]Entr’acte.
[9267]
[9268]A ribald face, sullen as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan came forward, then
[9269]blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.
[9270]
[9271]—You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he
[9272]asked of Stephen.
[9273]
[9274]Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble.
[9275]
[9276]They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.
[9277]
[9278]Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.
[9279]
[9280]He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself,
[9281]Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends,
[9282]stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
[9283]crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven
[9284]and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His
[9285]Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead
[9286]when all the quick shall be dead already.
[9287]
[9288]Glo—o—ri—a in ex—cel—sis De—o.
[9289]
[9290]He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells
[9291]aquiring.
[9292]
[9293]—Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive
[9294]discussion. Mr Mulligan, I’ll be bound, has his theory too of the play
[9295]and of Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented.
[9296]
[9297]He smiled on all sides equally.
[9298]
[9299]Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled:
[9300]
[9301]—Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.
[9302]
[9303]A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.
[9304]
[9305]—To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like
[9306]Synge.
[9307]
[9308]Mr Best turned to him.
[9309]
[9310]—Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll see you after
[9311]at the D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hyde’s Lovesongs of
[9312]Connacht.
[9313]
[9314]—I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?
[9315]
[9316]—The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather
[9317]tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress
[9318]played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin.
[9319]Vining held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be
[9320]an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He
[9321]swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick.
[9322]
[9323]—The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde’s, Mr Best said,
[9324]lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he
[9325]proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues.
[9326]
[9327]—For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.
[9328]
[9329]Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?
[9330]
[9331]—I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily.
[9332]Of course it’s all paradox, don’t you know, Hughes and hews and
[9333]hues, the colour, but it’s so typical the way he works it out. It’s
[9334]the very essence of Wilde, don’t you know. The light touch.
[9335]
[9336]His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
[9337]Tame essence of Wilde.
[9338]
[9339]You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan
[9340]Deasy’s ducats.
[9341]
[9342]How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.
[9343]
[9344]For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.
[9345]
[9346]Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery he pranks
[9347]in. Lineaments of gratified desire.
[9348]
[9349]There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime
[9350]send them. Yea, turtledove her.
[9351]
[9352]Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s kiss.
[9353]
[9354]—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking.
[9355]The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.
[9356]
[9357]They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness.
[9358]
[9359]Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head
[9360]wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His
[9361]mobile lips read, smiling with new delight.
[9362]
[9363]—Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!
[9364]
[9365]He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:
[9366]
[9367]—The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the
[9368]immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you
[9369]launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four
[9370]quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram!
[9371]Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer!
[9372]O, you priestified Kinchite!
[9373]
[9374]Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a
[9375]querulous brogue:
[9376]
[9377]—It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we
[9378]were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. ’Twas murmur
[9379]we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I’m thinking, and
[9380]he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in
[9381]Connery’s sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.
[9382]
[9383]He wailed:
[9384]
[9385]—And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us
[9386]your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like
[9387]the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.
[9388]
[9389]Stephen laughed.
[9390]
[9391]Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.
[9392]
[9393]—The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He
[9394]heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He’s out in pampooties
[9395]to murder you.
[9396]
[9397]—Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.
[9398]
[9399]Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping
[9400]ceiling.
[9401]
[9402]—Murder you! he laughed.
[9403]
[9404]Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of
[9405]lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words,
[9406]palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods,
[9407]brandishing a winebottle. C’est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His
[9408]image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i’the forest.
[9409]
[9410]—Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.
[9411]
[9412]—... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his
[9413]Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms... Yes? What
[9414]is it?
[9415]
[9416]—There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward
[9417]and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the
[9418]Kilkenny People for last year.
[9419]
[9420]—Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?...
[9421]
[9422]He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked,
[9423]asked, creaked, asked:
[9424]
[9425]—Is he?... O, there!
[9426]
[9427]Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked
[9428]with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most
[9429]honest broadbrim.
[9430]
[9431]—This gentleman? Freeman’s Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure.
[9432]Good day, sir. Kilkenny... We have certainly...
[9433]
[9434]A patient silhouette waited, listening.
[9435]
[9436]—All the leading provincial... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner,
[9437]Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903... Will you please?... Evans, conduct this
[9438]gentleman... If you just follow the atten... Or, please allow me... This
[9439]way... Please, sir...
[9440]
[9441]Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing
[9442]dark figure following his hasty heels.
[9443]
[9444]The door closed.
[9445]
[9446]—The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.
[9447]
[9448]He jumped up and snatched the card.
[9449]
[9450]—What’s his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.
[9451]
[9452]He rattled on:
[9453]
[9454]—Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
[9455]museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that
[9456]has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her.
[9457]Life of life, thy lips enkindle.
[9458]
[9459]Suddenly he turned to Stephen:
[9460]
[9461]—He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker
[9462]than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.
[9463]Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the
[9464]maiden hid.
[9465]
[9466]—We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best’s
[9467]approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of
[9468]her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.
[9469]
[9470]—Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty
[9471]from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy
[9472]in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty
[9473]years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary
[9474]equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His
[9475]art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the
[9476]art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar
[9477]of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter
[9478]Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his
[9479]back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had
[9480]underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied
[9481]there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love
[9482]and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham’s story of the burgher’s
[9483]wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in Richard
[9484]III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing,
[9485]took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate,
[9486]answered from the capon’s blankets: William the conqueror came before
[9487]Richard III. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and
[9488]his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is
[9489]suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time.
[9490]
[9491]Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.
[9492]Minette? Tu veux?
[9493]
[9494]—The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford’s
[9495]mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.
[9496]
[9497]Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:
[9498]
[9499]—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!
[9500]
[9501]—And Harry of six wives’ daughter. And other lady friends from
[9502]neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those
[9503]twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing
[9504]behind the diamond panes?
[9505]
[9506]Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist,
[9507]he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of
[9508]Juno’s eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do.
[9509]Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.
[9510]
[9511]Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton’s desk sharply.
[9512]
[9513]—Whom do you suspect? he challenged.
[9514]
[9515]—Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice
[9516]spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.
[9517]
[9518]Love that dare not speak its name.
[9519]
[9520]—As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a
[9521]lord.
[9522]
[9523]Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.
[9524]
[9525]—It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all
[9526]other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the
[9527]stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a
[9528]shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two
[9529]deeds are rank in that ghost’s mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained
[9530]yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband’s brother.
[9531]Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer.
[9532]
[9533]Stephen turned boldly in his chair.
[9534]
[9535]—The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you
[9536]deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy
[9537]tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years
[9538]between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those
[9539]women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her
[9540]poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the
[9541]first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her
[9542]sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan’s daughter, Elizabeth, to
[9543]use granddaddy’s words, wed her second, having killed her first.
[9544]
[9545]O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in
[9546]royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her
[9547]father’s shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein
[9548]he has commended her to posterity.
[9549]
[9550]He faced their silence.
[9551]
[9552] To whom thus Eglinton:
[9553] You mean the will.
[9554] But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
[9555] She was entitled to her widow’s dower
[9556] At common law. His legal knowledge was great
[9557] Our judges tell us.
[9558] Him Satan fleers,
[9559] Mocker:
[9560] And therefore he left out her name
[9561] From the first draft but he did not leave out
[9562] The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
[9563] For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
[9564] And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
[9565] As I believe, to name her
[9566] He left her his
[9567] Secondbest
[9568] Bed.
[9569]
[9570] Punkt.
[9571]
[9572] Leftherhis
[9573] Secondbest
[9574] Leftherhis
[9575] Bestabed
[9576] Secabest
[9577] Leftabed.
[9578]Woa!
[9579]
[9580]—Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as
[9581]they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.
[9582]
[9583]—He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms
[9584]and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist
[9585]shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her
[9586]his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in
[9587]peace?
[9588]
[9589]—It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr
[9590]Secondbest Best said finely.
[9591]
[9592]—Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was smiled
[9593]on.
[9594]
[9595]—Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling.
[9596]Let me think.
[9597]
[9598]—Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage,
[9599]Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays
[9600]tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of
[9601]his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don’t
[9602]forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa.
[9603]
[9604]—Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean...
[9605]
[9606]—He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish
[9607]for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!
[9608]
[9609]—What? asked Besteglinton.
[9610]
[9611]William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people’s William. For
[9612]terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house...
[9613]
[9614]—Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought
[9615]of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his
[9616]hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days.
[9617]Lovely!
[9618]
[9619]Catamite.
[9620]
[9621]—The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to
[9622]ugling Eglinton.
[9623]
[9624]Steadfast John replied severe:
[9625]
[9626]—The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot eat your
[9627]cake and have it.
[9628]
[9629]Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me, the palm of beauty?
[9630]
[9631]—And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his
[9632]own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself
[9633]a cornjobber and moneylender, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the
[9634]famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship
[9635]mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing.
[9636]He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted
[9637]his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could
[9638]Aubrey’s ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist
[9639]to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the
[9640]hanging and quartering of the queen’s leech Lopez, his jew’s heart
[9641]being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Hamlet and Macbeth
[9642]with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn for
[9643]witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love’s Labour Lost.
[9644]His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking
[9645]enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter’s
[9646]theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the
[9647]play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin.
[9648]The sugared sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise
[9649]carrotty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor,
[9650]let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings
[9651]in the depths of the buckbasket.
[9652]
[9653]I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
[9654]theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.
[9655]
[9656]—Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean
[9657]of studies holds he was a holy Roman.
[9658]
[9659]Sufflaminandus sum.
[9660]
[9661]—He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French
[9662]polisher of Italian scandals.
[9663]
[9664]—A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him
[9665]myriadminded.
[9666]
[9667]Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia
[9668]inter multos.
[9669]
[9670]—Saint Thomas, Stephen began...
[9671]
[9672]—Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.
[9673]
[9674]There he keened a wailing rune.
[9675]
[9676]—Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from this day!
[9677]It’s destroyed we are surely!
[9678]
[9679]All smiled their smiles.
[9680]
[9681]—Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy
[9682]reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different
[9683]from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his
[9684]wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the
[9685]love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some
[9686]stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with
[9687]avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations
[9688]are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the
[9689]jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their
[9690]affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old
[9691]Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly
[9692]to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold
[9693]tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his
[9694]wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his
[9695]manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.
[9696]
[9697]—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.
[9698]
[9699]—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.
[9700]
[9701]—Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.
[9702]
[9703]—The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s
[9704]widow, is the will to die.
[9705]
[9706]—Requiescat! Stephen prayed.
[9707]
[9708] What of all the will to do?
[9709] It has vanished long ago...
[9710]—She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the
[9711]mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as
[9712]rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven
[9713]parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her
[9714]at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in
[9715]which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She
[9716]read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives
[9717]and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks
[9718]and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to
[9719]Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer.
[9720]Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted
[9721]whoredom groping for its god.
[9722]
[9723]—History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos.
[9724]The ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a
[9725]man’s worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel
[9726]that Russell is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should
[9727]say that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family
[9728]man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.
[9729]
[9730]Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping
[9731]with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade
[9732]it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s a
[9733]gentleman to see you. Me? Says he’s your father, sir. Give me my
[9734]Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern,
[9735]in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with
[9736]clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.
[9737]
[9738]Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.
[9739]
[9740]Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
[9741]touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is
[9742]attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.
[9743]
[9744]—A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary
[9745]evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father’s
[9746]death. If you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable
[9747]daughters, with thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra
[9748]vita, with fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from
[9749]Wittenberg then you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the
[9750]lustful queen. No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the
[9751]night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed
[9752]of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son.
[9753]Boccaccio’s Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself
[9754]with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown
[9755]to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only
[9756]begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which
[9757]the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is
[9758]founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro
[9759]and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor
[9760]matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing
[9761]in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son
[9762]that any son should love him or he any son?
[9763]
[9764]What the hell are you driving at?
[9765]
[9766]I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.
[9767]
[9768]Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.
[9769]
[9770]Are you condemned to do this?
[9771]
[9772]—They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal
[9773]annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities,
[9774]hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters,
[9775]lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with
[9776]grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son
[9777]unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases
[9778]care. He is a new male: his growth is his father’s decline, his youth
[9779]his father’s envy, his friend his father’s enemy.
[9780]
[9781]In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.
[9782]
[9783]—What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.
[9784]
[9785]Am I a father? If I were?
[9786]
[9787]Shrunken uncertain hand.
[9788]
[9789]—Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of
[9790]the field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of
[9791]Aquin, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if
[9792]the father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a
[9793]father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet
[9794]of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the
[9795]father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt
[9796]himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather,
[9797]the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was
[9798]born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection.
[9799]
[9800]Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
[9801]glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.
[9802]
[9803]Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.
[9804]
[9805]—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with
[9806]child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The
[9807]play’s the thing! Let me parturiate!
[9808]
[9809]He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.
[9810]
[9811]—As for his family, Stephen said, his mother’s name lives in the
[9812]forest of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in
[9813]Coriolanus. His boyson’s death is the deathscene of young Arthur in
[9814]King John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the
[9815]girls in The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter’s Tale are we know. Who
[9816]Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess.
[9817]But there is another member of his family who is recorded.
[9818]
[9819]—The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.
[9820]
[9821]The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with
[9822]haste, quake, quack.
[9823]
[9824]Door closed. Cell. Day.
[9825]
[9826]They list. Three. They.
[9827]
[9828]I you he they.
[9829]
[9830]Come, mess.
[9831]
[9832]STEPHEN: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his
[9833]old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer
[9834]one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter
[9835]up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on’s back. The playhouse
[9836]sausage filled Gilbert’s soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a
[9837]Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William.
[9838]
[9839]MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What’s in a name?
[9840]
[9841]BEST: That is my name, Richard, don’t you know. I hope you are
[9842]going to say a good word for Richard, don’t you know, for my sake.
[9843](Laughter)
[9844]
[9845]BUCKMULLIGAN: (Piano, diminuendo)
[9846]
[9847] Then outspoke medical Dick
[9848] To his comrade medical Davy...
[9849]STEPHEN: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago,
[9850]Richard Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles’
[9851]names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his
[9852]brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.
[9853]
[9854]BEST: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don’t want Richard, my
[9855]name ...
[9856]
[9857](Laughter)
[9858]
[9859]QUAKERLYSTER: (A tempo) But he that filches from me my good name...
[9860]
[9861]STEPHEN: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William,
[9862]in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy
[9863]set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the
[9864]sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John o’Gaunt his name
[9865]is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend
[9866]sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer
[9867]than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What’s in a
[9868]name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name
[9869]that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at his
[9870]birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the
[9871]night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent
[9872]constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars. His
[9873]eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as
[9874]he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from
[9875]Shottery and from her arms.
[9876]
[9877]Both satisfied. I too.
[9878]
[9879]Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.
[9880]
[9881]And from her arms.
[9882]
[9883]Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?
[9884]
[9885]Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where’s your
[9886]configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna.
[9887]Già: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.
[9888]
[9889]—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a
[9890]celestial phenomenon?
[9891]
[9892]—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.
[9893]
[9894]What more’s to speak?
[9895]
[9896]Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.
[9897]
[9898]Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my
[9899]feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.
[9900]
[9901]—You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name
[9902]is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.
[9903]
[9904]Me, Magee and Mulligan.
[9905]
[9906]Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
[9907]Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
[9908]Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing
[9909]be.
[9910]
[9911]Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:
[9912]
[9913]—That’s very interesting because that brother motive, don’t you
[9914]know, we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three
[9915]brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t you know, the fairytales.
[9916]The third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the
[9917]best prize.
[9918]
[9919]Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.
[9920]
[9921]The quaker librarian springhalted near.
[9922]
[9923]—I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you
[9924]to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps
[9925]I am anticipating?
[9926]
[9927]He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.
[9928]
[9929]An attendant from the doorway called:
[9930]
[9931]—Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...
[9932]
[9933]—O, Father Dineen! Directly.
[9934]
[9935]Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.
[9936]
[9937]John Eglinton touched the foil.
[9938]
[9939]—Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and
[9940]Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn’t you?
[9941]
[9942]—In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and
[9943]nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A
[9944]brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.
[9945]
[9946]Lapwing.
[9947]
[9948]Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him, then
[9949]Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They
[9950]mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.
[9951]
[9952]Lapwing.
[9953]
[9954]I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
[9955]
[9956]On.
[9957]
[9958]—You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which
[9959]he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?
[9960]Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed
[9961]Ann (what’s in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow.
[9962]Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered.
[9963]The other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his
[9964]kings Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare’s reverence,
[9965]the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear in which
[9966]Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney’s Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a
[9967]Celtic legend older than history?
[9968]
[9969]—That was Will’s way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now
[9970]combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith.
[9971]Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and
[9972]makes Ulysses quote Aristotle.
[9973]
[9974]—Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or
[9975]the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to
[9976]Shakespeare, what the poor are not, always with him. The note of
[9977]banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds
[9978]uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero
[9979]breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his
[9980]book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in
[9981]another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe.
[9982]It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married
[9983]daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it
[9984]was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will
[9985]and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of
[9986]my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin,
[9987]committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the
[9988]lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under
[9989]which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty
[9990]and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere
[9991]in the world he has created, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As you
[9992]like It, in The Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure—and in all
[9993]the other plays which I have not read.
[9994]
[9995]He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.
[9996]
[9997]Judge Eglinton summed up.
[9998]
[9999]—The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He
[10000]is all in all.
[10001]
[10002]—He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act
[10003]five. All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He
[10004]acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like José he
[10005]kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago
[10006]ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer.
[10007]
[10008]—Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!
[10009]
[10010]Dark dome received, reverbed.
[10011]
[10012]—And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed.
[10013]When all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) is right. After God
[10014]Shakespeare has created most.
[10015]
[10016]—Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns
[10017]after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where
[10018]he has always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey
[10019]of life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The
[10020]motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet père and Hamlet fils. A king
[10021]and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though
[10022]murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or
[10023]Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse
[10024]to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous
[10025]Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa’s lump of love, and
[10026]nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place
[10027]where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without
[10028]as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck says:
[10029]If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his
[10030]doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.
[10031]Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves,
[10032]meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows,
[10033]brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote
[10034]the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and
[10035]the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most
[10036]Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all
[10037]in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but
[10038]that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more
[10039]marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto
[10040]himself.
[10041]
[10042]—Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!
[10043]
[10044]Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton’s
[10045]desk.
[10046]
[10047]—May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.
[10048]
[10049]He began to scribble on a slip of paper.
[10050]
[10051]Take some slips from the counter going out.
[10052]
[10053]—Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one,
[10054]shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.
[10055]
[10056]He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.
[10057]
[10058]Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his
[10059]variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.
[10060]
[10061]—You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have
[10062]brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe
[10063]your own theory?
[10064]
[10065]—No, Stephen said promptly.
[10066]
[10067]—Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
[10068]dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.
[10069]
[10070]John Eclecticon doubly smiled.
[10071]
[10072]—Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should expect
[10073]payment for it since you don’t believe it yourself. Dowden believes
[10074]there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu,
[10075]the man Piper met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory,
[10076]believes that the secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is
[10077]going to visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his
[10078]ancestor wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his grace. But
[10079]he believes his theory.
[10080]
[10081]I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help
[10082]me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other
[10083]chap.
[10084]
[10085]—You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver.
[10086]Then I don’t know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an
[10087]article on economics.
[10088]
[10089]Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.
[10090]
[10091]—For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview.
[10092]
[10093]Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then
[10094]gravely said, honeying malice:
[10095]
[10096]—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
[10097]Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra
[10098]Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and
[10099]Rosalie, the coalquay whore.
[10100]
[10101]He broke away.
[10102]
[10103]—Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Ængus of the birds.
[10104]
[10105]Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts
[10106]and offals.
[10107]
[10108]Stephen rose.
[10109]
[10110]Life is many days. This will end.
[10111]
[10112]—We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says
[10113]Malachi Mulligan must be there.
[10114]
[10115]Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.
[10116]
[10117]—Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of
[10118]Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you
[10119]walk straight?
[10120]
[10121]Laughing, he...
[10122]
[10123]Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.
[10124]
[10125]Lubber...
[10126]
[10127]Stephen followed a lubber...
[10128]
[10129]One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. His
[10130]lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.
[10131]
[10132]Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt
[10133]head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of
[10134]no thought.
[10135]
[10136]What have I learned? Of them? Of me?
[10137]
[10138]Walk like Haines now.
[10139]
[10140]The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel Boyle
[10141]O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables.
[10142]Item: was Hamlet mad? The quaker’s pate godlily with a priesteen in
[10143]booktalk.
[10144]
[10145]—O please do, sir... I shall be most pleased...
[10146]
[10147]Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding:
[10148]
[10149]—A pleased bottom.
[10150]
[10151]The turnstile.
[10152]
[10153]Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?...
[10154]
[10155]The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.
[10156]
[10157]Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:
[10158]
[10159] John Eglinton, my jo, John,
[10160] Why won’t you wed a wife?
[10161]He spluttered to the air:
[10162]
[10163]—O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their
[10164]playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. Our players are creating a
[10165]new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I
[10166]smell the pubic sweat of monks.
[10167]
[10168]He spat blank.
[10169]
[10170]Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And
[10171]left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his
[10172]first child a girl?
[10173]
[10174]Afterwit. Go back.
[10175]
[10176]The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling,
[10177]minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.
[10178]
[10179]Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he...
[10180]
[10181]—Longworth and M’Curdy Atkinson were there...
[10182]
[10183]Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling:
[10184]
[10185] I hardly hear the purlieu cry
[10186] Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
[10187] Before my thoughts begin to run
[10188] On F. M’Curdy Atkinson,
[10189] The same that had the wooden leg
[10190] And that filibustering filibeg
[10191] That never dared to slake his drouth,
[10192] Magee that had the chinless mouth.
[10193] Being afraid to marry on earth
[10194] They masturbated for all they were worth.
[10195]Jest on. Know thyself.
[10196]
[10197]Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.
[10198]
[10199]—Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing
[10200]black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.
[10201]
[10202]A laugh tripped over his lips.
[10203]
[10204]—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that
[10205]old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you
[10206]a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus.
[10207]Couldn’t you do the Yeats touch?
[10208]
[10209]He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
[10210]
[10211]—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.
[10212]One thinks of Homer.
[10213]
[10214]He stopped at the stairfoot.
[10215]
[10216]—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.
[10217]
[10218]The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men’s
[10219]morrice with caps of indices.
[10220]
[10221]In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:
[10222]
[10223] Everyman His Own Wife
[10224] or
[10225] A Honeymoon in the Hand
[10226] (a national immorality in three orgasms)
[10227] by
[10228] Ballocky Mulligan.
[10229]He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:
[10230]
[10231]—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.
[10232]
[10233]He read, marcato:
[10234]
[10235]—Characters:
[10236]
[10237] TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
[10238] CRAB (a bushranger)
[10239] MEDICAL DICK )
[10240] and ) (two birds with one stone)
[10241] MEDICAL DAVY )
[10242] MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)
[10243] FRESH NELLY
[10244] and
[10245] ROSALIE (the coalquay whore).
[10246]He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen:
[10247]and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:
[10248]
[10249]—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to
[10250]lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured,
[10251]multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!
[10252]
[10253]—The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever
[10254]lifted them.
[10255]
[10256]About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.
[10257]
[10258]Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today,
[10259]if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must
[10260]come to, ineluctably.
[10261]
[10262]My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.
[10263]
[10264]A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.
[10265]
[10266]—Good day again, Buck Mulligan said.
[10267]
[10268]The portico.
[10269]
[10270]Here I watched the birds for augury. Ængus of the birds. They go, they
[10271]come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots
[10272]after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.
[10273]
[10274]—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s awe. Did
[10275]you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee,
[10276]ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.
[10277]
[10278]Manner of Oxenford.
[10279]
[10280]Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.
[10281]
[10282]A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway,
[10283]under portcullis barbs.
[10284]
[10285]They followed.
[10286]
[10287]Offend me still. Speak on.
[10288]
[10289]Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail
[10290]from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw
[10291]of softness softly were blown.
[10292]
[10293]Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic:
[10294]from wide earth an altar.
[10295]
[10296] Laud we the gods
[10297] And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
[10298] From our bless’d altars.
[10299]
[10300]
[10301]
[10302]
[10303]