A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Chapter 5 Part 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter five, Part one of A Portrait of the Artist
as a young Man. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by
Peter Bobby. A Portrait of the Artist as a young

(00:23):
Man by James Joyce, Chapter five, Part one. He drained
his third cup of watery tea to the dregs and
set to chewing the crusts of fried bread that were
scattered near him, staring into the dark pool of the jar.
The yellow dripping had been scooped out like a bog hole,

(00:44):
and the pool under it brought back to his memory
the dark turf colored water of the bath in Clongoes.
The box of pawn tickets at his elbow had just
been rifled, and he took up idly one after another
in his greasy fingers, the blue and white dockets scrawled
and sanded and creased, and bearing the name of the

(01:06):
pledger as Daily or Macavoy. One pair buskins, one d coat,
three articles, and white one man's pants. Then he put
them aside and gazed thoughtfully at the lid of the box,
speckled with louse marks, and asked vaguely, how much is

(01:28):
the clock fast? Now? His mother straightened the battered alarm
clock that was lying on its side in the middle
of the kitchen mantelpiece until its dial showed a quarter
to twelve, and then laid it once more on its side.
Now on twenty five minutes, she said, The right time
now is twenty past ten. The dear knows you might

(01:50):
try to be in time for your lectures. Fill out
the place for me to wash, said Stephen. Katy, fill
out the place for Stephen to wash. Boot, fill out
the place for Stephen to wash. I can't. I'm going
for blue. Fill it out, you, Maggie. When the enameled
basin had been fitted into the well of the sink

(02:11):
and the old washing glove flung on the side of it,
he allowed his mother to scrub his neck and root
into the folds of his ears and into the interstices
at the wings of his nose. Well, it's a poor case,
she said, when a university student is so dirty that
his mother has to wash him. But it gives you pleasure,

(02:31):
said Stephen, calmly. An ear splitting whistle was heard from upstairs,
and his mother thrust a damp overall into his hands, saying,
dry yourself and hurry out, for the love of goodness.
A second shrill whistle, prolonged angrily, brought one of the
girls to the foot of the staircase. Yes, father, is

(02:52):
your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet? Yes, father, sure, yes,
father hum Ah, The girl came back, making signs to
him to be quick and go out quietly by the back.
Stephen laughed and said he has a curious idea of
genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine. Ah, it's

(03:15):
a scandalous shame for you, Stephen, said his mother. And
you'll live to rue the day you set your foot
in that place. I know how it has changed you.
Good morning, everybody, said Stephen, smiling and kissing the tips
of his fingers in a dew. The lane behind the
terrace was water logged, and as he went down it,

(03:35):
slowly choosing his steps amid heaps of wet rubbish, he
heard a mad nun screeching in the nun's madhouse beyond
the wall. Jesus, Oh, Jesus, Jesus. He shook the sound
out of his ears. By an angry toss of his
head and hurried on, stumbling through the moldering awfal his

(03:58):
heart already bitten by an aig of loathing and bitterness.
His father's whistle, his mother's mutterings, the screech of an
unseen maniac were to him now so many voices offending
and threatening to humble the pride of his youth. He
drove their echoes even out of his heart with an execration.

(04:19):
But as he walked down the avenue and felt the
gray morning light falling about him through the dripping trees,
and smelt the strange, wild smell of the wet leaves
and bark, his soul was loose of her miseries. The
rain laden trees of the avenue evoked in him, as always,
memories of the girls and women in the plays of

(04:39):
Gerhardt Hoptmann, and the memory of their pale sorrows, and
the fragrance falling from the wet branches mingled in a
mood of quiet joy. His morning walk across the city
had begun, and he fore knew that as he passed
the slob lands of Fairview, he would think of the cloisterral,
silver veined prose of Newman, that as he walked along

(05:01):
the North Strand Road, glancing idly at the windows of
the provision shops, he would recall the dark humor of
Guido Cavalcanti and smile. That as he went by Baird's
stone cutting works in Talbot Place, the spirit of Ibsen
would blow through him like a keen wind, a spirit
of wayward, boyish beauty, and that passing a grimy marine

(05:24):
dealer's shop beyond the Liffey, he would repeat the song
by ben Jonson, which begins I was not wearier where
I lay. His mind, when wearied of its search for
the essence of beauty, amid the spectral words of Aristotle
or Aquinas, turned often for its pleasure to the dainty
songs of the Elizabethans. His mind, in the vesture of

(05:48):
a doubting monk, stood often in shadow under the windows
of that age, to hear the grave and mocking music
of the lutenists, or the frank laughter of wescotteers, until
a laugh too low, a phrase tarnished by time of
chambering and false honor, stung his monkish pride and drove
him on from his lurking place. The lore which he

(06:12):
was believed to pass his days brooding upon so that
it had wrapped him from the companionships of youth. Was
only a garner of slender sentences from Aristotle's poetics and psychology,
and a synopsis Philosophyae scolastique admentum de we tommae. His
thinking was a dusk of doubt and self mistrust, lit

(06:33):
up at moments by the lightnings of intuition, but lightnings
of so clear a splendor that in those moments the
world perished about his feet as if it had been
fire consumed. And thereafter his tongue grew heavy, and he
met the eyes of others with unanswering eyes, For he
felt that the spirit of beauty had folded him round

(06:53):
like a mantle, and that in Reverie at least he
had been acquainted with nobility. But when this brief pride
of silence upheld him no longer, he was glad to
find himself still in the midst of common lives, passing
on his way amid the squalor and noise and sloth
of the city, fearlessly and with a light heart. Near

(07:16):
the hoardings on the canal, he met the consumptive man
with the doll's face and the brimless hat, coming towards
him down the slope of the bridge with little steps,
tightly buttoned into his chocolate overcoat and holding his furled
umbrella a span or two from him like a divining rod.
It must be eleven, he thought, and peered into a
dairy to see the time. The clock in the dairy

(07:38):
told him that it was five minutes to five, But
as he turned away, he heard a clock somewhere near him,
but unseen, beating eleven strokes in swift precision. He laughed
as he heard it, for it made him think of Machan,
And he saw him, a squat figure in a shooting
jacket and breeches and with a fair goatee, standing in

(07:58):
the wind at Hopkins Corner, and heard him say, Daedalus,
you're an anti social being wrapped up in yourself. I'm not.
I'm a democrat, and I'll work and act for social
liberty and equality among all classes and sexes in the
United States of the Europe of the future. Eleven And

(08:19):
then he was late for that lecture too. What day
of the week was it? He stopped at a newsagent's
to read the headline of a placard Thursday ten to
eleven English eleven to twelve, French twelve to one Physics.
He fancied to himself the English lecture, and felt, even
at that distance restless and helpless. He saw the heads

(08:43):
of his classmates meekly bent as they wrote in their
note books the points they were bidden to note, nominal definitions,
essential definitions, and examples over dates of birth or death,
chief works, a favorable and an unfavorable criticism side by side.
His own head was unbent, for his thoughts wandered abroad,

(09:04):
and whether he looked around the little class of students
or out of the window across the desolate gardens of
the green and odor assailed him of cheerless, cellar, damp
and decay. Another head than his right before him in
the first benches, was poised squarely above its bending fellows,
like the head of a priest, appealing without humility to

(09:25):
the tabernacle for the humble worshipers about him. Why was
it that, when he thought of Cranley, he could never
raise before his mind the entire image of his body,
but only the image of the head and face. Even
now against the gray curtain of the morning, he saw
it before him, like the phantom of a dream, the
face of a severed head or death mask, crowned on

(09:47):
the brows by its stiff, black upright hair, as by
an iron crown. It was a priestlike face, priestlike in
its pallor, in the wide winged nose, in the shadowings
below the eyes and along the jaws, priest like in
the lips that were long and bloodless and faintly smiling.
And Stephen, remembering swiftly how he had told Cranley of

(10:10):
all the tumults and unrest and longings in his soul,
day after day and night by night, only to be
answered by his friend's listening silence, would have told himself
that it was the face of a guilty priest who
heard confessions of those whom he had not power to absolve,
but that he felt again in memory the gaze of
its dark, womanish eyes. Through this image he had a

(10:35):
glimpse of a strange, dark cavern of speculation, but at
once turned away from it, feeling that it was not
yet the hour to enter it. But the night shade
of his friend's listlessness seemed to be diffusing in the
air around him a tenuous and deadly exhilation, and he
found himself glancing from one casual word to another on

(10:55):
his right or left, in stolid wonder that they had
been so silently emptied instantaneous sense, until every mean shop
legend bound his mind like the words of a spell,
and his soul shriveled up, sighing with age. As he
walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language,
his own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brain

(11:17):
and trickling into the very words themselves, which set to
band and disband themselves in wayward rhythms. The ivy winds
upon the wall, and winds and whines upon the wall.
The ivy winds upon the wall, the yellow ivy on
the wall, Ivy ivy up the wall. Did any one

(11:39):
ever hear such drivel? Lord Almighty, who ever heard of
ivy whining on a wall? Yellow ivy? That was all right?
Yellow ivory also? And what about ivory ivy? The word
now shone in his brain, clearer and brighter than any
ivory son from the motteled tusks of elephants. Ivory ivhoar

(12:04):
avorio abor one of the first examples that he had
learnt in Latin, had run India meeted Ebor, and he
recalled the shrewd northern face of the rector who had
taught him to construe the metamorphoses of Ovid in a
courtly English, made whimsical by the mention of porkers and
potshards and chins of bacon. He had learnt what little

(12:28):
he knew of the laws of Latin verse from a
ragged book written by a Portuguese priest contrahit orator wariant
in Carmena Watts. The crises and victories and secessions in
Roman history were handed on to him in the trite
words in Tanto di Sgermine. And he had tried to

(12:49):
peer into the social life of the city of Cities
through the words impleiree olam di Narioram, which the rector
had rendered sonorously as the filling of a pot. With
the pages of his time warm, Horrace never felt cold
to the touch, even when his own fingers were cold.
They were human pages, and fifty years before they had

(13:11):
been turned by the human fingers of John Duncan Inverarity
and by his brother William Malcolm Inverarity. Yes, those were
noble names on the dusky fly leaf, and even for
so poor a Latinist as he, the dusky verses were
as fragrant as though they had lain all those years
in myrtle and lavender and vervaine. But yet it wounded

(13:34):
him to think that he would never be but a
shy guest at the feast of the world's culture, and
that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was
striving to forge out an esthetic philosophy, was held no
higher by the age he lived in than the subtle
and curious jargons of heraldry and falconry. The gray block
of Trinity on his left, set heavily in the city's ignorance,

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like a great dull stone set in a cumbers ring,
pulled his mind downward. And while he was striving this
way and that to free his feet from the fetters
of the reformed conscience, he came upon the droll statue
of the National Poet of Ireland. He looked at it
without anger, for though sloth of the body and of

(14:18):
the soul crept over it, like unseen vermin, over the
shuffling feet, and up the folds of the cloak, and
around the servile head, it seemed humbly conscious of its indignity.
It was a fur bole in the borrowed cloak of
a Milesian, and he thought of his friend Davin, the
peasant student. It was a jesting name between them, but

(14:40):
the young peasant bore with it lightly, saying, go on, Stevie,
I have a hard head. You tell me, call me
what you will. The homely version of his Christian name
on the lips of his friend had touched Stephen pleasantly
when first heard, for he was as formal in speech
with others as they were with him. Often as he

(15:01):
sat in Davin's rooms in Grantham Street, wondering at his
friend's well made boots that flanked the wall pair by pair,
and repeating for his friend's simple ear the verses and
cadences of others, which were the veils of his own
longing and dejection. The rude, furbolg mind of his listener
had drawn his mind towards it and flung it back again,

(15:23):
drawing it by a quiet, inbred courtesy of attention, or
by a quaint turn of old English speech, or by
the force of its delight and rude, bodily skill. For
Davon had sat at the feet of Michael Cusack, the
gale repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence,
or by a bluntness of feeling, or by a dull

(15:45):
stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul
of a starving Irish village in which the curfew was
still a knightly fear. Side by side with his memory
of the deeds of prowess of his uncle mat Dave
and the athlete, the young peasant worshiped the sorrowful legend
of Ireland, the gossip of his fellow students, which strove

(16:07):
to render the flat life of the college significant at
any cost. Loved to think of him as a rude Fenian.
His nurse had taught him Irish and shaped his rude
imagination by the broken lights of Irish myth. He stood
towards this myth, upon which no individual mind had ever
drawn out a line of beauty, and to its unwieldy

(16:28):
tales that divided themselves as they moved down the cycles,
in the same attitude as towards the Roman Catholic religion,
the attitude of a dull, witted, loyal serf, whatsoever of
thought or of feeling came to him from England, or
by way of English culture. His mind stood armed against
in obedience to a password, and of the world that

(16:49):
lay beyond England, he knew only the foreign legion of France,
in which he spoke of serving. Coupling this ambition with
the young man's humor, Stephen had often one of the
tame Geese, and there was even a point of irritation
in the name, pointed against that very reluctance of speech
and deed in his friend, which seemed so often to

(17:10):
stand between Stephen's mind, eager of speculation, and the hidden
ways of Irish life. One night, the young peasant, his
spirit stung by the violent or luxurious language in which
Stephen escaped from the cold silence of intellectual revolt, had
called up before Stephen's mind a strange vision. The two

(17:32):
were walking slowly towards Davin's rooms, through the dark, narrow
streets of the poorer Jews. A thing happened to myself, Stevie,
last autumn, coming on winter, and I never told it
to a living soul, And you are the first person
now I ever told it to. I disremember if it
was October or November it was October, because it was

(17:53):
before I came up here to join the matriculation class.
Stephen had turned his smiling eye towards his friend's face,
flattered by his confidence, and won over to sympathy by
the speaker's simple accent. I was away all that day
from my own place over and butt ofant I don't
know if you know where that is, and a hurling

(18:14):
match between the croak's own boys and the fearless Thirls,
And by God, Stevie, that was the hard fight. My
first cousin, Phonsie Davin, was stripped to his buff that day,
minding cool for the Limericks, but he was up with
the forwards half the time and shouting like mad. I
never will forget that day. One of the croaks made
a woeful wipe at him one time with his cammon,

(18:38):
and I declare to God he was within a name's
ace of getting it at the side of the temple. Oh,
honest to God. If the crook of it caught him
that time, he was done for. I am glad he escaped.
Stephen had said, with a laugh. But surely that's not
the strange thing that happened to you. Well, I suppose
that doesn't interest you. But leastways there was such noise

(18:58):
after the match that I missed the train home and
I couldn't get any kind of yoke to give me
a lift. For as luck would have it, there was
a mass meeting that same day over in Castle Town, Rush,
and all the cars in the country were there, so
there was nothing for it, only to stay the night
or to foot it out well. I started to walk,
and on I went, and it was coming on night

(19:19):
when I got to the Ballyhura Hills. That's better than
ten miles from Kilmallock, and there's a long, lonely road
after that. You wouldn't see the sign of a Christian
house along that road or hear a sound. It was
pitch dark. Almost once or twice I stopped by the
way under a bush to redden my pipe, and only
for the dew was thick, i'd have stretched out there

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and slept. At last, after a bend of the road,
I spied a little cottage with a light in the window.
I went up and knocked at the door. A voice
asked who was there, and I answered I was over
at the match in butt of it, and was walking
back and that I'd be thankful for a glass of water.
After for a while, a young woman opened the door

(20:01):
and brought me out a big mug of milk. She
was half undressed, as if she was going to bed
when I knocked, and she had her hair hanging, and
I thought, by her figure, and by something in the
look of her eyes, that she must be carrying a child.
She kept me in talk a long while at the door,
and I thought it strange because her breast and her
shoulders were bare. She asked me, was I tired, and

(20:24):
would I like to stop the night there? She said
she was all alone in the house, and that her
husband had gone that morning to Queenstown with his sister
to see her off. And all the time she was talking, Stevie,
she had her eyes fixed on my face, and she
stood so close to me I could hear her breathing
when I handed her back the mug. At last, she
took my hand to draw me in over the threshold

(20:47):
and said, come in and stay the night here. You've
got no call to be frightened. There's no one in
it but ourselves. I didn't go in, Stevie. I thanked
her and went on my way again. All in a
feet at the first bend of the road. I looked back,
and she was standing at the door. The last words
of Davin's story sang in his memory, and the figure

(21:09):
of the woman and the story stood forth, reflected in
other figures of the peasant women whom he had seen
standing in the doorways at Clane as the college cars
drove by, as a type of her race and his own,
a bat like soul waking to the consciousness of itself
in darkness and secrecy and loneliness, and through the eyes

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and voice and gesture of a woman without guile, calling
the stranger to her bed. A hand was laid on
his arm, and a young voice cried, Ah, gentlemen, your
own girl, sir, the first handsel to day, gentlemen, by
that lovely bunch, will you, gentlemen. The blue flowers which
she lifted towards him, and her young blue eyes seemed

(21:51):
to him at that instant images of guilelessness, and he
halted till the image had vanished, and he saw only
her ragged dress and damp, coarse hair and hoydenish face.
Do gentlemen, don't forget your own girl, sir. I have
no money said Stephen by them lovely ones. Will you, sir,

(22:13):
only a penny? Did you hear what I said? Asked Stephen,
bending towards her. I told you I had no money.
I tell you again now, well, sure you will some day, sir,
Please God, the girl answered, after an instant possibly said Stephen,
but I don't think it likely. He left her quickly,

(22:36):
fearing that her intimacy might turn into gibing, and wishing
to be out of the way before she offered her
waar to another, a tourist from England or a student
of Trinity. Grafton Street, along which he walked prolonged that
moment of discouraged poverty. In the roadway at the head
of the street, a slab was set to the memory

(22:57):
of wolf Tone, and he remembered having been present with
his father at its laying. He remembered with bitterness that
scene of tawdry tribute. There were four French delegates in
a break, and one a plump, smiling young man, held
wedged on a stick a card on which were printed
the words vis ve Lerland. But the trees in Stephen's

(23:21):
green were fragrant of rain, and the rain sodden earth
gave forth its mortal odour, a faint incense rising upward
through the mold from many hearts. The soul of the
gallant venal city, which his elders had told him of,
had shrunk with time to a faint mortal odour rising
from the earth. And he knew that in a moment,

(23:41):
when he entered the Somber College he would be conscious
of a corruption other than that of buck Egan and
burn Chapel Wayley. It was too late to go upstairs
to the French class. He crossed the hall and took
the corridor to the left, which led to the Physics Theatre.
The corridor was dark and silent, but not unwatchful. Why

(24:03):
did he feel that it was not unwatchful? Was it
because he had heard that in buck Whaley's time there
was a secret staircase there? Or was the Jesuit House
extra territorial? And was he walking among aliens? The ireland
of Tone and of Parnell seemed to have receded in space.

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He opened the door of the theater and halted. In
the chilly gray light that struggled through the dusty windows.
A figure was crouching before the large grate, and by
its leanness and grayness. He knew that it was the
Dean of Studies lighting the fire. Stephen closed the door
quietly and approached the fireplace. Good morning, sir, Can I

(24:44):
help you? The priest looked up quickly and said, one
moment now, mister Dadalus, and you will see there is
an art in lighting a fire. We have the liberal arts,
and we have the useful arts. This is one of
the useful arts. I try to learn it, said Stephen.
Not too much coal, said the Dean, working briskly at

(25:06):
his task. That is one of the secrets. He produced
four candle butts from the side pockets of his sutaine
and placed them deftly among the coals and twisted papers.
Stephen watched him in silence, kneeling thus on the flagstone
to kindle the fire, and busied with the disposition of
his wisps of paper and candle butts. He seemed more

(25:28):
than ever a humble server, making ready the place of
sacrifice in an empty temple, a levite of the Lord,
like a levite's robe of plain linen. The faded, worn
sutaine draped the kneeling figure of one whom the canonicals
or the bell bordered ephod would irk and trouble. His
very body had waxed old and lowly service of the lord,

(25:52):
intending the fire upon the altar, in bearing tidings, secretly,
in waiting upon worldlings, in striking swiftly bidden, and yet
had remained ungraced by aught of saintly or of prilatic beauty. Nay,
his very soul had waxed old at that service, without
growing towards light and beauty, or spreading abroad a sweet

(26:14):
odor of her sanctity, A mortified will no more responsive
to the thrill of its obedience than was to the
thrill of love or combat. His aging body spare and sinewy,
grayed with a silver pointed down. The dean rested back
on his hunkers and watched the sticks catch. Stephen to
fill the silence, said, I am sure I could not

(26:37):
light a fire. You are an artist, are you not,
mister Daedalus, said the dean, glancing up and blinking his
pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation
of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.
He rubbed his hands slowly and dryly over the difficulty.

(26:57):
Can you solve that question? Now? He asked, Aquinnas answered
Stephen says, pulcras sunt quay ui sa placant this fire
before us, said the dean will be pleasing to the eye.
Will it therefore be beautiful in so far as it
is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose means here

(27:19):
esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful. But a Quinnas also
says bonum est in quote, tendit apetitus. In so far
as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth, fire is
a good in hell. However it is an evil. Quite so,
said the dean. You have certainly hit the nail on

(27:40):
the head. He rose nimbly and went towards the door,
set it ajar, and said, a draft is said to
be a help in these matters. As he came back
to the hearth, limping slightly but with a brisk step,
Stephen saw the silent soul of a Jesuit look out
at him from the pale, loveless eyes. Like Ignatius, he

(28:03):
was lame, but in his eyes burned no spark of
ignacious enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of the company, a
craft subtler and more secret than its fabled books of
secret settled wisdom had not fired his soul with the
energy of apostleship. It seemed as if he used the
shifts and lore and cunning of the world as bidden

(28:25):
to do for the greater glory of God, without joy
in their handling, or hatred of that in them which
was evil, but turning them with a firm gesture of
obedience back upon themselves. And for all this silent service,
it seemed as if he loved not at all the Master,
and little, if at all, the ends he served similitaire

(28:47):
atke cennis Ebaculus. He was as the Founder would have
had him, like a staff in an old man's hand,
to be left in a corner, to be leaned on
in the road at nightfall, or in stress of weather,
to lie with the lady's nosegay on a garden seat,
to be raised in menace. The dean returned to the

(29:09):
hearth and began to stroke his chin. When may we
expect to have something from you on the esthetic question?
He asked from me, said Stephen, in astonishment. I stumble
on an idea once a fortnight, if I am lucky.
These questions are very profound, mister Daedalus, said the dean.

(29:30):
It is like looking down from the cliffs of Moher
into the depths. Many go down into the depths and
never come up. Only the trained diver can go down
into those depths and explore them and come to the
surface again. If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I
also am sure that there is no such thing as

(29:51):
free thinking, inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by
its own laws. Ah for my purpose, I can work
on at present by the light of one or two
ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas I see. I quite see
your point. I need them only for my own use
and guidance, until I have done something for myself by

(30:13):
their light. If the lamp smokes or smells, I shall
try to trim it. If it does not give light enough,
I shall sell it and buy another. Epictetus also had
a lamp, said the Dean, which was sold for a
fancy price after his death. It was the lamp he
wrote his philosophical dissertations by, you know, Epictetus, an old gentleman,

(30:36):
said Stephen coarsely, who said that the soul is very
like a bucketful of water. He tells us in his
homely way. The deuon went on that he put an
iron lamp before a statue of one of the gods,
and that a thief stole the lamp. What did the
philosopher do? He reflected that it was in the character

(30:56):
of a thief to steal, and determined to buy an
earthen lamp near day instead of the iron lamp. A
smell of molten tallow came up from the Dean's candlebuts
and fused itself in Stephen's consciousness with the jingle of
the words bucket and lamp and lamp and bucket. The
priest's voice, too, had a hard jingling tone. Stephen's mind

(31:19):
halted by instinct, checked by the strange tone and the imagery,
and by the priest's face, which seemed like an unlit
lamp or a reflector hung in a false focus. What
lay behind it or within it a dull torpor of
the soul, or the dullness of the thunder cloud charged
with intellection and capable of the gloom of God. I

(31:43):
meant a different kind of lamp, Sir, said Stephen. Undoubtedly,
said the Dean. One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion
is to know whether words are being used according to
the literary tradition or according to the tradition of the
market place. I remember a sentence of Newman's in which
he says of the blessed Virgin that she was detained

(32:05):
in the full company of the saints. The use of
the word in the market place is quite different. I
hope I am not detaining you, not in the least,
said the dean politely. No, no, said Stephen, smiling. I mean, yes, yes,
I see, said the dean quickly. I quite catch the point. Detain.

(32:28):
He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry,
short cough. To return to the lamp, he said. The
feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must
choose the pure oil, and you must be careful when
you pour it in, not to overflow it, not to
pour in more than the funnel can hold. What funnel,
asked Stephen. The funnel through which you pour the oil

(32:51):
into your lamp, that, said Stephen. Is that called a funnel?
Is it not a tundish? What is a tundish? That
the the funnel? Is that called a tundish in Ireland?
Asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.

(33:12):
It is called a Tundish and lower drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing,
where they speak the best English. A Tundish, said the
dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must
look that word up upon my word, I must. His
courtesy of manner rang a little false, and Stephen looked

(33:33):
at the English convert with the same eyes as the
elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal,
a humble follower in the wake of clamorous conversions, a
poor Englishman in Ireland. He seemed to have entered on
the stage of Jesuit history, when that strange play of
intrigue and suffering, and envy and struggle and indignity had

(33:55):
been all but given through a late comer, a tardy spirit.
From what had he set out? Perhaps he had been
born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in Jesus only,
and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he
felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter
of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms. Six

(34:18):
principal men, peculiar people, seed and snake Baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists.
Had he found the true Church all of a sudden
in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton,
some fine spun line of reasoning upon insufflation, or the
imposition of hands, or the procession of the Holy Ghost,

(34:39):
Or had Lord Christ touched him then bidden him follow
like the disciple who had sat at the receipt of
custom as he sat by the door of some zinc
roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church Pence. The
dean repeated the word yet again, tundish. Well, now that
is interesting. The question you asked me a moment ago

(35:01):
seems to me more interesting. What is that beauty which
the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth? Said
Stephen coldly. The little words seem to have turned a
rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe.
He felt, with a smart of dejection that the man
to whom he was speaking was a countryman of ben Jonson.

(35:24):
He thought, the language in which we are speaking is
his before it is mine. How different are the words
home christ ale Master on his lips and on mine.
I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit.
His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be

(35:47):
for me an acquired speech. I have not made or
accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My
soul frets in the shadow of his language. And to
distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the dean added,
to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty, and to

(36:09):
inquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of
the various arts. There are some interesting points we might
take up. Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the Dean's firm, dry tone,
was silent. The dean also was silent, and through the silence,
a distant noise of many boots and confused voices came
up the staircase. In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively,

(36:33):
there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First
you must take your degree, set that before you as
your first aim. Then little by little you will see
your way. I mean, in every sense, your way in
life and in thinking. It may be uphill peddling at first.
Take mister Moonin. He was a long time before he

(36:55):
got to the top, but he got there. I may
not have his talent, said Stephen quietly. You never know,
said the dean brightly, We never can say what is
in us. I most certainly should not be despondent, Peer
Aspera ad Astra. He left the hearth quickly and went

(37:16):
towards the landing to oversee the arrival of the first
arts class. Leaning against the fireplace, Stephen heard him greet
briskly and impartially every student of the class, and could
almost see the frank smiles of the coarser students. A
desolating pity began to fall like adieu upon his easily
embittered heart, for this faithful serving man of the knightly Loyola,

(37:39):
for this half brother of the clergy, more venal than
they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one
whom he would never call his ghostly father. And he
thought how this man and his companions had earned the
name of worldlings at the hands not of the unworldly only,
but of the worldly also, for having pleaded during all

(38:00):
their history at the bar of God's justice for the
souls of the lax and the lukewarm and the prudent.
The entry of the Professor was signaled by a few
rounds of Kentish fire from the heavy boots of those
students who sat on the highest tier of the gloomy
theater under the gray cobwebbed windows. The calling of the

(38:22):
roll began, and the responses to the names were given
out in all tones, until the name of Peter Byrne
was reached. Here a deep bass note in response came
from the upper tier, followed by coughs of protest along
the other benches. The professor paused in his reading and
called the next name, Cranley. No answer, mister Cranley. A

(38:48):
smile flew across Stephen's face as he thought of his
friend's studies. Try Leopardstown, said a voice from the bench behind.
Stephen glanced up quickly, but Moynihan's knoutish face, outlined on
the gray light, was impassive. A formula was given out
amid the rustling of the note books. Stephen turned back

(39:10):
again and said, gimme some paper, for God's sake. Are
you as bad as that? Asked moynihan with a broad grin.
He tore a sheet from his scribbler and passed it down, whispering,
in case of necessity, any layman or woman can do it.
The formula, which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper.

(39:31):
The coiling and uncoiling calculations of the Professor, the specter
like symbols of force and velocity, fascinated and jaded Stephen's mind.
He had heard some say that the old professor was
an atheist freemason. Oh the gray dull day. It seemed
a limbo of painless, patient consciousness, through which souls of

(39:52):
mathematicians might wander, projecting long, slender fabrics, from playing to
plain of ever rarer and paler twilight, radiating swift eddies
to the last verges of a universe, ever vaster, farther,
and more impalpable. So we must distinguish between elliptical and ellipsoidal.

(40:13):
Perhaps some of you, gentlemen may be familiar with the
works of mister W. S. Gilbert. In one of his songs,
he speaks of the billiard sharp who is condemned to
play on a cloth on true with a twisted cue
and elliptical billiard balls. He means a ball having the
form of the ellipsoid of the principal axes of which

(40:34):
I spoke a moment ago, moynihan leaned down towards Stephen's
ear and murmured, what price ellipsoidal balls? Chase me, ladies,
I'm in the cavalry. His fellow student's rude humor rang
like a gust through the cloister of Stephen's mind, shaking
into gay life. Limp priestly vestments that hung upon the walls,

(40:56):
setting them to sway and caper in a sabbath of misrule.
The forms of the community emerged from the gust blown vestments.
The Dean of Studies, the portly florid burser with his
cap of gray hair, the President, the little priest with
feathery hair who wrote devout verses. The squat peasant form
of the professor of economics, the tall form of the

(41:18):
young professor of mental science, discussing on the landing a
case of conscience with his class, like a giraffe cropping
high leafage among a herd of antelopes. The grave, troubled
Prefect of the sodality, the plump, round headed professor of
Italian with his rogue's eyes. They came ambling and stumbling,
tumbling and capering, kilting their gowns for leap frog, holding

(41:41):
one another back, shaken with deep false laughter, smacking one
another behind and laughing at their rude malice, calling one
another by familiar nicknames, protesting with sudden dignity at some
rough usage, whispering two and two behind their hands. The
professor had go on to the glass cases on the
side wall, from a shelf of which he took down

(42:03):
a set of coils, blew away the dust from many points,
and bearing it carefully to the table, held a finger
on it while he proceeded with his lecture. He explained
that the wires in modern coils were of a compound
called platinoid, lately discovered by F. W. Martino. He spoke
clearly the initials and surname of the discoverer. Moynihan whispered

(42:27):
from behind, good old fresh water Martin. Ask him Stephen,
whispered back with a weary humor. If he wants a
subject for electrocution, he can have me. Moynihan, seeing the
professor bend over the coils, rose on his bench and
clacking noiselessly, the fingers of his right hand, began to call,

(42:49):
with the voice of a slobbering urchin, Please, teacher, Please, teacher,
this boy is After saying a bad word, teacher. Platinoid,
the professor said, solemnly, is referred to German silver because
it has a lower coefficient of resistance variation by changes
of temperature. The platinoid wire is insulated, and the covering

(43:09):
of silk that insulates it is wound on the ebonite bobbins,
just where my finger is. If it were wound single
and extra current would be induced in the coils. The
bobbins are saturated in hot paraffin wax. A sharp ulster
voice said from the bench below Stephen, are we likely
to be asked questions on applied science? The professor began

(43:33):
to juggle gravely with the terms pure science and applied science.
The heavy built student, wearing gold spectacles, stared with some
wonder at the questioner. Moynihan murmured from behind in his
natural voice, isn't McAllister a devil? For his pound of flesh?
Stephen looked down coldly on the oblong skull beneath him,
overgrown with tangled twine colored hair. The voice, the accent

(43:57):
the mind of the questioner offended him, and he allowed
the offense to carry him towards wilful unkindness, bidding his
mind think that the student's father would have done better
had he sent his son to Belfast to study, than
have saved something on the train fares by so doing.
The oblong skull beneath did not turn to meet this
shaft of thought. And yet the shaft came back to

(44:19):
its bowstring, for he saw in a moment the student's
way pale face. That thought is not mine, he said
to himself quickly. It came from the comic irishman in
the bench behind. Patience, can you say with certitude by
whom the soul of your race was bartered and its
elect betrayed by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience?

(44:44):
Remember Epictetus, it is probably in his character to ask
such a question at such a moment, in such a tone,
and to pronounce the words science as a monosyllable. The
droning voice of the professor continued to wind itself slowly
round and round the coils. It spoke of doubling, trebling,
quadrupling its sumbnolent energy. As the coil multiplied its oms

(45:08):
of resistance. Moynihan's voice called from behind and echoed to
a distant bell, closing time. Gents. End of Chapter five,
Part one of a portrait of the artist as a
young man.