Ch2 Pt2

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter two, Part two of A Portrait of the Artist
as a young Man by James Joyce. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Recording by Peter Bobby, A Portrait of the Artist as

(00:24):
a young Man, Chapter two, Part two. The night of
the Whitsuntide play had come, and Stephen, from the window
of the dressing room, looked out on the small grass
plot across which lines of Chinese lanterns were stretched. He
watched the visitors come down the steps from the house

(00:45):
and pass into the theater stewards in evening dress. Old
Belviderians loitered in groups about the entrance to the theater
and ushered in the visitors with ceremony. Under the sudden
glow of a lantern, he could rect recognized the smiling
face of a priest. The blessed sacrament had been removed

(01:05):
from the tabernacle, and the first benches had been driven
so as to leave the dais of the altar and
the space before it free. Against the walls stood companies
of barbells and Indian clubs. The dumbbells were piled in
one corner, and in the midst of countless hillocks of
gymnasium shoes and sweaters and singlets in untidy brown parcels.

(01:26):
There stood the stout leather jacketed vaulting horse, waiting its
turn to be carried up on the stage. A large
bronze shield tipped with silver, leaned against the panel of
the altar, also waiting its turn to be carried up
on the stage, and set in the middle of the
winning team. At the end of the gymnastic display. Stephen,

(01:48):
though in deference to his reputation for essay riding he
had been elected Secretary to the Gymnasium, had had no
part in the first section of the program. But in
the play which formed the second section, he had the
chief heart, that of a farcical pedagogue. He had been
cast for it on account of his stature and grave manners,
for he was now at the end of his second

(02:08):
year at Belvedere. And in number two a score of
the younger boys in white knickers and singlets came pattering
down from the stage, through the vestry and into the chapel.
The vestry and chapel were peopled with eager masters and boys.
The plump, bald Sergeant Major was testing with his foot
the spring board of the vaulting horse. The lean young

(02:30):
man in a long overcoat, who was to give a
special display of intricate club swinging, stood near, watching with interest,
his silver coated clubs peeping out of his deep side pockets.
The hollow rattle of the wooden dumb bells was heard
as another team made ready to go up on the stage,
and in another moment, the excited Prefect was hustling the

(02:52):
boys through the vestry like a flock of geese, flapping
the wings of his sutane nervously and crying to the
laggards to make haste. A little troop of Neapolitan peasants
were practicing their steps at the end of the chapel,
some circling their arms above their heads, some swaying their
baskets of paper violets, and curtseying. In a dark corner

(03:13):
of the chapel. At the gospel side of the altar,
a stout old lady knelt amid her copious black skirts.
When she stood up. A pink dressed figure wearing a
curly golden wig and an old fashioned straw sun bonnet
with black penciled eyebrows and cheeks delicately rouged and powdered,
was discovered. A low murmur of curiosity ran round the

(03:35):
chapel at the discovery of this girlish figure. One of
the prefects, smiling and nodding his head, approached the dark corner, and,
having bowed to the stout old lady, said pleasantly, is
this a beautiful young lady or a doll that you
have here, missus Tallan, Then, bending down to peer at
the smiling painted face under the leaf of the bonnet,

(03:57):
he exclaimed, no, upon my word, I believe its little
Bertie Talon. After all. Stephen, at his post by the window,
heard the old lady and the priest laugh together, and
heard the boy's murmur of admiration behind him. As they
passed forward to see the little boy, who had to
dance the sunbonnet dance by himself. A movement of impatience

(04:20):
escaped him. He let the edge of the blind fall, and,
stepping down from the bench on which he had been standing,
walked out of the chapel. He passed out of the
schoolhouse and halted under the shed that flanked the garden
from the theater. Opposite came the muffled noise of the
audience and sudden, brazen clashes of the soldier's band. The

(04:41):
light spread upwards from the glass roof, making the theater
seem a festive arc, anchored among the hulks of houses,
her frail cables of lanterns looping her to her moorings.
A side door of the theater opened suddenly, and a
shaft of light flew across the grass plots. A sudden
burst of mute zi issued from the ark, the prelude

(05:02):
of a waltz, And when the side door closed again,
the listener could hear the faint rhythm of the music,
the sentiment of the opening bars. Their languor and supple
movement evoked the incommunicable emotion which had been the cause
of all his days unrest, and of his impatient movement
of a moment before his unrest issued from him like

(05:24):
a wave of sound, and on the tide of flowing music.
The ark was journeying, trailing her cables of lanterns in
her wake. Then a noise like a dwarf artillery broke
the movement. It was the clapping that greeted the entry
of the dumb bell team on the stage. At the
far end of the shed near the street, a speck

(05:45):
of pink light showed in the darkness, and as he
walked towards it, he became aware of a faint, aromatic odor.
Two boys were standing in the shelter of a doorway smoking,
and before he reached them he had recognized Heroin by
his voice. Here comes the noble Daedalus, cried a high
throaty voice, Welcome to our trusty friend. This welcome ended

(06:10):
in a soft peal of mirthless laughter as Heron salaamed
and then began to poke the ground with his cane.
Here I am, said Stephen, halting and glancing from Heron
to his friend. The latter was a stranger to him,
but in the darkness, by the aid of the glowing
cigarette tips, he could make out a pale, dandyish face

(06:33):
over which a smile was traveling slowly, a tall, overcoated
figure and a hard hat. Heron did not trouble himself
about an introduction, but said instead, I was just telling
my friend Wallace, what a lark it would be to
night if you took off the rector in the part
of the schoolmaster. It would be a ripping good joke.

(06:54):
Heron made a poor attempt to imitate for his friend
Wallace the rector's pedantic bass, and then, laughing at his failure,
asked Stephen to do it. Come on, Daedalus, he urged,
you can take him off, rippingly he that will not
hear the church. Let him be to thee as the
heathen and the publican. The imitation was prevented by a

(07:17):
mild expression of anger from Wallace, in whose mouthpiece the
cigarette had become too tightly wedged. Damn this blankety blank holder,
he said, taking it from his mouth and smiling and
frowning upon it tolerantly. It's always getting stuck like that.
Do you use a holder? I don't smoke, answered Stephen. No,

(07:40):
said Heron. Daedalus is a model youth. He doesn't smoke,
and he doesn't go to bazaars, and he doesn't flirt,
and he doesn't damn anything or damn all. Stephen shook
his head and smiled in his rival's flushed and mobile face,
beaked like a bird's. He had often thought it strange
that Vincent Heron had a bird's as well as a

(08:01):
bird's name. A shock of pale hair lay on the
forehead like a ruffled crest. The forehead was narrow and bony,
and a thin, hooked nose stood out between the close set,
prominent eyes, which were light and inexpressive. The rivals were
school friends. They sat together in class, knelt together in

(08:22):
the chapel, talked together after beads over their lunches. As
the fellows in number one were undistinguished dullards, Stephen and
Heron had been during the year the virtual heads of
the school. It was they who went up to the
rector together to ask for a free day, or to
get a fellow off. Oh, by the way, said Heron,

(08:42):
Suddenly I saw your gov'nor going in the smile waned
on Stephen's face. Any allusion made to his father by
a fellow or by a master put his calm to rout.
In a moment, he waited, in timorous silence to hear
what Heron might say next. Heron, however, nudged him expressively
with his elbow and said, you're a sly dog Daedalus.

(09:06):
Why so, said Stephen, You'd think butter wouldn't melt in
your mouth, said heron, but I'm afraid you're a sly dog.
Might I ask you what you are talking about? Said
Stephen urbanely. Indeed you might, answered Heron, we saw her, Wallace,
didn't we? And deucedly pretty she is too, and so inquisitive.

(09:29):
And what part does Stephen take, mister Dadalas, And we'll
Stephen not sing, mister Dadalas, your governor was staring at
her through that eyeglass of his for all he was worth,
so that I think the old man has found you
out too. I wouldn't care a bit. By jove, She's ripping,
isn't she Wallace? Not half bad, answered Wallace quietly, as

(09:50):
he placed his holder once more in the corner of
his mouth. A shaft of momentary anger flew through Stephen's
mind at these indelicate allusions in the hearing a stranger.
For him, there was nothing amusing in a girl's interest
and regard. All day he had thought of nothing but
their leave taking on the steps of the tram at
Harold's Cross, the stream of moody emotions it had made

(10:13):
to course through him, and the poem he had written
about it. All day he had imagined a new meeting
with her, for he knew that she was to come
to the play. The old restless moodiness had again filled
his breast, as it had done on the night of
the party, but had not found an outlet. In verse,
the growth and knowledge of two years of boyhood stood

(10:35):
between then and now forbidding such an outlet. And all
day the stream of gloomy tenderness within him had started
forth and returned upon itself in dark courses and deadies,
wearying him in the end, until the pleasantry of the
Prefect and the painted little boy had drawn from him
a movement of impatience. So you may as well admit.

(10:56):
Heroin went on that we fairly found you out this time.
You can't play the saint on me any more, that's
one sure. Five. A soft peal of mirthless laughter escaped
from his lips, and, bending down as before, he struck
Stephen lightly across the calf of the leg with his cane,
as if in jesting reproof Stephen's movement of anger had

(11:19):
already passed. He was neither flattered nor confused, but simply
wished the banter to end. He scarcely resented what had
seemed to him at first a silly indelicateness, for he
knew that the adventure in his mind stood in no
danger from their words, and his face mirrored his rival's
false smile. Ad mit repeated Heron, striking him again with

(11:42):
his cane across the calf of the leg. The stroke
was playful, but not so lightly given as the first
one had been. Stephen felt the skin tingle and glow
slightly and almost painlessly, and, bowing submissively as if to
meet his companion's jesting mood, began to recite the confiture.

(12:03):
The episode ended well for both Heron and Wallace laughed
indulgently at the irreverence. The confession came only from Stephen's lips,
and while they spoke the words, a sudden memory had
carried him to another scene, called up as if by magic,
at the moment when he had noted the faint, cruel
dimples at the corners of Heron's smiling lips, and had

(12:24):
felt the familiar stroke of the cane against his calf,
and had heard the familiar word of admonition ad met.
It was towards the close of his first term in
the college, when he was in number six. His sensitive
nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivined
and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted

(12:46):
and cast down by the dull phenomenon of dublin. He
had emerged from a two years spell of reverie to
find himself in the midst of a new scene. Every
event and figure of which affected him intimately disheartened him
or allured, and whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always
with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his

(13:09):
school life left him was passed in the company of
subversive writers, whose gibes and violence of speech set up
a ferment in his brain before they passed out of
it into his crude writings. The essay was for him
the chief labor of his week, and every Tuesday, as
he marched from home to the school, he read his
fate in the incidents of the way, pitting himself against

(13:31):
some figure ahead of him and quickening his pace to
outstrip it before a certain goal was reached, or planting
his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of
the footpath and telling himself that he would be first
and not first. In the weekly essay, on a certain Tuesday,
the course of his triumphs was rudely broken. Mister Tate,

(13:52):
the English Master, pointed his finger at him and said, bluntly,
this fellow has heresy in his essay. A hush fell
on the class. Mister Tate did not break it, but
dug with his hand between his crossed thighs, while his
heavily starched linen creaked about his neck and wrists. Stephen
did not look up. It was a raw spring morning,

(14:15):
and his eyes were still smarting and weak. He was
conscious of failure and of detection of the squalor of
his own mind and home, and felt against his neck
the raw edge of his turned and jagged collar. A
short loud laugh from mister Tate set the class more
at ease. Perhaps you didn't know that, he said, Where,

(14:39):
asked Stephen. Mister Tate withdrew his delving hand and spread
out the essay. Here. It's about the Creator and the
soul a ah, without a possibility of ever approaching nearer.
That's heresy. Stephen murmured. I meant without a possibility of

(15:02):
ever reaching It was a submission, and mister Tate appeased,
folded up the essay and passed it across to him, saying,
oh ah, Ever, reaching that's another story. But the class
was not so soon appeased. Though nobody spoke to him
of the affair after class, he could feel about him

(15:25):
a vague, general malignant joy. A few nights after this
public chiding, he was walking with a letter along the
Drumcondra road when he heard a voice cry halt. He
turned and saw three boys of his own class coming
towards him in the dusk. It was Heron who had
called out, and as he marched forward between his two attendants,

(15:47):
he cleft the air before him with a thin cane
in time to their steps. Boland, his friend, marched beside him,
a large grin on his face, while Nash came on
a few steps behind, blowing from the pace and wagging
his great red head. As soon as the boys had
turned into Clonliffe rode together. They began to speak about

(16:09):
books and writers, saying what books they were reading and
how many books there were in their father's bookcases at home.
Stephen listened to them in some wonderment, for Boland was
the dunce and Nash the idler of the class. In fact,
after some talk about their favorite writers. Nash declared for
Captain Marriat, who he said was the greatest writer. Fudge,

(16:31):
said Heron, ask Dedalus who is the greatest writer? Daedalus.
Stephen noted the mockery in the question and said, of prose,
do you mean yes Newman? I think? Is it Cardinal Newman?
Asked Boland, Yes, answered Stephen. The grin broadened on Nash's

(16:54):
freckled face as he turned to Stephen and said, and
do you like Cardinal Newman? Dedalus? Oh, many say that
Newman has the best prose style, Heron said to the
other two in explanation. Of course, he is not a poet.
And who is the best poet, Heron asked Boland, Lord Tennyson,

(17:16):
of course, answered Heron. Oh yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash.
We have all his poetry at home in a book.
At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been
making and burst out Tennyson a poet? Why he's only
a rhymster? Oh, get out, said Heron. Every one knows
that Tennyson is the greatest poet. And who do you

(17:38):
think is the greatest poet? Asked Boland, nudging his neighbor Byron,
of course, answered Stephen. Heron gave the lead, and all
three joined in a scornful laugh. What are you laughing at,
asked Stephen. You said Heron, Byron the greatest poet. He's
only a poet for uneducated people. He must be a

(18:01):
fine poet, said Boland. You may keep your mouth shut,
said Stephen, turning on him boldly. All you know about
poetry is what you wrote up on the slates in
the yard and were going to be sent to the
loft for Boland, in fact, was said to have written
on the slates in the yard a couplet about a
classmate of his who often rode home from the college

(18:23):
on a pony. As Tyson was riding into Jerusalem, he
fell and hurt his alec Kuffusalem. This thrust put the
two lieutenants to silence, but Heron went on. In any case,
Byron was a heretic and immoral too. I don't care
what he was, cried Stephen hotly. You don't care whether

(18:44):
he was a heretic or not, said Nash. What do
you know about it, shouted Stephen. You never read a
line of anything in your life except a trance or
Boland either I know that Byron was a bad man,
said Boland. Here catch hold of this, heretic. Heron called
out in a moment, Stephen was a prisoner. Tait made

(19:08):
you buck up the other day. Heron went on about
the heresy in your essay. I'll tell him to morrow,
said Boland. Will you, said Stephen, you'd be afraid to
open your lips, afraid, ay, afraid of your life. Behave yourself,
cried Heron, cutting at Stephen's legs with his cane. It

(19:29):
was the signal for their onset. Nash pinioned his arms
behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was
lying in the gutter. Struggling and kicking under the cuts
of the cane and the blows of the knotty stump,
Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence. Admit
that Byron was no good. No, admit no, admit no, no.

(19:56):
At last, after a fury of plunges, he wrenched himself
his tormentor set off towards Jones's road, laughing and jeering
at him while he torn and flushed and panting, stumbled
after them, half blinded with tears, clenching his fists madly
and sobbing. While he was still repeating the confitiore amid

(20:17):
the indulgent laughter of his hearers, and while the scenes
of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly
before his mind, he wondered why he bore no malice
now to those who had tormented him. He had not
forgotten a whit of their cowardice and cruelty, but the
memory of it called forth no anger from him. All

(20:38):
the descriptions of fierce love and hatred which he had
met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even
that night, as he stumbled homewards along Jones's road, he
had felt that some power was divesting him of that sudden,
woven anger, as easily as a fruit is divested of
its soft, ripe peal. He remained standing with his two

(21:02):
companions at the end of the shed, listening idly to
their talk or to the bursts of applause in the theater.
She was sitting there among the others, perhaps waiting for
him to appear. He tried to recall her appearance, but
could not. He could remember only that she had worn
a shawl about her head, like a cowl, and that
her dark eyes had invited and unnerved him. He wondered

(21:25):
had he been in her thoughts as she had been
in his. Then, in the dark and unseen by the
other two, he rested the tips of the fingers of
one hand upon the palm of the other hand, scarcely
touching it, and yet pressing upon it lightly. But the
pressure of her fingers had been lighter and steadier, And

(21:45):
suddenly the memory of their touch traversed his brain and
body like an invisible warm wave. A boy came towards them,
running along under the shed. He was excited and breathless. Oh, Dedalus,
he cried, Oyle is in a great bake about you.
You're to go in at once and get dressed for
the play. Hurry up, you'd better. He's coming now, said

(22:08):
heron to the messenger, with a haughty drawl. When he
wants to The boy turned to heron and repeated, but
Doyle is in an awful bake. Will you tell Doyle
with my best compliments that I damned his eyes? Answered heron. Well,
I must go now, said Stephen, who cared little for

(22:29):
such points of honor. I wouldn't, said heron, damn me
if I would that's no way to send for one
of the senior boys in a bake. Indeed, I think
it's quite enough that you're taking part in his bally
old play. This spirit of quarrelsome comradeship, which he had
observed lately in his rival, had not seduced Stephen from

(22:52):
his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and
doubted the sincerity of such comrade ship, which seemed to
him a sorry anticipation of manhood. The question of honor
here raised was, like all such questions, trivial to him.
While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms and

(23:13):
turning in irresolution from such pursuit, he had heard about
him the constant voices of his father and of his masters,
urging him to be a gentleman above all things, and
urging him to be a good Catholic above all things.
These voices had now come to be hollow sounding in
his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened, he had
heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly

(23:36):
and healthy. And when the movement towards national revival had
begun to be felt in the college, yet another voice
had bidden him to be true to his country and
helped to raise up her fallen language and tradition in
the profane world. As he foresaw, a worldly voice would
bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labors.
And meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him

(23:59):
to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame
or to beg them off, and to do his best
to get free days for the school. And it was
the din of all these hollow sounding voices that made
him halt irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave
them ear only for a time, but he was happy
only when he was far from them, beyond their call

(24:20):
alone or in the company of phantasmal comrades. In the vestry,
a plump, fresh faced Jesuit and an elderly man in
shabby blue clothes were dabbling in a case of paints
and chalks. The boys who had been painted walked about
or stood still, awkwardly, touching their faces in a gingerly

(24:40):
fashion with their furtive finger tips. In the middle of
the vestry, a young Jesuit, who was then on a
visit to the college, stood rocking himself rhythmically from the
tips of his toes to his heels and back again,
his hands thrust well forward into his side pockets, his
small head set off with glossy red curls, and his
newly shaven face agreed well with the spotless decency of

(25:04):
his soutane and with his spotless shoes. As he watched
this swaying form and tried to read for himself the
legend of the priest's mocking smile, there came into Stephen's
memory a saying which he had heard from his father
before he had been sent to Clongo's, that you could
always tell a Jesuit by the style of his clothes.

(25:24):
At the same moment, he thought he saw a likeness
between his father's mind and that of this smiling, well
dressed priest, and he was aware of some desecration of
the priest's office, or of the vestry itself, whose silence
was now routed by loud talk and joking, and its
air pungent with the smells of the gas jets and
the grease. While his forehead was being wrinkled and his

(25:46):
jaws painted black and blue by the elderly man, he
listened distractedly to the voice of the plump young Jesuit,
which bade him speak up and make his points clearly.
He could hear the band playing the Lily of Killarney,
and knew that in a few moments the curtain would
go up. He felt no stage fright, but the thought
of the part he had to play humiliated him. A

(26:09):
remembrance of some of his lines made a sudden flush
rise to his painted cheeks. He saw her serious, alluring
eyes watching him from among the audience, and their image
at once swept away his scruples, leaving his will compact.
Another nature seemed to have been lent him. The infection
of the excitement and youth about him entered into and

(26:31):
transformed his moody mistrustfulness. For one rare moment he seemed
to be clothed in the real apparel of boyhood, and
as he stood in the wings among the other players,
he shared the common mirth amid which the drop scene
was hauled upwards by two able bodied priests with violent
jerks and all awry. A few moments after, he found

(26:52):
himself on the stage amid the garish gas in the
dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void.
It surprised him to see that the play, which he
had known at rehearsals for a disjointed, lifeless thing, had
suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now
to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it

(27:13):
with their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene,
he heard the void filled with applause, and through a
rift in the side scene, saw the simple body before
which he had acted magically deformed, the void of faces,
breaking at all points and falling asunder into busy groups.
He left the stage quickly and rid himself of his mummery,

(27:35):
and passed out through the chapel into the college garden.
Now that the play was over, his nerves cried for
some further adventure. He hurried onwards as if to overtake it.
The doors of the theater were all open, and the
audience had emptied out on the lines which he had fancied.
The moorings of an ark a few lanterns swung in
the night breeze. Flickering cheerlessly. He mounted the steps from

(27:59):
the garden in haste, eager that some prey should not
elude him, and forced his way through the crowd in
the hall and passed the two Jesuits, who stood watching
the exodus and bowing and shaking hands with the visitors.
He pushed onward nervously, feigning a still greater haste, and
faintly conscious of the smiles and stairs and nudges which

(28:20):
his powdered head left in its wake. When he came
out on the steps, he saw his family waiting for
him at the first lamp. In a glance, he noted
that every figure of the group was familiar, and ran
down the steps angrily. I have to leave a message
down in Georgie's Street, he said to his father quickly.
I'll be home after you. Without waiting for his father's questions,

(28:44):
he ran across the road and began to walk at
breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he
was walking. Pride and hope and desire, like crushed herbs
in his heart, sent up vapors of maddening incense before
the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill
amid the tumult of sudden risen. Vapors of wounded pride
and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before

(29:08):
his anguished eyes. In dense and maddening fumes, and passed
away above him, till at last the air was clear
and cold again. A film still veiled his eyes, but
they burned no longer. A power akin to that which
had often made anger or resentment fall from him, brought
his steps to rest. He stood still and gazed up

(29:31):
at the somber porch of the morgue, and from that
to the dark cobbled laneway at its side. He saw
the word lots on the wall of the lane, and
breathed slowly the rank, heavy air, that is horse piss
and rotted straw. He thought, it is a good odor
to breathe. It will come my heart. My heart is

(29:53):
quite calm. Now I will go back. N end of
Chapter two, Part two