Ch4 Pt2

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter four, Part two 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

(00:22):
Man by James Joyce, Chapter four, Part two. He could
wait no longer. From the door of Byron's Public House
to the gate of Clontarf Chapel, From the gate of
Clontarf Chapel to the door of Byron's Public House, and
then back again to the chapel, and then back again
to the public House. He had paced slowly, at first,

(00:44):
planning his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork
of the footpath, then timing their fall to the fall
of verses. A full hour had passed since his father
had gone in with Dan Crosby, the Tutor, to find
out for him something about the union. For a full
hour he had paced up and down, waiting. But he
could wait no longer. He set off abruptly for the bull,

(01:09):
walking rapidly lest his father's shrill whistle might call him back,
and in a few moments he had rounded the curve
at the police barrack and was safe. Yes, his mother
was hostile to the idea, as he had read from
her listless silence. Yet her mistrust pricked him more keenly
than his father's pride. And he thought coldly how he

(01:29):
had watched the faith which was fading down in his soul,
aging and strengthening in her eyes. A dim antagonism gathered
force within him and darkened his mind as a cloud
against her disloyalty. And when it passed cloud like, leaving
his mind serene and dutiful towards her again, he was
made aware, dimly and without regret, of a first, noiseless

(01:53):
sundering of their lives the university. So he had passed
beyond the challenge of the sentries who had stood as
guardians of his boyhood, and had sought to keep him
among them, that he might be subject to them and
serve their ends. Bride after satisfaction uplifted him like long,
slow waves. The end he had been born to serve

(02:16):
yet did not see, had led him to escape by
an unseen path, And now it beckoned to him once more,
and a new adventure was about to be opened to him.
It seemed to him that he heard notes of fitful music,
leaping upwards a tone and downwards a diminished forth upwards
a tone, and downwards a major third, like triple branching

(02:38):
flames leaping fitfully, flame after flame out of a midnight wood.
It was an elfin prelude, endless and formless, and as
it grew wilder and faster, the flames leaping out of time,
he seemed to hear from under the boughs and grasses,
wild creatures racing their feet, pattering like rain upon the leaves.

(03:02):
Their feet passed in pattering tumult over his mind, the
feet of hares and rabbits, the feet of hearts and
hinds and antelopes, until he heard them no more, and
remembered only a proud cadence from newman, whose feet are
as the feet of hearts, and underneath the everlasting arms.
The pride of that dim image brought back to his

(03:23):
mind the dignity of the office he had refused. All
through his boyhood. He had mused upon that which he
had so often thought to be his destiny, And when
the moment had come for him to obey the call,
he had turned aside obeying a wayward instinct. Now time
lay between the oils of ordination would never anoint his body.

(03:46):
He had refused why he turned seaward from the road
at Dolly Mount, and as he passed on to the
thin wooden bridge, he felt the planks shaking with the
tramp of heavily shod feet. A squad of Christian brothers
was on its way back from the Bull and had
begun to pass two by two across the bridge. Soon

(04:08):
the whole bridge was trembling and resounding. The uncouth faces
passed him two by two, stained yellow or red or
livid by the sea, and as he strove to look
at them with ease and indifference, a faint stain of
personal shame and commiseration rose to his own face. Angry
with himself, he tried to hide his face from their

(04:29):
eyes by gazing down sideways into the shallow, swirling water
under the bridge, But he still saw a reflection therein
of their top heavy silk hats and humble tape like
collars and loosely hanging clerical clothes. Brother Hickey, brother Kad,
brother mac Cardle, brother Kiov. Their piety would be like

(04:54):
their names, like their faces like their clothes, and was
idle for him to tell tell himself that their humble
and contrite hearts it might be paid a far richer
tribute of devotion than his had ever been, a gift
tenfold more acceptable than his elaborate adoration. It was idle
for him to move himself to be generous towards them,

(05:16):
to tell himself that if he ever came to their gates,
stripped of his pride, beaten and in beggar's weeds, that
they would be generous towards him, loving him as themselves,
idle and embittering. Finally, to argue against his own dispassionate certitude,
that the commandment of love bade us not to love
our neighbor as ourselves with the same amount and intensity

(05:39):
of love, but to love him as ourselves with the
same kind of love. He drew forth a phrase from
his treasure and spoke it softly to himself. A day
of dappled sea born clouds. The phrase and the day
and the scene harmonized in accord words. Was it their colors?

(06:02):
He allowed them to glow and fade, hugh after hue, sunrise, gold,
the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves,
the gray fringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not
their colors, it was the poise and balance of the
period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and

(06:23):
fall of words better than their associations of legend and color?
Or was it that, being as weak of sight as
he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from
the reflection of the glowing, sensible world through the prism
of a language many colored and richly storied, than from
the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored

(06:45):
perfectly in a lucid, supple periodic prose. He passed from
the trembling bridge on to firm land again at that instant,
as it seemed to him, the air was chilled, and
looking askance towards the water, he saw a flying squall,
darkening and crisping. Suddenly the tide. A faint click at

(07:06):
his heart, a faint throb in his throat told him
once more of how his flesh dreaded the cold, infrahuman
odor of the sea. Yet he did not strike across
the downs on his left, but held straight on along
the spine of rocks, that pointed against the river's mouth.
A veiled sunlight lit up faintly the gray sheet of

(07:28):
water where the river was embayed. In the distance, along
the course of the slow flowing liffy, slender masts flecked
the sky, and more distant still, the dim fabric of
the city lay prone in haze, like a scene on
some vague arrass old as man's weariness, the image of

(07:48):
the Seventh City of Christendom was visible to him across
the timeless air, no older nor more weary, nor less
patient of subjection than in the days of the thing
Moat disheartened, he raised his eyes towards the slow, drifting clouds,
dappled and sea born. They were voyaging across the deserts

(08:10):
of the sky, a host of nomads on the march,
voyaging high over Ireland, westward bound the Europe they had
come from. Lay out there beyond the Irish Sea, Europe
of strange tongues and valleyed and wood begirt and citadeled,
and of entrenched and martialed races. He heard a confused

(08:30):
music within him, as of memories and names which he
was almost conscious of, but could not capture even for
an instant. Then the music seemed to recede, to recede,
to recede, and from each receding trail of nebulous music
there fell always one long, drawn calling note, piercing like

(08:51):
a star the dusk of silence. Again, again, again, a
voice beyond the world was calling, Hello, Stephanos, here comes
the daedalus. Oh, eh, give it over, dwyre, I'm tellin you,
or I'll give you a stuffin the kisser for yourself. Oh,

(09:13):
good man, taoser, duck him, come along daedalus Bos stephenomenos
bos stefanephoros, duck him, guzzoleim now towser help help. Oh.
He recognized their speech collectively before he distinguished their faces.
The mere sight of that medley of wet nakedness chilled

(09:35):
him to the bone. Their bodies, corpse white, were suffused
with a pallid golden light, or rawly tanned by the suns,
gleamed with the wet of the sea. Their diving stone,
poised on its rude supports and rocking under their plunges,
and the rough hewn stones of the sloping breakwater over
which they scrambled in their horse play, gleamed with cold

(09:58):
wet luster. The towels with which they smacked their bodies
were heavy with cold sea water, and drenched with cold
brine was their matted hair. He stood still in deference
to their calls, and parried their banter with easy words.
How characterless they looked, Surely without his deep unbuttoned collar,

(10:19):
Ennis without his scarlet belt with a snaky clasp, and
Connilly without his Norfolk coat with the flapless side pockets.
It was a pain to see them, and a sword
like pain to see the signs of adolescence that made
repellent their pitiable nakedness. Perhaps they had taken refuge in
number and noise from the secret dread in their souls.

(10:41):
But he, apart from them, and in silence, remembered in
what dread he stood of the mystery of his own body.
Stefanos delos Bos, Stefanomenos, Bals, Stefanephoros. Their banter was not
new to him, and now it flattered his mile proud sovereignty. Now,

(11:02):
as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy,
so timeless, seemed the gray, warm air, so fluid and
impersonal his own mood, that all ages were as one
to him a moment before the ghost of the ancient
Kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through the vesture
of the Hazrat city. Now at the name of the

(11:25):
fabulous Artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves,
and to see a winged form flying above the waves
and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was
it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval
book of prophecies and symbols? A hawk like man flying
sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he

(11:50):
had been born to serve and had been following through
the mists of childhood and boyhood, A symbol of the
artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish
matter of the earth, a new, soaring, impalpable, imperishable being.
His heart trembled, his breath came faster, and a wild

(12:11):
spirit passed over his limbs, as though he were soaring sunward.
His heart trembled in an ecstasy of fear, and his
soul was in flight. His soul was soaring in an
air beyond the world, and the body he knew was
purified in a breath and delivered of incertitude and made
radiant and commingled with the element of the spirit, an

(12:34):
ecstasy of flight, made radiant his eyes, and wild his breath,
and tremulous and wild and radiant his wind swept limbs.
One two, look out, O cripes, I'm drownded. One two
three and away me, next me, next one uk Stephanophros,

(12:59):
his throat ached with a desire to cry aloud, the
cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry
piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. This was the
call of life to his soul, not the dull, gross
voice of the world of duties and despair, not the
inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service
of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him,

(13:23):
and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft
his brain. Stephanephoros, what were they now but seraments shaken
from the body of death, the fear he had walked
in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round,
the shame that had abased him within and without sermons,

(13:45):
the linens of the grave. His soul had arisen from
the grave of boyhood spurning her grave clothes. Yes, yes, yes,
he would create proudly out of the freedom and power
of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore,
a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

(14:11):
He started up nervously from the stone block, for he
could no longer quench the flame in his blood. He
felt his cheeks aflame, and his throat throbbing with song.
There was a lust of wandering in his feet that
burned to set out for the ends of the earth.
On on his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen

(14:32):
above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer
before the wanderer, and show him strange fields and hills
and faces. Where he looked northward towards howth the sea
had fallen below the line of sea rack on the
shallow side of the breakwater, and already the tide was

(14:52):
running out fast along the foreshore. Already one long oval
bank of sand lay warm and dry amid the wavelets.
Here and there, warm aisles of sand gleamed above the
shallow tide, and about the aisles, and around the long bank,
and amid the shallow currents of the beach were light clad,
gay clad figures wading and delving. In a few moments,

(15:16):
he was barefoot, his stockings folded in his pockets, and
his canvas shoes dangling by their knotted laces over his shoulders,
and picking a pointed salt eaten stick out of the
jetsam among the rocks, he clambered down the slope of
the breakwater. There was a long rivulet in the sand,
and as he waded slowly up its course, he wondered

(15:38):
at the endless drift of seaweed, emerald and black, and
russet and olive. It moved beneath the current swaying and turning.
The water of the rivulet was dark with endless drift,
and mirrored the high drifting clouds. The clouds were drifting
above him silently and silently, the sea tangle was drifting
below him, and the gray, warm air was still. And

(16:01):
knew wild life was singing in his veins. Where was
his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung
back from her destiny to brood alone upon the shame
of her wounds, and in her house of squalor and subterfuse,
to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that
withered at the touch. Or where was he? He was alone?

(16:27):
He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart
of life. He was alone and young and wilful and
wild hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and
brackish waters, and the sea harvest of shells and tangle
and veiled gray sunlight and gay clad light clad figures

(16:48):
of children and girls, and voices childish and girlish in
the air. A girl stood before him in mid stream,
alone and still gazing out to sea. She seemed like
one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a
strange and beautiful sea bird. Her long, slender, bare legs

(17:10):
were delicate as a crane's and pure, save where an
emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign
upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft hued as ivory,
were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes
of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down.

(17:31):
Her slate blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist
and dove tailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's,
soft and slight slight and soft as the breast of
some dark plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was
girlish and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty.

(17:52):
Her face. She was alone and still gazing out to sea,
And when she felt his presence and the worship of
his eyes, her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance
of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long long she
suffered his gaze, and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his,

(18:14):
and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water
with her foot. Hither and thither the first faint noise
of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint
and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep. Hither and thither,
hither and thither, and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

(18:38):
Heavenly God cried Stephen's soul in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across
the strand. His cheeks were aflame, his body was aglow,
his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on.

(19:00):
He strode far out over the sands, singing wildly to
the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life
that had cried to him. Her image had passed into
his soul forever, and no word had broken the holy
silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him, and
his soul had leaped at the call to live, to err,

(19:22):
to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.
A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of
mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts
of life, to throw open before him in an instant
of ecstasy, the gates of all the ways of error
and glory, on and on and on and on. He

(19:47):
halted suddenly, and heard his heart in the silence. How
far had he walked? What hour was it? There was
no human figure near him, nor any sound borne to
him over the air, But the tide was near the turn,
and already the day was on the wane. He turned
landward and ran towards the shore, and, running up the

(20:10):
sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy
nook amid a ring of tufted sand knells, and lay
down there, that the peace and silence of the evening
might still the riot of his blood. He felt above
him the vast, indifferent dome, and the calm processes of
the heavenly bodies, and the earth beneath him, the earth

(20:32):
that had borne him had taken him to her breast.
He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His
eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement
of the earth, and her watchers trembled as if they
felt the strange light of some new world. His soul
was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim uncertain as

(20:57):
under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings, a world,
a glimmer or a flower, glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding,
a breaking light, an opening flower. It spread in endless
succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and
fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf, and wave of

(21:21):
light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with
its soft flushes, every flush deeper than other. Evening had
fallen when he woke, and the sand and arid grasses
of his bed glowed no longer. He rose, slowly, and
recalling the rapture of his sleep. Sighed at its joy,

(21:44):
he climbed to the crest of the sand hill and
gazed about him. Evening had fallen, a rim of the
young moon, cleft the pale waste of sky, like the
rim of a silver hoop embedded in gray sand, and
the tide was flowing in fast to the land, with
a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last

(22:05):
figures in distant pools. End of Chapter four,