"Although the future may be unpredictable, the past is also full of surprises."

Your post got me thinking about my own childhood memories...there is only one in my mental file, and I'd be mortified to share it! Maybe I could if my own sister wasn't going to be joining us!

Hey, Ella, you can talk about any Dubliner story you care too! I really enjoyed them and think they will help us to understand Joyce's childhood better! Anything goes here, ok?

Ella, would you believe those stories in Dubliners are even more autobiographical than Portrait? It seems that for the novel, Joyce wrote an autobiographical draft, much like Dubliners (he titled it Stephen Hero), and then rewrote it, fictionalizing the real characters for Portrait.

The circus! Jackie! You weren't even two! Mickey Mouse! Bleachers! I find this absolutely amazing...and I am very envious...for reasons I will tell you about next week.

Galia is divisa en partes tres.

Gall is divided into three parts. and I ca't dven spell GALL.

I tried to read James Joyce once long ago. I lasted about half a page. His sentences went on forever, as I recall. Maybe I'll do better this time. You say it's on line? good I just found it following the trail begun here with our hotlink title. The translation is as follows:

Epigraph: Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes: Latin, "And he applies his mind to unknown arts" [the line continues, "and changes the laws of nature"]. Description of Daedalus in Ovid's Metamorphoses, VIII:188.

Claire

HERE

Claire

to be found here

So now the young mans world is one where he must go forth as an original , exploring "where no man has gone before". Since we're quoting, that's from STAR TREK. My but this is an education reading one paragraph has really started the ball rolling.

Claire

I copied the book to my hard disk. It hasn't much of a plot, doesn't need one, is so full of food for thought . a wonderful choice, joyce (S)

Claire

From the early reviews of A Portrait, it's clear this novel was considered "unconventional" at the time.

"...the book's eerily convincing portrayal of a sensitive youth who is harrowed by religious and sexual guilt and transfigured by an idea of beauty. Stephen's remarkable self-involvement and his frustration under the authority of church, state, and parents rings especially true for undergraduate readers today, however different the specifics of circumstance."

How is that for early in the morning?

Ella, who ever said anything about keeping them all happy?

Claire

NOBODY else could make sense of Finnigans Wake either., And it was based in part on the song, which I know well.

wheels in whells. I'm having fun here.

Claire

Nice to see you here. We have a fun group here.  If I may I'd like to add your name to our emailing Bookie List.  We send out news and advertisements occasionally.

Barbara, MR.(mad researcher) has crept in as we slept and left a most useful tool, the "Annotated Chapters", which now appears up in the heading for easy reference. As always, thanks Barb - for the Dublin photos too!

claire! That's so funny! Do you first read the last pages of a mystery too! You've tempted me to look, but no, I'll resist a bit longer! Yes, fun! You make this fun! It's contagious! I think this will be "high mirth" indeed!

Ella, now that you mention it, yes, I think he's handsome too. Would you prefer a photo in the heading, instead of the graphic? I rather liked the graphic...especially his feet!

Ann stand in line for punishment. I got there first. read all of chapter one and the last one two. Who can stop at two pages and on line they don[t even paginate that stuff.

How did they do it then a birch rod on the knuckles?

Claire

Lets see, what was the punishment back then? A caning or a rod to the knuckles. Sounds awful to me!

Claire

And ANN! A big WELCOME. Good for you, Ella - you talked her into joining, promising she only need s two pages to jump in! I just didn't want newcomers to think they had to read the whole book to start. We take it painfully slow in GB...

And now claire is giving me a hard time about it! I think it's time for her punishment...get the paddle...palms up! Till they smart!!!

Claire

Hmm...Ella, I've been thinking about James Duffy's credibility in Painful Case...
Here is this poor guy...40ish?...living in an old house, (no carpets, no pictures on the wall), far from Dublin, where he works. He knows no one...in total isolation. Everything is harsh, Joyce tells us, though Duffy is ever alert for some "redeeming instinct in others, often disappointed".
His only passion or interest in life is his writing, piano and Mozart. Finally he meets a woman his age who shares the same interest in music. They begin to meet at concerts...She's married, but brings him home to meet her husband, who thinks the interest is in his daughter.
He spends much time...talking to her as he has never spoken to another person in his life. They continue to meet...and talk! One day as he tries to express a thought, she takes his hand to her...cheek! He is appalled! The relationship is cheapened! It has turned into something tawdry! They break up. He writes, Love between man and man is impossible, because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse."
When he learns that while inebriated she has been hit by a train and killed, he feels that she has degraded HIM. A soulmate has done something so irresponsible. (anger) Then he begins to question WHY he should be blamed?(denial) He begins to understand how lonely she had become and blames himself for sentencing her to death. The one human being who had tried to love him...he had denied her happiness! Now he is really alone.

What do you find "incredible" about all this?

I'll be back in a few minutes and tell you what my sources have to say about this story. I think you'll be amused!

Joyce was 23 when he finished this story for Dubliners...only 23! He has left Ireland and is living in Italy. He writes to his 21 yr. old brother Stanislaus that his intention is "to write a chapter in the moral history in my country. I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me to be the center of the paralysis" (later he describes this paralysis as the "doomed and self- deflating life in Dublin"). Critics refer to these stories as "epiphanies of paralysis". Duffy had become totally alienated from the "mean, modern, pretentious suburbs of Dublin. But this story brings out his inability to live as far as possible from the city. This collection of stories was intended to be a step toward the spiritual liberation of his country.


He is writing from memory...refusing to invent names of places, pubs, shops...the use of real names tell that this is an actual city, not a figment of the artist's imagination. Does this extend to the characters? If so, shouldn't that improve their credibility? And where does the artist's imagination enter into his work?

The characters are also based on real people... Joyce's "frugal, caustic, abstemious" brother, Stanislaus, is the model for Duffy....The humor is that the name belonged to Pisser Duffy who beat up Stanislaus when they first moved into one of their many homes...
Here's more humor. When they were younger, Stanislaus kept a very private diary, which Joyce was always finding and making great fun of his brother's moralistic writing. The sentence about men and woman and friendship and intercourse was lifted exactly as Stanislaus had written in his diary and included in Painful Case! You don't think that was very nice...very funny, you say? Get used to James Joyce! Everything that occurs in his life is fair game for his fiction!

The importance of the Dubliners stories - Joyce is learning to use the map of Dublin for fictional purposes.

Claire

The association of sex and guilt is a major theme we can expect in Portrait - and all of Joyce's work. Sex, guilt and atonement- or lack thereof. All directly associated with love of mother, church and country...as Barbara puts it so well! Repression!

Heavy! But funny at the same time - a very fine line separates pain and humor, don't you think? We are in for quite a trip!
...and all the kidding aside about the first two pages - I only meant we will limit the discussion to these pages this week...as an introduction to the big issues we will be seeing in the coming weeks. Of course you can - and will - read the book however you like, from the last page forward if you wish!

Since we got an early start on the guilt and atonement issue, what do you see of it already in these first two pages?

IE> Now I know the Daedelus myth. Daedelus was the father of Icarus, the foolish son who flew too high too close to the sun, melted the wax in his wings and perished.

So is Stephen the father? carefully making his way out of the labyrinth on his constructed wings. It seems to fit better in my mind than the heedless behavior of Icarus, the son.

And what about a play on words (son=sun???) getting confused. . .free associating now.

I'm picking up a lot about joyce from your posts. Stephen seems to me to be cautious even though he does decide to leave the world he knows. . . . partly because of his loss of religion. other Is religion the sun? (or son = Icarus ) dangerous--stuff?

You've got me going -- off the wall now. continue. please. . . . . Claire

is this is related to the Ti Finnegan song he was a simple workman. "Tim Finigan lived in Walking street A gentle Irishman mighty odd

He'd a beautiful brogue so rich and sweet, and to rise in the world he carried a hod."

Now Stephen came from an upper middle class environment, or even higher. . . for whatever it's worth, it's a great song. about resurrection. . . rising from the dead to join in the fun at his wake.

Claire

How does Joyce's recollection of his third year compare with your own? I am really curious. I will tell you why...it's a sad little story, one that is painful and embarassing to tell. All the more difficult, because my sister is reading along with us.

My mother died shortly after I turned seven and I was sent to boarding school. While there, I remember finding all my memories fading...my old school, friends, house, mother...I remember wanting a camera very badly. What I really needed was photographs...(I didn't have a single one), but I believed I needed a camera and everything would be better. Nearly everything did fade eventually, (blocked?), so that all my childhood memories begin at seven.

But wait! The question about memories at age three has brought forth one single memory, the embarassing one I mention above.

It is my sister's christening day. I know I'm three because we are three years apart. I have been given a doll, because "Mommy has a new baby" and now I have one too! Everyone prepares to leave for the church. I announce I am not going. I remember that so clearly. I remember waiting to be coaxed. They can't leave without <me, can they? Well of course they could, and did! I stayed behind with other adults...and my new baby. I remember taking that "baby" by the feet and smashing it into walls, furniture, trying to destroy it! I don't remember if I did. I don't remember anything else. Sorry, Kay! Not very nice big sister...but I never hurt you, (I don't think...I don't remember!)

Yet that's how his readers first received his Portrait of the Artist...in serial form, published in a literary magazine, The Egoist in 1914. (The same year Dubliners was finally printed. I wish I knew how much Of Portrait was published in each edition. The readers were probably familiar with the historical figures, Parnell and Davitt, but much of the symbolism was a mystery to them, as it is to us.
While I have this source in front of me, I'll give you some more of the information...to fill the vacuum a bit. Joyce wrote the Dublinersstories before and during the writing of Portrait. For example, he wrote A Painful Case(claire, did you notice that the story is in clickable form in post #64?) in 1904 when he was 23 years old. He also wrote Stephen Hero in 1904 . This was more of an autobiography, "providing a great deal of material helpful in understanding Stephen's motivations in Portrait" Too bad he didn't' publish it! I wonder if it is available anywhere. He sent a copy to his brother Stanislaus for comment...did Stanislaus ever publish it? In 1908 he rewrote Stephen Hero, greatly fictionalizing the characters. He renamed it, saying he thought the title too "heavily ironic".

So, it is left for us to puzzle through symbolism and references in these first two pages, in an attempt to read ensuing chapters in less of a vacuum. Personally, I think we are making great progress!

Back in a few minutes...

And yes, I do think that Joyce is using all the senses, as an artist to create this 'portrait'of an artist and his sensitivities...the "queer smelling oilcloth", the "hairy" face of his father, the "nicer-smelling mother", the "warm/cold" of the wet bed..., the piano, the song, the dance...

I must add here that I am typing this in tears. Hugs to you Barbara and admiration! Here I sit, wishing to retrieve some early memories and you have had so much to cope with! And you did it with the same determination to get to the bottom of things that leads us to refer to you as "mad researcher". I am still shaking, but want to say that I am proud to know you. You are an inspiration to everyone who has ever encountered adversity. I just wonder why you had to shoulder so much...at such a young age! Too much!!! I'm off. Will talk to you tomorrow.

Do you have the book? If not, you can read on-line...there is a clickable above. That's all you need. Please pull up a chair and make yourself at home in the Daedalus Society!

My childhood must have been a happy time, and much sheltered.  I remember times of eating ice cream with real chocolate syrup at Grandfather's, feeding the swans when we lived in Florida one winter, a new tricycle that I rode on in the house, and taking a nap with a large dog (but don't know what kind).

Later I remember spending a long time in a T-B sanitarium.  But don't really have any vivid memories even though I was 7.  I try to not remember unpleasant times. My grade school days were full of baseball, bicycles, yo-yo's, and swimming.  But during the depression, I remember we did a lot of walking wherever we wanted to go.  It was 2 miles to the YW to swim and church was 1 mile.  We ate a lot of beans and cornbread, and hamburger was a special treat. And two cousins, older than me, furnished us with our clothes for me and my sister.

It would be hard for me to part with a son, to send him away for an education, at a time when children that age need so much love.

I don't know when the battle with my sister began but it was life-long. She was five years older and badly managed when the baby (I) came.

There was a story that I fell out of my crib at age two and broke my collar bone. Never very active as a child I rather suspect that she might have had something to do with it. However, I don't remember ever having a broken collar bone.

Mother often punished her for my transgressions . . . for setting a bad example . No wonder she hated me.

I do remember that although she controlled my sister forcefully with mouth washings of soap and such, when she tried it with me I bit her. There were many spankings, bare assed ones, bare legged ones, wait until you father comes home and belted ones, until the day I pushed back, he slipped and fell on the slippery tile of the bathroom floor and beatings ended.

I wrote a story about the time my sister taught me to fight back, too long for here, but I'll be forever grateful. The message is that if you move forward to attack you're not as frightened as you would be moving backward in retreat. It works to this day. Barbara, is this making sense to you?. Seems to me that is what you did when you tackled your memories in therapy. They call it courage and maybe that's what courage is -- taking charge .

I'm a creative person, a lifelong artist, but my childhood memories are few and boring to me. - - llearning to tie my shoe at three - a triumph and hopscotch on the sidewalks using the squares there...school and kindergarden paints, mixing the together and sloshing,= crimiinal behavior. I'm sure they are insignificant.

Claire

What I remember even more than this, though, is my sister, she's 7 years younger than me telling her aunts of some early memories. They were Pentecostal lay-ministers and the idea that someone could conjure up memories that early positively drove them into a holy frenzy. It was the devils work for some reason I never understood! (Also, my sister had a moo-cow on her wall jumping over the moon!)

Charlie

Joan

('Kate'! I just came in in time to see your St. Patty's greeting before the stroke of midnight! I would bet you didn't read back posts, or you would have commented on your "christening day" story...just as well you didn't! Good to hear from you! How are Josh's plans shaping up?
Barb - YES-that's my answer to your question! That's all I have time for tonight...ready to drop and a huge day at work tomorrow! So I'll paste this here and hit the pillow! Talk to you tomorrow night. )

Marg, it is therapeutic, isn't it? I am remembering more and more little snatches of my life before the age of seven, just reading what others have written....and I haven't even tried Barb's method yet - sitting quietly and writing thoughts with the left hand - although I think that is fascinating! Did you ever read that book about drawing, where you try copying a picture with your left hand, without looking at your hand or paper...I did something marvelous like that once. I think the theory is that you are using the right brain, which is much less critical than your left side, so you are less inhibited. Did I get that right? Anyway, I do intend to try it, and perhaps will tap into memories I thought were lost forever...

Do you think that such reminiscence was therapeutic for Joyce? You know, his own life was the source of subject matter for all of his works!!! I made a note from Ellman's biography on Joyce's incessant joining of the events of his life and his writing- let me find it here somewhere...

"The life of an artist, but particularly that of Joyce, differs from the lives of other persons in that its events are becoming artistic sources even as they command his present attention. Instead of allowing each day to lapse into imprecise memory (as Nellie, you appear to be doing), he shapes again the experiences which have shaped him. He is at once the captive and the liberator. (He is creating his own labyrinth, as Daedalus did!) In turn, the process of reshaping experience becomes a part of his life, another of its recurrent events like rising or sleeping."

I have an idea why Irish emigrants celebrate St. P's day..I'll bet Ginny and Sandy enjoyed the parade in NYC...with Maureen O'Hara as the grand marshall!

And the more I think of it, the more I agree with what Ed said yesterday..."When Joyce is describing outward events and things, he is really describing their interior significance for himself." That's probably how he arrived at the stream of consciousness form we see in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake!!!

I must tell you all how much I appreciate your posts, your "significant interiors"! They are opening up whole avenues which lead to self-understanding, and understanding of "the artist"! Invaluable! I think you all should be writers the way you express yourselves...

Marg's "sweet sweaty smell of my father
Pat's "taking a nap with a large dog"
claire, the artist - "mixing them (kindergarten paints) together and sloshing (criminal behavior) " - here's some of claire's "sloshing"-sloshing
Charles - ""sitting under a table seeing my father in a tuxedo" (I'd give anything to see in my memory my mother wearing something so specific!)
Larry's delight "when my little sister came home from the hospital"
Barb's "wondrous top" at 11 months! Amazing!
And Ella's "fear" trying to make her way home

Childhood memories? Many!! Pushing a wicker doll stroller with my bear riding inside. (Both of these toys had originally belonged to my mother) Stubbing my toes on a hot sidewalk and being reminded to wear shoes. Watching my grandfather carry roofing tar up a ladder and climbing up after him. Getting tar in my hair and being reminded that I wasn't supposed to be on the ladder. Helping my mother(who was visiting down the street) by bringing in the milk and dropping both quart bottles and breaking them. Everyone worrying about me getting glass in my feet. Moving to another house and my mother collapsing on the sofa after the busy day. It was in early September, hot,hot,hot but the living room was so nice and cool. Going for rides in my uncle's convertible with him and his new wife. Attending their wedding in May of that year and my grandmother handing me a tiny rosary to keep me occupied. All of these memories are before I was three. I even remember being in a playpen which had a side that unlocked and you could leave the playpen but (as my mother laughingly told me later) I was so occupied with the locking and unlocking of the side or gate that I just kept returning to the inside.

My daughter remembers being in her crib when she had to be just shy of two. Isn't it funny how these memories are sort of in shadow but always there?

"But online groups do seem to fill the needs of a variety of readers. Some gravitate to such clubs because of location, mobility or scheduling restrictions. "No matter where you are or what your situation, you can still talk books, even if it's the middle of the night," said Ginny Anderson, a retired Latin professor in Pauline, S.C., and book club leader at Senior Net www.seniornet.org, which supports nine reading groups in a message-board format.

But many members of online reading groups say they simply prefer discussing books online. online clubs are more amorphous and open to new members, adherents say. "The image of reading groups is of mostly a female thing," said Craft, of V.R.G., "so I had this fear that I would go to one and stumble into a Tupperware party. For someone like me, who is hesistant to enter unfamiliar territory, an online club was a good option."

Ms. Anderson, of Senior Net, said her clubs turned what was generally considered a disadvantage of online communication -- the lack of facial and other physical cues -- into a plus.

"There's no body language," she said, "and it's quite marvelous. It becomes a pure meeting of the minds. In real life, all you need is one person to roll their eyes to shut someone up for the rest of the night. That doesn't happen here."

Jill Lasker, a science writer based in Richmond, Va., has helped lead both online and off-line clubs since 1995.

"My experience with online groups has been much more rewarding than that with face-to-face groups," she wrote in an e-mail message. "People are more inhibited in person. Of course, online you don't see the joyous expression of someone who has absolutely fallen in love with a book. But it does get to the point in a good online group where you swear you can hear the other person giggling."

Off to work!
Joan

What heavy guilt upon him lies!
How cursed is his name!
The ravens shall pick out his eyes
And eagles eat the same

the scriptural basis Proverbs 30:17,"The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it."

Betty Byrne is listed as a grocer at 46 Main Street in Bray. Bray "the Irish Brighton," is on the coast 13 miles south-southeast of the center of Dublin. The Joyces lived at 1 Martello Terrace, Bray 1887-92

Tuckoo Suggests being tucked into bed but 'tuckout' is also Irish slang for a good meal, a feast.

This discussion is bringing them up, memories. the small curly white poodle with the enormous red bow balanced precariously in the lid of a shirt laundry box on a Christmas, so far back I can't differentiate and I, in bed sick, unhappy but suddenly entranced with this new little person, mine for the next fourteen years.

There, I did it Joyce style all in one sentence, but lacking the smells and sounds and intestinal gurgles.

How'mIdoin. . . (grin)

Writing is fun if not taken so seriously that it becomes a chore. This group is wonderful.

Thanks for the art plug Joan? that's one of my favorite "sloshes" too. It's a monoprint originally until I got to improving on it in Adobe Phtoshop on my computer. The media is currently making much of the message, since it is so well adapted to theme and variations. . . a musical form enjoyed by Beethovan and others and me as listener. Remember the FRENCH LEUTiNANTS WOMAN with it's alternate endings.? Now there's an interesting art-form for writing . . . "theme and variations".

Claire

Claire

Bill CLinton once tried to read A Portrait of The Artist.... He couldn't get past those 'first two pages'. Depends on your definition of "was".....

Charlie

"Isn't it funny how these memories are sort of in the shadow, but always there?"

Charlie, good one! I think Joyce's definition of was would be is. I envy those of you who can sit quietly and resurrect those precious memories. Kay, do more memories exist after you turned four? You know, I've never thought about what you all were going through. I suppose I thought you didn't remember anything at all. I assumed that because I had no memories before 7, that you wouldn't either. I'm sorry. This whole "memory" week has been a revelation to me.

I will put some of the questions which have been raised in the heading and also the sites provided by Larry on Michael Davitt/Parnell and Barbara's site on the Jesuits in Ireland, which should help us understand the rest of Chapter I

"Oh! Lily, sweet Lily, dear Lily Dale,
Now the wild rose bolossoms
O'er her little green grave,
'Neath the trees in the flowe'ry vale."

I've read that A Portrait is supposed to parrallel Ibsens's Brand(1886) Joyce says his Stephen's spirit owes something to "the will-glorification in Brand". Brand asserts: My infant soul grew up in loneliness - Brand refuses to become a parson on the note, "I have a greater duty laid on me" as Stephen will refuse a vocation in the priesthood. Brand's mother accuses him of taking unnecessary risks as Stephen's mother is "hostile to the idea" of university

Is bed-wetting will-glory and symbolic of a lonely but willful soul?

Claire

By the way, Stephen Hero is available as a 1968 New Directions paperback.

Other random thoughts: Joyce running around with a notebook driving his friends crazy - reminds me of when I first came to Boston and used to sit in an all-night Hayes-Bickford's Diner scribbling snatches of random conversations.

We've all given our first, earliest memories…Why are they significant, and what do they have in common? Perhaps they are our first realization of OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD. And in our first realization, we are at the center. We look, we smell, we touch, we hear and OTHERS, those OTHERS, sing to US, talk to US, clap to US, coo-coo to US, for we are baby tuckoo and all is safe and warm and tralala and it's a very good time. BUT. BUT. Baby Tuckoo is a rose blossoming on the little green place (Ireland). A WILD Rose who might want to marry Eileen when he grows up. TOO WILD. SCOLD SCOLD baby tuckoo. Under the table. Stephen WILL apologize (or else). Retribution. Scorn. Moral judgements. The times will never be as nicens as thesens again

WET/DRY WET/DRY WET/DRY WET/DRY WET/DRY wet/bed all/warm wet/bed all/warm wet/bed all/warm….feels/good feels/warm feels/good feels/warm NO …BAD BABY TUCKOO…WET IS BAD - DRY IS GOOD (feels cold - sniff-sniff) - dry oilsheet. Smell bad too. Baby tuckoo feels that wet is nicens and warm, but mama learns baby tuckoo that wet is BAD and COLD. Baby tuckoo confused.

Charlie

Charlie

p.s. you're doing some great work here, as usual, Barbara. Thanks

Charlie

Further, he also did a painting called

How many of us got hooked on reading as young kids through the fantastic illustrations of the N. C. Wyeth/Pyle type? I know I did.

Hey, Charlotte! Welcome back!

Charlie

Claire

Oh look! Carolyn just made it, all the way from Norway! I can see the tree fluttering to the sidewalk! Whomp! Lovely tree is all gone. (Have you all given some thought to Barb's question? - it's in the heading - interesting and important)..The symbolism for you...the transience of good times surely to come again...very optimistic! You must be an upbeat person by nature! So glad you decided to share that...the mad hen too! Carolyn is our primo lurker!

And Charolotte!, how was elderhostel? Will look forward to your insight in coming weeks. Enjoy Lear today! That play is definitely on our agenda here for the year 2000! Take good notes!

And if it isn't "her bundled little self!" JO! Didn't want to start without you! Can see the awe on your face when the bride came to see you! What a sweet thing for her to do! And you've remembered it all this time!

Well, I find lots of memories after age seven and will feel more like the rest of you when we start Stephen Goes Away to School tomorrow. He is 6.5 years old when he leaves for boarding school - I found a picture of Joyce taken 30 minutes before he started school, which I'll put up tomorrow. Makes you realize just how little, young, weak, he was. I was seven when I went off to Bender, so I can empathize completely.

(Kay, I too remember that weekend at Bender...you came to stay for the holiday bazaar weekend. You were four. I don't remember your precious pumpkin...but do you remember the taffy pull? Yes, I think you came because Nana was in hospital. I wonder where Pat went. We ought to get together, all five of us, and pool our childhood memories. I bet we'd remember a lot more than we think we do!)

Having slogged through Magic Mountain with some of you, I feel compelled to comment. While I agree there are parallels between Stephen/Joyce and Hans Castorp and their duality, I do sense major differences. I see Joyce's paralysis self-imposed (although I see that his religion and politics contributed - his brother, Stanslaus, for example, did not suffer in the same way...). Joyce seems to have created his own labyrinthine sanitorium right there at home in Dublin...and flees(flies) to freedom in Paris, never to return to the "flatlands". They both "escape"; they both become paralysed by "duality" - Hans can live with it! Joyce cannot bear it...except by turning it into an art form.

Marg - I have read that Joyce's favorite author was Dante. Yes, Divine Comedy - high on the list for Great Books attention...nominated every time. I am certain we will "do" it eventually. I think it is no coincidence that Joyce chose the name, which also means "aunt" in Eire. I think of "tante" in French...

Ella, yes, the roses and the watery eyes...we'll be seeing all of these symbolic references along with birds, "duality", religion and politics! I think we're ready

ps. Don't forget the annotations in the heading. I'd print out those for Chapter I. Most helpful!

Stanislaus Joyce is to James Joyce is to Stephen Dedaelus??

Io (one of my handles) was a lovely wood nymph living in the forest with her father Inacus and her sisters when Zeus discovered her and began to pay her attentions. Hera seeing the little gray cloud out over the forest on an otherwise cloudless day (from Mt. Olympus) rushed down there to see what her wandering spouse was up to now. JUst in time Zeus was warned and changed IO into a white cow. . . a BEAUTIFUL white cow.

Hera commented upon her beauty. "what a beautiful white cow, whose is she, where does she come from?"

"She comes from the earth" said Zeus, squirming a bit . . . "she is mine".

"OH, she's is so lovely. I'd like to have her" gushed Hera, "will you give her to me?".

There was no way out. Hera set the cow in a field with Argos (a thousand eyes) to watch over her. The story grows long but eventually IO escaped and Hera, to have the last word send a gadfly after her, biting her rump and keeping her moving until she arrived in Egypt, many years later. Zeus prevailed upon Hera to lift the spell and IO once again assumed her natural form, but this time with a little gold crown of horns on her head. The Egyptians Called her ISIS.

I left out some good stuff because of the length. Do you see a connection?

Possibly another outcast who transforms into something godlike in the end.

Claire

Yes, Charlie, I'll agree with your equation. Can't emphasize enough the effect of these fathers on their artistic sons and the characters the sons put forth. Let's watch Simon Dedalus very closely.

Patz! Give Jack a hug for me and tell him that a "moocow is a moocow" everywhere else but in a Joyce novel! You have to know what his definition of "is" is! This isn't just an autobiography, where he is remembering a tale is papa told him about a moocow coming down the road. This is a re-worked autobiography...fictionalized to tell his story. Actually, he first wrote of his childhood in a five-chapter autobiography, titled, Stephen Hero. Thanks to Charlie's tip that it was published in 1968, I located it and ordered it from Barnes & Noble over the weekend. In case anyone is interested here's the site through the bookstore:

So, Joyce took this autobiography and reworked it to tell the story his childhood. He was very selective...lots of symbols...nothing included unless enhanced the plot. So what about the "moocow"? As claire suggests, it could have been a reference to the Io myth, "Possibly another outcast who transforms into something godlike in the end

OR, it could have been the white cow of Irish myth discovered by Barbara:

"OK, found the references to: moocow in Irish idiom, the most beautiful of cattle, an allegorical epithet of Irland. Versions of the story are still current in Connemara in the west of Ireland: the supernatural white cow takes children across to an island realm where they are relieved of the petty restraints and dependencies of childhood and magically schooled as heroes before they are returned to their astonished parents and community."

Or (and I go with this one), it could be the articial cow that produced the Minotaur of the Daedalus myth. Several allusions to this myth occur in the first two pages, beginning with the quote of Daedalus in Ovid's Latin dedication and including the bird reference in the "apologize" psalm...

Everything is included in Portrait to make a point...not just to share a memory with us...

Consider Ella's question: "And what is the symbolism of this "you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could." (pg.200) Is this "changing the laws of nature?" It's put there for a reason. What do you think?

Did you see the photo in the heading? That's a photo of Joyce himself - taken about 30 minutes before he left for boarding school at age 6 1/2. Look how little he is. My heart went out to him while I read of his misery at school...and then it occured to me that I was his seven when I went away to school. Believe me, it's too young!!! Why would anyone send a young child away? Did they really believe it was for the child's best interest...a good education begins at this age? Why is it easier for some of the children at Clongowes than others? I would be interested in your thoughts. Did Joyce succeed in putting you into the very mind and heart of a six year old?

Charlie

St. Stephen had a foreign name, born in a "foreign" land

Nasty asks Stephen his name. "Stephen Dedalus.". "What kind of a name is that?"

St. Stephen was, according to the law of the time, cast into a pit and stoned to death.

Stephen was shoved into "the square ditch" by Wells because, according to the laws of the strong v.s. the weak, he would not make the trade.

No Stephen is no longer the center of the Universe. He needs to find his place…the world…Europe…Ireland…County Kildare…Sallins…Clongowes Wood College…Class of Elements…Stephen Dedalus…"That was he"

I picked up a used paperback (Penguin) today and of course kept reading, but smugging is annoying me.. anyone???

Claire

Claire

Claire

A great point about the associative mind - a disease!!! HAHAHA! I am quite familiar with such an affliction! Will Stephen create his own labyrinthe...? Perhaps he will need to fashion some wings to escape. Or, is the labyrinth the society in which he finds himself.... In either case, unbearable.

I haven't read the end of the chapter closely...won't until next week, but I do remember wondering at the term when reading those pages. The "Annotatations" up in the heading are worth printing out for chapter I. I also wondered at that "chestnut" which he would not accept in trade for his snuff box. It's all up there. Give it a "click". My son got in trouble in school when he and a bunch of seniors gave the new kid on the baseball team a "wedgie". The coach told me that I wouldn't want to hear it, when I demanded to know the reason he had to sit out a game. I imagined the worst sort of thing, but .......it wasn't. Same category as "smugging", I think.

About the six year old and art. Yes I would think so. He does so much wondering and it takes him so far afield. He finds more than one meaning for any word that happens to be important at the time and he's more interested in thinking than in rough competitive sports. Of course he's not very well equipped for sports but he is for thinking. How many kids read and write well at age six.

Claire

But I did find this list of annotations which seems to be even more specific than the one up in the heading. I'll paste it here and include it up top in the morning...

And lookee what I found in this list:

7.04 tuckoo. Harmon suggests "cuckoo" as an appropriate name for Stephen. The baby cuckoo is an alien because the female lays her eggs in another bird's nest. Joyce's father wrote to him on January 31, 1931: "I wonder do you recollect the old days in Brighton Square, when you were Babie Tuckoo, and I used to take you out in the Square and tell you all about the moo-cow that used to come down from the mountain and take little boys across?" (Letters, III, 212.) The Joyce family moved from Brighton Square in 1884, when Joyce was two.

"OK, found the references to: moocow in Irish idiom, the most beautiful of cattle, an allegorical epithet of Irland. Versions of the story are still current in Connemara in the west of Ireland: the supernatural white cow takes children across to an island realm where they are relieved of the petty restraints and dependencies of childhood and magically schooled as heroes before they are returned to their astonished parents and community."

Now, shall we conclude that the moocow has taken Stephen to Clongowes to relieve him of "the petty restraints and dependencies of childhood"?
"Stephen Hero"!

"Modernity is simply the sense or the idea that the present is discontinuous with the past, that through a process of social and cultural change (either through improvement, that is, progress, or through decline) life in the present is fundamentally different from life in the past.

The "crisis of modernity" is the sense that modernity is a problem , that traditional ways of life have been replaced with uncontrollable change and unmanageable alternatives. The crisis itself is merely the sense that the present is a transitional point not focussed on a clear goal in the future but simply changing through forces outside our control

Traditional cultures see themselves as repeating a finite number of alternatives in the present;
In Modern cultures, the future opens up a vast field of historical and lifestyle choices. This proliferation of alternatives is a source of great anxiety and often results in cultural attempts to restrict alternatives in the face of this anxiety. Let's keep in mind that it is not the alternatives themselves which create this anxiety, it is the sense that the proliferation of alternatives has become unmanageable.

Modernity has created a world view in us that is primarily abstract, that is, we experience the world as composed of discrete, fragmented, and separable units. Abstraction is a difficult word to define; for our purposes, it is the idea that areas of existence and culture can be separated from, that is abstracted out of, other areas of existence and culture.

Finally, we see ourselves as having lost tradition, that is, that our behavior patterns, our rituals, etc., are all new and innovative, that we are not repeating the past. But in fact, the experience of modernity is, in fact, to live in traditional ways and to repeat tradition in unrecognizable forms. Modern cultures still perform traditional rituals, such as sports (which are originally religious rituals) or shaming rituals, yet the origin and original meaning of these rituals have passed out of the culture. Modern cultures still repeat ways of thinking in the past — in fact, the bulk of modern culture is based on traditional ways of thinking repeated relatively unchanged — yet modern cultures tend to view these ways of thinking as innovations.

Although we base our social groups on abstract categories, the structure and content of these social groups repeat the structure and content of kinship groups, in other words, we base our abstract social groups on biological relationships; we do not, however, experience these social groups as real, biological relationships.

So, in sum, modernity — the sense that the present is discontinuous with the past, is an illusion — and this illusion creates modernity itself. What has changed is social memory; we have disconnected most of our practices and ideas from our collective memory of their origins and meaning."

Remembering the explination of Joyce as a writers Picasso - Joyce exemplifiies modern by using: shame; Stephen 'kissing his mother, being shouldered into the square ditch'; references many Irish traditions and the new 'family' at the Clongowes Wood College with Jesuit 'Fathers'.

Later!!!
Joan

. . . much more extreme than JoyceIMHO.

I like and understand most modern art, but some of it is clearly bull sh*t. I think maybe Cage music is in that catagory.

Claire

Did the prometheus site too. The story I have is that he gave man fire, symbolic for knowlege and lost his liver each day to grow it back each eveningl. I didn't know he ever was released from this. Interesting here. Learning new things every day. Thanks folks.

Claire

Here's something I found in David Pierce's James Joyce's Ireland on the school.:

"Clongowes Wood College (the real name) - the Eton of Catholic Ireland. John Joyce wanted his son to have the best education and he told his son the Jesuits were the 'fellows that can get you a position.' (So, now we see Papa Joyce's ambition, anyway.)

James was learning to mix with the sons of gentry. He was tiny, conscientious about his work, though one school mate said he was 'more delicate than brilliant.' He was also quite conscious of his inferior social position."

This consciousness is dawning on these pages...and I find it painful to read....do you? Did Joyce succeed in drawing you into the solitary confusion of this little boy? Do you remember the first time you felt you were different from other kids and your family didn't quite measure up? Were you away from home, or could you retreat to your family for consolation - validation? Stephen has nowhere to turn...but to his prayers his mother taught him...and to his bed. I think this is going to have a long term effect on him...how could it not?

As a schoolboy around the age of seven or eight, I wore shirts handmade by my grandmother - and BLESS HER HEART she was a good seamstress but she had a little problem with the collars. THEY CAME DOWN OVER MY SHOULDERS. THEY WERE HUGE. (ungrateful little boy). Oh, the humiliation. They sure made ME feel like an alien. (I mean these collars were so large that Stephen could have used them to lift off and fly away outta there!!!)

Look! Clongowes continues! I haven't seen a photo of the castle anywhere, but check out the school seal...are those.....eagles??? You know, I just thought of something. My son played against Gonzaga College High School in sports (is this a Jesuit thing...calling high schools "colleges" or what) - ...they were the Gonzaga EAGLES!!! A Jesuit mascot?! I was pleased to see that the boys must be 12 years old to enter Clongowes today (not six)!!!

I never picked up on what I'd call "self-pity". It only seemed to me that here is a lonely frightened little boy who feels APART, DIFFERENT. It seems to me that he is just finding himself and his corresponding talent to escape THIS reality through his imagination. A talent that, as it sorts itself out, leads to the molding of an "artist." Certainly, you are right, Ed, that Joyce is developing his "gift to create an inner private world where he can meet it [the outer, public world] on his own terms." I think that this veering inward ultimately leads to more universal truths - certainly more universal than the world of politics or religion.

I remember being weak and small and different and isolated. I wonder if it's universal. . . if everyone feels it at some time or other.

As a lifetime visual artist I can relate to the personal world. It was and is a saving grace for me. There I can do anything I wnt to, make my own rules, break them. As long as I don't hurt anyone else I rule and the art is first of all for ME. . . not those misunderstood and misunderstanding creatures out there in the "real" world. I imagine it's so for most artists. . . a hide-away, a place of safety although also one of confusion and doubt. Will the magic continue? will I be able to keep it going? What will happen next???.

Claire

If the resultant creation is the outer expression of self and we love it too much, we stop producing. Producing is a search as well as a distraction from reality. A search for something we can't even name or imagine. The search or process is more important than the final outcome because it is living --alive while the outcome is now external,l unchanging -- dead.

Claire

Those are wise words on the reading of Mann and Joyce. Stream of consciousness is tough reading, unless you understand where the thinker is coming from. I think we'll get the major themes down after the first chapter, but agree, we will never be able to race through!

So many ideas!!! I fear my head will burst! I don't want to go to work today. I want to sit here and spill out my thoughts all over the page! (Aren't you lucky I CAN'T?) Is this what it feels like to be an artist? (Could I have something in common with James Joyce?) If so, then claire, I don't think being an artist is necessarily narcissistic! Nor do I think that an artist works to produce - he MUST produce! He must express his thoughts, his vision...because he can think of no other way to calm the burning desire to express that which is consuming him at the moment. Now that is self-centered, but not necessarily narcissistic. I don't think Joyce paints Stephen as "hero" in these pages. I don't think he especially admires Stephen - but I do think he feels the need to portray Stephen in a way he(Joyce) will be understood!

You ask, "do we all remember feeling weak and isolated when small? A very good question! Did you ever think you were the only one who felt this way...and the "popular" kids were lucky because they were exempt from such insecurities? Do you still feel this way about them? Ella, how old were your four sisters? I don't understand why you felt you couldn't confide in one of them your problems with the "bully"? Do you think that "bully" may be sitting somewhere right this minute, writing of her insecurities as a young girl?

I remember being consumed with the idea that everybody knew more than I did! Kept that a very big secret. Memorized stuff, without understanding, would write out three questions to ask in class, just so the teacher would never call on me asking questions I wouldn't be able to answer - preferring to hear from the rest of the class. I would cheat, copy from other kids, even though I suspected they had wrong answers, so sure was I that I didn't know anything! No bully...just myself, I guess!

There were so many really good ideas expressed here yesterday. I want to hear more. You are all perfectly delightful...and entertaining!!!!!
Have a super day!

Joan

In this way I"ve learned all the traditional media of art, some of them here on the web, some of music and now writing. It keeps me feeling ALIVE and the producing is still the same thing it always was. . . . an externalization of me.

Claire

Charlie

I didn't know that Joyce introduced stream of consciousness writing. . . it's like poetry isn't it. But then he was a poet too.

Claire

After reading the first 28 pages, I found that this poor little guy was so homesick at the school that I could have cried. Having been that homesick at summer camp(that I chose to attend and pay for myself), at the tender age of 10 or 11, I knew how overwhelmed he felt. And, you can't tell anyone, including the adults, because its so embarrassing. I finally rose at 5am one morning and went to the dining tent, found a phone that I had spotted the day before, and called my mother to come and get me!! It was dreadful!

Then, on top of being confused about everything and wishing he could go home, Stephen gets really sick. What a great description of being that ill Joyce gives us. Do you remember having a fever as a child. As if you were in another world but this world still went on. Sounds similar to the descriptions of trying drugs or LSD.

As to the dining table at Christmastime, that was such a good scene, exposing all the persons' different feelings concerning Parnell's death and the priests using the pulpit to tell the people how to vote for his predecessor. I have read several books about Parnell plus seen a couple of movies about that time in the life of the Irish and according to this tale, the myth was portrayed quite well. What a great way to write this though, with just all of Stephen's perceptions right there on the page, like the painting of a picture. Yes, he is an artist! When you think back on your own lives, don't you remember being like a mouse in the wall and listening to all this talk. Can you tell that I am pretty Irish myself? Can you tell that for a time, I grew up in a semi-boarding house atmosphere with lots of family around plus our boarders? 'Twas different but grand fun!

Nellie! I read your post with great interest - the one about "reading for the story, without looking for the symbolism." When we were reading Magic Mountain , the only way I got through was to "attach myself" to Hans Castorp - and forget the philosophical talk swirling around him. I was lost in that and didn't understand it - so was Hans! What a pair we made!!! And other posters layered on explanations of the symbolism, the philosophy and the situation in the outside world at the time - for which I will always be grateful! I was set! I had everything I needed to finish a book I would not have finished otherwise!

To put this novel in context, it is worth noting that it appeared in serial form beginning February 2, 1914 (Joyce's birthday), just as World War I was to erupt right and went on through 1915. So imagine that we are reading the book in "serial form" each week during a very volatile time in Europe.

It is Charlotte who suggested the best way to study a work - is to read it through, and then go back and examine it more closely. I agree...and I'm sure Ros would too. But it has been our experience here in Great Books, since we read The Odyssey together several years ago, that all of our readers do not read to study, some read for the story, as noted, and that once the book is read through, they are gone to another book on their list.
So we take our time with Great Books, reading a bit each week, as if reading a serial, and hope to see you all when we reach the final page! A memorable, valuable experience guaranteed - hopefully! (an oxymoron?)

We each have our own reason for reading this book and it occurs to me that we fall into two, no three categories...different, though working together.

*I. Those who are reading for the story, the entertainment value.
Here we find Nellie and Ann, Larry,Patzy and Pat Westerdale - and I think I'll assign Ginny to this group before she breaks down and burns out trying to decipher the Monarch notes!...and Sandy too because they are best friends and go everywhere together...and Kay, my sister, whose memories bring forth my own. What a trip!

You are a very important part of the group. You post your enjoyment of the writing and your reactions to Joyce's stream of consciousness style. You remind us of why we read, and keep Group II from getting lost in the forest, by pointing out the trees. Be sure to follow the posts on symbolism though as Joyce becomes more and more obtuse as he and Stephen mature.

II Those who are looking for the symbolism behind every turn of the phrase. Here's Ella, who "doesn't usually read like this", but really wants an "A" for the course. And Marg, determined to systematically crack the code. Barbara, our mad researcher, who can't help it...can't help delving into every searchable noun reference, and Joan who has a hidden agenda to read Ulysses before she dies - this is in preparation.
Group II unearths tons of priceless, meaningful, sometimes overwhelming amounts of information, but must beware of turning this into a grueling research project!!!

III Those who provide the aesthetic, the philosophical implications behind the text, behind the symbols...
Here's Charles the Mirthful, claire, the artist (not narcissistic at all!) and Ed who will remind us that Joyce is creating his own inner private world where he can deal with the public on his own terms...
This is a gift, Group III and we are all better readers for your posts!!!

What a team!!! Let me know if you are not comfortable in the group to which you have been "assigned"...Feel free to get up from your seat and wander over to join another group whenever the spirit moves you!
Those just getting started will surely find a comfortable seat with one of these groups, No? Just holler and we'll create a new group just for you!!!

Nellie thinks he seems older that a six and a half year old...I think there's a good reason for this. Portrait is NOT Joyce's autobiography. Stephen Hero was the autobiography, written in 1904, ten years before Portrait was published. Did I tell you I ordered it as soon as Charlie mentioned it was in print? I was so excited when it arrived this week - was expecting to see the contrast between the autobiography in SH and the "art" in Portrait! Was devastated to learn that although Joyce wrote nearly 1000 pages of SH, (1000 pages! Can YOU imagine writing 1000 pages about YOUR life?) - really truly devastated to learn that 518 pages are lost and that the published copy I hold in my hand, printed from that which exists today at Harvard, covers the two years of Joyce's life at National University. The introduction says this of Stephen Hero:

: "..is the personal history on the growth of a mind, his own mind, and his own intensive absorption in himself and what he had been and how he had grown out of the Jesuitical garden of his youth...to assume a godlike poise of watchfulness over the boy..."

Soo, I think that explains what Nellie has noticed. We are not really looking at a six and a half year old, but rather at Joyce's Portrait of himself in the context of his entire life - as a young man. He sounds lost, because Joyce remembers that, but he appears wiser than Joyce was at the time, because Joyce is wiser and is telling a story now. This is an important part of the story...explaining Stephen's growing alienation from his world and confusion at the conflicting "rules" society presents to him, and his growing desire to escape... at a very young age. He sees it all in retrospect and is telling the story to us here.

So, do you see him as a scared and lost little boy, or one a bit too wise and analytical for his age?

Do you think that if you put these memories on paper...if you really wanted your great-grandchildren to read about them - that you would truthfully, shamelessly record them as they happened? Or would you put them in context, with some sort of explanation as to what lead to such circumstances? And if you felt compelled to spend time presenting this in readable story form, to entertain, don't you think you'd put some sort of interesting spin on the whole thing to evoke a sympathetic response from your readers (those little grandchildren 0f yours...my grandnephews-to-be?) I think you would! Otherwise you'd leave out the uglies, like bedwetting and cesspools and the like...

Your name has entered the esteemed Group I - which keeps this converstation moving!
Later!

I remember a shy silent child in grade school, also in high school and college, but as an adult, going back to pick up the pieces missed and fill in the dark places, I was obnoxious. You couldn't shut me up, ignoring the fact that this was a class and impelled to ask one thing after another -- almost a private conversation with the teacher -- who was supposed to KNOW and generally did, but got tired of calling on me.

I seek what I want to know aggressively now, but NOT as SHY retiring child. Maybe I didn't think I had a RIGHT to know. Anyhow this is wonderful for me and as usual I'm talking too much and too long.

Claire

And what happens? Nothing religious for sure, but talk of worldly concerns and even some rather unpleasant discourse and argument. He must feel mightily confused . . . where is CHRISTMAS?

It could be the beginning of his estrangement from his religion, his family, his place as he has known it.

Joyce spends a great deal of space on this scene, even though he "floats" into it, as has been suggested. Its impact is on the level of dreams -- Stephen's subconscious is taking note, if not the detail certainly the " feelings" and his own resultant disillustsionment.

Joyce makes much of this scene. It must be important.

Claire

The annotations are wonderfully useful and very hard for me to read. . . not at all like CHAPTER ONE itself. So much for the "art" of writing.

Claire

Thankyou

Claire

*Whoa, Nellie! Don't ever apologize for getting carried away! Your memories are simply amazing! Joyce was right - "The Past is full of surprises"! I cannot believe so many people learn to swim the way you did! The crib memories, and the "cage" at 8 mos. - those are magical memories! I'm jealous!

Pat W - an interesting point...these little boys away from home with no one to give needed hugs. And they were away for a long time too, without weekends home as you and I had! Could this lead to smugging, do you think?

Ella, I don't remember nightmares very long...but I do remember the fact that I have them because they are very disturbing. I think the details here are the work of the artist...and probably didn't appear in the autobiographical, Stephen Hero

ps Ed, thanks for the information on the video. It sounds like something I'd like to watch after we have firmly established our own ideas of these characters. I remember when reading the Odyssey, we watched a TV version...disaster!!! And I wish I had completed the Benson Lucia before watching the videos, although I loved them. The problem was that the characters Benson had created in my mind did not resemble the casting director's characters...and they stuck in my mind and blurred my image of those in the book when I went back!

Ginny, you are just about caught up! Finish the chapter this week and you are with us. No Monarch!

Ella is right...all your questions are answered (and then some) in the "EVEN BETTER ANNOTATIONS" found in the heading...

I noticed something interesting there yesterday about the little snuff box Stephen wouldn't trade for the hacking chestnut:

10.30 swop his little snuffbox for Wells's seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty.

You'd better read up on Parnell - he is will be major! Up in the annotations! The contest was to swing one chestnut on a string against another swung by the opponent until one or the other smashed. "Conqueror of forty" probably does not mean that Wells's chestnut had smashed forty other chestnuts: it might, for example, have smashed four which were "conquerors of ten." When Joyce was at Clongowes he had a tiny snuffbox in the form of a little black coffin. In later life Joyce dreamed that Molly Bloom threw a black coffin at Bloom and the little snuffbox at him, saying to each, "I have done with you." (Gorman, p. 283n.)

Claire

Claire

Mr Casey: "Let him remember too,...the language with which the priests and the priests' pawns broke Parnell's heart...Let him remember that too when he grows up."

Joyce remembering why he remembers what he never forgot?

Patz! Thanks for Bray! Bray-on-the sea! How nice. Apparently the Joyce family still had their money at this point. They moved a lot...with each baby, they moved to a "lesser" dwelling. James was the eldest of 10 and they moved about a dozen times! From a biography:

"In the beginning the moves were for convenience...to have more space, to be near the sea, to be further from John Joyce's wife's family. (He thought the train fare would keep her family away!) Later the moves were of necessity".

So the Bray home was the last of the nicens homes...and this is where James Joyce lived while attending Clongowes College...40 miles from Bray at Sallins, County Kildare. It still stands! It is still fully operational, although the youngest boys there are now 12. Here's a photo:

It's funny...like Nellie, I'm experiencing flashbacks of long-forgotten events (not back to my crib, however!!!). Here's my story of wronged outrage:

I'm in kindergarten. School is over for the day. We are lined up, ready to go out for the schoolbuses...The teacher has told us to stare at the head of the child in front of us, and not to stop, even if someone talks to us. She then proceeds to hand out something...maybe report cards? She calls my name. I remember thinking...this is a test...we're not supposed to stop staring ahead, no matter what! Soo, she comes up to me and hollers my name in my face. I stare ahead. She's furious! She slaps me on my thigh. Hard! (This is not a nun...this is public school!) I get on the school bus and sit there crying...looking at the welts in the form of red fingers burning on my thigh . I feel stupid and ashamed for misunderstanding. (and I was the one who wanted to remember this stuff!!!)

Okay, we know this Christmas dinner argument made a deep impression on Stephen. How did it impact him? Do you notice any change in him when he returns to Clongowes? .

And the next thing you know his hands are being smacked by Fr. Dolan. I'm sure most everyone can relate to Stephens feelings when the prefect of studies calls upon him unexpectedly. I remember a sadistic shop teacher, who's mode of discipline was to grab a boys hands and force back the tips of his fingers into the base of his fingers all the while "walking" the boy around the room and having him up and down, up and down like a duck. Well the point was not lost on me. Never received this particular punishment!

A quick thumbing through Ellman tells me that he's not going to take sides on the stream of con. issue, Charlotte. He does offer up some interesting tidbits, however...upon the publication of Ulysses

Virginia Woolf: his writing is 'underbred', but 'there is something in this - a scene that should figure I suppose in the history of literature.'

It was Gertrude Stein who "was irritated to have her position as arch-experimentalist challenged..." 'Joyce is good. People like him because he is incomprehensible and anybody can understand him (?). But who came first Gertrude Stein or James Joyce? Do not forget my first great book, Three Lives,(1908) long before Ulysses...'

Voltaire: "how can one read such stuff?"

TS Eliot: "Joyce killed the nineteenth century, exposed the futility of all styles and destroyed his own future. There is nothing else for him to write another book about. Yet the book gave not new insight into human nature such as War and Peace did. Indeed, this new method of giving the psychology proves to my mind that it doesn't work. It doesn't tell us as much as one casual glance from outside often tells.

Yeats: "It is an entirely new thing - neither what the eye sees not the ear hears, but what the rambling mind thinks and imagines from moment to moment. He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist to our time."

Joyce himself came to regard the interior monologue as a stylization, rather than a total exposition of consciousness

Two other things from the Ellman biography: Portrait was first published in the literary magazine, The Egoist in serial form...15 pages each...does that sound like a full Chapter each edition? Also much is made of the importance of the short story from Dubiners, the "Dead" - supposed to have been the nucleus for Portrait. I just may reread that tonight.

. Oh I wish I could stay here and delve today! It should be a perfectly dreadful, treacherous day- eagles pulling at my eyes, putrid-smelling water - the works!! But wait! Birds can fly away...water can be purifying too! I can hardly wait to get home tonight and read all your lovely posts!

Joan

ps. Charlie, Ginny - more on those "hands" images tonight! Another reference in these pages, which hint at something to come...Yes, 'hand' memories are important to our inner children, aren't they?

Claire

I agree that stephen seems to enjoy "peaching". It makes him special with the boys, a hero of sorts....even better than MONEY.

Claire

Claire

I understand that many writers do not use outlines but depend on this disorganized way of following the muse as SHE tells the story.

Now would that be considered an epiphany?

Claire

"The epiphany was the sudden 'revelation of the whatness of a thing', the moment in which 'the soul of the commonest object...seems to us radiant.' The artist, he felt, was charged with such revelations, and must look for them not among gods, but among common men, in casual, unostentatious, even unpleasant moments. He might find a 'sudden spiritual manifestation either in vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.' Sometimes the epiphanies are 'eucharistic'- another term arrogantly borrowed by Joyce from Christianity and invested with secular meaning. These are moments of fullness or of passion. Sometimes the epiphanies are rewarding for another reason, that they convey precisely the flavor of unpalatable experiences. The spirit, as Joyce characteristically held manifested itself on both levels..."

What a lucky little girl you were, Ella!!!! That shoots my theory that we all had our own difficult coming up...only different! No bitter painful "hands" memories! Imagine that! Maybe all those girls I envied because they didn't have the troubles I had...really didn't! They were Ellas!!!
Ginny, I could never make those potholders look like the rest of the classes' either! And I really tried. Here's my little memory:

First a bit of background...I'm 9-10...in Sister Alexis' class ( I loved the name - when I grew up I wanted to name three of my sons Alexis, but didn't get the opportunity. What's odd is that yesterday I heard the top four names for baby girls in the state of Maryland last year...and "Alexis" was number 4!) But I wander...Here was Sr. Alexis' "method"...this was every day (it seemed)...One student at a time came to the front of the room with a stack of books. Opened to the week's lessons...geography on the bottom, then history, reader, math book and catechism. The student then stood facing into the corner, back to the class, and Sr. Alexis peppered the child with questions from each book. This took about 15-20 minutes...
While this went on, the rest of us did "seat work". On Fridays we did art...that meant we copied a picture out of one of our text books and colored it. Some kids had colored pencils. I had eight crayons. I mean, how could I compete? One day, I couldn't find my crayons and someone lent me colored pencils. I was so proud...of my Arab street scene with a red and white striped awning. It was "perfect"...looked just like the text book, only in color...and neat too! I couldn't wait for her to see it...mounted it on construction paper...and waited for it to get hung up.
It wasn't mine, she said. Couldn't be mine! Too neat! Wasn't mine??? I was 9! Whose was it if it wasn't mine? OUTRAGE...tears! She gave me a real low mark in Art on my report card, I remember. I never told anyone! I know claire...I shouldn't have had a better grade in the first place, even if she believed it was mine...it was just copying!!!

So we have Ginny reporting the teacher to her parents, (Ginny, are you saying that Miss Thomas was jailed for pushing a child out a window?) and our Brave Nellie telling the Principal. Pat W., was it really Stephen's bravery and sense of unfairness that motivated him to the rector's office or his fear of Father Dolan returning every day for more paddling?
If reporting on Father Dolan's unfair cruelty to the rector is peaching (we seem to be divided on that), then Stephen seems to have decided to disregard-reject his father's warning, his father's authority-power-materialism. And Ed, do you think we are getting close to the reasons for the schizoid relationship of Irish writers with the authority of their church? Is it just Irish writers, or Irish in general? The writers are just able to express their feelings in print? Hmmm?

I thought the rector's response verrry interesting...and was also impressed with Stephen's persistence in explaining the exact situation, not letting it get dismissed as an honest mistake...

claire does Stephen really enjoy being the center of attention, or is he simply enjoying the exuberant feelings of freedom. Look at him again, and how quickly he disassociates from the celebration....

Goodness, where does the time go?!...came in to talk about hands and birds, but of course, there is always tomorrow! I love your posts!!!

ps Our Nellie will love you - any one who reads science fiction!!!

Have you all "caught up" ? This week we will go so far as, but not including Stephen's trip to Cork with his father in Chapter II. As Ann mentions, things really start to pick up now. Stephen/Joyce develops from a boy of 11 to an adolescent of 14 in this chapter, and we are in for some fairly rapid development at this point. Let's take great care to examine this process so we understand the choices he makes, in his life and in his writing. It is going to be unorthodox and sometimes unacceptable behavior to some of our sensitivities...but at least we will understand the "WHY" of it!. We can certainly see that Stephen is "on the brink" of taking off into the future. I think we should keep Ovid's quote chosen by Joyce at the start of the book in our minds...in the heading? Will do that today.

Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes: Latin, "And he applies his mind to unknown arts" [the line continues, "and changes the laws of nature"]. Description of Daedalus in Ovid's Metamorphoses, VIII:188.

"Joyce exploits many of the things all humans have in common. They have all been ignored in the interest of good taste in previous literature. Uncle Charles sits smoking in the reeking outhouse with the cat and the garden tools."

Have you noticed the way Joyce jumps from the sublime to the grotesque or "tasteless"? We left Chapter I with Stephen in triumph...and happy at Clongowes at last! Turn the page and we find ourselves with Uncle Charles in the "reeking outhouse"...It is these contrasts that strike me most about Joyce. Don't get comfortable with an explanation, a definition, because NOTHING is ever as it seems. The way he plays with words, saying them over to himself until he understands the meaning and then concludes that this is only one meaning of that word...the same with the symbolism...the birds for freedom, no, the birds for treachery and danger; the hands for shaking (remember poor little Stephen thought that Dolan was going to shake his hand at first?), the hand for paddling...sometimes hands feel good, sometimes painful; roses...beautiful and wild and free, sometimes war and death...everything must be understood in context. What is his context? He scrutinizes Uncle Charles and Mike Flynn very closely, the milkman too. Trying to see himself in their places when he grows up. And what does he conclude? Ann that's an idea. Maybe Mike Flynn had Stephen run just to keep him busy, out of earshot, so he could talk to Uncle Charles privately. Perhaps he sensed this little boy was all ears and scrutinizing him a bit too closely for comfort!

Good luck this week, Ann. Your guy will be in our thoughts and prayers!

Claire

I'm trying to clear my desktop of snippets this afternoon...scribbles of notes I've been meaning to post here, but never get to it.

"Soon after the Joyces moved to Bray (the nice seaside resort) they were joined by Mrs. 'Dante' Hearn Conway from Cork, who was to act as governess to the children. A fat, clever woman, she was too embittered by a disastrous marriage to fit easily into the tolerant, gay household. She had been on the verge of becoming a nun in America (Pittsbugh, I think I read somewhere) when her brother, who had made a fortune out of trading with African natives, died and left her 30,000 pounds. She came back to Ireland to settle her inheritance, and instead of returning to the US, gave up the convent and settled in Dublin to find a husband. She allowed herself to be won by an overdressed (?) employee of the Bank of Ireland. Soon after their marriage, to culminate a fine show of considerateness and good manner, Conway ran off to South America with her money tucked away in his pockets, and quickly ceased to write her promises to return. For the rest of her life Dante Conway remained the abandoned bride , and her burning memories of being deserted joined remorse at having left the convent to make her overzealous, in both religion and nationalism. She had two brushes, as JJ wrote, one backed in maroon for Davitt and his Land League, the other in green for Parnell. Her loyalties clashed bitterly when Parnell was found to have been an adulterer, but it is not hard to see why she should have at once abandoned this betrayer of marriage ties and torn off the green backing form her second brush.
Mrs. Conway was fairly well educated and evidently a competent teacher. Sitting on a throne-like arrangement of chair and cushions to soother her chronically ailing back, wearing a black lace cap, heavy velvet skirts, and jeweled slippers, she would ring a little bell. James would then come and sit at her feet for a lesson in reading, writing, geography, or arithmetic: or he would listen to her recite poetry. Her piety affected him less than her superstition, she talked a good deal about the end of the world, as if she expected it any moment, and when there was a flash of lightening she taught James to cross himself, and say 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, from a sudden and unprovided for death deliver us, O Lord'. The thunderstorm as a vehicle of divine power and wrath moved Joyce's imagination so profoundly that to the end of his life he trembled at the sound. when a friend asked him why he was so affected, he replied, 'You were not brought up in Catholic Ireland."...

"In the Joyce household Dante Conway, who stood firmly with the Church in its opposition to Parnell's leadership, must have felt less and less at home. Parnell's death made matters worse by overweighing his tragedy with martyrdom. Joyce has described the Christmas dinner in 1891, when his father and John Kelly raged and wept over Parnell's betrayal and death, and Dante Conway, full of venomous piety, left the table. Mrs. Conway left the house for four days...

Now to go ever the annotations for chapter two. did you say fourteen pages? in my large print versions that could be forty. thanks again. wonderful post.

Claire

Barbara I think it's time to move you to the third form with that observation on Parnell and Ireland's dependence on him and the Land Reform movement. The end of Parnell had an immediate effect on the economic downward spriral of the Joyce family as we'll see in this chapter.

I am struck by Stephen's increasing depression - and can only imagine that his entire family was in such a state that no one noticed the effect the "meanness" of the new digs was having on him. Or maybe they did - maybe that's why dad made the arrangements for him to attend the Belvedere school. It couldn't have been easy for dad to admit his circumstances to Conmee to get Stephen (and his brothers) free admission to the expensive day school. The house pictured above is the one S/J lived in when he began his Belvedere College days in Dublin. Huge family too...including Uncle Charles and Dante Conway!

claire! Where did you get the big print edition? I'm going to check my library for that!
Have a good day! Talk to you all later...new assignment at the Folger. Nothing exciting, just different!
Later!
Joan

Your conception of the story is just wonderful to read. At the moment, I am really enjoying just reading for content and you have explained that so well. The stream of conciousnes and the poetic sound of it all is quite easy to read. What the double meanings to each word used or each story told are is beyond me because I am just trying to get the tale straight in my mind. The Irish history of their intense nationalism and their attachment to the church has been told many times plus we can read it in our own newspapers right now but since this was written close to the history making time of Parnell, it brings a different and more personal light to the unfolding of such hard times in Ireland, while a young man grows to maturity.

I went to the DUBLINERS hot link and read THE DEAD, which was wonderful, conversation at the table again into politics and much more.

Complete Joyce Works can be found here if you haven't already done so. I'm going to read the short stories as a project. How come he isn't boring with those long sentences and descriptions? I think I'm a FAN.

Claire

In September 1653, issued by parliament the order for the great transplanting. Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman or child was to be found east of the River Shannon, after the 1st May 1654."

Untill 1801, when Ireland becomes part of Britain under the Act of Union, the Irish Catholic had no rights in his own land. Protestants were of English heritage and by old Irish rights they had no right to the land they were (illegaly) given by Henry VIII. Daniel O'Connell 'The Liberator' agitated for Catholic Emancipation (religious freedom, the right to hold public office, etc.) and for repeal of the Act of Union. This is when we catch up to A Portrait When Simon Dedalus slanders the clergy as the bad guys because they supported Catholic Emancipation. The Bishops were thinking it would lead to more freedom.

I have several catholic friends almost all of whom are no longer practicing . . . disappointed in what the church has done for them in time of need, or growing up here in the US and exposed to the freedom of our lifestyle unable to accept it's restrictions. They ALL feel guilty about it though and one (a brilliant man whose family was urging him to become a priest) claim that he was abused as a child, not sexually but mentally and emotionally by the church. It's the first time I'd heard of a system of thought being accused of child abuse, although there are others, christian scientists who won't provide medical care for sick children etc.

Because of all this I had a very negative view of the church although not my friends whom I considered to be victims, having to defend themselves against their upbringing. . . sad to begin life that way.

I can't say any religion is good. I've given up on all of them and on a higher power too, but some are more invasive and abusive than others. And yes politics plays a part. as in most things.

When you read THE DEAD you'll see another sequence of fanaticizing a WALK as a way out of an uncomfortable situation. Before I was gimped with arthritis and while married to the jerk I divorced I used to walk off my anger. It usually took an hour or so, but was good exercise. The impetus was negative but the results were FINE (G).Claire

TRADITIONAL IRISH CHAMP (recipe courtesy of Darina Allen of Ballymaloe Cookery School, as seen on Cooking Live)

6 to 8 unpeeled "old" potatoes, Yukon Gold
1 cup chopped scallions or spring onions or 1/2 cup chopped chives
1 1/2 cups milk
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Scrub the potatoes and boil them in their jackets. Chop finely the scallions or spring onions or chives. Cover with cold milk and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 3 to 4 minutes, turn off the heat and leave to infuse. Peel and mash the freshly boiled potatoes and while hot, mix with the boiling milk and onions, beat in the butter. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Serve in a 1 large or 5 individual bowls with a knob of butter melting in the center.
Champ may be put aside and reheated later in a moderate oven, 350 degrees F. Cover with aluminum foil while it reheats so that it doesn't get a skin.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings

And Nellie! That was a wonderful post...evoking so many word pictures of your own...even so far as to incorporate bird imagery into your post, as you surveyed the party scene like a "large bird of prey." And those long walks, just like Stephen...sometimes just to think, other times to simply get away from something. Why did Stephen run from the stage into the night after his performance? Will you all look at that part again closely for clues? Obviously there is someone or something he doesn't want to face!

claire, I'm not bored either, just scared that Joyce will sail over our heads as he gets deeper into the stream of consciousness mode...but feel assured that I am with good company who will see us through to the end...what a group! Isn't this turning into quite an "Ally dally discussion!!!

Barbara's (m-r) research puts it all into context. We owe you big time for this, Barb!. I think I'm going to make me some Irish Champ tonight if I can find my chives and scallions in time for dinner...maybe tomorrow! Can now understand Dante's position, and the passions of both the clergy and the nationalists!

Ginny, do you understand now that Dante just didn't have too many options available to her at this time? You know I think young Stephen would have excelled in those latin exams...can still see those certificates..tell me the levels of prizes...written in latin across the top. I think I got a "superior" once. He (Joyce) studied Latin, French and then chose Italian as his third language...regretting for the rest of his life that he had not studied Greek.

Barbara, have you ever seen those bumper stickers proclaiming, "I survived Catholic school"? I thought of that when I read your post. I went to the Benedictines when I was 7 and stayed through elementary, high school and undergraduate school too. I don't think I ever had an abusive teacher ...(a few were a little weird when it came to stories of the devil...remember Sister Paula, Kay? The Benedictine motto..."Ora et Labora", pray and work, became who I am...I can still hear it..."you must pray as if everything depends upon God and work as if everything depends upon you...because it does." Now that wasn't abuse, but sometimes rough - intrusive - restrictive. But is my cornerstone...and it is between myself and the spirit who is God, at my elbow, always watching...sometimes helping - not far up in the cosmos somewhere, but just on the other side of consciousness. (By the way, the face of God is my mother's) And my pastor is an Irish priest...from Ireland, a kindred spirit...who tells me that my Church has been a harsh mother at times, but means well....
Sure we all have an individual horror story or two...let's face it, teaching methods were different. Some teachers were more "zealous" than others, some better balanced...oh, except for Ella's, Lucky Ella!

> From the start of chapter II, Stephen is discontent and troubled with his world. As Ella notes, we have all been there to one degree or another...all experienced the restlessness and confusion. Was adolescence ever the "best of times", Ella? Perhaps the innocence, the optimism...the belief that soon everything would be better when you were in control of your future!

What was Stephen running from - angrily??? I sense this is an important question...one of those 'epiphanies', sudden realizations of truth...and a turning point in Stephen's development. Nellie, I don't think he was running because Ellen had left at all. I went back and read the section again...and again too. I think it is one of those things we are going to have to agree to disagree.

Here's how I see it.

Stephen has developed "habits of quiet obedience"...but already his father's voice and his masters' voices telling him to be a gentleman and a good Catholic above all else are becoming "hollow sounding" to him. The new gymnasium comes with urgings to be manly, healthy and all urge him "to be true to his country - to raise up her language and tradition.". BUT, this "din of voices made him halt and he was only happy when far from them..."
Okay, the young Jesuit, the acting coach - gives Stephen advice to "Speak up - make points clearly." Stephen experiences "no stage fright - but his part in the play humiliated him. His lines made him blush - no - flush." He sees those "alluring eyes" in the audience - watching him and this excites him...and he "is a boy again, sharing the common mirth" of his mates. But as soon as the play gets started, he feels he is in a void...actually, he says several times the gymnasium is like "a great Ark"...Where is it going to take him? He loses himself in his role. The play comes alive for the first time...but when the applause signals the end of the play, the "spell is broken...He is embarassed when he think about this girl viewing his schoolboy performance...he sees the difference between reality and the idealism expressed in the play...and his nerves cry out for further adventure.....

He sees his family and all the familiar faces ( I think he sees Ellen too...she is one of the familiar faces...) But he wants no part of them. He needs to get away...from what? From the sentiments expressed in the play, which are no longer his...he is running from everything "familiar" and craves new adventure..but doesn't calm down till he inhales the stench of the "rotten straw, the horse piss" in front of the morgue. This is sufficiently offensive to calm him.

Now, whether or not this makes sense, this "epiphany" signals the end of Stephen's boyhood and underscores his increasing separation from just about everyone (though it is not yet a clean break.
This week we will finish Chapter II and his alienation will be complete! Catch up, because this sexually developing adolescent takes major steps. You won't want to miss it!

"This recognition of women as sexual beings manifests itself again when, after reading The Count of Monte Christo, Stephen begins to have sexually-driven fantasies about its female protagonist, Mercedes. Though she exists only in fiction, Mercedes' role in Stephen's development and accumulation of experience is no less important. She represents a new step in his relationship with women, in that her physical presence is not required to inspire Stephen's imagination. Her image alone has a profound effect on him: "as he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood" (311). In this case, Mercedes' image stirs sexual feelings in Stephen, but eventually the female image comes to have a deeper significance for him, as does the sexual act to which it is tied."

Peering back through the shadows of time, I do recall frustration at Stephen's age (13-14)...not knowing what it would be like to have a boyfriend...not knowing anything...how do you kiss? But satisfied myself with the belief, that when the time came, all of my inexperience would fall away and somehow I would be transported...well, that's how all my dreams would end...nothing any more specific...rather idyllic...like Stephen with Mercedes I think - only not so much raging hormones...just romantic stuff. Then again, maybe there were "stirrings" and I just don't remember! I am truly sorry for him by the end of this chapter...that it wasn't beautiful at all.

Confiteor

Stephen is in the process of breaking ties and taking off from this labyrinth of country and church, but not yet...the break is not yet complete.
To me, the break with his family is the most painful of all. Perhaps I am looking at this last part of Chapter II through the eyes of a parent, from whom the break(s) is(are) now being made...I will be interested in your impressions of this 'disconnect' process...

Claire

By the way, Ginny, I love the Cardinal Nueman referral. I read his biography when I was in the 5th grade and thoroughly enjoyed it but that was when I was going to be a nun!!Hahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahhahaha! LOL, falling on the floor! See ya'll later!

Stephen is positively put off by his father...and the sad thing - I read in the Ellman biography ..James was the only one of all his children that John Joyce got along with. And the kid can't stand him! Isn't that sad? Doesn't like his Cork accent which comes back up there after a few drinks. BTW, Dante was from Cork too...where auntie is pronounced Dante...


I know you are right Jo, it is a necessary time, but isn't fourteen young to feel so alienated from your entire family, your teachers, friends... Stephen feels so different from his own classmates, he can't talk to them either...which is why seeing the word, foetus carved in the desk was so startling, I think . He understands instantly that other boys were consumed with the sexual act, as he was, the foetus being the "empirical data!"

And having survived puberty with four sons, the image of any one of them walking down the street, getting approached by a lady of the night...I became all mama! Doesn't she know he's a child? How much does she charge him? He's telling us he didn't know he was in Nighttown - thought he was in the Jewish quarter (?) from the colorful dress of the women.

Notice that he couldn't bend to kiss the pink lady...echoes of "do you kiss your mama?" - No wonder he froze at this moment, as Barb points out. Remember the "kiss mama" question came from the story of St. Aloysius Gonzaga - too "pure" to kiss his mother...."didn't dare to raise his eyes to look even at his own mother."

claire, you said it best...you find this religiosity oppressive and are "experiencing disenchantment with his upbringing...feeling pressure on every front." The battle will rage all through Chapter III. Would be interested in hearing your response to the last question in the heading...or do we know the answer? Have you ever been in Stephen's position - in the state of confusion and mixed emotions he finds himself now?

LOL Constantly, including this very moment, as to whether I can stand to discuss this book. Maybe I'll just read it. (G) Claire

At one point in the story S/J relives again the whole story of his life so far beginning with "I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father....."I don't know why this is included???????

You know what is so strange about your reaction, claire...it is totally unexpected. What I anticipated...(and still do) - is some bruised sensitivities as we get into Chapter III, and Stephen makes a break from the church in a rather profane manner...expect a few withdrawals from that. Whenever we talk about reading the great Ulysses, there are voices against it for the very same reasons...that it is anti-religious, anti-clerical. The book may still be banned in Ireland, as far as I know for this. But, objections because of talk of the religious environment from which Stephen is trying to free himself, no, I never expected that. I wonder if you can see any humor in this situation...Perhaps you will feel more comfortable in Chapter III! I hope so! We have all enjoyed our time with you. You call it as you see it and we all appreciate that!

I really hate what religion has done to humanity. I guess I'm a humanist. I care about all of us, and religion has made promises that it doesn't keep and made it hard for us to accept each other, created wars,interferred with peoples natural biological pursuits etc. etc. etc. It is an instrument of abuse. And the sad thing is that most of the abused don't realize it.

Anyhow that's how I feel. I wonder if Stephen wasn't feeling something of this, only too young and inexperienced to have confidence in his own ideas. He did consider the church and all those standing outside the mass to be hypocrits.

Ok you have a rebel if that's how you see me or rather the DEVILS ADVOCATE of our group. Just don't be offended if I tell it how it IS (to me).

Claire

Claire

I'm off to work for today...would like to talk about young Stephen and his prize money. What is he doing with it? It seems he is trying to work off some guilt concerning the estrangement he feels from his family...at least his mother and siblings? And those resolutions?

I found a whole lot of stuff about Joyce's own Dad that will shock you - wanted to wait and see reactions to the Portrait portrayal of dad, before coloring your feelings about him. How do you feel about him now - as you finish up Chapter II?

NELLIE what does Pink mean to him, the color of the prostitutes dress? the color he paints his room until he runs out of paint, what else. Pink is a girl color, is it an attempt to identify somehow with the other side of himself. . . to be androgenous not all male but female as well. a crisis of sexual identity? . Many of his preferences are not the usual male ones, i.e. sports, etc. Just a thought

Now about spending his money on his family. Yes he's trying to buy his way back in or else maybe he's trying take over his fathers role of support and the source of power...money=power. (the old edipus thing) .

ALL Thank you for your kind acceptance of my differences. I'll try to behave as well as your do. (S)

Claire

This part of the story moves very quickly and seems to be separate from the rest, which is mostly descriptive. Maybe Joyce got bored with all that as others have. I enjoyed it though. verywell done view of the outer parts of people, so full of detail and sensual input, sights, smells sounds echoes, etc..

Claire

Thanks for the dictionary version of "devils advocate".....see, I know some of the words too (VBG) I really am made uncomfortable by ideas and assumptions that don't fit together properly. That's what probably started the twelve-year-old me on the road to atheism. . . God just didn't make sense. . . . (smile) it/he/she still doesn't. (G)

Claire

Yes, I have Stanislaus Joyce's My Brother's Keeper right here at my elbow...spent too much time looking through it this afternoon. Full of revelations...will share some of them with you at a later time. Yes, we know now that Joyce's Stephen Hero was his autobiography...that Portrait is a "fictionalized" version of the first...Stanislaus says:

"James's talent, his gift was for transforming material, not for originating it. He (James) once remarked, 'Have you ever noticed, when you get an idea, how much I can make of it?'"

< claire, an interesting thought about the "pink" paint! A girl color...hm...Stanislaus doesn't mention this in his autobiography...Would this be considered a strange thing to do? Did it happen? Remember, this is the fanciful version, not the true autobiography...I like Barb's reminder of the pink and lavender roses from the earlier chapter... hmmm.. So he uses the prize money to buy presents to make up for the separation from mama and siblings (what separation? he frets about the nasty, evil things he's doing at night...does this loss of innocence cause him to feel apart, unworthy?) He paints over his room to freshen it up...it is a mean, little room ...and at the same time, he writes out long resolutions to change his ways and improve himself (like the paint job) and then he breaks the resolution with the girl in the pink dress, just as we learn that he had run out of "pink" paint before the room was glossed over...hmm. Methinks this is masterful, bedad!

Whoa Nellie! Dear little alien daughter! Another masterful post! No, his first experience wasn't sordid at all...but he wasn't transported, or masterful (no, not near it...he was like a doll, a little "rascal", she calls him) - as he dreamed he would be when with the Mercedes of his dreams...this first time was simply the result of his passion and nothing more. Which is probably the way most of them are...was your first time a beautiful and treasured memory? In your dreams! Not!!! I betcha!
Ohh boy! I have to run! Have to one more post in the Terkel...will be back tomorrow. What fun this place is! Never know what to expect!

ps claire, I'm glad you see the colors now...my little attempt to put in the colors of the flag of Ireland! And all you saw was black! ..and Ginny saw red!!!

I went to Ellman's biography of Joyce and to Joyce's brother Stanislaus' autobiography to see if there was any discussion of the naming of the book.

Ellman supplied some words, but I'm still trying to grasp the meaning:

"Joyce could become an artist by writing about the process of becoming an artist...his life legitimizing his portrait...by turning his life into fiction at the same time he was living it. ...
He becomes an artist because art opens to him 'the fair courts of life' which priest and king were trying to keep locked."

He says that Portrait is not an autobiography, that it is an "artistic creation"...that the characters are actual people, "blended and fused into the mold of the imagination" and that Stephen Dedalus of Portrait is an imaginary, not a real self- portrait and freely treated.
He goes on to say that in the fifth chapter (the last) of Portrait, "my brother shows the artist (the young poet) in the throes of creation."

So you think it was fairly common to attach such names...yours were based on your own names though...my "Doris Dinglefarb, Kay's Sophie Gluttsbottom...a bit different and nothing related to our own names...and more like the "Peter Pickackafax" in Portrait...

Nellie, you had a "funny name too"! Does it make you smile remembering it? Had you thought about it for a long time, or did this bring it back? Did you think you were an alien child at the same time your mother was being so playful with you?
You know, pink, soft innocence makes sense, and how ironic that the prostitute wore the same. The more I think of it, the more I think that all this is the work of the artist at his palette...

I was looking back over these pages in Chapter II and to see the reasons Stephen was freely spending his prize money at that time. The purpose of the trip to Cork was to sell the remaining parcels of land that had belonged to his father's family. The family had been living off of income from these properties, and after that, things got really bad for the large Dedalus/Joyce family...
He tried to make things easier for them, he tried to repair "filial relations"...did it work?
The prize money was spent not on necessities though - treats for everyone. "Great parcels of groceries and delicacies...theater, chocolates, presents" Did it work?

He saw clearly his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour that had divided him from mother and brother and sister...

Ella, I just read that you read The Dead. Will print out your questions and think about them tonight. Bruce will be home in a minute and can't let him walk in and find me in the same chair before the screen that I was in when he went out to work this morning!!!

It became part of my identity, being able to draw. . . . something I later decided was not me at all, but only a means to an end. It gave me a world of my own where I could make all the rules and write the language and express as I desired. It took along time for me to understand this. During that time I let other people define me as an artist. . . because of the magic that lets one person do something thing better than another, that person becomes identified by it. ie. musicians writers etc.

Now what is basic is the WAY in which we do this, the personalization or style (wrong word..too intellectual) and what it means to us on a personal level. It's said to be a sublimation for anti-social behavior. I can accept that. Mostly I think of art now as a BRIDGE TO THE SUBCONSCIOUS of the artist and the viewer often gets the message too because we are not so very different.

The craft should be seamless, so unconscious that it doesn't enter into the making of the image. I think an artist must learn his/her craft so as to be able to use it this way.

The art comes through me not from me and this from an atheist. Others have given the credit to their god, but it is still OF me, part of me. . . when I can get out of my own way and LET IT HAPPEN. Much of my stuff is not pleasant, but then we often write about things that trouble us more than things that please us. Poetry has more of an emotional impact if it addresses problems. I think religious spalms and ulagies, a kind of poetry as in praise of ...and leads people out of themselves in a search for otherness, for grace for protection and explanations.

Art, making somethingout of very little or nothing, sometimes only a hidden feeling,torment or idea, is an informal or unconscious search within self for either something new or a transformation of something already known. . . as JJ's brother says. I find I'm good at transforming words and phrases until they roll and slide, rhythm being important to me. I think a good editor is a kind of artist.

There, you got me started and I'm sure there is much more to say. I can only speak for myself. In the end it's good to communicate and have others understand what you are trying to express is pleasant but unlike literature, painting and the visual arts don't depend upon an audience for their reason to be. how do you say that in french..it sounds better ,.raison de something? What an assignment you gave me. . . still thinking, but thought itself is often not conscious when producing something from within. . . it's more an emotiuonal experience.

Claire

LIke Stephen, I try to be honest with myself and often say it how it is, softening it when it comes out to be seen by others but often using street language before it gets there.....yes I know some. We all do. Teenagers will use it liberally often for its shock value. Once in a while I do that even now. Value judgements are exaggerated at this time too. . . everything out of kilter and balance. It's the age, between childhood and adulthood that is like this. Finding our way out of it while retaining it's clear eyed honesty is very hard to do. Most of us don't. we just shut off those voices screaming obscenities in our heads, smile and try not to make waves.

Claire

I think that Stephens declaration of his name is a declaration of self, as different and opposed to his father. the birth of an independent spirit daring to make judgements and statements of his own. . . in other words "teen-age-itis"

Claire

He thinks that his mind is "older than their's", (his father's friends), "No life or youth stirred in him, as in them. He had known neither pleasure of companionship with others - nor vigor of rude male health nor filial poverty. Nothing stirred his soul but a cold, cruel and loveless lust."

At some point, our artist will feel compelled to "get out of his own way and just let his art happen". But he's not there yet!

I don't know how to tell this to you all, but we are facing "HELL WEEK" here in the Great Books. I'm afraid you're all going to sit this one out! You won't do that to me, will you? It's going to be tough, but if you can sit through the rector's retreat sermon, you will witness the power of Joyce's art as he unleashes the portrait of hell on the 16 year old Stephen. You feel it! You understand Stephen's reaction as if you were in his skin!

Go for it! You can do it! The whole chapter! There's no other way!

Claire

claire, I copied the heading I was working on last week and that's the one without a background color! I rely on you so much to tell me what you see! It should be better now. I changed my template "downstairs" too, so it shouldn't happen next week!

pink > FUN! I love it! Pink convertibles, fun with girlieees
pink > a girlie color (blue for boys)
pink > innocence -baby pink

Joyce the artist certainly made use of his color palette right from the start - green, maroon brushes, lavender and pink roses, pink dresses, pink paint, white, red roses...
Lots of yellow...decay, rot and evil. We'll see more yellow in this chapter - and white too!

Watch for the colors of hell in the rector's sermon.

I read somewhere that Joyce's eyes were so bad that he leaned heavily on his sense of smell, of sound in his descriptions. Did you click Fra Angelico's painting to see the detail in his depiction of hell? How does it compare to Joyce's?

claire, here's another "assignment", if you can stand going back to hell. Would you look at Joyce's portrait of hell and observe the artist at work? How does his description compare with Fra Angelico's? What does he use to draw so powerful a picture that so devastates our hero? You could help us to appreciate the artist in action!

I was particularly interested to see how Stephen is handling himself after his "fall" at the end of Chapter II. Joyce likes to use the old inflation-deflation technique. Usually, when he leaves Stephen on a high, we see a downward spiral in the next scene. I'm not sure what to make of his mood at the start of Chapter III...

and another: 'Let me hate myself and love Thee;
Let me humble myself, and exalt Thee...'

Amazing to me, the thread is all about a neediness for God's love and grace and nothing about, loving your neighbor.
Quote from the opening page:
'The human heart craves and seeks unceasingly for happiness. Many find but a small measure of happiness in this life because they lose sight of their eternal destiny - the object of their creation - which is to know God, to love Him, to serve Him, and to be happy with Him.'

Now I have to conclude, Stephen is a product of his times and therefore, not all that self-centered.

I have a hard time understanding how Stephen was able to carry out this dual existence...nights in town, feeling guilty that he was spending money on the ladies when things were so bad at home...and yet carrying on at school as the most pious of all, acting as the prefect of the Sodality. We need a short explanation of Sodality, but it is very strange to me that he led this double existence for two years. And it isn't as if he was putting on an act. He was very devoted to Mary, ever Virgin, while enjoying the ladies of the night, not virgins...but were they married? He didn't know. What an odd question, it must have seemed to him. ...I want to straighten out in my mind how he was able to live this way...before the retreat! Talk about the ability to compartmenalize! I don't know how to do this mysefl. I know people (mostly men) who do, but to me it's all part of a piece!

By the way, I read that the prefect of the Sodality was elected by the others as the most devout and deserving...that Heron was the vice-prefect.

.......the sound of softly browsing cattle as the other boys munched their lunches tranquilly

Did your childhood pictures of hell include such visual detail...fire, suffering, pain, stench? I'm going to ask a dumb question, suspecting the answer, but not certain - where did these graphic pictures come from? Biblical? Where? I do have a suspicion that they came from man (not speaking from experience!), and the better the artist, the more graphic and moving the picture. Do you think the retreat sermon contained such a description, or is it an artist's rendition from Joyce's imagination?

In his own autobiography, brother Stanislaus says that he attended that same retreat, but had no brainstorm of terror and remorse........

Must run, lots to accomplish. No, Ella, I didn't get caught, but it was reaalll close! And obvious that I hadn't accomplished much. I have a question about your young years with the Nazarenes...will ask later! Later!!!

Fra Angelico, according to my art history teacher was a horney old man, so I would expect some of this to show up in his portrait of hell. 'will go look and report back.

I think I've seen a few posted here. Religion does terrible things in the name of love of god. doesn't it. Claire

A monk who lusted after "small boys???" maybe, and who usually included his own face in his works. I'll have a look again at a larger size and see if I can find him.

Claire

Claire

It seems to me that Stephen/Joyce tailored his picture of hell to contain his own portrait...in every single one of the descriptions of the capital sins!

Charolotte, I wish we could get Donne's description of hell, also Brugel's painting...perhaps I or one of you can find some time to locate them and we can see them.

Our Nellie has hit on something here with mention of Dante's Inferno. Joyce loved the Divine Comedy and must have been quite familiar with his portrayal of hell. It's way too long to bring here, although I did find an on- line electronic version...way too long. Maybe some day we'll read the Divine Comedy here. I know claire would love that! I did find a student paper describing the creative aspect of the Inferno and will put that here if you wish to read it.

And all of the themes that were introduced in the first two pages of the book were pulled into this chapter, into this retreat scene. "Confess" "Apologize"! Say you're sorry or or? You know what? There weren't birds of prey in this chapter! For the very first time! And bird imagery is what Joyce has been using to tell this story! Where are the birds? Simply implied? They weren't in hell!

You know, when I was growing up and heard of the burning hellfire, I used to think...if my body is in the ground, turning to dust, what is there to burn? I was so hung up on that , that I always discounted the burning to scare tactics...and concluded that no one really knew what Hell was, because no one had been there to talk about it. But I always seemed to enjoy the fiery drama! There was one aspect of hell that really shook me up. That was the "isolation" - the thought of being separated from those I loved. My mother had died, and whenever I thought of being deprived of the sight of God, I understood that to include my mother too. I was a good girl, a very good girl. And yes, Nellie, I felt the same after confession...lighter than air...there is no feeling like that!

I thought it interesting that the same thing tortured Stephen...alienation from family and all human relationships ...when in fact, that is what his life had been of late!

Barb, I think our religious upbringing was similar in many ways...but we did have more Bible study...In the early grades, we had Bible stories...never the real thing. Carefully selected stories to illustrate the moral du jour. However, starting 9th grade, we had Bible study. I can't say we ever read the whole bible, but the emphasis was definitely on the New Testament. It was my personal opinion that the "good stuff" was in the old... It was more of a study approach, not a tool for pious thinking. I "compartmentalized" what I was reading. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I just studied it as if it were history...

My understanding of the "rites" of the Church is a bit different from yours. There was a political break in the Roman Empire...and the religious break followed, with the Western Church "headquartered" in Rome under the Pope, The Orthodox in the East under the Bishop of Constantinople. These were and are the two major Rites of the Church. Eighteen smaller groups follow the Roman rite, recognize the Pope, but have some practices, ceremonies, rituals (these are "rites, not "rights".) The others are splintered groups of the Orthodox Rite, but many no longer recognize the successor of the Bishop of Constantinople.


The Jesuits probably are not teaching sexual repression for political supression in Ireland. They were not at all similar to the parish priests...they were passing down to these boys the Jesuitical teachings, many hundreds of years old, way beyond Ireland's borders. Yes, Fordham, but don't forget the Loyalas, Boston College, Georgetown...all major Jesuit Colleges.

The Sodality in Jesuit teaching I don't fully understand. This group met on Saturday mornings Saturday mornings!!! Adolescent boys!!! I belonged to a Sodality, but I thought it was for girls...to pray for strength to preserve purity. This Jesuit concept seems to be more like an Order of Knights to protect purity, womanhood. Will have to do someresearch on that! Very interesting. I still don't understand how Stephen was able to carry out his role as Prefect of this Sodality, while spending his nights doing something he considered very wrong.

Later!

Stephen "does not want to stand outside the church door with those believing to follow the precepts of the church", but he does feel apart in actuality.
Charlotte, this does help me to understand how Stephen continues his dual roles as exemplary Senior, Sodality Prefect and frequenter of the brothels of Dublin!
He does not want to give up his devotion to Mary Ever Virgin of the Sodality, his ideal of the purity of women, but does feel apart from this ideal in his response to the urges of his own sexuality.


Yes, I can understand this battle between the ideal (what one considers the ideal) and the satisfaction of one's natural inclinations...
And with this "first act of unification", he says he does not wantto stand outside of heaven's gate, because of the alienation from all others for eternity!...That was what impressed him most from the sermon's description of hell...the suffering, the horror, yes, but the total blackness and isolation from all others for eternity was what got to him! Even Fra Angelico's portrayal of hell at least showed some "togetherness", some light , as the sinners sit together in their woeful circles. The hell of the retreat sermon was extreme in its emphasis on the solitary aspect of the suffering.

Thank you, Charlotte...and Barb. I can leave that puzzle alone for a while...

Robert Pinsky's comments on the influences of philosophy/mythology/Marquis de Sade, and not the mercy, the forgiveness, the understanding of the weakness of man found in the Gospels on this portrait of hell brings up another point. I read in Ellman's biography that Joyce relied on St. Ignatius Loyala's Spiritual Exercises of 16th century Sermons for his "understanding" of hell...16th century! So this would explain the extreme "medieval" emphasis on torture, rather than on the merciful God of later teachings...would love to see some of those sermons.

But Nellie, I'll agree with you, this writing his Joyce at his best! You can feel the impact of every word on Stephen! It is written as if every word of the sermon is directed right at him! I agree with what you say about the development of conscience. I think that is the main advantage of a religious upbringing...long after one has lost the need to formally practice the religion of his childhood, the development of conscience, the ability to distinguish right from wrong, the development of a value system - remains. I would be interested in exploring that idea further, before we leave this chapter..

And that Capuchin too. Let's look at him. We know Stephen wanted anonymity, which caused him to walk to the other side of Dublin to find a priest to hear his confession. Let's look at the contrast between this monk...(a Capuchin is a monk, isn't he? )...and the Jesuit who delivered this sermon. And also Stephen's newly discovered "joy" of being in the state of grace. Given Stephen's nature, do you think it will last? What would you say of his "value system" at this point in his life? Will it work for him in the future?

There is one more "beast" in Chapter III...the goat. Is the goat a symbol? Is a goat bovine? (I confess, I don't know what bovine means!) The goat appears in Stephen's dream/vision of hell, which I think was more horrible than the hell of the retreat sermon...because this one had such real meaning for Stephen!

"...evil, foul smell....Goatish creatures with human faces...
The malice of evil glittered in hard eyes (remembering the "jewel eyes of the harlots), moving hither and thither (from one man to another?), moving in slow circles, closer and closer to enclose...soft language from lips...long swishing tales besmeared with stale shite(!) thrashing toward terrifying faces - the hell reserved for his sins - stinking, bestial, malignant - a hell of lecherous, goatish fiends."

Charlotte is so right! To really appreciate what Joyce is doing in Portrait with his artistic brush.,,you have to read the whole thing again after deciphering the many symbols and references. We lose the forest for the trees! Watch him interweave everything into a continuous fabric, paint a complete portrait of the artist as a young man...on every level! How this differs from all other autobiographies! Can you imagine writing a complete story of your own life, including your early impressions, actual occurrences, responses to them, complete with sensory accents...?

This is personal, and probably erroneous, so I pre-apologize to all of you who have had successful psychological counseling. I have never had professional counseling, telling myself always that no one could possibly understand a particular problem, because it would take too long to understand ME, who I was, where I was coming from - it would take too long to get the problem into context.

Joyce has done just that! He has let us into his inner trappings, with all of the influences on his psyche...I doubt he's left much out! It is quite an accomplishment, isn't it?

I love the way he has presented the recurrences of early impressions from the first two pages, repeating and developing all of these themes...

The harsh clerical response to Parnell's adultery...from Dante's tearing of the velvet from her brush...speaking of harsh clerical reaction to sin...look at the contrast between the description of the Capuchin and the Jesuit of the retreat sermon....

the Capuchin in his brown habit...we'll see it referred to as "jupe" (French for skirt) in Chapter IV, gentle and forgiving..."you are very young, my child" - and the harsh, judgmental, righteous Jesuit of the retreat sermon.

This contrast reminds me of the "nicens, sweet-smelling mother" and the father with the "hairy face" (harsh), looking at his poor soul "through a glass" (scrutinizing and judgemental)

The only guiltifying I was exposed to came one day from my mother (don't forget we were Jewish) when she insisted that everything I ever thought or did had an effect on SOMEONE somewhere. Odd that I remember it. I was an independent and difficult child. spankings didn't do much, but this burden of responsibility, this requirement that I consider others did make an impression. There was no fear involved, but a change in consciousness and conscience. As a humanist, I'm probably still operating on that principal to some degree.

The best part of this writing for me is in the beauty of the language. Chasing the symbols as such are intellectualizing and if not obvious interrupt feelings and the flow.

Claire PS the movie was SPLENDER in the grass.

Nellie

Your description of your Lenten mornings are almost identical to mine. I remember getting up to attend Mass and receive Communion every day during Lent and really appreciating the coming of Spring during those six weeks. I could almost taste your hot cocoa. My mom managed the school cafeteria and served cocoa and doughnuts to the kids every first Friday of the month. Anyway, back to our holiness, I only thought briefly about becoming a nun as I liked the boys too much and I loved life in general and thought that all that would be gone if I were a nun. When I was in high school, we had a school retreat every year but the good priests who led it, never threatened us with death of the soul, like the Irish priest in this story. Whew! Scary stuff! Of course, children sometimes take things so literally and try to improve themselves. I can remember my mom, telling me that my voice was so high that it was irritating her, so the next time we had a long talk(one night while drifting off to sleep), she asked me if I was getting a cold or something. No, I said, I am trying to lower my voice! What a doofus! Anything to please the adults in our lives! Hadn't thought about that time in my life lately. Mom and I shared a bedroom and twin beds because she was lonely,having been widowed again (inside of 3 years) and being left to raise three kids alone. We also had to sell our home and move to something more affordable. We had already done that twice since 1947. So we rented the apartment in the front of my grandparents' house.My life was so different from my friends that I guess that I was a loner,in my way.But I loved being around people and didn't stay alone for long.

Back to Stephen, I could not help chuckling when he was being so holier than thou. He just swings from one extreme to another in his life.That retreat really got to him, didn't it? And isn't that so kid-like,too. There is something so different about being raised in a Catholic atmosphere, at home and at school. It does make one more aware of one's soul, on a daily basis. TEE HEE! Sorry, its just tickles my funny bone and at the same time, makes me want that time of my life back. Times were so innocent compared to now.

Claire

Stephen has finally realized he is growing older and changing as he watches younger adolescent boys play in the water. And in one dash of insight, he has found his passion for words.

I'm still in the minority here as I'm the only non-Catholic in the discussion.

Not quite everyone I'm not and find that these posts are interesting in that they answer one of my most basic questions. How can such intelligent people be so completely taken in by religious practises.?

They are all dressed up in nostalgia. Even those who have left the CHURCH seem to think fondly of it.

I was nothing like this in the eighth grade. I was thirteen, it was 1941, there were terrible things happening in the world. I wasn't dating because as a tom-boy I had yet to get EXCITED about BOYS. I had some as friends but they were becoming uncomfortable with girls at that age. Hmm. . . I think I read a lot.

Claire

ps. My modem is fixed...upgraded to a 56 and is it fast!

I'll be up half the night reading all these posts again...will get up early before work to toss some questions at you, although I must say, you are doing a super job without them!!! I'll be glad to add yours to the heading too!

Later!

Again, welcome!

I am really anticipating a great discussion of these last pages of Chapter IV! What action! All in our Stephen's mind! I cannot get over what Joyce has accomplished in these few pages!

Oh, I wish I didn't have to go to work today. And then I'll have to battle with the answering machine, the dead printer, and the odd high pitched sound system- my new sound card is not behaving at all. I do think my scanner is working though and have a great photo to scan in of this weeks "scene".

It's fun, though overwhelming to be back! Thanks for your kind words, Pat!

Later!!!

We are reaching the climax in these last pages of Chapter Four, aren't we!

The boy gave it his best shot! The description of hell was particularly painful for him because the sinner suffered through all of his senses. Add the psychological torture for eternity. Escape impossible! For eternity! He denies those five senses which could lead him to such damnation. Now, I don't know about you, but I thought the denial extreme to say the least. He seems to have entered into an obsessive-compulsive state, doesn't he? I'm wondering if he had never entered Clongowes and the Jesuit education, would he exhibit similar tendencies. Really! I think he'd be a loner still, and miserably unhappy in the poverty his family is suffering from. And I think he'd be acting out- a similar extreme manner......

Anyway, he did go to the Jesuits and has been offered an alternative to the gratification of his sexual drive in the brothels of Dublin. And he tries to deny himself...to such an extreme that we all know he can't live with for any period of time.
There are signs that he is doubting his resolve, there are more signs that he is rejecting the priesthood even before he enters the director's office. He fears going in and when he comes out and is confronted with the "mirthless" reflection on the priest's face, he "detached his hand slowly." even though he continues to envision "the grave, ordered and passionless life that awaited him", by the time he gets home, he has discarded a religious life.."destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others - or to learn the wisdom of others wandering among the snares of the world - sins." He knows it is too hard not to sin. The priesthood would be another sort of "cage" , just as inescapable as hell!

So at least he's thinking about his future...

The bird imagery reaches its peak at the end of this chapter, doesn't it?

As he crosses the Tolka, his eyes look coldly toward the faded blue shrine of the Blessed Virgin - looked behind him, coldly ...at the Blessed Virgin's shrine..."which stood fowlwise on a pole in the middle of a hamshaped encampment of poor cottages." Barb, where are you? Translation needed! I come away from this sentence with the feeling that Stephen is leaving more behind that simply the priesthood here!

Excuse me if this is obvious, but I see such a strong connection between MOTHER - CHURCH- RELIGION-DEVOTION to Mary, (but not to God)-Choice of Capuchin as a confessor (gentle, in jupes(skirts)...and am sensing a rejection now of that entire equation. Do you feel he loves his parents? His brothers and sisters? Does he love anyone at all? Certainly not himself! Who?

Barb!, you are absolutely precious...I laughed aloud at your last post! There is absolutely no one like you! I love the explanation of the "ham shaped encampment. There is no one like James Joyce either.

After reading your post, I had an idea about the "fowl" description of Mary, but my lunch hour is over. I just want to say real quick that one thing I enjoy about Joyce is the return to the early pages. I appreciate how he revisits these themes...

>>and remember another "flightless bird", the turkey at the Christmas dinner...remember how that bird was attacked by papa who was angry with the church...the turkey dinner was all spoiled...do you see any sort of parallel here?

See you all when I can. I miss you!

Latrer!!!

Joan

Barbara, have you read "How the Irish Saved Civilization" yet? Another county heard from!

I am still attempting to discover the hidden meaning of all the birds referencing. Do you suppose that they give the author the sense of freedom that all airborne things do?

In fact, I feel so much better and the computer and dog are back to normal (almost- no scanner, no virus protection-am afraid to reinstall until this job is complete next week and I have time to spend on the phone with techies). Sons with all accompanying issues - big dog, graduations, job decisions, mountains of laundry, huge dinners after a day of work...they still keep me from getting back to Chapter IV...but I think we can be up and running again well before the 4th! Perhaps by the end of this month??? I pray we regain the momentum we had before my "crash"! It was the best discussion yet, and we were just into the climax!!! Determined to resurrect this one!

Later! (but not too much later!)

Joan

...and Marg, nothing makes us happier than when a lurker says "hi"!!!

Barb, here's a funny quote from one of Marg's posts back in March:

"We always had terrific arguments and fights (no fisticuffs) I hated it. I was always looking for a quiet nook to be with my books. My mother was of a more practical mind. She told us not to discuss sex, politics or religion in public. Oh, my God what am I doing???????? "

That was soooo funny!

Ed, thanks for the tip...will try to locate a New Yorker this evening...

Tomorrow is June sixteenth. How do we celebrate? eat, drink, wear green, and play the music? Anyhow, 'good to be back Onward to finish chapter four. I never did, so it's not a reread for me. Mostly I like JJ's style of writing, his use of language, the rolling rhythm encased within semicolons instead of periods in those ultra long sentences. Now I'll have to look for that climax. I don't remember seeing one YET.

Claire

PS. I thing gorgonzola is a very ripe very fat cheese something like a Brie. If it's what I'm thinking of it's WONDERFUL and almost all FAT.

And claire...sheathed in green, down at the end of the bar! Note that she was the first one here this morning- which accounts for, well, for her condition! claire, you are so right about the stout, about the cheese...all bad for you! I was right when I was young to ask, "why is it that everything that is so good is so bad for you? (including that Irish boyfriend I gave up, good girl that I am!) When you read chapter four, claire, you simply must follow Joyce's use of color to build to the climax! Our 'resident artiste' will appreciate what he has done here...

And Pat W.! That information about the cheese is most helpful. No wonder Joyce mentions it...as he loved smelly, earthy odours so much! Now can you imagine that on a sandwich? Like a pungent brie sandwich I envision? With a bit of bacon, right Barb?

I'm liking this party so much, I don't want to go to work today! Shall I call in and say it's Bloomsday and I can't make it? Did you click #2 yet? The one that says "Win $2000"? Check that out! There is a live link to Davey Byrne's tavern in Dublin! That's where you get those sandwiches!

That is also the site for the contest registration and clues. I'm thinking that the contest is not as easy as it looked at first- or am I making it too hard, as I am known to do? There are six clues given. The anwers are to be found in the Lazy Reader's Guide, available at the same site. Now they say the clues will lead to the keys. You are to take the six keys and write them in a sentence and submit them in an email. For some reason, I don't think the keys are the answers to the questions...or are they?

Shall we work on these together and submit our answers as a joint project, splitting the prize money? Is that legal? Isn't it like a bunch going in together to buy a lottery ticket? I'll be home at 4:30 and plan to come in here and work on it!!! I don't care so much about the money, just the International attention for SeniorNet.org!!!

I know I'm taking up lots of bytes here, but I do have to work, and you'll have your share all day long!!!

I can't sign off without commenting on Marg's comments! Wow! Wow! Wow! (Will elaborate this afternoon!!!)
Later!!!
Joan

Well, I just got back from the Chat at Davey Byrnes tavern, talked to three Irishmen, a woman from South Africa, one from Mississippi and one from CA. Lots more came in as I was leaving...

Copied this from the site:

Mr. Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust, pungent mustard, the feety flavour of green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the chill off.

Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planned. Like the way it curves there. Ulysses

Now I'll go to Lazy Readers where the answers are supposed to be found..that says the "next clue is on the site where Joyce went to school...for the Next Clue? But that's not Clue#2 in the contest!!! This is getting confusing! I'll go get the site where he went to school...Clongowes College, right?

Joyce at school

When Joyce was in school in Clongowes Wood, he started every essay he wrote, or 'theme' as they were known in Clongowes, with the latin words 'Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam' which in English means, 'To the Greater Glory of God.' This was the Jesuit way of offering the work up as a prayer. For many years he would start his work the initials AMDG as a result.

* "theme"?
*AMDG
*Jesuit way
*Clongowes?

Time for one more and then I must get dinner ready....

The Martello Tower, Sandycove: described in Ulysses and a place where Joyce stayed in real life, with Oliver St. John Gogarty. Samual Chevenix Trench also stayed there. One night he had a nightmare, woke up and shot the gun he kept by his bed, narrowly missing Joyce. Joyce immediately left the tower, never to return. The tower has since been turned into a Joyce Museum.

*Martello Tower?

Sandycove?

nightmare?

gun?

Joyce Museum?

"never to return"?

Okay, here's the third clue:
CLUE 3 Search on the site for where James Joyces mentally ill daughter is mentioned
Lucia and Jung

Joyce had a daughter called Lucia who was schizophrenic. She had a breakdown on Joyce's birthday (February 2nd). She was examined the famous psychologist Carl Jung. He told Joyce, "You are like two people going the bottom of the sea, but whereas she is drowning, you sir are diving."

Lucia?

schizophrenic?

Joyce's birthday?

Jung-like two people going the bottom of the sea, but whereas she is drowning, you sir are diving."?

Davy Byrne's Pub: mentioned in Ulysses as the place where Bloom stopped off for a lunch of a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzola sandwich. This is a must.

Davy Byrne's Pub?

gorgonzola sandwich?

Let's do 5% too, while we're at it!

CLUE 5 A search for Leopold Bloom's wife's name will bring you to the next clue...
And the text:

>"The Molly Bloom Soliloquy Keep drawing reference to it. Don't accuse any girl of being a Molly Bloom. Those who are very familiar with Joyce might see being called a Molly as a bit of a compliment as she, like Odysseus' Penelope, has a tremendously faithful spirit. She does really love Bloom and discards her lover like a sex aid. That, in effect, is all he is to her.

Calypso The House 8:00 a.m. Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman, eats breakfast. He brings breakfast to his wife Molly together with a letter from her lover, Blazes Boylan.

Molly Bloom

Penelope

faithful, loving wife

Calypso

Blazes Boylan

The Rocks Afternoon. Bloom spies the female of the species relaxing on the strand and then playing with their children. Then he spot Gerty McDowell showing her ankles (the naughty floozy). He gets very, very aroused and….she leaves.

Classical Bit Nausicaa is played by Gerty. Nausikaa, a virgin princess, found Odysseus washed up on the shore naked. She should great maturity and clear-headedness in helping Odysseus. She also had lovely slender ankles. In the Odyssey she is perhaps the only person, apart from Penelope, who is worthy to become a wife of Odysseus, but she remains a virgin. Gerty shows Bloom her ankles, she may not be so innocent. She has a limp.

Gerty McDowel?

showing ankles,naughty floozy?

Nausicaa, worthy virgin

limp?

We'll get to Portrait in earnest tomorrow. I look forward to your thoughts...you always get right to the point!

Here's my sentence for the contest...wish me luck! It's not great, and probably not what they are looking for, but it's an entry and I feel part of an international contest!

From the day he spots those white ankles of the virgin/floozy, Gerty McDowel at Sandycove, Joyce dives into life, as his theme becomes the conscious choice of the earthly, the earthy, like that pungent gorgonzola sandwich he chews in Davy Byrne's tavern, accepting it all, even the flaws of his unfaithful, though loving wife, Molly.

Later!
Joan

Barb ...thanks so much for summarizing it all into one post! I'm going to go delete all the others...people will think (or discover I'm mad!). Oh, I wish you'd submit a sentence! I think you're on the right track! Do it, please! I'm too tired...this has been a swell party. but I'm looking forward to the Portrait discussion tomorrow! That chat room in Davy Byrne's pub did me in!!!

Goodnight all!

Charlotte! Yes! YOu made it to the party before closing time! When did you get here? I just spotted you down at the end of the bar in your green sheathe!

I'm hoping to get to the heart of Portrait, which is Chapter IV, I think! We were peaking just when I had to turn attention to other matters! I really hated to do that! So, we'll look at it again, searching for the crux, and watching how Joyce executes. I am focusing on use of color, others will probably see something else. I will list your nomination in the heading tomorrow.
Goodnight. I am so happy and pleased that you all made it back! Why am I teary? Always when I'm happy!

"Away then; it is time to go. A voice spoke softly to stephen's lonely heart, bidding him go and telling him that his friendship was coming to an end. Yes; he would go. He could not strive against another. He knew his part.." He is reminded by Cranly of what he said earlier."To discover the mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom". Cranly suggest that he isn't free enough to commit a sacrilege, that of taking communion to please his mother while not believing. But he knows now that he is finally freed from the bondage of the church. He is ready to face life alone where he can be himself. I find myself identifying here. IN the end, in order to be who we are,to have "unfettered freedom" and certainly when we die, we are all alone.

Claire

Charlotte, I hope you and Milt are feeling better!
You are so right! The key to understanding - and appreciating Joyce is in the rereading! He has invited us into his mind, subjecting us to all of the sensory, and intellectual machinations going on in his brain, which leads him to the sudden realization of who he is!!! It's a bit muchisn't it? It's overwhelming! We experience his joyful discovery along with him! And it's difficult to articulate in words just how he has achieved that! You just know that for a brief period of time, you were inside someone else's brain!

That's where the rereading comes in!
But before we get into that, I want to ask you something. Did you identify with him, as claire identified with his discovery of the importance of "unfettered freedom" of spirit to express himself? Is this more of an artist's need or does everyone need such freedom of self-expression - to the point that they must become "elusive of social or religious orders", learning "wisdom apart from others, wandering among the snares of the world"?

Marg's "heart swelled with joy" for him. "His soul responded to the call of life, he had undergone a transformative experience of the soul"...and Marg was happy for him!

What was your reaction? Did you identify with him? (My first reaction was a combination of envy and personal regret - but I want to hear from you!)
Another question I want to ask you...are you the first child in your family? I'm curious - and think your position in the family may influence your reaction somewhat!

...are you watching his use of color as you reread? Fascinating!!!

But back to the book and the wonderful discovery of Stephen and his unfettered freedom. Wasn't he lucky to feel this freedom at such a young age? Some of us don't arrive at this point in our lives until much older. Its wonderful!

I really appreciate JJ's use of language. It breaks all the old rules but who cares. I'm busy enjoying his UNFETTERED FREEDOM.

Claire

Okay, I'll try to express in mere words what I see, and feel Joyce doing with color in this chapter. Grey, yes, a lot of grey, lifeless grey! He begins with a reference to the rosary beads in his pocket...can't you see this adolescent boy walking the streets of Dublin muttering the repetitious prayers of the rosary, praying over and over for Mary to "pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death"...? He refers to these beads as "flowers, odourless and hueless" Isn't his life lifeless at this point, as he is consumed with the Seven Deadly sins of pride, covetousnesss, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth? All is dark, gloom and fire...(and yet the way in which he tried to atone for each of these sins is almost funny to me...some of the only humor in the book...if he hadn't been so earnest and in such obvious pain!

And the colours are exactly that...in these early pages of the chapter...:gloom and fire.

the divine gloom and silence of the chapel, where dwelt the unseen Paraclete, whose symbols were a dove...orbed in the *scarlet of the tongues of fire

flushed cheeks of angry teachers

brown crossblinds

faint yellow glow of the waning sky

the colourless sky

turfcolored water (like the bathwater at Clongowes)

pallid brick red face (priest)

raw and reddish glow (shaven faces of teachers)

sad quiet greyblue glow of the dying day

faded blue shrine, fowlwise on a pole

pink tinges of anger

faces (of Christian brothers) stained yellow, red or livid

Now, what is that saying to you? "...than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?" Is he saying that he will not paint all the world's colors into his works, that he is more interested in words? Or that he will use color in his prose only when they will serve -as words do - to mirror emotion and convey thoughts

What did you understand by this???

Now we see the new Stephen, having come to the realization that he is the artist! That he will not continue to use the old palette as he creates his future - with "unfettered freedom". Now, I don't expect, from what he has said about the use of color, that he will turn the drab grays of his life up to this point into a flood of technicolor hues - much like some of the movies do...Wizard of Oz, for one, as the mood changes. He will use color only to convey emotion or an idea, methinks.

Our boy is not sure what the new colors will be until he sees the girl with the bare legs, bare except for the emerald trail of seaweed and her ivory thighs...the white fringes of her drawers like the feathering of white down, the slate-blue skirts above her waist

"Her breasts soft as the breast fo some dark plumaged dove Wait a minute? He's painting this dove as "dark plumaged"! A dove? Is this an oxymoron? What is this about? And the choice of "slate-blue" skirt?

His soul responds to the looks of her, to her gaze ""without shame or wantonness. ..to the wordless call of her eyes...to live, to err, to fall to triumph, to recreate...

His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain ...a world, a glimmer, a flower. (A flower unlike the flowers of the rosary beads at the start of the chapter, lifeless, odourless, hueless) Now 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 the palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than other." Not now the same raw, harsh reds of fire and anger at the beginning of the chapter, but the deep, lush warm and sensual reds of life!

Now 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 the palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than other." Not now the same raw, harsh reds of fire and anger at the beginning of the chapter, but the deep, lush warm and sensual reds of life!

Joan that last description sounded more like an orgasm to me. No wonder he was banned. He's off into the land of the sensual. I do believe his new world is principally one of words . . . colors come into it now and then but he doesn't depend upon them to send his message.

Claire

Then you touched upon another epiphany - his realization that his future will not include any ties to his family...I really want to get into that some more...I felt so bad for his mother, my heart ached (as a mother)...that's for another day too!

And there was lots more...the meaning of the clouds over Europe, the Christian Brothers...etc. etc.

I will be using your post as an outline ...you are something else! I'm next in line right behind claire, waiting to thank you for the richness you bring to this discussion and the time you put into your posts for us!!

And Ann, great connection...On Eagle's Wings:

"And He will raise you up on eagles’ wings Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun"... .

"He believed this all the more, and with trepidation, because of the divine gloom and silence wherein dwelt the unseen Paraclete, Whose symbols were a dove and a mighty wind, to sin against Whom was a sin beyond forgiveness"

This may interest you...her rather hypnotic motions while stirring the water with her foot reminded me of an earlier scene with another girl...was it Eileen Vance? Remember when he walked her to the streetcar?

"he on the upper step and she on the lower. She came up to his step many times and went down to her again... His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide...a voice within him spoke above the noises of his dancing heart, asking him would he take her gift to which he had only to stretch out his hand..."

There is another comparison, even more striking...more hypnotic rhythm with hither and thither motion! Look at these two passages, the first Stephen's nightmare of hell:

"creatures were moving in the field, hither and thither...they moved hither and thither, trailing their long tails behind them...they swished in slow circles round and round in the field, winding hither and thither...They moved in slow circles, circling closer and closer to enclose, soft language issuing from their lips...Stephen cries out 'Help' as they move toward him."

"...she suffered his gaze...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. Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy" .

But let's look at the bird imagery, represented in this little tableau....and how it ties into the Daedalus myth.

Birds to me are a symbol for freedom. Unless the bird is a predator then it's death,punishment, and fear of death as in the eagle who tore out Prometheus' liver every night? do I have the details right. I can see the image in my mind, but words often escape me.

Birds are musical, they sing their own songs. We view that as light-hearted, also "twits" light-headed, flighty. although creatures of instinct and true to their "calling".

"That is for the birds" a contemporary saying of dislike. [birds birds birds]..a movie, remember? when the meek (the birds in droves hmmmm droves=doves? but not here) inherited the earth. Birds are seen as powerless unless they are predators.

You asked for input. did you want all this free association? Anyhow, you've got it. . . . . Claire

How about tying the bird imagery into the Daedalus/Icarus myth? - SarahT- you can find the myth up in the heading...

Later!

149.02 To sin against Whom was a sin beyond forgiveness. The unforgivable sin is "blasphemy" against the Holy Ghost. ( See Matthew 12:32, Mark 3:29, and Luke 12:10.) No one is certain what this sin is, though Catholic teaching most frequently suggests total despair, a final and invincible loss of hope in attaining a state of grace.

What has become of his "nicens", musical, light-hearted mother from the first chapter? The one who wanted peace in the house at all costs during the Christmas dinner scene? This pains me to see him pull away from her, although after four boys of my own, I know each one must separate himself from "mother". But this is hard for me to read...

"his mother was hostile to the idea, as he had read from her listless silence." Doesn't she want him to go to the university?

"Her mistrust pricked him more keenly than his father's pride." What does she mistrust?

"He thought coldly how he had watched the faith which was fading down in his soul ageing and strengthening in her eyes." He senses that she suspects that he will not become a priest, and has lost his faith? How would she know that?

"A dim antagonism gathered force within him and darkened his mind as a cloud against her disloyalty." He is projecting her dissatisfaction with his decision and already resents her lack of understanding and acceptance?

...and then the really sad part:
"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 sundering of their lives."..Sniff!

SarahT, thank you! I misread that passage entirely. Stephen's poor mother's, "ever-strengthening beliefs" that he would become a priest is causing his guilt - and I guess, resentment that she should assume this.

Her "listless silence" pronounces her unhappiness that he will be attending the university rather than entering the priesthood directly after graduation from Belvedere. (Thanks for explaining that process, Barb!). Her "listless silence made him aware dimly and without regret of the first noiseless sundering of their lives."

I think of myself here, as I try to hold my tongue when my boys are making major life decisions I am not too thrilled about..... I realize that such silence is a statement, and as unwelcome as an expressed disagreement!

Barb, you have the healthy approach - you worry when they don't withdraw! If anyone out there on the west coast runs into my free-spirited son - without a dime, deeply in debt, on his newly purchased surf board (credit card) - will you please tell him for me that I think it's great that he is happy - no matter what message my "listless silence" conveyed before he left Virginia?

While not supporting the family, he does treat them in mini-splurges from time to time - and his future is brighter than Dad's, brighter than their own prospects!

And you have brought the "cold infrahuman odour of the sea" in this chapter to our attention! Great!

Our Stephen will not leave Ireland by sea! He'll have to fly - like Daedalus! His labyrinth is hemmed in by the sea and the River Liffey. I'm a bit confuses about the Icarus/Daedalus message here. Icarus flew too high, too close to the sun, melted the wax in his wings and plunged into the sea to drown. Don't flight too freely, too high, too recklessly, young hawk-man! Is that the message? Now, Stephen is also Daedalus here? An older, wiser free spirit? He flies away in his escape from the labyrinth of his own creation...Daedalus the great Artificer. Any ideas on Joyce's message here?

We could all do what Joyce did...view our everyday existence and dreams as worthy of art! Why not? I think we are already doing that subconsciously as we read this book. Look what SarahT just said
"I think the novels that most move me are those that speak to me in a very personal way."
I think the reason that we are hearing Joyce is that we are matching our own experience with his , and therefore are able to appreciate what he is saying! Granted he is speaking poetically, but let's review what has happened here.

The young Joyce remembers much from his childhood. He writes a biography - Stephen Hero, in which he remembers moments in his life that emphasized or changed the way he viewed his childhood as a young man. He remembers that he always loved to read - everything - Even the sentences in a particular spelling book came alive for him - as Nellie just pointed out in that perfect example of Joyce's magic! (I used to read cereal boxes...everything on them in the same way...loved the words too!).

Years later, the artist decides he wants to explain his break with his childhood and rewrites the biography of memories in a stylized way, full of symbolism, color, rhythm and emphasis on that which was important to him. He selects moments in his life that changed the way he viewed the world...little "epiphanies" he called them - sudden revelations or realization of the person he was to become. When he rewrites his biography, these moments turn into something hugely symbolic. And so Portrait of the Artist does not read like a biography at all, but more like ...poetry.

I have an idea...

Let's think of a little "epiphany" which occurred in our own lives...seemingly unimportant, but one which changed the course of our lives in a small...or great way.

I can think of one right now, and will include it because I feel it was important to me, but to no one else!

I was a teenager (I think!), watching the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's- the opening scene where the lean and lovely Audrey Hepburn has overslept on the morning she was to meet her boyfriend, just released from prison (I think that's right). She is tearing around, looking for her clothes, her shoes under the bed - throws on her little dress over her undies, slips into her high heels.....Wait a minute!!! Where's the slip, the stockings, the girdle! She's putting on those shoes over her bare feet!!!

Well, that was it! I was in control, from that moment on! Out went the silly girdle - the garter belt made so much more sense! I began to wear what I wanted to wear, from color, to style ...and support - no matter what others were wearing. I'm still like that! If I was writing a Portrait of my life, (instead of just living it), I'd have to include the effect the opening scene in that old movie!

Your turn!

Oh my! I keep forgetting the rollercoaster effect in Joyce's writing! The highs and then the lows from chapter to chaper! Each time I am caught unawares! Well, I guess there's no where to go but up again from here!

He soared so high in the last chapter, taking us with him through his glorious writing on his rapturous flight to freedom!

Should have known it was too good to be true, claire! He was only 16 -17 years old---without much wax to hold those wings together so high up there close to the sun! He was indeed Icarus come plunging down into the sea!

But once tasting that freedom, no matter how briefly, our Stephen will never be the same groundling again!

So, he's hit rock bottom, attending the "sombre Jesuit University" in open rebellion, while living at home, experiencing his family's supreme sacrifice for his education.

Cannot wait to hear what you think of his behavior!

We left him on the shore in chapter IV...free from indecision and confusion, his inner conflicts resolved. He knows he has the power over his life to choose his own path. The sky is the limit! But does he fly to high?

"...evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and realizing the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy."

Before the chapter closes, were we given a hint, just a little hint, that things had to cool down when he wakes to find himself back on the shore, back on earth in a bed no longer glowing? Had the heat of his passion for the freedom to be himself melted the wax in his wings to send him plunging back to the sea, the earth, reality?

Chapter V answers the question, beginning on a real low. I think the first two pages of this chapter are a masterpiece - allowing us to experience both Stephen's frustration and his family's. So much has Joyce accomplished with small brush strokes...those details! And the symbolism!

Who is the victim here? Who is the sacrificial lamb? Do you see the components of a Mass here, as Stephen eats of the fried bread and watery tea, accepting the pawn tickets as a tithe of all his family's belongings, the ablutions performed by his mother as she washes him in preparation of the sacrifice?

Who or what is the sacrifice? Who is making the sacrifice?

How did you react to his behavior? Were you sympathetic, empathetic? You would have been a great teacher with such patience and understanding!!!

We won't exactly speed through the rest of this! (I can't go that fast with Joyce!) Fifteen pages into Chapter V for this week, Ella - you can do it. But hopefully, you will lurk, even if you have no time to read ?. You have come this far... and your empty chair will be a constant reminder of our loss!

We also need to be thinking about what we will read next...after Labor Day. If you remember, we were going to stick to 20th century authors this year...and then at our New Year's party, we added the element of "high mirth" to the criteria. We seemed to stumble upon the principle - to be considered a Great Book, the content must be serious, and it's not easy to find much humor in the selection. But we will stick to 20th century - to get to the nomination site, you may have noticed the pile of books on top. It's clickable - would love to hear from you there! Would really like to start thinking about that...

By the way, did you look at this week's AARP bulletin yet? There's a questionnaire on the 20th century, with the results to be published this fall. One of the questions...#4 asks"

What was the best book written in the 20th century?

I would love to hear your ideas on that! I want to read that book next!

Let"s look at Papa Joyce in these opening pages. We had a passing reference to his whistling in Chapter IV:

"He set off abruptly for the Bull, walking rapidly lest his father's shrill whistle might call him back."

Do you hear Dedalus warning young Icarus not to fly too high, whistling him back?

In this chapter, Papa is using that "ear-splitting whistle" to roust that "lazy bitch of a brother" out of the house to his classes. In the last chapter, it was mother expressing her displeasure with Stephen's choice of university over priesthood. She notes here how the university has changed him...and not for the better.
But his father was so proud of him! wanted him in the university - went to great lengths to get him in ... Had such high hopes! And Stephen is disappointing him - infuriating him with his apathy.

I read in Joyce's biography that his father hounded him at this time - to choose either journalism, medicine (remember Papa Dedalus had started to study medicine), or law. And young James could not answer him, would not answer him, ignored him, because he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, except that he did not want the life his father was pressing on him.

Kay, you must remember Daddy's pride in our accomplishments (often misplaced and excessive) and his high hopes for our future which he wanted to plan...

Living at home during this crucial period of indecision, trying to make life decisions - is never easy...unless of course, you are Nellie!

You're right, Stephen is happier when he gets out of the house, but the root of his unhappiness seems to lie in the university experience itself, doesn't it? I mean, if he were happy, he'd be eager to get out to class on time and the family would certainly be happier too! (Speaking of time, what is all that with the alarm clock lying on its side. I understand why the time is not set right, but why is it sideways?)

At first I thought he was not happy at the Jesuit University, but he has nothing good to say about Trinity College, (the state university, right?) either!

"The grey block of Trinity...set heavily in the city's ignorance like a dull stone set in a cumbrous ring, pulled his mind downward...and while he was striving to free his feet from the fetters of the reformed conscience..."

"...as he walked down the avenue and felt the grey morning light falling about him through the dripping trees and smelt the strange wild smell of the wet leaves and bark, his soul was loosed of her miseries.

The rain laden trees of the avenue evoked in him...memories of girls and women in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann, and the memory of their pale sorrows and the fragrance falling from the wet branches mingled in a mood of quiet joy."

Sarah, I like your thoughts on Joyce's attitude toward education...will need time to think about the meaning of the dean's warning against diving into literature, philosophy on one's own, without a guide...and Stephen's statement that he was able to find little of beauty in the writings of Aristotle and Aquinas... I'm sure this warning did not sit well with Stephen/Joyce, as this was the method he was using to educate himself!

Barbara, I hope you are feeling better after you finally got some sleep. Dental procedures are still medieval torture when they get down there below the old gum line!!! Hope it's over! Poor baby! We really do look forward to hearing from you - but not at 2 a.m. when you should be sleeping!

There’s a whole “world’s culture” out there and he’s relegated to the “monkish learning” of university. Well he certainly seems happier walking through the Dublin streets. There’s Hauptmann in the “rainladen trees”, Newman in the “sloblands of Fairview”, Cavalcanti in the windows of the “provision shops”, the “spirit of Ibsen” in the “stonecutting works”, the “dainty songs of the Elizabethans” in the “grimy marinedealer’s shop.” The poet’s eye. There’s his education. Immediately his “soul was loosed of her miseries.” Her miseries? Hmmm. Has THAT come up??

Like you, Ella, I will be very interested to see what AARP members come up with as Best Book of the Century! Ulysses??? What do you think?

Walking to the University - not on a bright sunny day, but a rainy one (it's raining all the time in this chapter! What does this mean! ) He's late, ...having slammed out of the house (well not exactly - he has put his fingers to his lips to blow airy kisses to his upset family!), having missed a class - totally unconcerned about the time. (What is going on with all the clocks showing incorrect time...and Stephen isn't even certain what day of the week it is?)

Charlie follows him through the Dublin streets with his head full of his favorite authors, though he lets us know "his mind wearied of its search for the essence of beauty amid the spectral words of Aristotle and Aquinas."

And later in a response to a question from the Dean of Studies, 'when may we expect to hear from you on the esthetic question?' Stephen responds that he 'stumbles on an idea only once in a fortnight' when he's lucky...and then 'garners only slender sentences' from Aristotle and Aquinas.' So he's not getting much of beauty from these writers so important to the Jesuits>

You said it Charlie, Stephen's education comes from - the streets of Dublin - and from those writers who freely express the beauty he seeks...without a guide! But what is this beauty he seeks? Is beauty truth? Somehow I think it is more than that, or he would have found more in Aristotle and Aquinas to satisfy!

And what do you make of those friends Barb is smiling at! Yes, he banters with them...sort of! His so-called "friends"! Let's look at them closely, both Davin and Cranley. They're in the photo above. What did you think of them? Were they clearly drawn or simply representatives, symbols, devices? They seem to me to represent both Ireland and Catholicism. What did you think of the story of the nursing mother Davin disclosed to Stephen?

” can absorb slop or the waters of the universe” – nice, Barbara.

- "You are an artist, are you not, Mr. Dedalus?

The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful.
What the beautiful is is another question."

- Stephen, quoting Aquinas:
'Whatever pleases the observer is beautiful.'"

You can do one of three things...post right here, scroll up to the clickable graphic that says "Great Books Nominations" above the Barnes & Noble graphic in the heading, or go to the main menu to the "Great Books Upcoming" site!

Is your post "okay"? Okay? Your summary/analysis is magnificent! But what's this about forgoing your light summer reading?

When your mind wearies of its search for the essence of beauty in Joyce,
Turn often for its pleasure to the dainty songs of summer readings.

Charlie and Barbara's references to the fried bread and watery tea keep hooking up in my mind with Barb's post on the banter between Stephen and his "friends". The link has just come to me...!!!

First let me put together some thoughts from earlier posts:

"Who is the victim here? Who is the sacrificial lamb? Do you see the components of a Mass here, as Stephen eats of the fried bread and watery tea, accepting the pawn tickets as a tithe of all his family's belongings, the ablutions performed by his mother as she washes him in preparation of the sacrifice..."

"Is the washing like absolution from a worried and disapproving but, forgiving mother?"

175.31 Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus! See 174.01. The nun's ejaculation suggests both a thanksgiving for the "Mass" just ended and a naming of Stephen as Jesus. Stanislaus Joyce underlines Joyce's interest in the Mass of the Presanctified: "It was as a primitive religious drama that my brother valued it so highly. He understood it as a drama of a man who has a perilous mission to fulfil, which he must fulfil even though he knows beforehand that those nearest to his heart will betray him. The chant and words of Judas or Peter on Palm Sunday, 'Etsi omnes scandalizati fuerint in te, ego numquam scandalizabor,' moved him profoundly. He was habitually a very late riser, but wherever he was, alone in Paris or married in Trieste, he never failed to get up at about five in all weathers to go to the early morning Mass on Holy Thursday and Good Friday." (Stanislaus, p. 105.)

I scanned ahead and see that there will be more on Holy Thursday and certainly more on Stephen's friends/disciples. But can we look more closely at Davin and Cranly first - and the Dean - as Stephen measures how different he is from all of them?

Please picture this gesture and all that has just gone before. How can this be anything other than an ironic gesture, nearly an obscene gesture – it just doesn’t sound like a toodle-oo and a cherry good mawnin’ to me.

By the way, Stephen and the tea dregs and crusty fried bread remind me of that pen and ink (?) Picasso (a very early one, I think) of a gaunt couple sitting at table.

Yes, Picasso - a good association with Joyce - even beyond the visual of the gaunt family at breakfast -

he paints lots of birds, doves, a recurrent theme with Joyce - freedom, the Holy Spirit etc -
- and Picasso and Joyce - both minimalists. I read this comparison of Joyce's writing (which I think applies to Picasso too):

"The final effect of his writing is that which a Shakespearean actor might achieve by culling out all the scenes in Hamlet where the hero does not appear."

Irony

Yes, Charlie, I felt the irony too! Do you get the feeling that Joyce doesn't like the young Stephen very much?

He's writing through hindsight, looking back at his own adolescent self, revolted by his behavior towards his mother and siblings. Haven't you done that? Thought much later about how badly you behaved toward some loved one as a callow fellow?

And Joyce did love his nicens mother - though he associated her very closely with the Church and religion. And he did love the "feminine" side of religion and the church - not the authoritative, harsh, judgmental male aspect - the Papacy, the rules and regulations...but the supportive, understanding, nurturing, forgiving, feminine church. Remember the Capuchin (in the dress), the forgiving, understanding confessor? He loved the aesthetics of the mass. From his brother we learned that all through his life he continued to attend the Holy Thursday-Good Friday services.

Joyce will always love his mother, but is not able to accept the authority of the church, even to please her. Not even when she was on her deathbed! All of his heroines will be nurturing maternal figures. All his relationships with women, his wife...and remember his encounter with the prostitute? He was her baby!

There is something feminine about Davin, the tame goose, even though he is the athlete, the "jock" of all his friends. The only one who calls Stephen by his first name...not "Steven", "Steve", but but "Stevie"! What is it about Davin that draws Stephen to him? Or vice versa? What is a tame goose? Does he have any feelings toward Davin? Does he face betrayal by the one closest to him?

Barb you ask, "Will he come away as a compassionate artist or an artful independent?" This is a crucial period in Stephen/Joyce's life...which will determine future relationships with others...Do you see him relating to anyone at all to date?

Thanks for reminding me that this is a “re-co-llection” of sorts? Joyce looking back on his young self does bring these pages into focus for me. Guide me along, Joan!!

“Joyce will always love his mother, but is not able to accept the authority of the church, even to please her.” Oh do I know the feeling of not being able to say something (just because I don’t believe it) when every logical fiber of my being shouts to me that it would be best, easiest, and so simple to yield. What would it hurt?

I’ll offer this on tame goose: The opposite of tame goose – ornery geese - have a well known tendency to attack humans in their private parts. So there is a certain compulsive sexual association attached here to ”untamed” geese. What this leads us to associate with the opposite, I’m not sure. A certain sexless-ness?

I just may spend the rest of my days with Joyce and Shakespeare!

Charlie, here's what happened with Portrait. Joyce wrote an autobiography, almost a personal diary, when he was 19 years old. It was the raw material for Portrait He called it Stephen Hero. He tried to get it published when he was in his twenties, but after many rejections, the story goes, he threw it into the fire. Mrs. Joyce reached in and retrieved what she could. The remaining pages presently reside at Harvard University, I don't know why or how they got there. But they were published. I bought a copy, all excited, thinking it would fill in what Portrait only hinted at...but Stephen Hero only begins at the University. We haven't reached the point in Portrait yet where the autobiography kicks in.

His brother, Stanislaus, also wrote a book, My Brother's Keeper, which sheds much biographic light on the young Joyce. Stanislaus claims that the Stephen Dedalus in Portrait is a fictional character, with biographical similarities to his brother.

It seems that Joyce has been able to distance himself from his own autobiography in Portrait, which according to Joyce, is the mature revelation of the conclusions hammered out in the adolescent period of Stephen Hero - an artistic rendition of the autobiography.

When I think of the opposite of "tame geese", I think "wild geese". Wild geese fly south for the winter when it gets too cold, don't they? Would a tame goose, like a tame tiger cub do something unlike the tiger in the wild? Would the tame goose adapt to the difficult climate, preferring to stay near to that which tamed him? Would Davin be such a part of Ireland, tamed in his very soul, to the point that he is unable to think beyond his present environment?

Stephen is drawn to him, this "peasant" student. Just as he is happy when walking the streets of Dublin, away from his home and the university. He likes Dublin, he likes Davin, but....he regards him as a "dullwitted loyal serf" to Irish nationalism. Stephen feels somehow superior, well, at least he feels separate, different. I think he pities him this likable, athlete, outstanding example of Ireland's finest. I'm remembering back to the early chapter when Stephen's uncle took him to the park for running lessons, "head high, hands and arms straight at his side"...taught by the old track star, who had clearly seen better days. Young Stephen pitied him too, Ireland's all-star runner! He will not run like that. He will not be like him!

Davin tells him in crude terms about the invitation he had from the bare-breasted young mother who offered him - milk. She beckons, he declines. Stephen thinks this is pretty sordid. His sensitivities are offended. Davin's crude speech, the mother, pathetic. Not at all like Stephen's own uplifting encounter with the bird girl, who also looked right at him, guilelessly. She did not beckon to him, he did not decline. He was filled with elation at the possibilities open to him. He would never forget her! Davin was disgusted at the memory of how low this young mother had sunk. Was she Ireland? Offering herself - corrupt?

Right after this story, Stephen is confronted with the flower girl, at first guileless, but then crude with a hoydenish face. He is sickened by poverty....and then he describes the rain, more rain:
"But the trees ... were fragrant of rain, rainsodden earth gave forth mortal odour...the soul of Dublin had shrunk to a faint mortal odour of corruption."

"When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets."

The image of Trinity College, standing for the "British" invasion, not only into Irish ignorance, intrudes upon Irish pride and independence. It is very clear, that Stephen will not be influenced by British culture and literature. You're right, Barb, Stephen is rooted in Ireland, and will never be influenced by the "invader".

Somehow, I can sense what Joyce is trying to do with Davin's story as he tries to explain what separates him from him, but don't know if I can get it into words. Let me at least try. If the young, vulnerable, poor, pregnant woman,, ready to accept a total stranger into her bed in the middle of the night...if she represents a weary, vulnerable Ireland ready to take any stranger, alien, invader (England)into her bosom (the milk), as Trinity sits in the heart of Dublin, as Ireland struggles for its independence from Britain....wouldn't it make sense that Davin, the Irish nationalist is revolted by such acquiescence, such willingness to be invaded...and runs off into the night?

Is it Davin's desire for an independent Ireland, his strong Nationalistic hopes that attracts Stephen to him, and then the hopelessness of the situation, the ignorance and poverty of the Irish peasant and the "peasant" in Davin that separates them?

Let's also take the magnifying class to his other "friend" from the portrait in the heading...the one who is "all head" - Cranly

Joyce was 58 when he died too.

I like that Nellie...

""The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the action like a vital sea."

I promise to move forward into the discussion with Lynch on esthetics and beauty tomorrow...right up to the end of that discussion. (Why did he choose the crude, revolting Lynch to discuss esthetics???)

But a few words on Cranly. Thanks, Barbfor the background information on the name. Gads! Joyce spent all that time naming this one character! So the name is meant to signify another example of the English betrayal of Ireland? Will Cranly's actions accomplish the same?

When we first meet him, it is in Joyce's mind...Cranly sits in the front row of class, and all Stephen can see is his large head...with a face like a death mask. Cranly is Stephen's confessor of sorts. He tells him all...but does he really expect understanding, absolution? Is it his "dark, womanish, eyes" which draw Stephen to him? But no, no absolution, no understanding...he responds with silence "Like a guilty priest who has no power to absolve..."

Now, where does England's betrayal fit into this picture? Will we have to wait till later in the chapter for more information?

I see the Davin dialog indicating that Joyce and the nationalism of Ireland have separated.

But what of Cranly?

Please keep the homefires burning. Comments on the "truth-beauty-art" discussion with Lynch (why Lynch?) would be most helpful. There is an important message there if we can get it all together!

Why did Joyce choose Lynch for this most important topic?

And of course, I have jet lag right now and am overwhelmed by your posts here! Now will you bear with me and go slowly this week? I'd like to extend the esthetic discussion with Lynch a bit...please? Like Barb, I got stalled in the discussion on art and beauty and have been walking, climbing, sailing around with so many ideas in my head. I need to have your clear thoughts to help me out.

The only book I took with me was Stephen Hero which was cheating, but it lets us into Joyce's head at the time he was at the Universtiy. I'd like to share those ideas with you. There's a section on Lynch too...although Joyce didn't use Lynch in his thoughts on art and beauty in Stephen Hero.

Then, as soon as I got home, I started to read your posts, and was overwhelmed. Will have to study them very closely tomorrow when I have the house to myself. Almost unpacked...tomorrow laundry and Portrait. You all did a super job keeping the discussion rolling. An important lesson for me! I'll explain that another time!

Before I get off tonight for daughter-in-law's birthday party, I want to add one little paragraph from Theodore Spenser's introduction to Stephen Hero

"We follow Stephen as he develops his theory...the situation comes to a crisis in the delivery of the paper, and we are interested, as we are interested in a drama, as we wait to hear how the audience will react.."

So, I'd like to stall a little and catch up with the rest of you this week. I have NEVER gotten so "into" a novel, so bogged down in thought as with this one - not even Magic Mountain! I have an article here I intend to share with you that suggests Joyce is a schizophrenic...I think it is a bit of a reach, but if it is so difficult for us to read through it, can you imagine how it was to write it...to live it??? I think it is worthwhile to spend time on it though, I think it is important. I am so grateful that you all have chosen to stick it through!!!

Love,
red-eye Joan

Here's the post I came in here with...more to come later tonight:

I have carefully read Barbara's illuminating history notes and annotations... and very, very closely, Charlotte's masterful summary of Chapter V....the first seven pages of it. Will save the rest until I've read the next section of Portrait!

Okay, what to do...where to start? I've got piles of notes of my own impressions, notes from Stephen Hero, notes from Ellman's biography and now new notes and comments on your recent posts!!! Don't know how to harness all this material and accompanying ideas! I suppose I should follow Charlotte's orderly linear approach - as opposed to the swirling spiral - tornado - of impressions in which I find myself trapped!

But first, I'll post the comment on possible schizophrenia mentioned yesterday...for your consideration:

I suppose I should have noted the author, but alas...Anon. states that there are many elements present in the character of Stephen Dedalus, which correspond to symptoms of schizophrenia:

dissociation from one's environment

search to find a center

negative mother-fixation

life experience fiercely controlled, rather than genially lived

The author expands on the above, applies to Stephen/Joyce and if anyone wishes, I'll go through this stack of books and find it to share with you

This chapter reminds me of Magic Mountain. I often felt I was in way over my head and the only way I got through it was to listen to the avalanche of philosophic thought with the ears of a very young Hans Castorp. We were often lost together. That's how I am coming to understand Stephen Dedalus...an inexperienced kid - gifted, yes, talented, oh yes. Many indications of the greatness that is evolving...but not yet James Joyce, the great writer if not the greatest of the century. Surely, I can follow the musings of a 17 year old!!!

Stephen Hero...as Joyce planned it was to be "an autobiographical book, a personal history of the growth of a mind, his own mind, and his own intensive absorption in himself and what he had been and how he had grown out of the Jesuitical garden of his youth. He endeavoured to see himself objectively, to assume a godlike poise of watchfulness over the small boy and youth he called Stephen and who was really himself."

In Portrait, Joyce was "aiming at economy, trying to place his center of action inside the consciousness of his hero." In Stephen Hero, we "see things in daylight, instead of under a spotlight - less emphasis, less selection, less art."

I'll attempt to keep all of the following information linear, chronological, as Charlotte did so well...bear with me, there's a lot of it, but it's good stuff! I'll put all the quotes from Stephen Hero in a blue font.

"Stephen's home life had by this time grown sufficiently unpleasant: the direction of his development was against the stream of tendency of his family...he was harassed very much by enquiries as to his progress at the College and Mr. Daedalus, meditating upon the evasive answers had begun to express a fear that his son was falling into bad company. The youth was given to understand that if he did not succeed brilliantly at the coming examination his career at the University would come to a close. He was not greatly troubled by this warning for he knew that his fate was, in this respect, with his godfather and not with his father. He felt that the moments of his youth were too precious to be wasted in a dull mechanical endeavour...His family expected that he would at once follow the path of remunerative respectability and save the situation but hi could not satisfy his family. He thanked their intention: it had first fulfilled him with egoism; and he rejoiced that his life had been so self-centered. He felt however that there were activities which it <<would be a peril>> to postpone...He was now busily preparing his paper for the Literary and Historical Society ..."

"The monster in Stephen had lately taken to misbehaving himself and on the least provocation was ready for bloodshed. Almost every incident of the day was a goad for him and the intellect had great trouble keeping him within bounds. ...the fever- fit of holiness ..had driven him from breathless flights of zeal shamefully inwards and the most that devotional exercises could do for him was to soothe him.

This soothing he badly needed for he suffered greatly from contact with his new environment. He hardly spoke to his colleagues and performed the business of the class without remark or interest.

Every morning..took tram for town, sat on the front seat outside with his face to the wind, got off before the Pillar because he wished to partake in the morning life of the city...he strove to pierce the motive center of its ugliness. It was always with a feeling of displeasure that he entered the Green and saw the gloomy building of the College.

In class, in the hushed library, in the company of other students he would suddenly hear a command to begone, to be alone, a voice agitating the very tympanum of his ear, a flame leaping into divine cerebral life. He would obey the command and wander up and down the streets alone..."

The Holy OfficeSo distantly I turn to view
The shamblings of that motley crew,
Those souls that hate the strength that mine has
Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.
Where they have crouched and crawled and prayed
I stand, the self-doomed, unafraid,
Unfellowed, friendless and alone,
Indifferent as the herring-bone
Firm as the mountain-ridges where
I flash my antlers on the air."

I warned you I had a zillion notes... will be back tomorrow. I hope you come back as I empty all my buckets. I find this so fascinating...

Contrasts yes, lots of that in Joyce's writing, I agree! Irony - lots of that too! So you think Lynch is ugly! I thought him crude as he spent so much time with his off-color jokes - as he gripped his groin with his hand in his pockets...(sometimes both hands!) . Everything Stephen said to him seemed to elicit a carnal response. I think that such a response what Aquinas called "kinetic"...and therefore not within the realm of the beautiful. I'm not sure I fully understood that part of the discussion...but it seemed to say that true beauty does not evoke such a response. True beauty is a state of stasis...the level you reach when you pass through a subjective response and appreciate the perfection, the harmony of the object for what it is. Something like that. If I really understood, I'd give an example. I'm not sure young Stephen/James understood the "slender threads" of information he had garnered from Aquinas either. But he knew that the carnal, kinetic response that Lynch was exhibiting was not beauty!

I'll just have to add here that I always thought that "beauty" elicited a positive response, a kinetic response from the beholder. Apparently that is not Aquinas' way of thinking! True beauty goes beyond the physical... "Truth and beauty are akin." Maybe it's something on the order of : lust is not love. But what is beauty? What is love for that matter? Any ideas?

Anyway, as Stephen/Joyce prepares his paper on Aesthetics, he is also drawing his own conclusions...taking what he needs from Aquinas and forming his own concepts....he tells us that he is determined to "...to express from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound, shape, color - prism gates of the soul - an image of beauty. That is art!" Is that what he's doing with Lynch? He regards his eyes "reptilian", (his"face resembles a devil's mask"), but there is that human glint in his eye...is there beauty there? Lynch is not a dummy, is he? He has a mind. He follows Stephen's theories, he responds with much humor, the humor of understanding. He sang in Latin the majestic hymn written by Aquinas (for Holy Thursday--we are in Easter week still, aren't we...) I get the feeling that Stephen is a Jesus figure here, with his disciples, not fully comprehending his message. It's way over their heads.

Here's something interesting from Stephen Hero. The discussion concerning art and beauty is there, but it's all in Stephen's head...no Lynch. Lynch was added to "Portrait later - to break the monotony perhaps? The contrast gets our attention here, as Nellie points out.

I think they need to be put in context to comprehend the mocking irony as Stephen walks the streets of Dublin, severing his connection to his Irish heritage with each step he takes.

"The grey block of Trinity on his left...pulled his mind downward, and while he was striving...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 ...it seemed humbly conscious of its indignity ( the statue stands over a public urinal near Trinity College)."

His reputation was tarnished by his apparent willingness to compromise artistic integrity.

Moore stood there, "the sloth of his body rising up the folds of the cloak and around the servile head - a Firbolg in the borrowed cloak of a Milesian; and he thought of his friend Davin, the peasant student.

" The Firbolgs were an ancient tribe living in Ireland - a dwarfish, primitive uncultured race...serfs -conquered by the Milesians. The Irish race is known as the Milesian race because genuine Irish (Celtic) people are supposed to be descended from Milesius of Spain, whose sons invaded and possessed Ireland a thousand years BC - a tall handsome, cultured people. So what does that make Davin? A primitive warrior for Ireland, a Nationalist with a "servile head" who was doomed to live under the domination of a stronger, more cultured people...

Wolfe Tone

"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 of Wolfe 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...a plump smiling young man held ...a card on which were printed the words: 'Vive Irlande!' "

And finally...sugar...which is not as someone mentioned earlier, something that melts in the mouth, (though Lynch bragged of eating dried cow dung as a child!)...it is simply a euphemism for that one syllable term for excrement so commonly used today. I'm sorry, I promise to get back to aesthetics tomorrow!