Without Lifting A Finger

 —The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. 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.

He felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought: —The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

The dean rested back on his hunkers and watched the sticks catch. Stephen, to fill the silence, said: —I am sure I could not light a fire. —You are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancing up and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question. He rubbed his hands slowly and drily over the difficulty. —Can you solve that question now? he asked. —Aquinas, answered Stephen, says pulcra sunt quæ visa placent. —This fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye. Will it therefore be beautiful? —In so far as it is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose means here esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also says Bonum est in quod tendit appetitus. In so far as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell however it is an evil. —Quite so, said the dean, you have certainly hit the nail on the head.

Art thou pale for weariness  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,  Wandering companionless …?  He repeated to himself the lines of Shelley’s fragment. Its alternation of sad human ineffectualness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him, and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.

I am nauseated by their lying drivel about pure men and pure women and spiritual love and love for ever: blatant lying in the face of the truth. I don’t know much about the ‘saince’ of the subject but I presume there are very few mortals in Europe who are not in danger of waking some morning and finding themselves syphilitic. The Irish consider England a sink: but, if cleanliness be important in this matter, what is Ireland? Perhaps my view of life is too cynical but it seems to me that a lot of this talk about love is nonsense. A woman’s love is always maternal and egoistic. A man, on the contrary, side by side with his extraordinary cerebral sexualism and bodily fervour (from which women are normally free) possesses a fund of genuine affection for the ‘beloved’ or ‘once beloved’ object. I am no friend of tyranny, as you know, but if many husbands are brutal the atmosphere in which they live (vide Counterparts) is brutal and few wives and homes can satisfy the desire for happiness. In...

Two bits: To Stannie (1906): Can you tell me what is a cure for dreaming? I am troubled every night by horrible and terrifying dreams: death, corpses, assassinations in which I take an unpleasantly prominent part. & Nora has a talent for blowing soap-bubbles. While I was wading through a chapter of Dorian Gray a few days ago she and Georgie were blowing bubbles on the floor out of a basin of suds. She can make them as big as a football.

To Grant Richards (1906): I believe Richards would eventually publish Joyce's Dubliners , but there was a lot of back-and-forth before that happened (e.g., the slang term "bloody" -- mistakenly believed to be an allusion to Christ or the Virgin -- was a big trip at the time): Perhaps this may reconcile you to Dubliners. It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.

"Ranch' io son pittore!" I cried. "Unless I am mistaken, you have a masterpiece on the stocks. If you put all that in, you will do more than Raphael himself did. Let me know when your picture is finished, and wherever in the wide world I may be, I will post back to Florence and pay my respects to--the MADONNA OF THE FUTURE!"

The young James Joyce has gone from Trieste to Pola. In a letter to his brother Stannie he says that Nora's making his cigarettes and that he's going to buy Henry James' story "The Madonna of the Future" (which I've never read) that very day. Then JJ finishes the letter with the seemingly frustrated:  "I really can’t write. Nora is trying on a pair of drawers at the wardrobe Excuse me." & I check my Kindle trove and sure enough: I have the Madonna. I'll pingpong between the two Jameses.:) Excerpt: We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim ide...

To Nora (1904): My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classes of life, and religious doctrines. How could I like the idea of home? My home was simply a middle-class affair ruined by spendthrift habits which I have inherited. My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father’s ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct. When I looked on her face as she lay in her coffin—a face grey and wasted with cancer—I understood that I was looking on the face of a victim and I cursed the system which had made her a victim. We were seventeen in family. My brothers and sisters are nothing to me. One brother alone is capable of understanding me. Six years ago I left the Catholic Church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made...

To Nora (1904): I have been a half-hour writing this thing. Will you write something to me? I hope you will. How am I to sign myself? I won’t sign anything at all, because I don’t know what to sign myself.

To His Mother (1903): He had recently met JM Synge in Paris: Every Sunday I try and get out into the country. Last Sunday I went out to the woods of Clamart and walked through them to Sèvres—coming back by steamer. I read every day in the Bibliothèque Nationale and every night in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. I often go to vespers at Notre Dame or at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. I never go to the theatre—as I have no money. I have no money either to buy books. Synge was over here selling out and gave me his play to read—a play which is to be produced by the Irish Literary Theatre. I criticised it. Synge says I have a mind like Spinoza!

To Lady Gregory (1902): All things are inconstant except the faith of the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. And though I seem to have been driven out of my country here as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.

She was a little vulgar; sometimes she said I seen and If I had’ve known. But what would grammar matter if he really loved her?

—You are a native, I suppose? —No, no. No indeed. Mick toyed with his glass, showing nonchalance. —My own little trip to Skerries, he remarked, isn’t really for the purpose of holiday. I came here looking for somebody who’s in the town, I believe. —A relative? —No. A man I admire very much, a writer. —Ah. I see? —My good sir, I will not be so presumptuous as to ask you your name. Instead, I will tell you what it is. The weak eyes seemed to grope behind their glass walls. —Tell me . . . my name? —Yes. Your name is James Joyce. It was as if a stone had been dropped from a height into a still pool. The body stiffened. He put a hand about his face nervously. —Quiet, please! Quiet! I am not known by that name here. I insist that you respect my affairs. The voice was low but urgent. —Of course I will, Mr Joyce. I shall mention no name again. But it is a really deep pleasure to meet a man of your attainments face to face. Your name stands high in the world. You are a most remarkable writer, a...

I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, subtracting rather than adding. When I first met Joyce, I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching. When I found I simply couldn't teach. But I do remember speaking about Joyce's heroic achievement. I had a great admiration for him. That's what it was: epic, heroic, what he achieved. I realized that I couldn't go down that same road. Samuel Beckett 

sylvia_beach_and_james_joyce , a photo by warehouse42 on Flickr.

Shakespeare & Co Antiquarian Books , a photo by El Bingle on Flickr. I was here years ago (on my honeymoon and then later by myself). Very close to Notre Dame. Not sure if I photographed it (I'm on my way to look). I remember buying a cheap copy of something by Jean Genet (I wasn't real impressed). I don't believe I knew then of the Sylvia Beach connection.

Looks like F Scott Fitzgerald was something of a closet artist. A friend pointed this drawing out to me some while ago (he's a real big fan of  FSF). FSF is bowing before a literary god: James Joyce. I believe the mermaid on the left is Sylvia Beach (of Shakespeare & Co. fame).  

[From James Joyce and the Nineteenth-century French Novel , edited by Finn Fordham and Rita Sakr]