Complete Works of James Joyce

by Unknown

  — But since you married neither of you so much as bought a single book!

  — Well, you see, Stephen, your father is not like you: he takes no interest in that sort of thing . . . When he was young he told me he used to spend all his time out after the hounds or rowing on the Lee. He went in for athletics.

  — I suspect what he went in for, said Stephen irreverently. I know he doesn’t care a jack straw about what I think or what I write.

  — He wants to see you make your way, get on in life, said his mother defensively. That’s his ambition. You shouldn’t blame him for that.

  — No, no, no. But it may not be my ambition. That kind of life I often loathe: I find it ugly and cowardly.

  — Of course life isn’t what I used to think it was when I was a young girl. That’s why I would like to read some great writer, to see what ideal of life he has — amn’t I right in saying “ideal”?

  — Yes, but . . .

  — Because sometimes — not that I grumble at the lot Almighty God has given me and I have more or less a happy life with your father — but sometimes I feel that I want to leave this actual life and enter another — for a time.

  — But that is wrong: that is the great mistake everyone makes. Art is not an escape from life!

  — No?

  — You evidently weren’t listening to what I said or else you didn’t understand what I said. Art is not an escape from life. It’s just the very opposite. Art, on the contrary, is the very central expression of life. An artist is not a fellow who dangles a mechanical heaven before the public. The priest does that. The artist affirms out of the fulness of his own life, he creates . . . Do you understand?

  And so on. A day or two afterwards Stephen gave his mother a few of the plays to read. She read them with great interest and found Nora Helmer a charming character. Dr Stockmann she admired but her admiration was naturally checked by her son’s light-heartedly blasphemous description of that stout burgher as ‘Jesus in a frock-coat.’ But the play which she preferred to all others was the . Of it she spoke readily and on her own initiative: it had moved her deeply. Stephen, to escape a charge of hot-headedness and partizanship, did not encourage her to an open record of her feelings.

  — I hope you’re not going to mention Little Nell in the .

  — Of course I like Dickens too but I can see a great difference between Little Nell and that poor little creature — what is her name? . . .

  — Hedvig Ekdal?

  — Hedvig, yes ... It’s so sad: it’s terrible to read it even . . . I quite agree with you that Ibsen is a wonderful writer.

  — Really?

  — Yes, really. His plays have impressed me very much.

  — Do you think he is immoral?

  — Of course, you know, Stephen, he treats of subjects . of which I know very little myself . . . subjects .

  — Subjects which, you think, should never be talked about?

  — Well, that was the old people’s idea but I don’t know if it was right. I don’t know if it is good for people to be entirely ignorant.

  — Then why not treat them openly?

  — I think it might do harm to some people — uneducated, unbalanced people. People’s natures are so different. You perhaps . . .

  — O, never mind me . . . Do you think these plays are unfit for people to read?

  — No, I think they’re magnificent plays indeed.

  — And not immoral?

  — I think that Ibsen . . . has an extraordinary knowledge of human nature . . . And I think that human nature is a very extraordinary thing sometimes.

  Stephen had to be contented with this well-worn generality as he recognised in it a genuine sentiment. His mother, in fact, had so far evangelised herself that she undertook the duties of missioner to the heathen; that is to say, she offered some of the plays to her husband to read. He listened to her praises with a somewhat startled air, observing no feature of her face, his eyeglass screwed into an astonished eye and his mouth poised in naif surprise. He was always interested in novelties, childishly interested and receptive, and this new name and the phenomena it had produced in his house were novelties for him. He made no attempt to discredit his wife’s novel development but he resented both that she should have achieved it unaided by him and that she should be able thereby to act as intermediary between him and his son. He condemned as inopportune but not discredited his son’s wayward researches into strange literature and, though a similar taste was not discoverable in him, he was prepared to commit that most pious of heroisms namely the extension of one’s sympathies late in life in deference to the advocacy of a junior. Following the custom of certain old-fashioned people who can never understand why their patronage or judgments should put men of letters into a rage he chose his play from the title. A metaphor is a vice that attracts the dull mind by reason of its aptness and repels the too serious mind by reason of its falsity and danger so that, after all, there is something to be said, nothing voluminous perhaps, but at least a word of concession for that class of society which in literature as in everything else goes always with its four feet on the ground. Mr Daedalus, anyhow, suspected that would be a triviality in the manner of and, as he had never been even unofficially a member of that international society which collects and examines psychical phenomena, he decided that would probably be some uninteresting story about a haunted house. He chose the in which he hoped to find the reminiscences of like-minded roysterers and, after reading through two acts of provincial intrigue, abandoned the enterprise as tedious. He had promised himself, arguing from the alienated attitudes and half-deferential half-words of pressmen at the mention of the name, a certain extravagance, perhaps an anomalous torridity of the North and [he] though the name beneath Ibsen’s photograph never failed to reawaken his sense of wonder, the upright line of the “b” running so strangely beside the initial letter as to suspend [one] the mind amid incertitudes for some oblivious instants, the final impression made upon him by the figure to which the name was affixed, a figure which he associated with a solicitor’s or a stockbroker’s office in Dame St, was an impression of [disappointment mixed] relief mixed with disappointment, the relief for his son’s sake prevailing dutifully over his own slight but real disappointment. So that from neither of Stephen’s parents did respectability get full allegiance.

  A week before the date fixed for the reading of the paper Stephen consigned a small packet covered with neat characters into the Auditor’s hands. McCann smacked his lips and put the manuscript into the inside pocket of his coat:

  — I’ll read this tonight and I’ll see you here at the same hour tomorrow. I think I know all that is in it beforehand.

  The next [evening] afternoon McCann reported: — Well, I’ve read your paper.

  — Well?

  — Brilliantly written — a bit strong, it seems to me. However I gave it to the President this morning to read.

  — What for?

  — All the papers must be submitted to him first for approval, you know.

  — Do you mean to say, said Stephen scornfully, that the President must approve of my paper before I can read it to your society!

  — Yes. He’s the Censor.

  — What a valuable society!

  — Why not?

  — It’s only child’s play, man. You remind me of children in the nursery.

  — Can’t be helped. We must take what we can get.

  — Why not put up the shutters at once?

  — Well, it is valuable. It trains young men for public speaking — for the bar and the political platform.

  — Mr Daniel could say as much for his charades.

  — I daresay he could.

  — So this Censor of yours is inspecting my essay?

  — Well. He’s liberal-minded .

  — Ay.

  While the two young men were holding this conversation on the steps of
the Library, Whelan, the College orator came up to them. This suave rotund young man, who was the Secretary of the Society, was reading for the Bar. His eyes regarded Stephen now with mild, envious horror and he forgot all his baggage from Attica:

  — Your essay is tabu, Daedalus.

  — Who said so?

  — The Very Reverend Dr Dillon.

  The delivery of this news was followed by a silence during which Whelan slowly moistened his lower lip with saliva from his tongue and McCann made ready to shrug his shoulders.

  — Where is the damned old fool? said the essayist promptly.

  Whelan blushed and pointed his thumb over his shoulder. Stephen in a moment was half across the quadrangle. McCann called after him:

  — Where are you going?

  Stephen halted but, discovering that he was too angry to trust himself to speak, he merely pointed in the direction of the College, and went forward quickly.

  So after all his trouble, thinking out his essay and composing his periods, this old fogey was about to prohibit it! His indignation settled into a mood of politic contempt as he crossed the Green. The clock in the hall of the College pointed to half past three as Stephen addressed the doddering door-porter. He had to speak twice, the second time with a distinct, separated enunciation, for the door-porter was rather stupid and deaf:

  — Can — I — see — the — President?

  The President was not in his room: he was saying his office in the garden. Stephen went out into the garden and went down towards the ball-alley. A small figure wrapped in a loose Spanish-looking black cloak presented its back to him near the far end of the side-walk. The figure went on slowly to the end of the walk, halted there for a few moments, and then turning about presented to him over the edge of a breviary a neat round head covered with curly grey hair and a very wrinkled face of an indescribable colour: the upper part was the colour of putty and the lower part was shot with slate colour. The President came slowly down the side-walk, in his capacious cloak, noiselessly moving his grey lips as he said his office. At the end of the walk he halted again and looked inquiringly at Stephen. Stephen raised his cap and said “Good evening, sir.” The President answered with the smile which a pretty girl gives when she receives some compliment which puzzles her — a ‘winning smile:

  — What can I do for you? he asked in a [wonderfully] rich deep calculated voice.

  — I understand, said Stephen, that you wish to see me about my essay — an essay I have written for the Debating Society.

  — O, you are Mr Daedalus, said the President more seriously but still agreeably.

  — Perhaps I am disturbing . . .

  — No, I have finished my office, said the President.

  He [started] began to walk slowly down the path at such a pace as implied invitation. Stephen kept therefore at his side.

  — I admire the style of your paper, he said firmly, very much but I do not approve at all of your theories. I am afraid I cannot allow you to read your paper before the Society.

  They walked on to the end of the path, without speaking. Then Stephen said:

  — Why, sir?

  — I cannot encourage you to disseminate such theories among the young men in this college.

  — You think my theory of art is a false one?

  — It is certainly not the theory of art which is respected in this college.

  — I agree with that, said Stephen.

  — On the contrary, it represents the sum-total of modern unrest and modern freethinking. The authors you quote as examples, those you seem to admire . . .

  — Aquinas?

  — Not Aquinas; I have to speak of him in a moment. But Ibsen, Maeterlinck . . . these atheistic writers . . .

  — You do not like . . .

  — I am surprised that any student of this college could find anything to admire in such writers, writers who usurp the name of poet, who openly profess their atheistic doctrines and fill the minds of their readers with all the garbage of modern society. That is not art.

  — Even admitting the corruption you speak of I see nothing unlawful in an examination of corruption.

  — Yes, it may be lawful — for the scientist, for the reformer . . .

  — Why not for the poet too? Dante surely examines and upbraids society.

  — Ah, yes, said the President explanatorily, with a moral purpose in view: Dante was a great poet.

  — Ibsen is also a great poet.

  — You cannot compare Dante and Ibsen.

  — I am not doing so.

  — Dante, the lofty upholder of beauty, the greatest of Italian poets, and Ibsen, the writer above and beyond all others, Ibsen and Zola, who seek to degrade their art, who pander to a corrupt taste . . .

  — But you are comparing them!

  — No, you cannot compare them. One has a high moral aim — he ennobles the human race: the other degrades it.

  — The lack of a specific code of moral conventions does not degrade the poet, in my opinion.

  — Ah, if he were to examine even the basest things, said the President with a suggestion of tolerance in store, [that] it would be different if he were to examine and then show men the way to purify themselves.

  — That is for the Salvationists, said Stephen.

  — Do you mean . . .

  — I mean that Ibsen’s account of modern society is as genuinely ironical as Newman’s account of English Protestant morality and belief.

  — That may be, said the President appeased by the conjunction.

  — And as free from any missionary intention.

  The President was silent.

  — It is a question of temper. Newman could refrain from writing his Apologia for twenty years.

  — But when he came out on him! said the President with a chuckle and an expressive incompletion of the phrase. Poor Kingsley!

  — It is all a question of temper — one’s attitude towards society whether one is poet or critic.

  — O, yes.

  — Ibsen has the temper of an archangel.

  — It may be: but I have always believed that he was a fierce realist like Zola with some kind of a new doctrine to preach.

  — You were mistaken, sir.

  — This is the general opinion.

  — A mistaken one.

  — I understood he had some doctrine or other — a social doctrine, free living, and an artistic doctrine, unbridled licence — so much so that the public will not tolerate his plays on the stage and that you cannot name him even in mixed society.

  — Where have you seen this?

  — O, everywhere . . . in the papers.

  — This is a serious argument, said Stephen reprovingly.

  The president far from resenting this hardy statement seemed to bow to its justice: no-one could have a poorer opinion of the half-educated journalism of the present day than he had and he certainly would not allow a newspaper to dictate criticism to him. At the same time there was such a unanimity of opinion everywhere about Ibsen that he imagined . . .

  — May I ask you if you have read much of his writing? asked Stephen.

  — Well, no . . . I must say I . . .

  — May I ask you if you have read even a single line?

  — Well, no . . . I must admit . . .

  — And surely you do not think it right to pass judgment on a writer a single line of whose writing you have never read?

  — Yes, I must admit that.

  Stephen hesitated after this first success. The President resumed:

  — I am very interested in the enthusiasm you show for this writer. I have never had any opportunity to read Ibsen myself but I know that he enjoys a great reputation. What you say of him, I must confess, alters my view of him considerably. Some day perhaps I shall . . .

  — I can lend you some of the plays if you like, sir, said Stephen with imprudent simplicity.

  — Can you indeed?

  Both paused for an instant: then —

  — You wil
l see that he is a great poet and a great artist, said Stephen.

  — I shall be very interested, said the President with an amiable intention, to read some of his work for myself. I certainly shall.

  Stephen had an impulse to say “Excuse me for five minutes while I send a telegram to Christiania” but he resisted his impulse. During the interview he had occasion more than once to put severe shackles on this importunate devil within him whose appetite was on edge for the farcical. The President was beginning to exhibit the liberal side of his character, but with priestly cautiousness.

  — Yes, I shall be most interested. Your opinions are somewhat strange. Do you intend to publish this essay?

  — Publish it!

  — I should not care for anyone to identify the ideas in your essay with the teaching in our college. We receive this college in trust.

  — But you are not supposed to be responsible for everything a student in your college thinks or says.

  — No, of course not . . . but, reading your essay and knowing you came from our college, people would suppose that we inculcated such ideas here.

  — Surely a student of this college can pursue a special line of study if he chooses.

  — It is just that which we always try to encourage in our students but your study, it seems to me, leads you to adopt very revolutionary . . . very revolutionary theories.

  — If I were to publish tomorrow a very revolutionary pamphlet on the means of avoiding potato-blight would you consider yourself responsible for my theory?

  — No, no, of course not . . . but then this is not a school of agriculture.

  — Neither is it a school of dramaturgy, answered Stephen.

  — Your argument is not so conclusive as it seems, said the President after a short pause. However I am glad to see that your attitude towards your subject is so genuinely serious. At the same time you must admit that this theory you have — if pushed to its logical conclusion — would emancipate the poet from all moral laws. I notice too that in your essay you allude satirically to what you call the ‘antique’ theory — the theory, namely, that the drama should have special ethical aims, that it should instruct, elevate and amuse. I suppose you mean Art for Art’s sake.