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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
This carefully crafted ebook: "The Collected Works of James Joyce: Chamber Music + Dubliners + A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man + Exiles + Ulysses (the original 1922 ed.) + Pomes Penyeach + Finnegans Wake + Stephen Hero + The Critical Writings of James Joyce" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre also includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
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The Collected Works of James Joyce:Chamber Music + Dubliners + A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man + Exiles + Ulysses (the original 1922 ed.)
Table of Contents
Chamber Music
I
Strings in the earth and air
Make music sweet; Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
There’s music along the river
For Love wanders there, Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent, And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.
II
The twilight turns from amethyst To deep and deeper blue, The lamp fills with a pale green glow The trees of the avenue.
The old piano plays an air,
Sedate and slow and gay; She bends upon the yellow keys,
Her head inclines this way.
Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands That wander as they list— The twilight turns to darker blue With lights of amethyst.
III
At that hour when all things have repose, O lonely watcher of the skies, Do you hear the night wind and the sighs Of harps playing unto Love to unclose The pale gates of sunrise?
When all things repose, do you alone Awake to hear the sweet harps play To Love before him on his way, And the night wind answering in antiphon Till night is overgone?
Play on, invisible harps, unto Love, Whose way in heaven is aglow At that hour when soft lights come and go, Soft sweet music in the air above And in the earth below.
IV
When the shy star goes forth in heaven All maidenly, disconsolate, Hear you amid the drowsy even
One who is singing by your gate.
His song is softer than the dew
And he is come to visit you.
O bend no more in revery
When he at eventide is calling.
Nor muse: Who may this singer be Whose song about my heart is falling?
Know you by this, the lover’s chant, ‘Tis I that am your visitant.
V
Lean out of the window,
Goldenhair,
I hear you singing
A merry air.
My book was closed,
I read no more,
Watching the fire dance
On the floor.
I have left my book,
I have left my room, For I heard you singing
Through the gloom.
Singing and singing
A merry air,
Lean out of the window,
Goldenhair.
VI
I would in that sweet bosom be
(O sweet it is and fair it is!) Where no rude wind might visit me.
Because of sad austerities I would in that sweet bosom be.
I would be ever in that heart
(O soft I knock and soft entreat her!) Where only peace might be my part.
Austerities were all the sweeter So I were ever in that heart.
VII
My love is in a light attire
Among the apple-trees, Where the gay winds do most desire To run in companies.
There, where the gay winds stay to woo The young leaves as they pass, My love goes slowly, bending to
Her shadow on the grass;
And where the sky’s a pale blue cup Over the laughing land, My love goes lightly, holding up Her dress with dainty hand.
VIII
Who goes amid the green wood
With springtide all adorning her?
Who goes amid the merry green wood To make it merrier?
Who passes in the sunlight
By ways that know the light footfall?
Who passes in the sweet sunlight With mien so virginal?
The ways of all the woodland
Gleam with a soft and golden fire— For whom does all the sunny woodland Carry so brave attire?
O, it is for my true love
The woods their rich apparel wear— O, it is for my own true love,
That is so young and fair.
IX
Winds of May, that dance on the sea, Dancing a ring-around in glee
From furrow to furrow, while overhead The foam flies up to be garlanded, In silvery arches spanning the air, Saw you my true love anywhere?
Welladay! Welladay!
For the winds of May!
Love is unhappy when love is away!
X
Bright cap and streamers,
He sings in the hollow: Come follow, come follow, All you that love.
Leave dreams to the dreamers
That will not after, That song and laughter Do nothing move.
With ribbons streaming
He sings the bolder; In troop at his shoulder The wild bees hum.
And the time of dreaming
Dreams is over—
As lover to lover, Sweetheart, I come.
XI
Bid adieu, adieu, adieu,
Bid adieu to girlish days, Happy Love is come to woo
Thee and woo thy girlish ways— The zone that doth become thee fair, The snood upon thy yellow hair,
When thou hast heard his name upon The bugles of the cherubim Begin thou softly to unzone
Thy girlish bosom unto him And softly to undo the snood
That is the sign of maidenhood.
XII
What counsel has the hooded moon Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet, Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet— A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?
Believe me rather that am wise
In disregard of the divine, A glory kindles in those eyes
Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!
No more be tears in moon or mist For thee, sweet sentimentalist.
XIII
Go seek her out all courteously, And say I come,
Wind of spices whose song is ever Epithalamium.
O, hurry over the dark lands
And run upon the sea For seas and lands shall not divide us My love and me.
Now, wind, of your good courtesy I pray you go,
And come into her little garden
And sing at her window; Singing: The bridal wind is blowing For Love is at his noon; And soon will your true love be with you, Soon, O soon.
XIV
My dove, my beautiful one,
Arise, arise!
The night-dew lies Upon my lips and eyes.
The odorous winds are weaving
A music of sighs: Arise, arise,
My dove, my beautiful one!
I wait by the cedar tree,
My sister, my love, White breast of the dove, My breast shall be your bed.
The pale dew lies
Like a veil on my head.
My fair one, my fair dove, Arise, arise!
XV
From dewy dreams, my soul, arise, From love’s deep slumber and from death, For lo! the trees are full of sighs Whose leaves the morn admonisheth.
Eastward the gradual dawn prevails Where softly-burning fires appear, Making to tremble all those veils Of grey and golden gossamer.
While sweetly, gently, secretly, The flowery bells of morn are stirred And the wise choirs of faery
Begin (innumerous!) to be heard.
XVI
O cool is the valley now
And there, love, will we go For many a choir is singing now
Where Love did sometime go.
And hear you not the thrushes calling, Calling us away?
O cool and pleasant is the valley And there, love, will we stay.
XVII
Because your voice was at my side I gave him pain,
Because within my hand I held
Your hand again.
There is no word nor any sign
Can make amend—
He is a stranger to me now
Who was my friend.
XVIII
O Sweetheart, hear you
Your lover’s tale; A man shall have sorrow
When friends him fail.
For he shall know then
Friends be untrue And a little ashes
Their words come to.
But one unto him
Will softly move
And softly woo him
In ways of love.
His hand is under
Her smooth round breast; So he who has sorrow
Shall have rest.
XIX
Be not sad because all men
Prefer a lying clamour before you: Sweetheart, be at peace again— Can they dishonour you?
They are sadder than all tears;
Their lives ascend as a continual sigh.
Proudly answer to their tears:
As they deny, deny.
XX
In the dark pine-wood
I would we lay,
In deep cool shadow
At noon of day.
How sweet to lie there,
Sweet to kiss,
Where the great pine-forest
Enaisled is!
Thy kiss descending
Sweeter were
With a soft tumult
Of thy hair.
O unto the pine-wood
At noon of day
Come with me now,
Sweet love, away.
XXI
He who hath glory lost, nor hath Found any soul to fellow his, Among his foes in scorn and wrath Holding to ancient nobleness, That high unconsortable one— His love is his companion.
XXII
Of that so sweet imprisonment
My soul, dearest, is fain— Soft arms that woo me to relent
And woo me to detain.
Ah, could they ever hold me there Gladly were I a prisoner!
Dearest, through interwoven arms By love made tremulous, That night allures me where alarms Nowise may trouble us; But sleep to dreamier sleep be wed Where soul with soul lies prisoned.
XXIII
This heart that flutters near my heart My hope and all my riches is, Unhappy when we draw apart
And happy between kiss and kiss: My hope and all my riches—yes!— And all my happiness.
For there, as in some mossy nest The wrens will divers treasures keep, I laid those treasures I possessed Ere that mine eyes had learned to weep.
Shall we not be as wise as they
Though love live but a day?
XXIV
Silently she’s combing,
Combing her long hair Silently and graciously,
With many a pretty air.
The sun is in the willow leaves
And on the dapplled grass, And still she’s combing her long hair Before the looking-glass.
I pray you, cease to comb out,
Comb out your long hair, For I have heard of witchery
Under a pretty air,
That makes as one thing to the lover Staying and going hence, All fair, with many a pretty air And many a negligence.
XXV
Lightly come or lightly go:
Though thy heart presage thee woe, Vales and many a wasted sun,
Oread let thy laughter run, Till the irreverent mountain air Ripple all thy flying hair.
Lightly, lightly—ever so:
Clouds that wrap the vales below At the hour of evenstar
Lowliest attendants are; Love and laughter song-confessed When the heart is heaviest.
XXVI
Thou leanest to the shell of night, Dear lady, a divining ear.
In that soft choiring of delight What sound hath made thy heart to fear?
Seemed it of rivers rushing forth From the grey deserts of the north?
That mood of thine
Is his, if thou but scan it well, Who a mad tale bequeaths to us
At ghosting hour conjurable— And all for some strange name he read In Purchas or in Holinshed.
XXVII
Though I thy Mithridates were,
Framed to defy the poison-dart, Yet must thou fold me unaware
To know the rapture of thy heart, And I but render and confess
The malice of thy tenderness.
For elegant and antique phrase,
Dearest, my lips wax all too wise; Nor have I known a love whose praise Our piping poets solemnize, Neither a love where may not be
Ever so little falsity.
XXVIII
Gentle lady, do not sing
Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing
How love that passes is enough.
Sing about the long deep sleep
Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.
XXIX
Dear heart, why will you use me so?
Dear eyes that gently me upbraid, Still are you beautiful—but O,
How is your beauty raimented!
Through the clear mirror of your eyes, Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss, Desolate winds assail with cries The shadowy garden where love is.
And soon shall love dissolved be When over us the wild winds blow— But you, dear love, too dear to me, Alas! why will you use me so?
XXX
Love came to us in time gone by
When one at twilight shyly played And one in fear was standing nigh— For Love at first is all afraid.
We were grave lovers. Love is past That had his sweet hours many a one; Welcome to us now at the last
The ways that we shall go upon.
XXXI
O, it was out by Donnycarney
When the bat flew from tree to tree My love and I did walk together; And sweet were the words she said to me.
Along with us the summer wind
Went murmuring—O, happily!— But softer than the breath of summer Was the kiss she gave to me.
XXXII
Rain has fallen all the day.
O come among the laden trees: The leaves lie thick upon the way Of memories.
Staying a little by the way
Of memories shall we depart.
Come, my beloved, where I may
Speak to your heart.
XXXIII
Now, O now, in this brown land
Where Love did so sweet music make We two shall wander, hand in hand, Forbearing for old friendship’ sake, Nor grieve because our love was gay Which now is ended in this way.
A rogue in red and yellow dress
Is knocking, knocking at the tree; And all around our loneliness
The wind is whistling merrily.
The leaves—they do not sigh at all When the year takes them in the fall.
Now, O now, we hear no more
The vilanelle and roundelay!
Yet will we kiss, sweetheart, before We take sad leave at close of day.
Grieve not, sweetheart, for anything— The year, the year is gathering.
XXXIV
Sleep now, O sleep now,
O you unquiet heart!
A voice crying “Sleep now”
Is heard in my heart.
The voice of the winter
Is heard at the door.
O sleep, for the winter
Is crying “Sleep no more.”
My kiss will give peace now
And quiet to your heart— Sleep on in peace now,
O you unquiet heart!
XXXV
All day I hear the noise of waters Making moan,
Sad as the sea-bird is when, going Forth alone,
He hears the winds cry to the water’s Monotone.
The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing Where I go.
I hear the noise of many waters
Far below.
All day, all night, I hear them flowing To and fro.
XXXVI
I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering ships, the charioteers.
They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.
They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?
Dubliners
The Sisters
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.
Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his:
—No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly… but there was something queer… there was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my opinion…
He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms, but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery.
—I have my own theory about it, he said. I think it was one of those… peculiar cases… But it’s hard to say…
He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My uncle saw me staring and said to me:
—Well, so your old friend is gone, you’ll be sorry to hear.
—Who? said I.
—Father Flynn.
—Is he dead?
—Mr Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.
I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter:
—The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.
—God have mercy on his soul, said my aunt piously.
Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate.
—I wouldn’t like children of mine, he said, to have too much to say to a man like that.
—How do you mean, Mr Cotter? asked my aunt.
—What I mean is, said old Cotter, it’s bad for children. My idea is: let a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be… Am I right, Jack?
—That’s my principle too, said my uncle. Let him learn to box his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and large… Mr Cotter might take a pick of that leg of mutton, he added to my aunt.
—No, no, not for me, said old Cotter.
My aunt brought the dish from the safe and laid it on the table.
—But why do you think it’s not good for children, Mr Cotter? she asked.
—It’s bad for children, said old Cotter, because their minds are so impressionable. When children see things like that, you know, it has an effect…
I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!
It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me. It murmured, and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region, and there again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly, as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.
The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little house in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered under the vague name of Drapery. The drapery consisted mainly of children’s bootees and umbrellas, and on ordinary days a notice used to hang in the window saying: Umbrellas Recovered. No notice was visible now for the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the door-knocker with ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were reading the card pinned on the crape. I also approached and read:
July 1st, 1895
The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine’s Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years.
R.I.P.
The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in his arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his greatcoat. Perhaps my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him, and this present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box, for his hands trembled too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look, for the red handkerchief, blackened as it always was with the snuff-stains of a week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.
I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood, and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them, and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper elucidating all these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no answer or only a very foolish and halting one, upon which he used to smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me through the responses of the Mass, which he had made me learn by heart, and as I pattered he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance, before I knew him well.
As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the customs were strange—in Persia, I thought… But I could not remember the end of the dream.
In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning. It was after sunset, but the window-panes of the houses that looked to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie received us in the hall, and as it would have been unseemly to have shouted at her my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman pointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt’s nodding, proceeded to toil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely above the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped and beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the dead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated to enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.
I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was suffused with dusky golden light, amid which the candles looked like pale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we three knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I could not gather my thoughts because the old woman’s mutterings distracted me. I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back and how the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side. The fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his coffin.
But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very truculent, grey and massive with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room—the flowers.
We crossed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards my usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and brought out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these on the table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at her sister’s bidding, she filled out the sherry into the glasses and passed them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also, but I declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them. She seemed to be somewhat disappointed at my refusal and went over quietly to the sofa, where she sat down behind her sister. No one spoke: we all gazed at the empty fireplace.
My aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:
—Ah, well, he’s gone to a better world.
Eliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the stem of her wine-glass before sipping a little.
—Did he… peacefully? she asked.
—Oh, quite peacefully, ma’am, said Eliza. You couldn’t tell when the breath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised.
—And everything…?
—Father O’Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and prepared him and all.
—He knew then?
—He was quite resigned.
—He looks quite resigned, said my aunt.
—That’s what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No one would think he’d make such a beautiful corpse.
—Yes, indeed, said my aunt.
She sipped a little more from her glass and said:
—Well, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great comfort for you to know that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to him, I must say.
Eliza smoothed her dress over her knees.
—Ah, poor James! she said. God knows we done all we could, as poor as we are—we wouldn’t see him want anything while he was in it.
Nannie had leaned her head against the sofa-pillow and seemed about to fall asleep.
—There’s poor Nannie, said Eliza, looking at her, she’s wore out. All the work we had, she and me, getting in the woman to wash him and then laying him out and then the coffin and then arranging about the mass in the chapel. Only for Father O’Rourke I don’t know what we’d have done at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two candlesticks out of the chapel and wrote out the notice for the Freeman’s General and took charge of all the papers for the cemetery and poor James’s insurance.
—Wasn’t that good of him? said my aunt.
Eliza closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.
—Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends, she said, when all is said and done, no friends that a body can trust.
—Indeed, that’s true, said my aunt. And I’m sure now that he’s gone to his eternal reward he won’t forget you and all your kindness to him.
—Ah, poor James! said Eliza. He was no great trouble to us. You wouldn’t hear him in the house any more than now. Still, I know he’s gone and all to that.
—It’s when it’s all over that you’ll miss him, said my aunt.
—I know that, said Eliza. I won’t be bringing him in his cup of beef tea any more, nor you, ma’am, sending him his snuff. Ah, poor James!
She stopped, as if she were communing with the past, and then said shrewdly:
—Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him latterly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth open.
She laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued:
—But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with him. If we could only get one of them new-fangled carriages that makes no noise that Father O’Rourke told him about, them with the rheumatic wheels—for the day cheap, he said, at Johnny Rush’s over the way there and drive out the three of us together of a Sunday evening. He had his mind set on that… Poor James!
—The Lord have mercy on his soul! said my aunt.
Eliza took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it. Then she put it back again in her pocket and gazed into the empty grate for some time without speaking.
—He was too scrupulous always, she said. The duties of the priesthood was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.
—Yes, said my aunt. He was a disappointed man. You could see that.
A silence took possession of the little room and, under cover of it, I approached the table and tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to my chair in the corner. Eliza seemed to have fallen into a deep revery. We waited respectfully for her to break the silence: and after a long pause she said slowly:
—It was that chalice he broke… That was the beginning of it. Of course, they say it was all right, that it contained nothing, I mean. But still… They say it was the boy’s fault. But poor James was so nervous, God be merciful to him!
—And was that it? said my aunt. I heard something…
Eliza nodded.
—That affected his mind, she said. After that he began to mope by himself, talking to no one and wandering about by himself. So one night he was wanted for to go on a call and they couldn’t find him anywhere. They looked high up and low down and still they couldn’t see a sight of him anywhere. So then the clerk suggested to try the chapel. So then they got the keys and opened the chapel, and the clerk and Father O’Rourke and another priest that was there brought in a light for to look for him… And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like softly to himself?
She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened, but there was no sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.
Eliza resumed:
—Wide-awake and laughing-like to himself… So then, of course, when they saw that, that made them think that there was something gone wrong with him…
An Encounter
It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack,Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm, or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But however well we fought, we never won siege or battle, and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon’s war dance of victory. His parents went to eight-o’clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street, and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin with his fist and yelling:
—Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!
Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.
A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was hearing the four pages of Roman History, clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.
—This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! Hardly had the day… Go on! What day? Hardly had the day dawned… Have you studied it? What have you there in your pocket?
Everyone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages, frowning.
—What is this rubbish? he said. The Apache Chief! Is this what you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched scribbler who writes these things for a drink. I’m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could understand it if you were… National School boys. Now, Dillon, I advise you strongly, get at your work or…
This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me, and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.
The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day’s miching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge. Mahony’s big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid we might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college, but Mahony asked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the Pigeon House. We were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the plot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same time showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last arrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands, laughing, and Mahony said:
—Till to-morrow, mates.
That night I slept badly. In the morning I was first-comer to the bridge, as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiring my frail canvas shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight, and watching the docile horses pulling a tramload of business people up the hill. All the branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves, and the sunlight slanted through them on to the water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.
When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony’s grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered up beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds. Mahony used slang freely and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of Leo Dillon. Mahony at last jumped down and said:
—Come along. I knew Fatty’d funk it.
—And his sixpence…? I said.
—That’s forfeit, said Mahony. And so much the better for us—a bob and a tanner instead of a bob.
We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd of ragged girls brandishing his unloaded catapult, and when two ragged boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small and so we walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us Swaddlers! Swaddlers! thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was dark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap. When we came to the Smoothing Iron we arranged a siege, but it was a failure because you must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on Leo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he would get at three o’clock from Mr Ryan.
We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and, as all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two big currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside the river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce—the barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.
We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be transported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a bag. We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful three-master which we had observed from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion… The sailors’ eyes were blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could have been called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay by calling out cheerfully every time the planks fell:
—All right! all right!
When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The day had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers’ shops musty biscuits lay bleaching. We bought some biscuits and chocolate which we ate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the families of the fishermen live. We could find no dairy and so we went into a huckster’s shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each. Refreshed by this Mahony chased a cat down a lane but the cat escaped into a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we could see the Dodder.
It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of visiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o’clock lest our adventure should be discovered. Mahony looked regretfully at his catapult and I had to suggest going home by train before he regained any cheerfulness. The sun went in behind some clouds and left us to our jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.
There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the bank for some time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the far end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those green stems on which girls tell fortunes. He came along by the bank slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily dressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a high crown. He seemed to be fairly old for his moustache was ashen-grey. When he passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then continued his way. We followed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces he turned about and began to retrace his steps. He walked towards us very slowly, always tapping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he was looking for something in the grass.
He stopped when he came level with us and bade us good-day. We answered him and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly and with great care. He began to talk of the weather, saying that it would be a very hot summer and adding that the seasons had changed greatly since he was a boy—a long time ago. He said that the happiest time of one’s life was undoubtedly one’s schoolboy days and that he would give anything to be young again. While he expressed these sentiments, which bored us a little, we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He asked us whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every book he mentioned so that in the end he said:
—Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now, he added, pointing to Mahony, who was regarding us with open eyes, he is different; he goes in for games.
He said he had all Sir Walter Scott’s works and all Lord Lytton’s works at home and never tired of reading them. Of course, he said, there were some of Lord Lytton’s works which boys couldn’t read. Mahony asked why couldn’t boys read them—a question which agitated and pained me because I was afraid the man would think I was as stupid as Mahony. The man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked me how many had I. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.
—Tell us, said Mahony pertly to the man, how many have you yourself?
The man smiled as before and said that when he was our age he had lots of sweethearts.
—Every boy, he said, has a little sweetheart.
His attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man of his age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and sweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth and I wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared something or felt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was good. He began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair they had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew. There was nothing he liked, he said, so much as looking at a nice young girl, at her nice white hands and her beautiful soft hair. He gave me the impression that he was repeating something which he had learned by heart or that, magnetised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circling round and round in the same orbit. At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some fact that everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously, as if he were telling us something secret which he did not wish others to overhear. He repeated his phrases over and over again, varying them and surrounding them with his monotonous voice. I continued to gaze towards the foot of the slope, listening to him.
After a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us towards the near end of the field. We remained silent when he had gone. After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony exclaim:
—I say! Look what he’s doing!
As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:
—I say… He’s a queer old josser!
—In case he asks us for our names, I said, let you be Murphy and I’ll be Smith.
We said nothing further to each other. I was still considering whether I would go away or not when the man came back and sat down beside us again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony, catching sight of the cat which had escaped him, sprang up and pursued her across the field. The man and I watched the chase. The cat escaped once more and Mahony began to throw stones at the wall she had escaladed. Desisting from this he began to wander about the far end of the field, aimlessly.
After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was going to reply indignantly that we were not National School boys to be whipped as he called it, but I remained silent. He began to speak on the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetised again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said that when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well whipped. When a boy was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him any good but a good sound whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good: what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was surprised at this sentiment and involuntarily glanced at his face. As I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me from under a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.
The man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgotten his recent liberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him, and that would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was nothing in this world he would like so well as that. He described to me how he would whip such a boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate mystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this world; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through the mystery, grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should understand him.
I waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly. Lest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to fix my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade him good-day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called loudly across the field:
—Murphy!
My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it, and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent, for in my heart I had always despised him a little.
Araby
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest, in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: O love!O love! many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar, she said, she would love to go.
—And why can’t you? I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
—It’s well for you, she said.
—If I go, I said, I will bring you something.
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated, and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness: he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:
—Yes, boy, I know.
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I left the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.
