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    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
    Ebook306 pages5 hours

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    By James Joyce

    3.5/5

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    Late 19th-century Ireland is full of social, political, and religious turmoil. It is in the midst of this strife that Stephen Dedalus grows up. From his struggles with his classmates as a schoolboy to the sexual and Christian awakenings he experiences as a young adult, Stephen's life is shaped by the state of Ireland around him. Ultimately, he must decide if the life of beauty he desires can even be found in Ireland at all. This renowned coming-of-age story by Irish author James Joyce was originally published in serial form in the London-based literary magazine The Egoist from 1914-1915 and in novel form in 1916 in the United States. This is an unabridged version.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLerner Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2015
    ISBN9781467786911
    Author

    James Joyce

    James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He came from a reasonably wealthy family which, predominantly because of the recklessness of Joyce's father John, was soon plunged into financial hardship. The young Joyce attended Clongowes College, Belvedere College and, eventually, University College, Dublin. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, and eloped with her to Croatia. From this point until the end of his life, Joyce lived as an exile, moving from Trieste to Rome, and then to Zurich and Paris. His major works are Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan's Wake (1939). He died in 1941, by which time he had come to be regarded as one of the greatest novelists the world ever produced.

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    Reviews for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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    • 4/5
      Despite having been a professor of literature, I haven't read much by James Joyce. I loved his story collection, Dubliners, but I've never tackled what are considered his great novels--and I'm not really sure that I want to. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a short novel that showcases Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style in an accessible way. It's the story of his later hero, Stephen Daedalus, from childhood through his university years. I would agree with those who say that it's tied to a particular time and place (Ireland in the early 20th century); note, for example, Stephen's idolization of Parnell and the overwhelming influence of the Catholic church. Yet many of the struggles young Stephen goes through, such as breaking out from under his parents' wings and finding his own place in the world, are still prevalent for the youth of today. There's a lot of humor in the novel that helps it to rise above the usual coming of age story.I listened to the book on audio, wonderfully read by Colin Farrell, an actor of whom I'm not usually fond. One rather funny note: When I originally downloaded the book, the cover title appears as 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman"! I see that someone must have reported the error and a correction has been made. I usually delete books once I've read them, but this one will stay on my iTunes for the novelty factor.
    • 3/5
      I have never read James Joyce before and I had heard that A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man is considered to be his most accessible work so I decided this was where I would start with this author. In this book we follow the early years of Irishman Stephen Dedalus, starting from his boyhood and taking us through to the end of his university years. It is apparent immediately that James Joyce is a master wordsmith. His writing paints vivid pictures but I disagree with those who call this book timeless. I felt it was quite dated and specific to it’s time and place. It is a barely concealed autobiographical piece and takes the main character through his adolescence while he searches for his own identity. His views on family, religion and the very essence of being Irish clearly date this piece as early 20th century writing. Joyce is brilliant but I struggled through this short and quite readable book so I am not reassured that I will appreciate his more complex works and I expect they will be pushed to the bottom of the 1,001 pile.
    • 3/5
      In Portrait, James Joyce dramatises incidents and periods from his own childhood and adolescence, and I don’t really know what to feel about this book. Parts of this were brilliant: the writing, the rhythm, the selection of words and images. This book is excellent at expressing the unscratchable ache that is growing pains: the death of a child’s naïve belief in Justice when unfair punishment is handed out; the intensity of adolescent frustrations, both sexual and religious; and the search for fundamental meaning in life. On the other hand, well, there were numerous occasions where I felt like rolling my eyes at the text, because I’ve read too many books about sensitive, intelligent, precious little main characters who struggle mightily against their schoolboy tormentors and an understimulating environment. I know that I can’t really hold that against this book -- the century of intervening literature that makes this kind of story feel so trite is not this book’s fault. But still: the story feels so trite in many places.This book left me feeling very ambiguous. For example: a very large section of this book is taken up by a series of fire-and-brimstone sermons delivered by a Jesuit hell-bent on frightening children into good old Catholic obedience through extensive and lascivious descriptions of torture. I can appreciate what Joyce was going for here, and it’s well done indeed: I can really taste the hunger for power, the emotional manipulation, the all-encompassing prison that this kind of mentality wants to enforce. But these sermons take up 12% of the text. 12%! That is way, way too long, and spoils the effect. Then there are later bits, where the main character expounds his views on beauty and art which serve as a replacement for his earlier religiosity, and which are intellectually impressive, but they are shoehorned in in the clumsiest of ways. Again, the effect is spoiled.Both of these -- the fire-and-brimstone, and the intellectualizing theories -- overstay their welcome and tip the balance from “Impressive, well done” into “Man, Joyce really loves hearing himself talk”. And self-important smugness is a sin I find hard to forgive. So yeah. Three stars?
    • 3/5
      An autobiographical novel, it is very conventional compared to where he was going for the rest of his life. He chooses his framework characters, the male parts of the Daedalus family, and thyeir relationships to the growing Stephen.
    • 3/5
      (Original Review, 1981-02-16)"April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."How much I love/hate Joyce when I read about him...how could he have denied his mother on her deathbed? That act disturbed me - he did not even kneel when she died.I am not speaking of hypocrisy here just thinking of a young poseur who was thinking of himself above all - as you do at that age - especially if you are the ''favourite'. How much are the writings of Joyce autobiographical? Is the 'real 'Stephen Dedalus - AKA Joyce - a 'self-obsessed arsehole' - and did Joyce realise that about himself during his writing? As regards the Portrait Joyce changed the original title from ‘Stephen Hero’ - why did he do that? When did Stephen stop being a Hero?Read it again recently - skipped loads of 'the sermon because being brought up a Catholic have kind of heard it all before but have never been on a Retreat where apparently, in the olden days, you would receive the hell-fire message in spades. I found it interesting in the book that Stephen had to find an anonymous confessor to his 'sins'. He seemed too proud or ashamed to confess to a priest at the school who may have recognised his voice.I think one of the best things I learned from The Portrait was how much Joyce loved his jovial, irascible Father. The last chapter in The Portrait seems a bit of a 'cop-out' with its diary entries...a bit rushed-but maybe that was all meant.The last entry is particularly poignant (vide quote above)The bits that stick in my mind aside from the obvious passages (Hell Fire Sermon ) are the childhood passages, Dedalus remembering his uncles' tobacco smoke, listening to and trying to make sense of the adults arguing about current affairs as a bystander, the bewilderment of starting a new and strange school and trying to understand and navigate the adult rules and language of the constitution chimed with my own memories of childhood. The child is the father of the man, I think Joyce says we cannot shake off these experiences, they form who we are. You are always going to be an exile from them even if you leave physically and geographically.
    • 4/5
      The rhythm and detail of Joyce is here as he captures the passion, extremism, and narcissism of the adolescent mind.
    • 5/5
      It's a great novel about all aspects of the Christian life...........................The part where he stops being deathly afraid of sin is actually really necessary. (“Supererogation”). Sunday was dedicated to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Monday to the Holy Ghost, Tuesday to Guardian Angels, Wednesday to saint Joseph, Thursday to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Friday to Suffering Jesus, and on Saturday he went to the jazz club with Thomas Merton. It doesn’t mean.... I don’t know. “Father forgive me; it’s been a day since my last confession, and I looked at Eva Cassidy the jazz singer for twenty seconds.”“Father forgive me; it’s been eight months since my last confession, and I’ve been really whoring it up the whole time.” There’s a difference. ...............................Really, by the last part, when he was “disillusioned with church and society”, or whatever, it could very well be, “A Portrait of the Scholastic as a Young Man”. If he was annoyed with the rowdy students, it was because they couldn’t follow all his quotes of Aquinas in Latin. As he was once a rowdy student himself, it’s quite the transformation. And yet he was not weighed down with a sense of sin, but carried with him a certain satisfaction. ...................................The closest any of them come to sinning, if you will, (excluding, for some reason, “I’ll be the death of that fellow one time”), in the end is questioning various doctrines, which is not a sin. It’s only a “nationalist” church which would curse that, and it’s not a nationalist book, or, more to the point, a nationalist *reality*. .... He just doesn’t sound like a cursing cynic to me. [reposted 2/3/18].
    • 3/5
      In youth, Stephen begins to experience doubts about god and the church, as well as his faith in the way he perceives the world. Finally as a young man, he solidifies his beliefs in the world and moves toward creating his life as an artist. There is some really beautiful writing in this book, and I most enjoyed those sequences when he's walking through whatever town he's living in at that time and his emotions are fluctuating as he experiences the world around him. However, there are also long bouts of sermonizing and lecturing, discussing things in a purely theoretical manor, which really dragged on the story. I lost a lot of interest through those passages. While I definitely can't claim that this is a great book, I saw enough beauty throughout much of it to make it through to the end.
    • 4/5
      This work shows Joyce's talent. It is well written, easy to follow and portrays characters that the reader can easily like. Man, did Joyce ever change when ego set in.
    • 2/5
      I started this book in June and just finished it. I was really hoping to love this book. I don't know why, but ever since middle school I believed that James Joyce would become one of my all time favorite authors. I felt an unexplainable pull towards him, but I decided to wait until I was in college to read him because I heard that he was difficult. Boy, is he ever! I enjoyed a few of the passages in this book, particularly the priest's sermon on Hell (which will haunt me until my dying day) and Stephen's monologue on beauty and aesthetics. So much of the novel just went straight over my head, though. The interaction between the boys completely eluded me. At times, Cranly came off as bipolar to me. I couldn't understand their extreme reactions to things and how they would pick a fight over nothing (Cranly being the worst of all of them about this), but I guess that's how boys are? I also didn't like how they would always use Latin in their everyday conversation. It made them seem very pretentious. Perhaps that was the point of it. I have to take some blame for not enjoying this book that much. I turned my reading of it into work rather than pleasure. Since I didn't have an annotated copy, I had to look up all the Irish slang and Latin phrases. I made sure that I always had a pen and highlighter with me, and for the first half of the book I always had to have my laptop available too until I decided to print out the glossary I was constantly referring to.I put so much effort into it because I knew that I would reread it one day, and I wanted to make sure that I would be able to focus on the story rather than the academics of it. I'm a bit too turned off from it right now to begin rereading it right away, but maybe after a few months I can prepare myself to pick it up again. And hopefully I'll enjoy it much more.
    • 4/5
      After having read "Ulysses" when i was 13, i read this book at 16 and found it a bit disappointing, since it was so much more conventional. This is not to say this is not a worthwhile read. And i realized it was written before "Ulysses", and some of the same characters make there appearance in that later book.
    • 1/5
      All I can say is: Thank goodness that's over!! I'm sure I really didn't understand it, but it doesn't make me even halfway interested in trying to understand it. At least I know what it's about, and I can mark it off the list!1 like
    • 5/5
      Excellent wording and so well written it is scary.
    • 1/5
      Sorry everybody. I know that Joyce is one of the quintessential authors of the twentieth century, but I just couldn't stand this book. And it's not that I don't like stream-of-consciousness...it's just the story--rather pathetic and rambling.
    • 4/5
      I don't much care for the later parts in the book, but the beginning--Stephen's childhood--is, in my opinion, one of the greatest and most beautiful bits of words ever put to paper. That alone is reason to pick this up, and as a sort of "gateway" book between the easy-to-read Dubliners and the notoriously difficult Ulysses, it works beautifully.
    • 3/5
      Joyce uses beautifully poetic language, and his portrayal of Catholic guilt was magnificent. However, the frequent jumps between the present and the thoughts in Dedalus's head made this a frustrating read.
    • 5/5
      This novel took me three times as long to read as it might have. A third of my time I spent reading it, a third reading about it, and another third lost in daydreaming and memories as time after time Joyce hit something from my experience so squarely on the nose that it sent me reeling.It didn't begin at all well. A title that reads like a subtitle, an opening line about a moocow, a stream-of-consciousness narrative with glimpses of scenes in fits and starts ... I feared the whole novel would be like this, until I understood it was a child's apprehension of the world. Confusion swiftly gave way to respect. James Joyce had a great talent for recapturing not only the events of childhood but also the much more difficult to remember perceptions, how a young boy takes in and processes what he learns about the world. I would never have recalled it quite this way, and yet it echoes with truth. The boy ages and the same truth shines from the page with each passing year and event, as how he perceives and what he perceives alter with time. He discovers the world is not black-and-white, that not all arguments have tidy resolutions, that the opposite sex is only human too, that religion cannot provide definitive answers, that destiny calls from within. He's still got his blind spots, though: he's stubborn about letting the world in, about taking responsibility for anyone or caring about his roots, and he's far too full of himself and his accumulated learning. But what's an artist without a surfeit of pride?I took the title to be self-referential to Joyce, but it's meant more generically; this is the development of a fictional artist's mind from childhood to self-identity as such, although with biographical elements borrowed from Joyce's own life. Surprisingly accessible (if not so much as "Dubliners"), the only sticking part for me were the big long diatribes about hell and damnation which don't really get examined but pull no punches as an example of what was being knocked into Catholic Irish boys' heads, and maybe still are in some dark corners of the world. I'm bound to deeply admire this book, one I'm stunned by for how well it got inside my head and toured me through episodes from my own life, like a tourist guide who remembers me better than I do.
    • 4/5
      et ignotas animum dimittit in artesOvid, metamorphoses, viii, 18
    • 5/5
      Impossibly good (as is all Joyce). For weeks after finishing this one, I wished that I were an Irish Catholic schoolboy, and I threw myself into a fit of reading Byron.
    • 3/5
      I feel like I don't really get Joyce and why he's so admired.
    • 5/5
      Overweening bastard that he is, Stephen Dedalus goes to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race. And I think: Wow, now I finally understand what Ulysses was all about. It was Joyce's great thesis and his canticle of canticles, his attempt to speak of Irish ghosts in their own language. And Portrait needs to come first, set the scene. Ye Artificer his Remarkable Historie.

      But it's so much more. It's an incredible invocation of the fears and fancies of childhood in a dark and brutal island off the coast of civilization, for we scattered generations of the Commonwealth a shivering memory of the disciplinary yoke of the imperial world-system out of which we came, its origin on another small cold island and its combination, in enchanted Ireland, with an ancient tyranny of soulmongers--Church and Charter, Christ and King. Joyce teases out the stunted schoolboy resistance that persists furtively under that hideous weight and, in the first section, makes it stand tall and proud and relate one small victory in a way that makes it an exemplar, a rebel ballad which will echo and shift, with none of the unavoidable self-neutering fascism of Another Brick in the Wall. When the dean offers to chastise the priest that paddled young Stephen, I want to throw my cap in the air, clutch my rock candy and shout "Haroo!"

      It is also, and here I see how Riddley Walker is the Dedalus of his culture, an ecstatic linguistic myth. Stephen languishes in phantasmagoria, transfixed by the Church's imagery even as its language leads him down scholastic and aesthetic rabbit holes. No site of resistance in thee, O Lord. He breaks free, but languishes too in sex and jealousy and a sense of his sex as sin that keeps him yoked to Sweet Baby Jay as much as he was when he thought he had a vocation--more, since there is now no intellectual tradition for him to inhabit and hone to a rapier point. And like Wittgenstein, this is what brings him back to language--the emptiness of any Irish emancipatory project that is not reflexive, that doesn't come to terms with rape and pillage of a people's speech and culture. The fact that the ghosts of Eire are now strangers, hostile and hungry ghosts. English priests will come and run your parish schools and be rebelled 'gainst in a mummer's show, but there ain't no English firbolg. The fact that the working and peasant classes are as estranged, slouched low inside the Celtic soul, and Stephen/young Joyce is so transfixed and compromised as to attack the people on one side with the class attitudes of the oppressor while still grasping after the deep insights and magic words with which the house Irish or say the native boy can convincingly and with the heart of a believer--one that no matter how effete and Anglified, hates righteously the foreign muck that encrusts him--can fight back as comfortable in his weapons as the car-bomber or the Gaelic association athlete or the balladeer. "Oh tell me Sean O'Farrell" is an anti-colonial weapon too, no doubt about it, but it's not the right one for Joyce/Dedalus, the freaky eyepatch, the adept who feels and the aesthete who believes and the fart-sniffing genius who moves away to Paris and unsettles the whole non-Celtic and imperial world with the queerness of his offerings.

      Meaning: Joyce's Sean O'Farrell is "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo". Dedalus's pikes hidden under haystacks and gleaming together at the rising of the moooooon are "The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea" and "Come forth Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job" and "If others have their will Ann hath a way" and perhaps even "End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousandsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs". Speaking English like a foreign language, like not only your Irish politics and desires and fears but indeed your Irish lips and mouth and brain are different. The extraordinary final third of Portrait of the Artist is where a callow young smartass engages intensively with others of his ilk in words, words, words, leavened with occasional fists; learns to quit yammering about what needs to be done and think about how to just maybe start to do it; and understand that the first step for the poor tongueless Irishman is to make words strange. This book reveals Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as, at least in part, a great project of national liberation. It is their prospectus and methodology.

    • 2/5
      Definitely a disappointment, after the glowing reports I'd gotten from reviews and from friends' recommendations who've read the book. There were some inspiring passages that I really resonated with, like Stephen Dedaelus's conversion experience, eventually disinherited.. or his walk along the coast where he describes the scene in such detail that you know James Joyce is speaking out of personal experience... But if you don't identify with the author at any point, how can you even want to suffer through it? In general, this book is a rambling exercise in pointless intellectual thoughts, which is anticlimactic enough to feel entirely purposeless. What IS the story, anyway? Ok, a boy grows up... and fantasizes about girls and sex a lot. Where's the story there? I've rarely been this hard on a proven "classic" before, but I'll make an exception. Note to editors: please don't put footnotes in your novels, it's incredible annoying no matter how much you might think it illuminates the text. Repeatedly suggesting that the reader isn't understanding something in a book SO vague that, clearly, NOTHING should be understood, and then only citing irrelevant history, dates & all, behind the song or the building or the person just mentioned, is infuriating. I mean, I take all this trouble to page ALL the way to the back of the book for an explanation that may somehow transform this whole tiresome reading experience for me, and you're giving me a 3-paragraph long HISTORY LESSON? How about making your first and only footnote about the elusive point of this book?
    • 1/5
      Totally worthless.
    • 2/5
      This is as far as my Joyce adventure will go, I think. I've looked at "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake", and I doubt I will make it any further. "A Portrait..." was interesting, if not exactly world-changing; perhaps I approached it in the wrong frame of mind, and wasn't open to the possibilities it suggests and has suggested in others.
    • 3/5
      I read this in preparation for a Joyce class I will start next week, focusing on Ulysses. I am very glad I did, because this book has inventive style, a gripping storyline and a representation of social issues not unlike Quebec's in the 50's and 60's - and is a good introduction to the kind of experiments Joyce makes in Ulysses.The development of an artistic mind striving for freedom is fascinating when put in Joyce's lyricism and grand eloquence. I was scared by Joyce at first but now I feel more confident than ever that I can enjoy and appreciate his work.
    • 3/5
      Very enjoyable for its influential literary style. As someone reading from quite a different generation, the story wasn't enough to keep it afloat on its own but more than makes up for it in punctuation. Moved through it fairly quickly, so would be worthy of a second read to reveal more depth- it is certainly there.
    • 5/5
      The classic Bildungsroman. Of course, I hate to use the term Bildungsroman cause you sound like a pompous ass. However, since I am in fact a pompous ass, it works out ok.
    • 4/5
      One of the most personal books in my reading: incarcerated as I was at the time in a Jesuit prep school, and not Roman Catholic, quite the lode.
    • 3/5
      Portrait is certainly more accessible than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, but it lacks the delightful wordplay and zany, ambitious flights that leave the reader in wonderment. It has its obscure parts, but for the most part chronicles Stephen Dedalus's life from young childhood through college, recording everything that influenced him.Some of these influences were recorded in more meticulous detail than makes for entertainment. For instance, the long, long passage giving the priest's sermon on sin and Hell was a flawless rendition of a classic fire and brimstone harangue. To describe it is to describe the problem with it.I thought I had read this in college, but listening to the audio version made me wonder. If I did read it, I deserved a very bad grade for comprehension and retention.
    • 4/5
      A portrait differs from an autobiography in that it is a subjective impression of the character from a certain point of view, and distorted to some degree through the use of a specific style. Whereas biography is more objective.Though the work is predominantly autobiographical in its source material, it is more a self portrait in its presentation, dressed up as a novel on the childhood and young adulthood of "Stephen Daedalus" who later takes a role in Joyce's Ulysses. Two things make this book interesting: the style in which it is written, and the subject matter. Though far more accessible and plainly-written than either Ulysses, or the even more formiddable Finnegan's wake, there are embryonic hints here of his characteristic style that would develop more fully in his later works.Joyce had an atypical childhood both from the modern viewpoint, and to a lesser degree for his time. He was initially educated in a Jesuit college in Ireland, before moving to another one due to his father's financial difficulties.This education seemed to encourage his propensity toward a religious disposition, which he showed for many of his earlier years, before a lapse into temptation and "pleasures of the flesh". Toward the end of the book he goes on to think about aesthetic theory, inspiring discussion with his peers at university. This would be a good introduction to reading Joyce, both because it gives the reader an understanding of Joyce's experiences, and because it is less challenging than his later works.

    Book preview

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

    5

    CHAPTER 1

    Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo …

    His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

    He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

    O, the wild rose blossoms

    On the little green place.

    He sang that song. That was his song.

    O, the green wothe botheth.

    When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell.

    His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She played on the piano the sailor’s hornpipe for him to dance. He danced:

    Tralala lala,

    Tralala tralaladdy,

    Tralala lala,

    Tralala lala.

    Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and mother but uncle Charles was older than Dante.

    Dante had two brushes in her press. The brush with the maroon velvet back was for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back was for Parnell. Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of tissue paper.

    The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and mother. They were Eileen’s father and mother. When they were grown up he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said:

    —O, Stephen will apologize.

    Dante said:

    —O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.—

    Pull out his eyes,

    Apologize,

    Apologize,

    Pull out his eyes.

    Apologize,

    Pull out his eyes,

    Pull out his eyes,

    Apologize.

    The wide playgrounds were swarming with boys. All were shouting and the prefects urged them on with strong cries. The evening air was pale and chilly and after every charge and thud of the footballers the greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light. He kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. He felt his body small and weak amid the throng of the players and his eyes were weak and watery. Rody Kickham was not like that: he would be captain of the third line all the fellows said.

    Rody Kickham was a decent fellow but Nasty Roche was a stink. Rody Kickham had greaves in his number and a hamper in the refectory. Nasty Roche had big hands. He called the Friday pudding dog-in-the-blanket. And one day he had asked:

    —What is your name?

    Stephen had answered: Stephen Dedalus.

    Then Nasty Roche had said:

    —What kind of a name is that?

    And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked:

    —What is your father?

    Stephen had answered:

    —A gentleman.

    Then Nasty Roche had asked:

    —Is he a magistrate?

    He crept about from point to point on the fringe of his line, making little runs now and then. But his hands were bluish with cold. He kept his hands in the side pockets of his belted grey suit. That was a belt round his pocket. And belt was also to give a fellow a belt. One day a fellow said to Cantwell:

    —I’d give you such a belt in a second.

    Cantwell had answered:

    —Go and fight your match. Give Cecil Thunder a belt. I’d like to see you. He’d give you a toe in the rump for yourself.

    That was not a nice expression. His mother had told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college. Nice mother! The first day in the hall of the castle when she had said goodbye she had put up her veil double to her nose to kiss him: and her nose and eyes were red. But he had pretended not to see that she was going to cry. She was a nice mother but she was not so nice when she cried. And his father had given him two five-shilling pieces for pocket money. And his father had told him if he wanted anything to write home to him and, whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow. Then at the door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on it. They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands:

    —Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

    —Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!

    He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through the legs. The fellows were struggling and groaning and their legs were rubbing and kicking and stamping. Then Jack Lawton’s yellow boots dodged out the ball and all the other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little way and then stopped. It was useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for the holidays. After supper in the study hall he would change the number pasted up inside his desk from seventy-seven to seventy-six.

    It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold. The sky was pale and cold but there were lights in the castle. He wondered from which window Hamilton Rowan had thrown his hat on the ha-ha and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the windows. One day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the marks of the soldiers’ slugs in the wood of the door and had given him a piece of shortbread that the community ate. It was nice and warm to see the lights in the castle. It was like something in a book. Perhaps Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were only sentences to learn the spelling from.

    Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey

    Where the abbots buried him.

    Canker is a disease of plants,

    Cancer one of animals.

    It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands, and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the scum. Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting for Brigid to bring in the tea. She had her feet on the fender and her jewelly slippers were so hot and they had such a lovely warm smell! Dante knew a lot of things. She had taught him where the Mozambique Channel was and what was the longest river in America and what was the name of the highest mountain in the moon. Father Arnall knew more than Dante because he was a priest but both his father and uncle Charles said that Dante was a clever woman and a well-read woman. And when Dante made that noise after dinner and then put up her hand to her mouth: that was heartburn.

    A voice cried far out on the playground:

    —All in!

    Then other voices cried from the lower and third lines:

    —All in! All in!

    The players closed around, flushed and muddy, and he went among them, glad to go in. Rody Kickham held the ball by its greasy lace. A fellow asked him to give it one last: but he walked on without even answering the fellow. Simon Moonan told him not to because the prefect was looking. The fellow turned to Simon Moonan and said:

    —We all know why you speak. You are McGlade’s suck.

    Suck was a queer word. The fellow called Simon Moonan that name because Simon Moonan used to tie the prefect’s false sleeves behind his back and the prefect used to let on to be angry. But the sound was ugly. Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty water went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down slowly the hole in the basin had made a sound like that: suck. Only louder.

    To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him feel cold and then hot. There were two cocks that you turned and water came out: cold and hot. He felt cold and then a little hot: and he could see the names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer thing.

    And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was queer and wettish. But soon the gas would be lit and in burning it made a light noise like a little song. Always the same: and when the fellows stopped talking in the playroom you could hear it.

    It was the hour for sums. Father Arnall wrote a hard sum on the board and then said:

    —Now then, who will win? Go ahead, York! Go ahead, Lancaster!

    Stephen tried his best, but the sum was too hard and he felt confused. The little silk badge with the white rose on it that was pinned on the breast of his jacket began to flutter. He was no good at sums, but he tried his best so that York might not lose. Father Arnall’s face looked very black, but he was not in a wax: he was laughing. Then Jack Lawton cracked his fingers and Father Arnall looked at his copybook and said:

    —Right. Bravo Lancaster! The red rose wins. Come on now, York! Forge ahead!

    Jack Lawton looked over from his side. The little silk badge with the red rose on it looked very rich because he had a blue sailor top on. Stephen felt his own face red too, thinking of all the bets about who would get first place in elements, Jack Lawton or he. Some weeks Jack Lawton got the card for first and some weeks he got the card for first. His white silk badge fluttered and fluttered as he worked at the next sum and heard Father Arnall’s voice. Then all his eagerness passed away and he felt his face quite cool. He thought his face must be white because it felt so cool. He could not get out the answer for the sum but it did not matter. White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and third place were beautiful colours too: pink and cream and lavender. Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms on the little green place. But you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could.

    The bell rang and then the classes began to file out of the rooms and along the corridors towards the refectory. He sat looking at the two prints of butter on his plate but could not eat the damp bread. The tablecloth was damp and limp. But he drank off the hot weak tea which the clumsy scullion, girt with a white apron, poured into his cup. He wondered whether the scullion’s apron was damp too or whether all white things were cold and damp. Nasty Roche and Saurin drank cocoa that their people sent them in tins. They said they could not drink the tea; that it was hogwash. Their fathers were magistrates, the fellows said.

    All the boys seemed to him very strange. They had all fathers and mothers and different clothes and voices. He longed to be at home and lay his head on his mother’s lap. But he could not: and so he longed for the play and study and prayers to be over and to be in bed.

    He drank another cup of hot tea and Fleming said:

    —What’s up? Have you a pain or what’s up with you?

    —I don’t know, Stephen said.

    —Sick in your breadbasket, Fleming said, because your face looks white. It will go away.

    —O yes, Stephen said.

    But he was not sick there. He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. Fleming was very decent to ask him. He wanted to cry. He leaned his elbows on the table and shut and opened the flaps of his ears. Then he heard the noise of the refectory every time he opened the flaps of his ears. It made a roar like a train at night. And when he closed the flaps the roar was shut off like a train going into a tunnel. That night at Dalkey the train had roared like that and then, when it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped. He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and then stopping; roaring again, stopping. It was nice to hear it roar and stop and then roar out of the tunnel again and then stop.

    Then the higher line fellows began to come down along the matting in the middle of the refectory, Paddy Rath and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard who was allowed to smoke cigars and the little Portuguese who wore the woolly cap. And then the lower line tables and the tables of the third line. And every single fellow had a different way of walking.

    He sat in a corner of the playroom pretending to watch a game of dominoes and once or twice he was able to hear for an instant the little song of the gas. The prefect was at the door with some boys and Simon Moonan was knotting his false sleeves. He was telling them something about Tullabeg.

    Then he went away from the door and Wells came over to Stephen and said:

    —Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed?

    Stephen answered:

    —I do.

    Wells turned to the other fellows and said:

    —O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed.

    The other fellows stopped their game and turned round, laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said:

    —I do not.

    Wells said:

    —O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed.

    They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar. He tried to think of Wells’s mother but he did not dare to raise his eyes to Wells’s face. He did not like Wells’s face. It was Wells who had shouldered him into the square ditch the day before because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. It was a mean thing to do; all the fellows said it was. And how cold and slimy the water had been! And a fellow had once seen a big rat jump plop into the scum.

    The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body; and, when the bell rang for study and the lines filed out of the playrooms, he felt the cold air of the corridor and staircase inside his clothes. He still tried to think what was the right answer. Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say good night and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?

    Sitting in the study hall he opened the lid of his desk and changed the number pasted up inside from seventy-seven to seventy-six. But the Christmas vacation was very far away: but one time it would come because the earth moved round always.

    There was a picture of the earth on the first page of his geography: a big ball in the middle of clouds. Fleming had a box of crayons and one night during free study he had coloured the earth green and the clouds maroon. That was like the two brushes in Dante’s press, the brush with the green velvet back for Parnell and the brush with the maroon velvet back for Michael Davitt. But he had not told Fleming to colour them those colours. Fleming had done it himself.

    He opened the geography to study the lesson; but he could not learn the names of places in America. Still they were all different places that had different names. They were all in different countries and the countries were in continents and the continents were in the world and the world was in the universe.

    He turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read what he had written there: himself, his name and where he was.

    Stephen Dedalus

    Class of Elements

    Clongowes Wood College

    Sallins

    County Kildare

    Ireland

    Europe

    The World

    The Universe

    That was in his writing: and Fleming one night for a cod had written on the opposite page:

    Stephen Dedalus is my name,

    Ireland is my nation.

    Clongowes is my dwellingplace

    And heaven my expectation.

    He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe?

    Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

    It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God.

    It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his head very big. He turned over the flyleaf and looked wearily at the green round earth in the middle of the maroon clouds. He wondered which was right, to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had ripped the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day with her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered if they were arguing at home about that. That was called politics. There were two sides in it: Dante was on one side and his father and Mr Casey were on the other side but his mother and uncle Charles were on no side. Every day there was something in the paper about it.

    It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in poetry and rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry. That was very far away. First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation again and then again another term and then again the vacation. It was like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got hot and then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to yawn.

    The bell rang for night prayers and he filed out of the study hall after the others and down the staircase and along the corridors to the chapel. The corridors were darkly lit and the chapel was darkly lit. Soon all would be dark and sleeping. There was cold night air in the chapel and the marbles were the colour the sea was at night. The sea was cold day and night: but it was colder at night. It was cold and dark under the seawall beside his father’s house. But the kettle would be on the hob to make punch.

    The prefect of the chapel prayed above his head and his memory knew the responses:

    O Lord open our lips

    And our mouths shall announce Thy praise.

    Incline unto our aid, O God!

    O Lord make haste to help us!

    There was a cold night smell in the chapel. But it was a holy smell. It was not like the smell of the old peasants who knelt at the back of the chapel at Sunday mass. That was a smell of air and rain and turf and corduroy. But they were very holy peasants. They breathed behind him on his neck and sighed as they prayed. They lived in Clane, a fellow said: there were little cottages there and he had seen a woman standing at the half-door of a cottage with a child in her arms as the cars had come past from Sallins. It would be lovely to sleep for one night in that cottage before the fire of smoking turf, in the dark lit by the fire, in the warm dark, breathing the smell of the peasants, air and rain and turf and corduroy. But O, the road there between the trees was dark! You would be lost in the dark. It made him afraid to think of how it was.

    He heard the voice of the prefect of the chapel saying the last prayers. He prayed it too against the dark outside under the trees.

    VISIT, WE BESEECH THEE, O LORD, THIS HABITATION AND DRIVE AWAY FROM IT ALL THE SNARES OF THE ENEMY. MAY THY HOLY ANGELS DWELL HEREIN TO PRESERVE US IN PEACE AND MAY THY BLESSINGS BE ALWAYS UPON US THROUGH CHRIST OUR LORD. AMEN.

    His fingers trembled as he undressed himself in the dormitory. He told his fingers to hurry up. He had to undress and then kneel and say his own prayers and be in bed before the gas was lowered so that he might not go to hell when he died. He rolled his stockings off and put on his nightshirt quickly and knelt trembling at his bedside and repeated his prayers quickly, fearing that the gas would go down. He felt his shoulders shaking as he murmured:

    God bless my father and my mother and spare them to me!

    God bless my little brothers and sisters and spare them to me!

    God bless Dante and Uncle Charles and spare them to me!

    He blessed himself and climbed quickly into bed and, tucking the end of the nightshirt under his feet, curled himself together under the cold white sheets, shaking and trembling. But he would not go to hell when he died; and the shaking would stop. A voice bade the boys in the dormitory good night. He peered out for an instant over the coverlet and saw the yellow curtains round and before his bed that shut him off on all sides. The light was lowered quietly.

    The prefect’s shoes went away. Where? Down the staircase and along the corridors or to his room at the end? He saw the dark. Was it true about the black dog that walked there at night with eyes as big as carriage-lamps? They said it was the ghost of a murderer. A long shiver of fear flowed over his body. He saw the dark entrance hall of the castle. Old servants in old dress were in the ironing-room above the staircase. It

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