A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners - James Joyce [0]
FROM THE PAGES OF A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
FROM THE PAGES OF DUBLINERS
Title Page
Copyright Page
JAMES JOYCE
THE WORLD OF JAMES JOYCE
Introduction
NOTE ON CURRENCY AND COINAGE
NOTE ON THE TEXTS
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
DUBLINERS
THE SISTERS
AN ENCOUNTER
ARABY
EVELINE
AFTER THE RACE
TWO GALLANTS
THE BOARDING HOUSE
A LITTLE CLOUD
COUNTERPARTS
CLAY
A PAINFUL CASE
IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM
A MOTHER
GRACE
THE DEAD
ENDNOTES
INSPIRED BY A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN AND DUBLINERS
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
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.
His eyes were dimmed with tears and, looking humbly up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.
To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples.
He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.
—The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile and cunning.
FROM THE PAGES OF DUBLINERS
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.
The car steered out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious feeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes of light above them in a haze of summer evening.
For the first time in his life he felt superior to the people he passed. For the first time his soul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
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