No More Learning

--I see, Cranly said.

He produced his match and began to clean the crevice between two teeth.
Then he said carelessly:

--Tell me, for example, would you deflower a virgin?

--Excuse me, Stephen said politely, is that not the ambition of most
young gentlemen?

--What then is your point of view? Cranly asked.

His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and
disheartening, excited Stephen's brain, over which its fumes seemed to
brood.

--Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and
what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not
do. 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.

Cranly seized his arm and steered him round so as to lead him back
towards Leeson Park. He laughed almost slyly and pressed Stephen's arm
with an elder's affection.

--Cunning indeed! he said. Is it you? You poor poet, you!

--And you made me confess to you, Stephen said, thrilled by his touch,
as I have confessed to you so many other things, have I not?

--Yes, my child, Cranly said, still gaily.

--You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also
what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for
another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to
make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps
as long as eternity too.

Cranly, now grave again, slowed his pace and said:

--Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that
word means? Not only to be separate from all others but to have not
even one friend.

--I will take the risk, said Stephen.

--And not to have any one person, Cranly said, who would be more than
a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.

His words seemed to have struck some deep chord in his own nature. Had
he spoken of himself, of himself as he was or wished to be? Stephen
watched his face for some moments in silence. A cold sadness was there.
He had spoken of himself, of his own loneliness which he feared.

--Of whom are you speaking? Stephen asked at length.

Cranly did not answer.


* * * * *


MARCH 20. Long talk with Cranly on the subject of my revolt.

He had his grand manner on. I supple and suave. Attacked me on the
score of love for one's mother. Tried to imagine his mother: cannot.
Told me once, in a moment of thoughtlessness, his father was sixty-one
when he was born. Can see him. Strong farmer type. Pepper and salt
suit. Square feet. Unkempt, grizzled beard. Probably attends coursing
matches. Pays his dues regularly but not plentifully to Father Dwyer of
Larras. Sometimes talks to girls after nightfall. But his mother? Very
young or very old? Hardly the first. If so, Cranly would not have
spoken as he did. Old then. Probably, and neglected. Hence Cranly's
despair of soul: the child of exhausted loins.

MARCH 21, MORNING. Thought this in bed last night but was too lazy and
free to add to it. Free, yes. The exhausted loins are those of
Elizabeth and Zacchary. Then he is the precursor. Item: he eats chiefly
belly bacon and dried figs. Read locusts and wild honey. Also, when
thinking of him, saw always a stern severed head or death mask as if
outlined on a grey curtain or veronica. Decollation they call it in the
gold. Puzzled for the moment by saint John at the Latin gate. What do I
see? A decollated percursor trying to pick the lock.

MARCH 21, NIGHT. Free. Soul free and fancy free. Let the dead bury the
dead. Ay. And let the dead marry the dead.

MARCH 22. In company with Lynch followed a sizeable hospital nurse.
Lynch's idea. Dislike it. Two lean hungry greyhounds walking after a
heifer.

MARCH 23. Have not seen her since that night. Unwell? Sits at the fire
perhaps with mamma's shawl on her shoulders. But not peevish. A nice
bowl of gruel? Won't you now?

MARCH 24. Began with a discussion with my mother. Subject: B. V. M.
Handicapped by my sex and youth. To escape held up relations between
Jesus and Papa against those between Mary and her son. Said religion
was not a lying-in hospital. Mother indulgent. Said I have a queer mind
and have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less.
Then she said I would come back to faith because I had a restless mind.
This means to leave church by back door of sin and re-enter through the
skylight of repentance. Cannot repent. Told her so and asked for
sixpence. Got threepence.

Then went to college. Other wrangle with little round head rogue's eye
Ghezzi. This time about Bruno the Nolan. Began in Italian and ended in
pidgin English. He said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he was
terribly burned. He agreed to this with some sorrow. Then gave me
recipe for what he calls RISOTTO ALLA BERGAMASCA. When he pronounces a
soft O he protrudes his full carnal lips as if he kissed the vowel. Has
he? And could he repent? Yes, he could: and cry two round rogue's
tears, one from each eye.

Crossing Stephen's, that is, my green, remembered that his countrymen
and not mine had invented what Cranly the other night called our
religion. A quartet of them, soldiers of the ninety-seventh infantry
regiment, sat at the foot of the cross and tossed up dice for the
overcoat of the crucified.

Went to library. Tried to read three reviews. Useless. She is not out
yet. Am I alarmed? About what? That she will never be out again.

Blake wrote:

I wonder if William Bond will die
For assuredly he is very ill.

Alas, poor William!

I was once at a diorama in Rotunda. At the end were pictures of big
nobs. Among them William Ewart Gladstone, just then dead. Orchestra
played O WILLIE, WE HAVE MISSED YOU.

A race of clodhoppers!

MARCH 25, MORNING. A troubled night of dreams. Want to get them off my
chest.

A long curving gallery. From the floor ascend pillars of dark vapours.
It is peopled by the images of fabulous kings, set in stone. Their
hands are folded upon their knees in token of weariness and their eyes
are darkened for the errors of men go up before them for ever as dark
vapours.

Strange figures advance as from a cave. They are not as tall as men.
One does not seem to stand quite apart from another. Their faces are
phosphorescent, with darker streaks. They peer at me and their eyes
seem to ask me something. They do not speak.

MARCH 30. This evening Cranly was in the porch of the library,
proposing a problem to Dixon and her brother. A mother let her child
fall into the Nile. Still harping on the mother. A crocodile seized the
child. Mother asked it back. Crocodile said all right if she told him
what he was going to do with the child, eat it or not eat it.

This mentality, Lepidus would say, is indeed bred out of your mud by
the operation of your sun.

And mine? Is it not too? Then into Nile mud with it!

APRIL 1. Disapprove of this last phrase.

APRIL 2. Saw her drinking tea and eating cakes in Johnston's, Mooney
and O'Brien's. Rather, lynx-eyed Lynch saw her as we passed. He tells
me Cranly was invited there by brother. Did he bring his crocodile? Is
he the shining light now? Well, I discovered him. I protest I did.
Shining quietly behind a bushel of Wicklow bran.

APRIL 3. Met Davin at the cigar shop opposite Findlater's church. He
was in a black sweater and had a hurley stick. Asked me was it true I
was going away and why. Told him the shortest way to Tara was VIA
Holyhead. Just then my father came up. Introduction. Father polite and
observant. Asked Davin if he might offer him some refreshment. Davin
could not, was going to a meeting. When we came away father told me he
had a good honest eye. Asked me why I did not join a rowing club. I
pretended to think it over. Told me then how he broke Pennyfeather's
heart. Wants me to read law. Says I was cut out for that. More mud,
more crocodiles.

APRIL 5. Wild spring. Scudding clouds. O life! Dark stream of swirling
bogwater on which apple-trees have cast down their delicate flowers.
Eyes of girls among the leaves. Girls demure and romping. All fair or
auburn: no dark ones. They blush better. Houpla!

APRIL 6. Certainly she remembers the past. Lynch says all women do.
Then she remembers the time of her childhood--and mine, if I was ever
a child.
The past is consumed in the present and the present is living
only because it brings forth the future. Statues of women, if Lynch be
right, should always be fully draped, one hand of the woman feeling
regretfully her own hinder parts.

APRIL 6, LATER. Michael Robartes remembers forgotten beauty and, when
his arms wrap her round, he presses in his arms the loveliness which
has long faded from the world. Not this. Not at all. I desire to press
in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

APRIL 10. Faintly, under the heavy night, through the silence of the
city which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary lover
whom no caresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the road. Not so faintly
now as they come near the bridge; and in a moment, as they pass the
darkened windows, the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. They
are heard now far away, hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as gems,
hurrying beyond the sleeping fields to what journey's end--what
heart? --bearing what tidings?

APRIL 11. Read what I wrote last night. Vague words for a vague
emotion. Would she like it? I think so. Then I should have to like it
also.

APRIL 13. That tundish has been on my mind for a long time. I looked it
up and find it English and good old blunt English too. Damn the dean of
studies and his funnel! What did he come here for to teach us his own
language or to learn it from us. Damn him one way or the other!

APRIL 14. John Alphonsus Mulrennan has just returned from the west of
Ireland. European and Asiatic papers please copy. He told us he met an
old man there in a mountain cabin. Old man had red eyes and short pipe.
Old man spoke Irish. Mulrennan spoke Irish. Then old man and Mulrennan
spoke English. Mulrennan spoke to him about universe and stars. Old man
sat, listened, smoked, spat. Then said:

--Ah, there must be terrible queer creatures at the latter end of the
world.

I fear him. I fear his red-rimmed horny eyes. It is with him I must
struggle all through this night till day come, till he or I lie dead,
gripping him by the sinewy throat till. . . Till what? Till he yield to me?
No. I mean no harm.

APRIL 15. Met her today point blank in Grafton Street. The crowd
brought us together. We both stopped. She asked me why I never came,
said she had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was only to gain
time. Asked me was I writing poems? About whom? I asked her. This
confused her more and I felt sorry and mean. Turned off that valve at
once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented
and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. Talked rapidly of
myself and my plans. In the midst of it unluckily I made a sudden
gesture of a revolutionary nature. I must have looked like a fellow
throwing a handful of peas into the air. People began to look at us.
She shook hands a moment after and, in going away, said she hoped I
would do what I said.

Now I call that friendly, don't you?

Yes, I liked her today. A little or much? Don't know. I liked her and
it seems a new feeling to me. Then, in that case, all the rest, all
that I thought I thought and all that I felt I felt, all the rest
before now, in fact. . . O, give it up, old chap! Sleep it off!

APRIL 16. Away! Away!

The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of
close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the
moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are
alone--come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsmen. And
the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman,
making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible
youth.

APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She
prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home
and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it.
Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality
of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated
conscience of my race.

APRIL 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good
stead.



Dublin, 1904
Trieste, 1914









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