No More Learning

Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of
death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak
their will.

--Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most
enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so
much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.

--But _Hamlet_ is so personal, isn't it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind
of private paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean, I don't
care a button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty. . .

He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his
defiance. His private papers in the original. _Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim
in mo shagart_. Put beurla on it, littlejohn.

Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:

--I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but
I may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that
Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.

Bear with me.

Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under
wrinkled brows. A basilisk. _E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca_. Messer
Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.

--As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said,
from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist
weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where
it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff
time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image
of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination,
when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that
which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the
future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but
by reflection from that which then I shall be.

Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.

--Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness
might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from
the son.

Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.

--That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.

John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.

--If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a
drug in the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan
admired so much breathe another spirit.

--The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.

--There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a
sundering.

Said that.

--If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over
the hell of time of _King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida,_
look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a
man, shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles,
prince of Tyre?

Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.

--A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.

--The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant
quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead
to the town.

Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats. Cypherjugglers
going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good
masters? Mummed in names: A. E. , eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the
sun, west of the moon: _Tir na n-og_. Booted the twain and staved.

_How many miles to Dublin? Three score and ten, sir. Will we be there by
candlelight? _

--Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing
period.

--Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his
name is, say of it?

--Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita,
that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter's
child. _My dearest wife_, Pericles says, _was like this maid. _ Will any
man love the daughter if he has not loved the mother?

--The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. _l'art d'etre
grand_. . .

--Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added,
another image?

Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all
men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus
. . .

--His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of
all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The
images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them
grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.

The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.

--I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of
the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George
Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on
Shakespeare in the _Saturday Review_ were surely brilliant. Oddly
enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the
sonnets. The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own
that if the poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in
harmony with--what shall I say? --our notions of what ought not to have
been.

Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg, prize
of their fray.

He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost
love thy man?

--That may be too, Stephen said. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr
Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because
you will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is
a _buonaroba,_ a bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a
scandalous girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord
of language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written
_Romeo and Juliet_. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely killed. He
was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I should say) and he will
never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game
of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later
undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded
him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet there
remains to her woman's invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the words,
some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a darker shadow
of the first, darkening even his own understanding of himself. A like
fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.

They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.

--The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the
porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot
know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls
with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast
with two backs that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were
he not endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech
(his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward.
Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from
Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its
mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up
to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because
loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished
personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he
has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by
Elsinore's rocks or what you will, the sea's voice, a voice heard
only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son
consubstantial with the father.

--Amen! was responded from the doorway.

Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?

_Entr'acte_.

A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then
blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.

--You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he
asked of Stephen.

Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble.

They make him welcome. _Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen. _

Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.

He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself,
Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends,
stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on
crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven
and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His
Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead
when all the quick shall be dead already.

Glo--o--ri--a in ex--cel--sis De--o.

He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells
aquiring.

--Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion.
Mr Mulligan, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of
Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented.

He smiled on all sides equally.

Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled:

--Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.

A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.

--To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like
Synge.

Mr Best turned to him.

--Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at
the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's _Lovesongs of Connacht_.

--I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?

--The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired
perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played
Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining
held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an
Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He
swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick.

--The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said,
lifting his brilliant notebook. That _Portrait of Mr W. H. _ where he
proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues.

--For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.

Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H. : who am I?

--I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of
course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues,
the colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very
essence of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch.

His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
Tame essence of Wilde.

You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan
Deasy's ducats.

How much did I spend? O, a few shillings.

For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.

Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks
in. Lineaments of gratified desire.

There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime
send them. Yea, turtledove her.

Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss.

--Do you think it is only a paradox?
the quaker librarian was asking.
The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.

They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness.

Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head
wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His
mobile lips read, smiling with new delight.

--Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!

He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:

--_The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the
immense debtorship for a thing done. _ Signed: Dedalus. Where did you
launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four
quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram!
Malachi Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer!
O, you priestified Kinchite!

Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a
querulous brogue:

--It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were,
Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did
for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with
leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's
sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.

He wailed:

--And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your
conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the
drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.

Stephen laughed.

Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.

--The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He
heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to
murder you.

--Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.

Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping
ceiling.

--Murder you! he laughed.

Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash
of lights in rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. In words of words for words,
palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods,
brandishing a winebottle. _C'est vendredi saint! _ Murthering Irish. His
image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i'the forest.

--Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.

--. . . in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his
_Diary of Master William Silence_ has found the hunting terms. . . Yes?
What is it?

--There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and
offering a card. From the _Freeman. _ He wants to see the files of the
_Kilkenny People_ for last year.

--Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman? . . .

He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked,
asked, creaked, asked:

--Is he? . . . O, there!

Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked
with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most
honest broadbrim.

--This gentleman? _Freeman's Journal? Kilkenny People? _ To be sure. Good
day, sir. _Kilkenny_. . . We have certainly. . .

A patient silhouette waited, listening.

--All the leading provincial. . . _Northern Whig, Cork Examiner,
Enniscorthy Guardian,_ 1903. . . Will you please? . . . Evans, conduct this
gentleman. . . If you just follow the atten. . . Or, please allow me. . .
This way. . . Please, sir. . .

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing
dark figure following his hasty heels.

The door closed.

--The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.

He jumped up and snatched the card.

--What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.

He rattled on:

--Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the
museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that
has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her.
_Life of life, thy lips enkindle. _

Suddenly he turned to Stephen:

--He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker
than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.
Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! _The god pursuing the
maiden hid_.

--We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval.
We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if
at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.

--Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty
from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy
in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty
years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary
equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His
art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the
art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar
of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter
Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his
back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had
underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied
there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love
and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham's story of the burgher's
wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in _Richard
III_ and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing,
took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate,
answered from the capon's blankets: _William the conqueror came before
Richard III_. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O,
and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is
suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time.

Cours la Reine. _Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.
Minette? Tu veux? _

--The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's
mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.

Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:

--Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!

--And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from
neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those
twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing
behind the diamond panes?

Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist,
he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of
Juno's eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do.
Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.

Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply.

--Whom do you suspect? he challenged.

--Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice
spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.

Love that dare not speak its name.

--As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a
lord.

Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.

--It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all
other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the
stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a
shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two
deeds are rank in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained
yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet
Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer.

Stephen turned boldly in his chair.

--The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you
deny that in the fifth scene of _Hamlet_ he has branded her with infamy
tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years
between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those
women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her
poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the
first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her
sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use
granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first.

O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in
royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her
father's shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he
has commended her to posterity.

He faced their silence.

To whom thus Eglinton:
You mean the will.
But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
She was entitled to her widow's dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.
Him Satan fleers,
Mocker:
And therefore he left out her name
From the first draft but he did not leave out
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
As I believe, to name her
He left her his
Secondbest
Bed.
_Punkt. _
Leftherhis
Secondbest
Leftherhis
Bestabed
Secabest
Leftabed.


Woa!

--Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as
they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.

--He was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms
and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist
shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her
his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in
peace?