Annotated Stephen Hero ch20.e
Jorn Barger
began to walk round the enclosure inside the chains. A few
mechanics and their sweethearts were sitting on the
swinging-chains turning the shadows to account.
'Mechanic' (and 'engineer') had specific meanings I'm not clear on.
The footpath was deserted except for the metallic image of a
distant policeman who had been posted well in the gaslight as an
admonition.
How 'metallic'?
When the two young men passed the college they
both looked up at the same moment towards the dark windows.
So their thoughts were attuned, at some level.
-- May I ask why you left the Church? asked Cranly.
(Didn't SD just carefully explain this?)
-- I could not observe the precepts.
-- Not even with grace?
(?)
-- No.
-- Jesus gives very simple precepts. The Church is severe.
-- Jesus or the Church-- it's all the same to me. I can't follow
him. I must have liberty to do as I please.
-- No man can do as he pleases.
-- Morally.
-- No, not morally either.
-- You want me, said Stephen, to toe the line with those
sycophants and hypocrites in the college. I will never do so.
-- No. I mentioned Jesus.
-- Don't mention him. I have made it a common noun.
If, as Stannie claims, this was Gogarty's trick, then Joyce is
plagiarising credit so as to have the trick available here, before the
introduction of the Gogarty character. This would confirm Joyce's claim
of always planning things out in great detail before starting to write.
They don't believe in him; they don't observe his precepts. In any
case let us leave Jesus aside. My sight will only carry me as far
as his lieutenant in Rome. It is quite useless: I will not be
frightened into paying tribute in money or in thought.
Eg by Wells the bully-priest.
-- You told me-- do you remember the evening we were standing
at the top of the staircase talking about...
-- Yes, yes, I remember, said Stephen who hated Cranly's
method of remembering the past, what did I tell you?
(Cf the criticism of Temple in ch19: "both of whom he seemed to regard
as very hard of hearing". Cranly seems to regard SD as very short of
memory.)
-- You told me the idea you had of Jesus on Good Friday, an ugly
misshapen Jesus. Did it ever strike you that Jesus may have
been a conscious impostor?
(Remarkably bold, from Cranly.)
-- I have never believed in his chastity-- that is since I began to
think about him. I am sure he was no eunuch priest. His interest
in loose women is too persistently humane. All the women
associated with him are of dubious character.
("Stephen Hero" couldn't have included a brothel scene yet, because only
in ch16 was SD's chastity quietly dispensed with.)
-- You don't think he was God?
-- What a question! Explain it: explain the hypostatic union:
God-plus-man: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07610b.htm
tell me if the figure which that policeman worships as the Holy
Ghost is intended for a spermatozoon with wings added. What a
question! He makes general remarks on life, that's all I know: and
I disagree with them.
-- For example?
-- For example... Look here, I cannot talk on this subject. I am
not a scholar and I receive no pay as a minister of God.
Cf ch17: "--But surely you have some political opinions, man! --I am
going to think them out..."
I want to live, do you understand. McCann wants air and food: I
want them and a hell of a lot of other things too. I don't care
whether I am right or wrong. There is always that risk in human
affairs, I suppose. But even if I am wrong at least I shall not
have to endure Father Butt's company for eternity.
Cf PoA4 "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of
life!" and PoA5: "I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great
mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too."
Cranly laughed.
-- Remember he would be glorified.
-- Heaven for climate, isn't that it, and hell for society...
(Cliche, nowadays.)
the whole affair is too damned idiotic. Give it up. I am very
young. When I have a beard to my middle I will study Hebrew and
then write to you about it.
(Cf Skeffington-Bloom's 'year to study the religious question'.)
-- Why are you so impatient with the Jesuits? asked Cranly.
Stephen did not answer and, when they arrived in the next region
of light Cranly exclaimed:
-- Your face is red!
-- I feel it, said Stephen.
-- Most people think you are self-restrained, said Cranly after a
pause.
-- So I am, said Stephen.
-- Not on this subject. Why do you get so excited: I can't
understand that. It is a thing for you to think out.
-- I can think out things when I like. I have thought this affair
out very carefully though you may not believe me when I tell you.
But my escape excites me: I must talk as I do. I feel a flame in my
face. I feel a wind rush through me.
(Is this the Lucy-epiphany finally kicking in, then?)
-- 'Like a mighty wind rushing,' said Cranly.
-- You urge me to postpone life-- till when? Life is now-- this is
life: if I postpone it I may never live. To walk nobly on the
surface of the earth, to express oneself without pretence, to
acknowledge one's own humanity! You mustn't think I rhapsodise:
I am quite serious. I speak from my soul.
-- Soul?
-- Yes: from my soul, my spiritual nature. Life is not a yawn.
As it is for, eg, Butt.
Philosophy, love, art will not disappear from my world because I
no longer believe that by entertaining an emotion of desire for
the tenth part of a second I prepare for myself an eternity of
torture. I am happy.
Intimidated Catholics act as if all good things _would_ disappear.
-- Can you say that?
-- Jesus is sad. Why is he so sad? He is solitary...
(Cf Stephen's claim that art needs isolation?)
I say, you must feel the truth of what I say.
(I don't know where the emphases belong here.)
You are holding up the Church against me...
-- Allow me...
-- But what is the Church? It is not Jesus, the magnificent
solitary with his inimitable abstinences. The Church is made by
me and my like-- her services, legends, practices, paintings,
music, traditions. These her artists gave her. They made her
what she is. They accepted Aquinas' commentary on Aristotle as
the Word of God and made her what she is.
So for Stephen, the lineage of the Irish Church starts with Aristotle
and proceeds thru Aquinas to the artists...?
-- And why will you not help her to be so still-- you as an
artist?
-- I see you recognise the truth of what I say though you won't
admit it.
(?)
-- The Church allows the individual conscience to have great... in
fact, if you believe... believe, that is, said Cranly stamping each
heavy foot on the words, honestly and truly...
(They've been walking along slowly as they talk.)
-- Enough! said Stephen gripping his companion's arm. You need
not defend me. I will take the odds as they are.
They paced along three sides of the Green in silence while the
couples began to leave the chains and return meekly to their
modest resting-places
Does this just mean their homes?
and after a while Cranly began to explain
to Stephen how he too had felt a desire for life-- a life of
freedom and happiness-- when he had been younger and how at
that time he too had been about to leave the Church in search of
happiness but that many considerations had restrained him.
(Odd way to end a chapter.)
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