Annotated Stephen Hero ch20.c
Jorn Barger
Stephen's mother seemed to be rather anxious. Stephen had not
given his parents much satisfaction as to his conduct at the
examination but he could not think that this was the cause of
his mother's trouble: he waited, however, for the trouble to
declare itself. His mother waited till the room was clear
Protecting his (unmentioned!?) siblings from SD's corruption.
and then she said casually:
-- You have not made your Easter duty yet, have you, Stephen?
This Communion is required, so refusing it means leaving the Church:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11516a.htm
There's contradictory evidence about when Joyce and May really had this
confrontation-- probably in 1901, but maybe not until 1903. (And Georgie
died in 1902, which is also a possibility.) Stannie says JAJ and May
had one "bitter and painful altercation" (surely like this one) sometime
before Georgie fell ill, and that afterwards JAJ ceased to be her
favorite child, with good-natured Georgie filling that role instead.
Joyce wrote much later that she'd called him a 'mocker'.
Stephen answered that he had not.
-- It would be better for you to go to confession in the
daytime. Tomorrow is Ascension Thursday and the chapels are
sure to be crowded tonight by people who have left off making
their Easter duty till the last moment. It's a wonder people
wouldn't have more shame in them. Goodness knows they have
time enough from Ash Wednesday, without waiting till the
stroke of twelve to go to the priest... I'm not speaking of you,
Stephen. I know you have been studying for your examination.
But people who have nothing to do...
Stephen made no answer to this but went on scraping diligently
in his eggshell.
-- I have made my Easter duty already-- on Holy Thursday--
but I'm going to the altar in the morning. I am making a novena
and I want you to offer up your communion for a special
intention of mine.
-- What special intention?
-- Well, dear, I'm very much concerned about Isabel... I don't
know what to think...
Stephen stuck his spoon angrily through the bottom of the shell
Joyce's portraits of Stephen frequently show these deeply-felt,
_physical_ reactions to spiritual offences.
and asked was there any more tea.
-- There's no more in the pot but I can boil some water in a
minute.
-- O, never mind.
-- It won't be a jiffy.
Stephen allowed the water to be put on as it would give him
time to put an end to the conversation. He was much annoyed
that his mother should try to wheedle him into conformity by
using his sister's health as an argument.
If this was 1903, then her own health would have been the issue. (Byrne
says they had long talks about this during the first week after Joyce
returned from Paris. Probably she'd asked him to _return_ to the Church
for her sake... so Mulligan's accusation in U1 is less exaggerated than
commonly believed.)
He felt that such an attempt dishonoured him and freed him from the
last dissuasions of considerate piety.
I'm-not-to-blame motif.
His mother put on the water and appeared to be less anxious as if
she had expected a blunt refusal.
(This level of meticulous psychological realism must have equalled-- or
surpassed?-- everything else at the time. ...Flaubert? Tolstoy?)
She even ventured on the small talk of religious matrons.
-- I must try and get into town tomorrow in time for High Mass
in Marlborough St. Tomorrow is a great feast-day in the
Church.
-- Why? asked Stephen smiling.
(Turpin Hero's next victim!??)
-- The Ascension of Our Lord, answered his mother gravely.
-- And why is that a great feast-day?
-- Because it was on that day that he showed Himself Divine:
he ascended into Heaven.
Stephen began to plaster butter over a crusty heel of the loaf
while his features settled into definite hostility:
-- Where did he go off?
-- From Mount Olivet, answered his mother reddening under
her eyes.
-- Head first?
-- What do you mean, Stephen?
-- I mean he must have been rather giddy by the time he
arrived. Why didn't he go by balloon?
(Again he stops bothering with coherent argument-- she must feel like
slapping him.)
-- Stephen, are you trying to scoff at Our Lord? I really
thought you had more intelligence than to use that kind of
language: it's only what people who believe only in what they
can see under their noses say. I'm surprised.
-- Tell me, mother, said Stephen between mouthfuls, do you
mean to tell me you believe that our friend went up off the
mountain as they say he did?
-- I do.
-- I don't.
-- What are you saying, Stephen?
-- It's absurd: it's Barnum. He comes into this world God knows
how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off
the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?
There's a tantalizing, very early FW note: "imposture book through the
ages, revered more and more" that must apply to ALP's letter and FW
itself, as well as the Bible in particular. FW notes:
ftp://ftp.trentu.ca/pub/jjoyce/newgame/fwnotes.txt
-- Stephen!
-- I don't believe it: and it would be no credit if I did. It's no
credit to me that I don't. It's drivel.
-- The most learned doctors of the Church believe it and that's
good enough for me.
-- He can fast for forty days...
-- God can do all things.
-- There's a fellow in Capel St at present in a show who says
he can eat glass and hard nails. He calls himself The Human
Ostrich.
(Where on Capel st were there shows?)
-- Stephen, said his mother, I'm afraid you have lost your faith.
-- I'm afraid so too, said Stephen.
All my images of Stephen and Joyce come together in this one, somehow--
the boy-man shocking his ALP: "...letters have never been quite their
old selves again since that weird weekday in bleak Janiveer... when to
the shock of both, Biddy Doran looked at literature..." Tristan shocks
Iseult, too, in the earliest draft of the T&I vignette:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/tristan.html
And Joyce in another early FW-note may have linked this motif to TS
Eliot 'ending the idea of poetry for ladies'.
Mrs Daedalus looked very discomposed and sat down helplessly
on the nearest chair. Stephen fixed his attention on the water
and when it was ready made himself another cup of tea.
-- I little thought, said his mother, that it would come to this--
that a child of mine would lose the faith.
-- But you knew some time ago.
-- How could I know?
-- You knew.
-- I suspected something was wrong but I never thought...
-- And yet you wanted me to receive Holy Communion!
-- Of course you cannot receive it now. But I thought you would
make your Easter duty as you have done every year up till
now. I do not know what led you astray unless it was those
books you read. John, too, your uncle-- he was led astray by
books when he was young but-- only for a time.
Her oldest brother, John 'Red' Murray. This books-business will be
elaborated slightly in ch22 below.
-- Poor fellow! said Stephen.
SD would respect him more if he'd stayed strayed.
-- You were religiously brought up by the Jesuits, in a Catholic
home...
-- A very Catholic home!
(Sins discreetly ignored; Christ's real teachings nowhere evident.)
-- None of your people, neither your father's nor mine, have a
drop of anything but Catholic blood in their veins.
The spell-of-arms epiphany has already shown him reconnecting with his
pre-Catholic ancestors, so he's flown past this net.
-- Well, I'll make a beginning in the family.
-- This is the result of being left too much liberty. You do as
you like and believe what you like.
-- I don't believe, for example, that Jesus was the only man
that ever had pure auburn hair.
-- Well?
-- Nor that he was the only man that was exactly six feet high,
neither more nor less.
-- Well?
-- Well, you believe that. I heard you tell that years ago to our
nurse in Bray-- do you remember nurse Sarah?
Mrs Daedalus defended the tradition in a half-hearted way.
-- That is what they say.
-- O, they say! They say a great deal.
-- But you need not believe that if you don't want to.
-- Thanks very much.
-- All you are asked to believe in is the word of God. Think of
the beautiful teachings of Our Lord. Think of your own life
when you believed in those teachings. Weren't you better and
happier then?
During Joyce's fervor-phase of 1897, he and his mother worshipped
together regularly.
-- It was good for me at the time, perhaps, but it is quite
useless for me now.
-- I know what is wrong with you-- you suffer from the pride
of the intellect. You forget that we are only worms of the
earth. You think you can defy God because you have misused
the talents he has given you.
(She would have discussed Stephen's case with priests, but these sound
like her own ideas to me.)
-- I think Jehovah gets too high a salary for judging motives. I
want to retire him on the plea of old age.
Mrs Daedalus stood up.
-- Stephen, you may use that kind of language with your
companions whoever they are but I will not allow you to use it
with me. Even your father, bad as he is supposed to be,
Supposed by... their neighbors?
does not speak such blasphemy as you do. I am afraid that you
are a changed boy since you went to that University. I suppose
you fell in with some of those students...
-- Good Lord, mother, said Stephen, don't believe that. The
students are awfully nice fellows. They love their religion:
they wouldn't say boo to a goose.
Indeed he would have fallen away, even in the seminary.
-- Wherever you've learnt it I will not allow you to use such
language to me when you speak of holy things. Keep that for the
street-corners at night.
(Very evocative image.)
-- Very well, mother, said Stephen. But you began the
conversation.
I'm-not-to-blame. (She could have been discreet as a Jesuit?)
-- I never thought I would see the day when a child of mine
would lose the faith. God knows I didn't. I did my best for you
to keep you in the right way.
Mrs Daedalus began to cry. Stephen, having eaten and drunk all
within his province, rose and went towards the door.
(...a lean and hungry look.)
-- It's all the fault of those books and the company you keep.
Out at all hours of the night instead of in your home, the proper
place for you. I'll burn every one of them. I won't have them in
the house to corrupt anyone else.
D'Annunzio, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Yeats, Blake, Shakespeare,
Dante, the Gospels...
Stephen halted at the door and turned towards his mother who
had now broken out into tears:
-- If you were a genuine Roman Catholic, mother, you would
burn me as well as the books.
(Implying that Rome has become less 'genuine' since the Inquisition
ended?)
-- I knew no good would come of your going to that place. You
are ruining yourself body and soul. Now your faith is gone!
-- Mother, said Stephen from the threshold, I don't see what
you're crying for. I'm young, healthy, happy.
Another contrasting SD-triad.
What is the crying for?... It's too silly...
{Editing quandary: Joyce always puts the ellipsis after the qmark, which
makes no sense to me. In some cases I think it should be moved inside,
in others the space should be moved like this: "for? ...It's" ]
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