Reference
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man
James Joyce
This
section from the novel describes an important moment, a
mental step symbolised by the crossing of a bridge - it
is here that Stephen decides not to become a priest, for
dwelling among sin, "the snares of the world"
will allow him to learn his own wisdom. |
| He was passing at that moment
before the jesuit house in Gardiner Street, and wondered
vaguely which window would be his if he ever joined the
order. Then he wondered at the vagueness of his wonder,
at the remoteness of his soul from what he had hitherto
imagined her sanctuary, at the frail hold which so many
years of order and obedience had of him when once a
definite and irrevocable act of his threatened to end for
ever, in time and in eternity, his freedom. The voice of
the director urging upon him the proud claims of the
church and the mystery and power of the priestly office
repeated itself idly in his memory. His soul was not
there to hear and greet it and he knew now that the
exhortation he had listened to had already fallen into an
idle formal tale. He would never swing the thurible
before the tabernacle as priest. His destiny was to be
elusive of social or religious orders. The wisdom of the
priest's appeal did not touch him to the quick. He was
destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to
learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the
snares of the world. The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard: and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling but not yet fallen, still unfallen but about to fall. He crossed the bridge over the stream of the Tolka and turned his eyes coldly for an instant towards the faded blue shrine of the Blessed Virgin which stood fowlwise on a pole in the middle of a hamshaped encampment of poor cottages. Then, bending to the left, he followed the lane which led up to his house. The faint sour stink of rotted cabbages came towards him from the kitchengardens on the rising ground above the river. He smiled to think that it was this disorder, the misrule and confusion of his father's house and the stagnation of vegetable life, which was to win the day in his soul. Then a short laugh broke from his lips as he thought of that solitary farmhand in the kitchengardens behind their house whom they had nicknamed the man with the hat. A second laugh, taking rise from the first after a pause, broke from him involuntarily as he thought of how the man with the hat worked, considering in turn the four points of the sky and then regretfully plunging his spade in the earth. |
| Joyce, James. from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914-15). p. 175-6. |