Irish Modernists:
Style and the Moral Compass
“forge in the smithy of my soul the
uncreated consciousness of my race”
Terry Eagleton Heathcliff and the
Great Hunger
“modernism, like nationalism, is out to translate
those abstract forms into the aesthetic
experience of difference, uniqueness, of the
ineffably particular and stubbornly specific, of
all that escapes the levelling commonness of
modernity.”
“Both pit image and intuition against what they
see as the reified rationality of the modern
world.”
“Here form is content, content is form. You
complain that this stuff is not written in
English. It is not written at all. It is not to be
read — or rather it is not only to be read. It is
to be looked at and listened to. His writing is
not about something, it is that something
itself.”
In a letter to potential publisher Grant Richards,
Joyce explained that he intended Dubliners to
serve as a moral lesson and history in order to
secure “the spiritual liberation of my country”
through the stories which operated as a
“nicely polished looking glass.”
Joyce described Dublin as “the centre of
paralysis” of the nation.
Structure in Dubliners 1914
Childhood (“The Sisters,” “An Encounter,”
“Araby”)
Adolescence (“Eveline,” “After the Race,” “The
Boarding House)
Maturity ( “Two Gallants,” “Counterparts,”
“Clay,” “A Painful Case)
Politics/public life in Ireland (“Ivy Day in the
Committee Room,” “A Mother,” “Grace”)
Paralysis, loss of innocence, thwarted desire,
powerlessness, domestic violence, cruelty, the
cash nexus and material struggle, tyranny of
tradition.
“My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my
father’s ill-treatment , by years of trouble, and by
my cynical frankness of conduct. When I looked
on her face as she lay in the coffin [...] I
understood that I was looking at a victim and I
cursed the system which had made her a victim.”
“An Encounter”
“The rebuke during the sober hours of school
paled much of the glory of the Wild West for
me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon
awakened one of my consciences. But when
the restraining influence of school was at a
distance I began to hunger again for wild
sensations, for the escape which those
chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer
me. The mimic warfare of the evening
became at last as wearisome to me as the
routine of the school in the morning because I
wanted real adventures to happen to myself.
But real adventures, I reflected, do not
happen to people who remain at home: they
must be sought abroad.”
“He described to me how he would whip such a
boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate
mystery. He would love that, he said, better
than anything in this world; and his voice, as
he led me monotonously through the mystery,
grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead
with me that I should understand him.”
“Araby”
“But my body was like a harp and her words and
gestures were like fingers running upon the
wires.”
“I had hardly any patience with the serious work of
life which, now that it stood between me and my
desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly
monotonous child’s play.”
“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a
creature driven and derided by vanity; and my
eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
“Eveline”
“Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long
before, when she had been laid up for a day,
he had read her out a ghost story and made
toast for her at the fire. Another day, when
their mother was alive, they had all gone for a
picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered
her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to
make the children laugh.”
“Two Gallants”
“His tongue was tired for he had been talking all
the afternoon in a public-house in Dorset
Street. Most people considered Lenehan a
leech but, in spite of this reputation, his
adroitness and eloquence had always
prevented his friends from forming any
general policy against him. He had a brave
manner of coming up to a party of them in a
bar and of holding himself nimbly at the
borders of the company until he was included in
a round. He was a sporting vagrant armed
with a vast stock of stories, limericks and
riddles. He was insensitive to all kinds of
discourtesy. No one knew how he achieved
with the stern task of living, but his name was
vaguely associated with racing tissues.”
--I used to spend money on them right enough,
he added, in a convincing tone, as if he were
conscious of being disbelieved.
But Lenehan could well believe it; he nodded
gravely.
--I know that game, he said, and it’s a mug’s
game.
--And damn the thing I ever got out of it, said
Corley.
“Counterparts”
“He felt strong enough to clear out the whole
office single-handed. His body ached to do
something, to rush out and revel in violence.
All the indignities of his life enraged him.”
“The barometer of his emotional nature was set
for a spell of riot.”
“the sight of five small hot whiskies was very
exhilarating. Everyone roared laughing when
he showed the way in which Mr Alleyne shook
his fist in Farrington’s face. Then he imitated
Farrington, saying, And here was my nabs, as
cool as you please, while Farrington looked at
the company out of his heavy dirty eyes,
smiling and at times drawing forth stray drops
of liquor from his moustache”
“A Painful Case”
“He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he
had been outcast from life’s feast. One human
being had seemed to love him and he had denied
her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to
ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the
prostrate creatures down by the wall were
watching him and wished him gone. No one
wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast.”
Last eight sentences all begin with “He.”
“Ivy Day in the Committee Room”
Charles Stewart Parnell: Land League 1879,
Chairman Irish Parliamentary Party 1880,
Ladies’ Land League 1880, Home Rule, Irish
National League 1882, Divorce petition from
Captain O’Shea 1889, 1890 Gladstone & clergy
denounce him. Dec. 1890-lime thrown in his
eye in Kilkenny.
Died 6 October 1891.
Class, labour, national identity and allegiance,
resistance, conflation of idealism and material
reality.
--Let bygones be bygones, said Mr. Henchy. I
admire the man personally. He’s just an
ordinary knockabout like you and me. He’s
fond of his glass of grog and he’s a bit of a
rake, perhaps, and he’s a good sportsman.
Damn it, can’t we Irish play fair?
“Grace”
--He told his hearers that he was there that evening
for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a
man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He
came to speak to businessmen and he would
speak to them in a businesslike way. If he might
use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual
accountant; and he wished each and every one of
his hearers to open his books, the books of his
spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately
with conscience.
“The Dead”
“He stood in the gloom of the hall, trying to
catch the air that the voice was singing and
gazing up at his wife. There was a grace and
mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol
of something. He asked himself what is a
woman standing on the stairs in the shadow,
listening to music a symbol of.”
“He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a
pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous wellmeaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians
and idealising his own clownish lusts, the
pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a
glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he
turned his back more to the light lest she
might see the shame that burned upon his
forehead.”
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow
falling faintly through the universe and faintly
falling, like the descent of their last end, upon
all the living and the dead.”
“Dante and the Lobster” 1934
“The stump of the loaf went back into prison, the
crumbs, as though there were no such thing as a
sparrow in the wide world, were swept in a fever
away, and the slices snatched up and carried to
the grill.”
“He laid his cheek against the soft of the bread, it
was spongy and warm, alive. But he would very
soon take that plush feel off it, by God but he
would very quickly take that fat white look off its
face. He lowered the gas a suspicion and plaqued
one flabby side plump down on the glowing
fabric.”
“The spots were Cain with his truss of thorns,
dispossessed, cursed from the earth, fugitive
and vagabond. The moon was that
countenance fallen and branded, seared with
the first stigma of God’s pity, that an outcast
might not die quickly.”
“This was an act of dilapidation, for it seared a great
weal in the paper. This was hooliganism pure and
simple. What the hell did he care? Was it his
wall? The same hopeless paper had been there
fifty years. It was livid with age. It could not be
disimproved.”
“Buttered toast was all right for Senior Fellows and
Salvationists, for such as had nothing but false
teeth in their heads. It was no good at all to a
fairly strong young rose like Belaqua.
“This meal that he was at such pains to make
ready, he would devour it with such a sense of
rapture and victory, it would be like smiting
the sledded Polacks on the ice. He would
snap at it with closed eyes, he would gnash it
into a pulp, he would vanquish it utterly with
his fangs. Then the anguish of pungency, the
pang of the spices, as each mouthful died,
scorching his palate, bringing tears.”
“Sometimes his hunger, more of mind, I need
scarcely say, than of body, for this meal
amounted to such a frenzy that he would have
not have hesitated to strike any man rash
enough to buttonhole and baulk him, he
would have shouldered him out of his path
without ceremony. Woe betide the meddler
who crossed him when his mind was really set
on this meal.”
“He rubbed it. It was sweating. That was
something. He stooped and smelt it. A faint
fragrance of corruption. What good was that?
He didn’t want fragrance, he wasn’t a bloody
gourmet, he wanted a good stench. What he
wanted was a good green stenching rotten lump
of Gorgonzola cheese, alive, and by God he would
have it.”
“Belacqua had a spavined gait, his feet were in
ruins, he suffered with them almost
continuously.”
“Also, his teeth and jaws had been in heaven,
splinters of vanquished toast spraying forth at
each gnash. It was like eating glass. His mouth
burned and ached with the exploit.”
“ ‘You make rapid progress’ she said in her ruined
voice. There subsisted as much of the Ottolenghi
as might be expected to of the person of a lady of
a certain age who had found being young and
beautiful and pure more of a bore than anything
else.”
“qui vive la pieta quandro e ben morta.”
“ ‘Where are we ever?’ cried the
Ottolenghi ‘where we were, as we
were.’”
“In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel
pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had
breathed secretly. It had survived the
Frenchwoman’s cat and his witless clutch. Now it
was going alive into scalding water. It had to.
Take into the air my quiet breath.”
“Well, thought Belacqua, it’s a quick death, God
help us all.
It is not.”
Waiting for Godot 1952
“All theatre is waiting”
Gogo: Funny, the more you eat the worse it gets.
Didi: With me it’s just the opposite.
Gogo: In other words?
Didi: I get used to the muck as I go along.
Gogo: (after prolonged reflection). Is that the
opposite?
Didi: Question of temperament.
Gogo: Of character.
Didi: Nothing you can do about it.
Gogo: No use struggling.
Didi: One is what one is.
Gogo: No use wriggling.
Didi: The essential doesn’t change.
Gogo: Nothing to be done.
Pozzo: But for him all my thoughts, all my
feelings, would have been of common things.
(Pause. With extraordinary vehemence.)
Professional worries! (Calmer.) Beauty, grace,
truth of the first water, I knew they were all
beyond me. So I took a knook.”
Gogo: The Scapegoat’s Agony.
Didi: The Hard Stool.
Pozzo: The Net. He thinks he’s entangled in a
net.
Lucky’s thought monlogue loosely shaped
around a theological sketch punctuated by
repetition, uncertainty, fragmented thoughts
lacking coherence. “Fartov” and “Belcher.”
Pozzo writhes, groans, beats the ground with his
fists.
Gogo: We should ask him for the bone first.
Then if he refuses we’ll leave him there.
Didi: You mean leave him at our mercy?
Gogo: Yes.
Didi: And that we should subordinate our good
offices to certain conditions?
“Man and the Echo” 1938
“Now that I am old and ill,
Turns into a question till
I lie awake night after night
And never get the answers right.
Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot?
Did words of mine put too great strain
On that woman's reeling brain?”
“ The spiritual intellect's great work,
And shirk it in vain. There is no release
In a bodkin or disease,
Nor can there be work so great
As that which cleans man's dirty slate.
While man can still his body keep
Wine or love drug him to sleep,
Waking he thanks the Lord that he
Has body and its stupidity,