A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (54 page)

141.26–7
Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!
: ‘Bous Stephanoforos’: Greek:
βους στεφανοςφóρος
: the ox as garland-bearer for the sacrifice (Bous:
βους
: ‘ox’); ‘Stephanoumenos’: a wreathed ox; also a nonce word that the boys have invented: ‘Stephen’s ox-soul’.

142.4
Norfolk coat
: a man’s loose-belted jacket with box pleats (
OERD
).

142.16
ghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes
: see 141.8 n.

142.18
fabulous artificer
: Daedalus; see note to epigraph.

142.36
O, Cripes, I’m drownded!
: like Icarus; see note to epigraph.

143.2–3
cry of a hawk or eagle on high
: see 189.2 n.

143.13–15
His soul … of his soul
: cf. Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938, Italian playwright, poet, and novelist),
Il Fuoco
(
The Flame
, 1900), the end of Part I, when the hero is ‘reborn’ after a night with his beloved, and vows ‘to create with joy’! (trans. Susan Bassnett (London: Quartet, 1991) 114, 120).
G
traces the pervasive influence of this novel and of
Il Piacere
, 1889 (
The Child of Pleasure
) on
Portrait
(
G
260–1) and
WD
contains relevant excerpts from
II Fuoco
and a third work,
Le Vergini del Rocce
, 1895 (
The Virgins of the Rocks
), the influence on Joyce of which Stanislaus Joyce remarks in
My Brother’s Keeper
(166) (
WD
269–79).

143.18
stoneblock
: a bathing place off the Bull.

143.25
Howth. The sea …
: Hill of Howth, tall headland on the north-east coast of Dublin Bay. Cf. this entire scene of Stephen at the sea with ‘Portrait’ (
PSW
215).

144.8
to queen it
: ‘to act or rule as queen’ (
SOED
).

144.9
cerements
: grave-clothes.

144.15
girl stood before him in midstream
: cf. Ethan Brand’s meeting of a young woman (also apparently looking out at the water) following close upon his refusal to enter the church (Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), Norwegian dramatist,
Brand
(1866)).
G
traces the parallels between
Portrait
and
Brand
more fully (129–30).

144.19–20
Her thighs … almost to the hips
: a daring display for the time.

144.22
slateblue
: cf. blue as the Virgin Mary’s colour.

145.7–8
angel of mortal youth and beauty
: cf. Dante’s description of Beatrice at the beginning of his
La Vita Nuova
.

145.8
an envoy from the fair courts of life
: cf. ‘Portrait’ where the exact phrase is used, though there about a prostitute (
PSW
216).

145.27–31
Glimmering … deeper than other
: cf. Dante’s vision at the end of the
Paradiso
, xxxiii. 115–20.

CHAPTER V

146.8–9
Daly or MacEvoy
: assumed names.

146.22
The dear knows
:
PWJ
: ‘The expression
the dear knows
(or correctly
the deer knows
), which is very common, is a translation from Irish of [a substitution of a harmless word for a forbidden one]. The original expression is
thauss ag Dhee
(given here phonetically), meaning
God knows
; but as this is too solemn and profane for most people, they changed it to
Thauss ag fee
, i.e.,
the deer knows
; and this may be uttered by anyone.
Dia
[Dhee] God:
fiadh
[fee] a deer’ (69).

146.27
blue
: a kind of washing powder to whiten clothes.

147.22
nuns’ madhouse
: St Vincent’s Lunatic Asylum (run by the Sisters of Charity) on Convent Avenue, Fairview, in north-east Dublin.

147.34
The rainladen trees … evoked in him
: cf. ‘Portrait’ (
PSW
215 and n. 45).

147.35
Gerhart Hauptmann
: (1862–1946), German dramatist, novelist, poet whose women are fairly feeble; Joyce translated his
Von Sonnenaufgang
(
Before Sunrise
, 1889) and perhaps
Michael Kramer
(1900) in the summer of 1901. (The former has been published as
Joyce and Hauptmann: Before Sunrise: Joyce’s Translation
, ed. Jill Perkins (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1978).)

147.38–9
the sloblands
: from the Gaelic:
slab
: mud, mire, filled land; known as Mud island, a tidal flat where the Tolka enters Dublin Bay.

147.39–148.1
the cloistral silverveined prose of Newman
: Newman is renowned for his eloquent prose (silver signifying this eloquence, as in ‘silver-tongued’); hence thoughts of his prose counterbalance the mud-flats.

148.1
North Strand Road
: road running from the mud-flats, across the Royal Canal towards the centre of Dublin.

148.3
Guido Cavalcanti
: (1259–1300), Italian poet, friend of Dante, famous for the poetic expression of lonely love. For his ‘dark humour’, see the story Stephen alludes to in
U
45.

148.4
Baird’s stonecutting works
: D. G. Baird and J. Paul Todd, Talbot Place, behind the Custom House in central Dublin.

148.4
spirit of Ibsen
: the only overt mention in
Portrait
of Henrik Ibsen (see 144.15 n.); the young Joyce championed him in ‘Ibsen’s New Drama’ (1900), an essay on Ibsen’s
When We Dead Awaken
(1899) whose hero, Rubek, shares much with Stephen (
CW
47–67 and
KB
30–49). Cf.
U
570: ‘Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird’s, the stonecutter’s in his mind somehow in Talbot Place.’

148.6
marinedealer’s shop
: Ellen Smith, sailor’s outfitter, waterproof and flag maker, Burgh Quay on the south bank of the Liffey.

148.7–8
Ben Jonson … wearier where I lay
: Ben Jonson (1572–1637), English dramatist and poet; the lines here come from Aurora’s Epilogue in
The Vision of Delight
(1617), ll. 237–42: ‘I am not wearier where I lay | By frozen Tython’s side tonight, | Than I am willing now to stay, | And be a part of your delight; | But I am urged by the Day, | Against my will, to bid you come away.’

148.10
Aristotle or Aquinas
: Aristotle (384–322
BC
), Greek philosopher, student of Plato, in many ways the founder of philosophy with his development of the inductive method of reasoning and the empirical approach to understanding of the natural world, whose works Aquinas attempted to integrate with Catholic theology (see 107.30–1 n).

148.14
waistcoateers
: ‘low-class prostitutes’ (
SOED
).

148.15
chambering
: ‘sexual indulgence’ (
SOED
).

148.19
garner … Aristotle’s poetics and psychology
: Aristotle’s
Poetics
; there is no work titled ‘psychology’ though Aristotle does address the subject in various places, e.g.
De Sensu
and
De Anima
. Stephen here admits that his reading has been only ‘a garner of slender sentences’, that is, that probably he has read Aristotle only in anthologized form (as he may have Newman: see 138.14–17 n.). Cf. ‘Portrait’: ‘He had interpreted for orthodox Greek scholarship the living doctrine of the
Poetics
’ (
PSW
218). Joyce read Aristotle in a French edition (in Paris in 1903) and copied his own translations into a (now lost) notebook; some phrases survive; for a full list and bibliographical information as well as an exhaustive discussion of Joyce’s developing aesthetic, see Aubert.

148.20
Synopsis Philosophiœ Scholasticœ ad mentem divi Thomœ
: Latin: ‘A Synopsis of Scholastic Philosophy for the Understanding of St Thomas’; Aubert has identified this as a work edited by Apud A. Roger and F. Chernoviz (2nd edn. Paris, 1892): ‘a mechanical digest for seminary students … not only an outline of Thomistic philosophy but also a detailed and systematic criticism of lay philosophies, especially modern ones’; ‘no internal evidence suggests that [Joyce] used it extensively despite a few verbal echoes’. Aubert reproduces two pages of the
Synopsis
(Aubert, 100–1, 110–11, 167).

148.26–7
in revery … nobility
: cf. ‘Portrait’: ‘[he] who, in revery at least, had been acquainted with nobility’ (
PSW
213).

148.33
the bridge
: Newcomen bridge, which crosses the Royal Canal.

149.3
Hopkins’ corner
: Hopkins and Hopkins, gold and silver smiths, on the corner of Lower Sackville (now O’Connell) Street and Eden Quay.

149.6–7
social liberty and equality … classes and sexes
: cf. Francis [Sheehy-] Skeffington’s demands in his ‘A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question’ which he published in a pamphlet together with Joyce’s ‘The Day of the Rabblement’ (1901) both of which had been refused by the college magazine (see
CW
68–72 and
KB
50–2). Skeffington advocated equal status for women (and changed his name to Sheehy-Skeffington on marrying Hannah Sheehy) and was an ardent pacifist. Ironically, he was shot by a
British army officer during the 1916 uprising. He had tried to stop the Dublin poor from looting, was arrested and summarily shot (
E
399).

149.7–8
United States of the Europe of the future
: cf. William Thomas Stead (1849–1912),
The United States of Europe
(1899).

149.15–16
nominal definitions, essential definitions
: Aristotle’s distinction (from
Posterior Analytics
, B. II, ch. 8): ‘nominal’: the definition of a thing in terms of the effects it produces; ‘essential’: the definition of a thing in terms of cause (‘essence’ being here the feature of a thing which provides the fundamental account of its other genuine properties) (see ‘Aristotle’,
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy
, ed. Ted Honderich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 54).

149.17
favourable … side by side
: standard teaching method especially of the Jesuits (cf. Aquinas’s mode of analysis in any of his analytical works).

149.20
the green
: St Stephen’s Green, south of the Liffey, central Dublin; University College sits on its south side.

149.25
Cranly
: appears again in
Ulysses
, though only in Stephen’s memory (
U
7, 32, 176, 177, 180, 203). Compare Joyce’s ‘Trieste Notebook’ (
c
. 1907–1909) for his comments on the actual persons who were models for Cranly, Lynch, and Davin (
WD
92–3).

149.28
a severed head
: not unlike St John the Baptist, seen as Jesus’s precursor (Matt. 3), who is beheaded (Matt. 14: 1–12); see 209.20–8.

150.21–2
Ivory … ebur
: English, French, Italian, and Latin for ‘ivory’.

150.23
India mittit ebur
: Latin: ‘India sends ivory’.

150.24
Metamorphoses of Ovid
: see note to epigraph.

150.27–8
a ragged book written by a Portuguese priest
: text on Latin grammar and prosody,
Prosodia
, by Emanuel Alvarez, SJ (1526–82); went through hundreds of editions and was standard item in Jesuit curriculum (cf.
WD
102).

150.29
Contrahit … vates
: Latin: as it stands, on its own: ‘The orator abridges; poets elaborate in song’, but it comes from Alvarez’s
Prosodia
(see above) and in context means something quite other:
Si mutam liquidamque simul praeeat brevis una, contrahit orator, variant in carmine vates
: ‘If a mute and liquid syllable both precede one short syllable it is short in prose but long or short in verse’ (
JSA
).

150.31
in tanto discrimine
: Latin: ‘in such a great crisis’.

150.33
implere ollam denariorum
: Latin: ‘to fill the earthenware pot with denarii’; Stephen translates it in the next line. ‘Denarii’: Roman coins.

150.35
Horace
: Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8
BC
), Roman poet, author of
Satires
and
Odes
, these latter celebrating friendship, love, wine, the country life; also wrote a treatise on poetry,
Ars Poetica
.

151.4
vervain
: variety of Verbena, a herbaceous plant with small blue, white, or purple flowers.