CHAPTER SUMMARY AND NOTES

CHAPTER 5

Summary (continued)

When he thinks of the Eucharist, he thinks of two more stanzas for his poem. He speaks the lines aloud and feels good about the poem. It is now full morning. He makes a cowl of his blanket and turns to face the wall paper covered with red roses. He smiles to think that he has written verses for her ten years after the first time he wrote for her. He remembers standing on the steps of the tram with her as she kept coming up to his step and then stepping back down to one step lower. He wonders what would happen if he sent her the verses. Would she let her rough brothers read the poem at the breakfast table, he wonders. Then he changes his mind. He feels guilty for having thought that she would betray him in this way. He feels humbled at the thought of her innocence. He thinks of her "humbled and saddened by the dark shame of womanhood." He wonders if, while his soul was in ecstasy in thoughts of her, her soul had known of his homage.

He begins to feel warm with desire. He thinks of her as "the temptress of his villanelle." He thinks of her naked and yielding to him. Then he recites the poem in its entirety.

He stands on the steps of the library looking out at the sky wondering what kind of birds these are which he sees flying over the buildings. It is an evening in late March. He counts the birds, listens to their cries. They sound like mice squeaking in the walls. Yet, unlike the sound of mice, their cries are louder and clearer. He is soothed by the sounds. His motherÂ’s reproaches are always in the back of his mind. The sight of the birds soothe his eyes which still preserve the image of his mother. He wonders why heÂ’s standing there looking at the birds. He wonders if heÂ’s looking for some kind of sign of good or evil. He thinks of a line from Cornelius Agrippa and thoughts from Swedenborg who thought there was a connection between birds and the intellect and who also thought that birds are in their natural order and that people are not because of the perversions of reason. He feels fear as he stands there. He thinks of the "hawklike man whose name he bore souring out of his captivity on osierwoven wings. He thinks of the god of writers, Thoth, who wrote with a reed and had the head of a bird with a pointed moon on it.

As he thinks of this god, he thinks of how he remembers the name. It sounds like an Irish oath. He thinks of it as foolishness, but then wonders if it is this foolishness for which heÂ’s leaving his home, "the house of prayer and prudence." He wonders if the birds are swallows and thinks of a stanza of a poem which features swallows making nests in the eaves of houses and then leaving them to wander. He feels joy at the sound of the words. He realizes that the sign that he had been looking for in the flight of the birds has come from his own heart.

He remembers the opening night of the national theater. The people in the audience heckled the play, calling it blasphemy and lies about Ireland. He remembers standing there feeling jaded about the culture of Dublin. He is awakened from his thoughts by the sound of someone switching on a reading light. He goes up the stairs and finds Cranly at a dictionary and listening to a medical student who was reading to him something about the game of chess. A priest gets up angrily. Stephen suggests to Dixon that they should leave since the priest has probably gone to complain. As they are walking out, Stephen tells Cranly he wants to speak to him. Cranly doesnÂ’t respond. He tells Dixon "Pawn to kingÂ’s bloody fourth." A small man comes up to them whose face Stephen compares to a monkeyÂ’s. Cranly and Dixon speak to him. He exclaims upon the merits of Sir Walter Scott. Stephen wonders when he hears the manÂ’s poor voice if it is true that he came of "noble and incestuous love." He looks out at the park and sees a game of swans. They embrace without love as if they were brothers and sisters. The images of his mind shift to the image of a brother and sister making love. He pushes the thought impatiently away and feels irritated with this man who has inspired the thought. He and Dixon walk away while Cranly continues to speak to the man.

The find Temple standing under the colonnade. Other men are crowded around Temple enjoying his feeble witticisms. He has called Dixon a "smiler." Temple comes over to Stephen and asks him a question about the Forsters being the kings of Belgium. When Cranly comes out, Temple fills out the details of the genealogy of the Forster family. As they are speaking, Groggins farts and elicits abuse from Cranly and a joke from Dixon. Temple goes on to say that the most profound sentence ever written comes at the end of the zoology "Reproduction is the beginning of death." Temple wants to know if Stephen feels the profundity of the phrase especially since he is a poet. Cranly makes fun of him and the others laugh. Temple blusters that while he is a "ballocks" and knows it, Cranly is a ballocks, but doesnÂ’t know it.

Stephen sees that "she" comes out of the library and nods to Cranly. He scrutinizes CranlyÂ’s flushed face, wondering if it comes from his exchange with Temple or at the womanÂ’s attention. He wonders if Cranly also is a rival for her attentions. He thinks this might be the cause of CranlyÂ’s rude interruptions when he has been making so many ardent confessions to him. Stephen remembers one night when he was riding his bicycle in the woods near Malahide. He had gotten off the bike to pray to God, lifting up his arms and speaking in ecstasy, thinking of the place as holy. Yet, when he was interrupted by the approach of two constables, he broke off the prayer and whistled a song from a pantomime.

Stephen becomes impatient to have a talk with Cranly. He hits his walking stick against the side of a pillar. He notices it is getting dark. He feels joy in the air and wonders if it comes from her having passed by or from the line of poetry he has just remembered ("Darkness falls from the air.). He walks away from the rest of the students wanting to hide his reverie from them. He thinks back on the writing at the time of Dowland, Byrd, and Nash. He summons images to his mind of blatant sex and then corrects himself, thinking that these are not the images with which he should think of her. He thinks of her walking home now. He smells her body. He feels restless. He thinks of his music flowing over her limbs.

A louse crawls over his neck. He catches it and throws it down. He thinks of a phrase from Cornelius a Lapide about lice. His body, "illclad, illfed, louse-eaten," makes him feel despair suddenly. He realizes he has remembered NashÂ’s line wrongly. It is actually, "Brightness falls from the air." He feels rotten in this mistake. He decides it is good if she were to go off and love some clean athlete who washed himself every day and had hair on his chest. He looks back over at the group of students. Cranly is eating another dried fig. A short young man, Glynn, comes over to them and begins a discussion filled with witty rudeness. Glynn is carrying a portfolio of student papers which he says he uses to test whether his teaching is doing any good. He adds, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Temple is reminded by this phrase of a theological problem he has with the church doctrine that unbaptized children will go to hell, a doctrine he finds at odds with JesusÂ’s statement that the children should come to him. The other students make fun of him for raising this question. Cranly is especially annoyed with Temple. He grabs StephenÂ’s stick and chases Temple with it.

Stephen reminds Cranly he wants to talk with him. They leave together and as they walk away Cranly and Dixon yell out to each other the arrangements for meeting later at the Adelphi hotel for a game of billiards. Stephen walks on alone bothered by the thoughts conjured up at the mention of the hotel where he imagines the "sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housed in calm." He wonders how he will ever appeal to the conscience of his fellow Irish people so they will raise a better generation than their own. He feels the thoughts and desires of the Irish. He thinks of the woman who waited at her doorway for Davin one night offering him milk and her bed.

Cranly joins him and they walk on. Stephen wonders if Cranly is thinking about her greeting a moment ago. Stephen tells Cranly that he had an unpleasant quarrel this evening with his mother. She wants him to take communion and he is refusing to do so. He says, "I will not serve." Cranly listens to him and questions him. Stephen feels that they are in sync with each other whereas, lately, they have been estranged. Cranly wonders why Stephen doesnÂ’t just take the Eucharist for his motherÂ’s sake if he doesnÂ’t believe in it anyway. Stephen says he is not interested in an "eternity of bliss in the company of the dean of studies." Cranly points out that StephenÂ’s mind is full of the religion he is claiming to reject. Cranly wants to know if Stephen was happier when he believed. Stephen says he was sometimes and sometimes not, but that the more important point is that he was not himself then, as he "had to become."

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