R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 33

James Joyce: Portrait

He felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought: —The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

James Joyce: Portrait

The dean rested back on his hunkers and watched the sticks catch. Stephen, to fill the silence, said: —I am sure I could not light a fire. —You are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancing up and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question. He rubbed his hands slowly and drily over the difficulty. —Can you solve that question now? he asked. —Aquinas, answered Stephen, says pulcra sunt quæ visa placent. —This fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye. Will it therefore be beautiful? —In so far as it is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose means here esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also says Bonum est in quod tendit appetitus. In so far as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell however it is an evil. —Quite so, said the dean, you have certainly hit the nail on the head.

Blue Morph Intermediate Snow Goose

Blue Morph Intermediate Snow Goose @ Sony Bono SSNW Refuge. Yes, he's thirsty (and hungry) and I was lucky enough to see him in action (from a distance).🎈

#rlswihart13 #sonnybonosaltonseanationalwildliferefuge #sonny #saltonsea #snowgeeseofinstagram #bluemorph #thirsty #beauty #nature #poetry #readmorepoetry2024♥️

James Joyce: Portrait

Art thou pale for weariness 

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, 

Wandering companionless …? 

He repeated to himself the lines of Shelley’s fragment. Its alternation of sad human ineffectualness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him, and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.

James Joyce: Portrait

On the way home uncle Charles would often pay a visit to the chapel and, as the font was above Stephen’s reach, the old man would dip his hand and then sprinkle the water briskly about Stephen’s clothes and on the floor of the porch. While he prayed he knelt on his red handkerchief and read above his breath from a thumbblackened prayerbook wherein catchwords were printed at the foot of every page. Stephen knelt at his side respecting, though he did not share, his piety. He often wondered what his granduncle prayed for so seriously. Perhaps he prayed for the souls in purgatory or for the grace of a happy death or perhaps he prayed that God might send him back a part of the big fortune he had squandered in Cork.

Gambel's Quail (Video)

 

James Joyce: The Letters

I am nauseated by their lying drivel about pure men and pure women and spiritual love and love for ever: blatant lying in the face of the truth. I don’t know much about the ‘saince’ of the subject but I presume there are very few mortals in Europe who are not in danger of waking some morning and finding themselves syphilitic. The Irish consider England a sink: but, if cleanliness be important in this matter, what is Ireland? Perhaps my view of life is too cynical but it seems to me that a lot of this talk about love is nonsense. A woman’s love is always maternal and egoistic. A man, on the contrary, side by side with his extraordinary cerebral sexualism and bodily fervour (from which women are normally free) possesses a fund of genuine affection for the ‘beloved’ or ‘once beloved’ object. I am no friend of tyranny, as you know, but if many husbands are brutal the atmosphere in which they live (vide Counterparts) is brutal and few wives and homes can satisfy the desire for happiness. In fact, it is useless to talk about this any further. I am going to lunch.

James Joyce: The Letters

Two bits: To Stannie (1906):

Can you tell me what is a cure for dreaming? I am troubled every night by horrible and terrifying dreams: death, corpses, assassinations in which I take an unpleasantly prominent part.

&

Nora has a talent for blowing soap-bubbles. While I was wading through a chapter of Dorian Gray a few days ago she and Georgie were blowing bubbles on the floor out of a basin of suds. She can make them as big as a football.

Leucistic Hummingbird @ Crystal Cove SP

Was late to the game but he's still there, and for a few moments (on an in-and-out sun kinda day) I had him all to myself: the leucistic hummingbird in Crystal Cove SP.🎈

Thanks for the help with location: Just.birdies.

#rlswihart13 #southerncalifornia #crystalcove #hummingbirdsofinstagram #leucistichummingbird #sealsandcrofts #poetryinmotion #dontflyaway #readmorepoetry2024🎈

James Joyce: The Letters

To Grant Richards (1906): I believe Richards would eventually publish Joyce's Dubliners, but there was a lot of back-and-forth before that happened (e.g., the slang term "bloody" -- mistakenly believed to be an allusion to Christ or the Virgin -- was a big trip at the time):

Perhaps this may reconcile you to Dubliners. It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.