Books: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

J >> James Joyce >> A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Consciousness of place came ebbing back to him slowly over a vast tract
of time unlit, unfelt, unlived. The squalid scene composed itself
around him; the common accents, the burning gas-jets in the shops,
odours of fish and spirits and wet sawdust, moving men and women. An
old woman was about to cross the street, an oilcan in her hand. He bent
down and asked her was there a chapel near.

--A chapel, sir? Yes, sir. Church Street chapel.

--Church?

She shifted the can to her other hand and directed him; and, as she
held out her reeking withered right hand under its fringe of shawl, he
bent lower towards her, saddened and soothed by her voice.

--Thank you.

--You are quite welcome, sir.

The candles on the high altar had been extinguished but the fragrance
of incense still floated down the dim nave. Bearded workmen with pious
faces were guiding a canopy out through a side door, the sacristan
aiding them with quiet gestures and words. A few of the faithful still
lingered praying before one of the side-altars or kneeling in the
benches near the confessionals. He approached timidly and knelt at the
last bench in the body, thankful for the peace and silence and fragrant
shadow of the church. The board on which he knelt was narrow and worn
and those who knelt near him were humble followers of Jesus. Jesus too
had been born in poverty and had worked in the shop of a carpenter,
cutting boards and planing them, and had first spoken of the kingdom of
God to poor fishermen, teaching all men to be meek and humble of heart.

He bowed his head upon his hands, bidding his heart be meek and humble
that he might be like those who knelt beside him and his prayer as
acceptable as theirs. He prayed beside them but it was hard. His soul
was foul with sin and he dared not ask forgiveness with the simple
trust of those whom Jesus, in the mysterious ways of God, had called
first to His side, the carpenters, the fishermen, poor and simple
people following a lowly trade, handling and shaping the wood of trees,
mending their nets with patience.

A tall figure came down the aisle and the penitents stirred; and at the
last moment, glancing up swiftly, he saw a long grey beard and the
brown habit of a capuchin. The priest entered the box and was hidden.
Two penitents rose and entered the confessional at either side. The
wooden slide was drawn back and the faint murmur of a voice troubled
the silence.

His blood began to murmur in his veins, murmuring like a sinful city
summoned from its sleep to hear its doom. Little flakes of fire fell
and powdery ashes fell softly, alighting on the houses of men. They
stirred, waking from sleep, troubled by the heated air.

The slide was shot back. The penitent emerged from the side of the box.
The farther side was drawn. A woman entered quietly and deftly where
the first penitent had knelt. The faint murmur began again.

He could still leave the chapel. He could stand up, put one foot before
the other and walk out softly and then run, run, run swiftly through
the dark streets. He could still escape from the shame. Had it been any
terrible crime but that one sin! Had it been murder! Little fiery
flakes fell and touched him at all points, shameful thoughts, shameful
words, shameful acts. Shame covered him wholly like fine glowing ashes
falling continually. To say it in words! His soul, stifling and
helpless, would cease to be.

The slide was shot back. A penitent emerged from the farther side of
the box. The near slide was drawn. A penitent entered where the other
penitent had come out. A soft whispering noise floated in vaporous
cloudlets out of the box. It was the woman: soft whispering cloudlets,
soft whispering vapour, whispering and vanishing.

He beat his breast with his fist humbly, secretly under cover of the
wooden armrest. He would be at one with others and with God. He would
love his neighbour. He would love God who had made and loved him. He
would kneel and pray with others and be happy. God would look down on
him and on them and would love them all.

It was easy to be good. God's yoke was sweet and light. It was better
never to have sinned, to have remained always a child, for God loved
little children and suffered them to come to Him. It was a terrible and
a sad thing to sin. But God was merciful to poor sinners who were truly
sorry. How true that was! That was indeed goodness.

The slide was shot to suddenly. The penitent came out. He was next. He
stood up in terror and walked blindly into the box.

At last it had come. He knelt in the silent gloom and raised his eyes
to the white crucifix suspended above him. God could see that he was
sorry. He would tell all his sins. His confession would be long, long.
Everybody in the chapel would know then what a sinner he had been. Let
them know. It was true. But God had promised to forgive him if he was
sorry. He was sorry. He clasped his hands and raised them towards the
white form, praying with his darkened eyes, praying with all his
trembling body, swaying his head to and fro like a lost creature,
praying with whimpering lips.

--Sorry! Sorry! O sorry!

The slide clicked back and his heart bounded in his breast. The face of
an old priest was at the grating, averted from him, leaning upon a
hand. He made the sign of the cross and prayed of the priest to bless
him for he had sinned. Then, bowing his head, he repeated the CONFITEOR
in fright. At the words MY MOST GRIEVOUS FAULT he ceased, breathless.

--How long is it since your last confession, my child?

--A long time, father.

--A month, my child?

--Longer, father.

--Three months, my child?

--Longer, father.

--Six months?

--Eight months, father.

He had begun. The priest asked:

--And what do you remember since that time?

He began to confess his sins: masses missed, prayers not said, lies.

--Anything else, my child?

Sins of anger, envy of others, gluttony, vanity, disobedience.

--Anything else, my child?

There was no help. He murmured:

--Icommitted sins of impurity, father.

The priest did not turn his head.

--With yourself, my child?

--Andwith others.

--With women, my child?

--Yes, father.

--Were they married women, my child?

He did not know. His sins trickled from his lips, one by one, trickled
in shameful drops from his soul, festering and oozing like a sore, a
squalid stream of vice. The last sins oozed forth, sluggish, filthy.
There was no more to tell. He bowed his head, overcome.

The Priest was silent. Then he asked:

--How old are you, my child?

--Sixteen, father.

The priest passed his hand several times over his face. Then, resting
his forehead against his hand, he leaned towards the grating and, with
eyes still averted, spoke slowly. His voice was weary and old.

--You are very young, my child, he said, and let me implore of you to
give up that sin. It is a terrible sin. It kills the body and it kills
the soul. It is the cause of many crimes and misfortunes. Give it up,
my child, for God's sake. It is dishonourable and unmanly. You cannot
know where that wretched habit will lead you or where it will come
against you. As long as you commit that sin, my poor child, you will
never be worth one farthing to God. Pray to our mother Mary to help
you. She will help you, my child. Pray to Our Blessed Lady when that
sin comes into your mind. I am sure you will do that, will you not? You
repent of all those sins. I am sure you do. And you will promise God
now that by His holy grace you will never offend Him any more by that
wicked sin. You will make that solemn promise to God, will you not?

--Yes, father.

The old and weary voice fell like sweet rain upon his quaking parching
heart. How sweet and sad!

--Do so my poor child. The devil has led you astray. Drive him back to
hell when he tempts you to dishonour your body in that way--the foul
spirit who hates our Lord. Promise God now that you will give up that
sin, that wretched wretched sin.

Blinded by his tears and by the light of God's mercifulness he bent his
head and heard the grave words of absolution spoken and saw the
priest's hand raised above him in token of forgiveness.

--God bless you, my child. Pray for me.

He knelt to say his penance, praying in a corner of the dark nave; and
his prayers ascended to heaven from his purified heart like perfume
streaming upwards from a heart of white rose.

The muddy streets were gay. He strode homeward, conscious of an
invisible grace pervading and making light his limbs. In spite of all
he had done it. He had confessed and God had pardoned him. His soul was
made fair and holy once more, holy and happy.

It would be beautiful to die if God so willed. It was beautiful to live
in grace a life of peace and virtue and forbearance with others.

He sat by the fire in the kitchen, not daring to speak for happiness.
Till that moment he had not known how beautiful and peaceful life could
be. The green square of paper pinned round the lamp cast down a tender
shade. On the dresser was a plate of sausages and white pudding and on
the shelf there were eggs. They would be for the breakfast in the
morning after the communion in the college chapel. White pudding and
eggs and sausages and cups of tea. How simple and beautiful was life
after all! And life lay all before him.

In a dream he fell asleep. In a dream he rose and saw that it was
morning. In a waking dream he went through the quiet morning towards
the college.

The boys were all there, kneeling in their places. He knelt among them,
happy and shy. The altar was heaped with fragrant masses of white
flowers; and in the morning light the pale flames of the candles among
the white flowers were clear and silent as his own soul.

He knelt before the altar with his classmates, holding the altar cloth
with them over a living rail of hands. His hands were trembling and his
soul trembled as he heard the priest pass with the ciborium from
communicant to communicant.

--CORPUS DOMINI NOSTRI.

Could it be? He knelt there sinless and timid; and he would hold upon
his tongue the host and God would enter his purified body.

--IN VITAM ETERNAM. AMEN.

Another life! A life of grace and virtue and happiness! It was true. It
was not a dream from which he would wake. The past was past.

--CORPUS DOMINI NOSTRI.

The ciborium had come to him.

Chapter 4

Sunday was dedicated to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Monday to the
Holy Ghost, Tuesday to the Guardian Angels, Wednesday to saint Joseph,
Thursday to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Friday to the
Suffering Jesus, Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Every morning he hallowed himself anew in the presence of some holy
image or mystery. His day began with an heroic offering of its every
moment of thought or action for the intentions of the sovereign pontiff
and with an early mass. The raw morning air whetted his resolute piety;
and often as he knelt among the few worshippers at the side-altar,
following with his interleaved prayer-book the murmur of the priest, he
glanced up for an instant towards the vested figure standing in the
gloom between the two candles, which were the old and the new
testaments, and imagined that he was kneeling at mass in the catacombs.

His daily life was laid out in devotional areas. By means of
ejaculations and prayers he stored up ungrudgingly for the souls in
purgatory centuries of days and quarantines and years; yet the
spiritual triumph which he felt in achieving with ease so many fabulous
ages of canonical penances did not wholly reward his zeal of prayer,
since he could never know how much temporal punishment he had remitted
by way of suffrage for the agonizing souls; and fearful lest in the
midst of the purgatorial fire, which differed from the infernal only in
that it was not everlasting, his penance might avail no more than a
drop of moisture, he drove his soul daily through an increasing circle
of works of supererogation.

Every part of his day, divided by what he regarded now as the duties of
his station in life, circled about its own centre of spiritual energy.
His life seemed to have drawn near to eternity; every thought, word,
and deed, every instance of consciousness could be made to revibrate
radiantly in heaven; and at times his sense of such immediate
repercussion was so lively that he seemed to feel his soul in devotion
pressing like fingers the keyboard of a great cash register and to see
the amount of his purchase start forth immediately in heaven, not as a
number but as a frail column of incense or as a slender flower.

The rosaries, too, which he said constantly--for he carried his beads
loose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked the
streets--transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vague
unearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless as
they were nameless. He offered up each of his three daily chaplets that
his soul might grow strong in each of the three theological virtues, in
faith in the Father Who had created him, in hope in the Son Who had
redeemed him and in love of the Holy Ghost Who had sanctified him; and
this thrice triple prayer he offered to the Three Persons through Mary
in the name of her joyful and sorrowful and glorious mysteries.

On each of the seven days of the week he further prayed that one of the
seven gifts of the Holy Ghost might descend upon his soul and drive out
of it day by day the seven deadly sins which had defiled it in the
past; and he prayed for each gift on its appointed day, confident that
it would descend upon him, though it seemed strange to him at times
that wisdom and understanding and knowledge were so distinct in their
nature that each should be prayed for apart from the others. Yet he
believed that at some future stage of his spiritual progress this
difficulty would be removed when his sinful soul had been raised up
from its weakness and enlightened by the Third Person of the Most
Blessed Trinity. He believed this all the more, and with trepidation,
because of the divine gloom and silence wherein dwelt the unseen
Paraclete, Whose symbols were a dove and a mighty wind, to sin against
Whom was a sin beyond forgiveness, the eternal mysterious secret Being
to Whom, as God, the priests offered up mass once a year, robed in the
scarlet of the tongues of fire.

The imagery through which the nature and kinship of the Three Persons
of the Trinity were darkly shadowed forth in the books of devotion
which he read--the Father contemplating from all eternity as in a
mirror His Divine Perfections and thereby begetting eternally the
Eternal Son and the Holy Spirit proceeding out of Father and Son from
all eternity--were easier of acceptance by his mind by reason of their
august incomprehensibility than was the simple fact that God had loved
his soul from all eternity, for ages before he had been born into the
world, for ages before the world itself had existed.

He had heard the names of the passions of love and hate pronounced
solemnly on the stage and in the pulpit, had found them set forth
solemnly in books and had wondered why his soul was unable to harbour
them for any time or to force his lips to utter their names with
conviction. A brief anger had often invested him but he had never been
able to make it an abiding passion and had always felt himself passing
out of it as if his very body were being divested with ease of some
outer skin or peel. He had felt a subtle, dark, and murmurous presence
penetrate his being and fire him with a brief iniquitous lust: it, too,
had slipped beyond his grasp leaving his mind lucid and indifferent.
This, it seemed, was the only love and that the only hate his soul
would harbour.

But he could no longer disbelieve in the reality of love, since God
Himself had loved his individual soul with divine love from all
eternity. Gradually, as his soul was enriched with spiritual knowledge,
he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God's
power and love. Life became a divine gift for every moment and
sensation of which, were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging on
the twig of a tree, his soul should praise and thank the Giver. The
world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer existed for
his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love and universality.
So entire and unquestionable was this sense of the divine meaning in
all nature granted to his soul that he could scarcely understand why it
was in any way necessary that he should continue to live. Yet that was
part of the divine purpose and he dared not question its use, he above
all others who had sinned so deeply and so foully against the divine
purpose. Meek and abased by this consciousness of the one eternal
omnipresent perfect reality his soul took up again her burden of
pieties, masses and prayers and sacraments and mortifications, and only
then for the first time since he had brooded on the great mystery of
love did he feel within him a warm movement like that of some newly
born life or virtue of the soul itself. The attitude of rapture in
sacred art, the raised and parted hands, the parted lips and eyes as of
one about to swoon, became for him an image of the soul in prayer,
humiliated and faint before her Creator.

But he had been forewarned of the dangers of spiritual exaltation and
did not allow himself to desist from even the least or lowliest
devotion, striving also by constant mortification to undo the sinful
past rather than to achieve a saintliness fraught with peril. Each of
his senses was brought under a rigorous discipline. In order to mortify
the sense of sight he made it his rule to walk in the street with
downcast eyes, glancing neither to right nor left and never behind him.
His eyes shunned every encounter with the eyes of women. From time to
time also he balked them by a sudden effort of the will, as by lifting
them suddenly in the middle of an unfinished sentence and closing the
book. To mortify his hearing he exerted no control over his voice which
was then breaking, neither sang nor whistled, and made no attempt to
flee from noises which caused him painful nervous irritation such as
the sharpening of knives on the knife board, the gathering of cinders
on the fire-shovel and the twigging of the carpet. To mortify his smell
was more difficult as he found in himself no instinctive repugnance to
bad odours whether they were the odours of the outdoor world, such as
those of dung or tar, or the odours of his own person among which he
had made many curious comparisons and experiments. He found in the end
that the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was a
certain stale fishy stink like that of long-standing urine; and
whenever it was possible he subjected himself to this unpleasant odour.
To mortify the taste he practised strict habits at table, observed to
the letter all the fasts of the church and sought by distraction to
divert his mind from the savours of different foods. But it was to the
mortification of touch he brought the most assiduous ingenuity of
inventiveness. He never consciously changed his position in bed, sat in
the most uncomfortable positions, suffered patiently every itch and
pain, kept away from the fire, remained on his knees all through the
mass except at the gospels, left part of his neck and face undried so
that air might sting them and, whenever he was not saying his beads,
carried his arms stiffly at his sides like a runner and never in his
pockets or clasped behind him.

He had no temptations to sin mortally. It surprised him however to find
that at the end of his course of intricate piety and self-restraint he
was so easily at the mercy of childish and unworthy imperfections. His
prayers and fasts availed him little for the suppression of anger at
hearing his mother sneeze or at being disturbed in his devotions. It
needed an immense effort of his will to master the impulse which urged
him to give outlet to such irritation. Images of the outbursts of
trivial anger which he had often noted among his masters, their
twitching mouths, close-shut lips and flushed cheeks, recurred to his
memory, discouraging him, for all his practice of humility, by the
comparison. To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was
harder for him than any fasting or prayer and it was his constant
failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at
last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts
and scruples. His soul traversed a period of desolation in which the
sacraments themselves seemed to have turned into dried-up sources. His
confession became a channel for the escape of scrupulous and unrepented
imperfections. His actual reception of the eucharist did not bring him
the same dissolving moments of virginal self-surrender as did those
spiritual communions made by him sometimes at the close of some visit
to the Blessed Sacrament. The book which he used for these visits was
an old neglected book written by saint Alphonsus Liguori, with fading
characters and sere foxpapered leaves. A faded world of fervent love
and virginal responses seemed to be evoked for his soul by the reading
of its pages in which the imagery of the canticles was interwoven with
the communicant's prayers. An inaudible voice seemed to caress the
soul, telling her names and glories, bidding her arise as for espousal
and come away, bidding her look forth, a spouse, from Amana and from
the mountains of the leopards; and the soul seemed to answer with the
same inaudible voice, surrendering herself: INTER UBERA MEA
COMMORABITUR.

This idea of surrender had a perilous attraction for his mind now that
he felt his soul beset once again by the insistent voices of the flesh
which began to murmur to him again during his prayers and meditations.
It gave him an intense sense of power to know that he could, by a
single act of consent, in a moment of thought, undo all that he had
done. He seemed to feel a flood slowly advancing towards his naked feet
and to be waiting for the first faint timid noiseless wavelet to touch
his fevered skin. Then, almost at the instant of that touch, almost at
the verge of sinful consent, he found himself standing far away from
the flood upon a dry shore, saved by a sudden act of the will or a
sudden ejaculation; and, seeing the silver line of the flood far away
and beginning again its slow advance towards his feet, a new thrill of
power and satisfaction shook his soul to know that he had not yielded
nor undone all.

When he had eluded the flood of temptation many times in this way he
grew troubled and wondered whether the grace which he had refused to
lose was not being filched from him little by little. The clear
certitude of his own immunity grew dim and to it succeeded a vague fear
that his soul had really fallen unawares. It was with difficulty that
he won back his old consciousness of his state of grace by telling
himself that he had prayed to God at every temptation and that the
grace which he had prayed for must have been given to him inasmuch as
God was obliged to give it. The very frequency and violence of
temptations showed him at last the truth of what he had heard about the
trials of the saints. Frequent and violent temptations were a proof
that the citadel of the soul had not fallen and that the devil raged to
make it fall.

Often when he had confessed his doubts and scruples--some momentary
inattention at prayer, a movement of trivial anger in his soul, or a
subtle wilfulness in speech or act--he was bidden by his confessor to
name some sin of his past life before absolution was given him. He
named it with humility and shame and repented of it once more. It
humiliated and shamed him to think that he would never be freed from it
wholly, however holily he might live or whatever virtues or perfections
he might attain. A restless feeling of guilt would always be present
with him: he would confess and repent and be absolved, confess and
repent again and be absolved again, fruitlessly. Perhaps that first
hasty confession wrung from him by the fear of hell had not been good?
Perhaps, concerned only for his imminent doom, he had not had sincere
sorrow for his sin? But the surest sign that his confession had been
good and that he had had sincere sorrow for his sin was, he knew, the
amendment of his life.

--I have amended my life, have I not? he asked himself

The director stood in the embrasure of the window, his back to the
light, leaning an elbow on the brown crossblind, and, as he spoke and
smiled, slowly dangling and looping the cord of the other blind,
Stephen stood before him, following for a moment with his eyes the
waning of the long summer daylight above the roofs or the slow deft
movements of the priestly fingers. The priest's face was in total
shadow, but the waning daylight from behind him touched the deeply
grooved temples and the curves of the skull.

Stephen followed also with his ears the accents and intervals of the
priest's voice as he spoke gravely and cordially of indifferent themes,
the vacation which had just ended, the colleges of the order abroad,
the transference of masters. The grave and cordial voice went on easily
with its tale and in the pauses Stephen felt bound to set it on again
with respectful questions. He knew that the tale was a prelude and his
mind waited for the sequel. Ever since the message of summons had come
for him from the director his mind had struggled to find the meaning of
the message; and, during the long restless time he had sat in the
college parlour waiting for the director to come in, his eyes had
wandered from one sober picture to another around the walls and his
mind wandered from one guess to another until the meaning of the
summons had almost become clear. Then, just as he was wishing that some
unforeseen cause might prevent the director from coming, he had heard
the handle of the door turning and the swish of a soutane.

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