Πέμπτη 19 Απριλίου 2018

James Joyce: [sweet sinking of consciousness]




[...]

To this unknown verses were now regularly inscribed and it seemed that the evil dream of love which Stephen chose to commemorate in these verses lay veritably upon the world now m a season of « damp violet mist. He had abandoned his Madonna, » he had forsaken his word and he had withdrawn
sternly from his little world and surely it was not wonderful that his solitude should propel him to frenetic outbursts of a young man’s passion and to outbursts of loneliness? This quality of the mind which so reveals itself is called (when incorrigible) a decadence but if we are to take a general view of [life] the world we cannot but see a process to life through corruption. There were moments for him, however, when such a process would have seemed intolerable, life on any common terms an intolerable offence, and at such moments he prayed for nothing and lamented for nothing but he felt with a sweet sinking of consciousness that if the end came to him it was in the arms of the unknown that it would come to him:

« The dawn awakes with tremulous alarms.
How grey, how cold, how bare!
O, hold me still white arms, encircling arms!
And hide me, heavy hair!

Life is a dream, a dream. The hour is done
And antiphon is said.
We go from the light and falsehood of the sun
To bleak wastes of the dead. »

[...]


STEPHEN HERO

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