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Epiphany by James Joyce

08Feb 1903, JAJ to brother Stannie: "Words cannot measure my contempt for AE at present... and his spiritual friends. I did well however to leave my MSS with him for I had a motive. However I shall take them back as my latest additions to 'Epiphany' might not be to his liking..." [SL14]

"Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once... " [Proteus]

[So you should picture these as being carefully inscribed on green oval leaves (leaves of paper, not straight from a plant!) by that precious 21-year-old.]

[Bray: in the parlour of the house in Martello Terrace.]

Mr Vance-- (comes in with a stick) ...O, you know, he'll have to apologise, Mrs Joyce.

Mrs Joyce-- O yes... Do you hear that, Jim?

Mr Vance-- Or else-- if he doesn't-- the eagles'll come and pull out his eyes.

Mrs Joyce-- O, but I'm sure he will apologise.

Joyce-- (under the table, to himself)

--Pull out his eyes,
Apologise,
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes.

Apologise,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise.

No school tomorrow: it is Saturday night in winter: I sit by the fire. Soon they will be returning with provisions, meat and vegetables, tea and bread and butter, and white pudding that makes a noise on the pan... I sit reading a story of Alsace, turning over the yellow pages, watching the men and women in their strange dresses. It pleases me to read of their ways; through them I seem to touch the life of a land beyond them to enter into communion with the German people. Dearest illusion, friend of my youth! ...In him I have imaged myself. Our lives are still sacred in their intimate sympathies. I am with him at night when he reads the books of the philosophers or some tale of ancient times. I am with him when he wanders alone or with one whom he has never seen, that young girl who puts around him arms that have no malice in them, offering her simple, abundant love, hearing and answering his soul he knows not how.

The quick light shower is over but tarries, a cluster of diamonds, among the shrubs of the quadrangle where an exhalation arises from the black earth. In the colonnade are the girls, an April company. They are leaving shelter, with many a doubting glance, with a prattle of trim boots and the pretty rescue of petticoats, under umbrellas, a light armoury, upheld at cunning angles. They are returning to the convent-- demure corridors and simple dormitories, a white rosary of hours-- having heard the fair promises of Spring, that well-graced ambassador...

Amid a flat rain-swept country stands a high plain building, with windows that filter the obscure daylight. Three hundred boys, noisy and hungry, sit at long tables eating beef fringed with green fat and vegetables that are still rank of the earth.

High up in the old, dark-windowed house: firelight in the narrow room: dusk outside. An old woman bustles about, making tea; she tells of the changes, her odd ways, and what the priest and the doctor said... I hear her words in the distance. I wander among the coals, among the ways of adventure... Christ! What is in the doorway? ...A skull-- a monkey; a creature drawn hither to the fire, to the voices: a silly creature.

-- Is that Mary Ellen?--

-- No, Eliza, it's Jim--

-- O... O, goodnight, Jim--

-- D'ye want anything, Eliza?--

-- I thought it was Mary Ellen... I thought you were Mary Ellen, Jim--

The children who have stayed latest are getting on their things to go home for the party is over. This is the last tram. The lank brown horses know it and shake their bells to the clear night, in admonition. The conductor talks to the driver; both nod often in the green light of the lamp. There is nobody near. We seem to listen, I on the upper step and she on the lower. She comes up to my step many times and goes down again, between our phrases, and once or twice remains beside me, forgetting to go down, and then goes down... Let be; let be... And now she does not urge her vanities,-- her fine dress and sash and long black stockings,-- for now (wisdom of children) we seem to know that this end will please us better than any end we have laboured for.

Here are we come together, wayfarers; here are we housed, amid intricate streets, by night and silence closely covered. In amity we rest together, well content, no more remembering the deviousness of the ways that we have come. What moves upon me from the darkness subtle and murmurous as a flood, passionate and fierce with an indecent movement of the loins? What leaps, crying in answer, out of me, as eagle to eagle in mid air, crying to overcome, crying for an iniquitous abandonment?

A small field of stiff weeds and thistles alive with confused forms, half-men, half-goats. Dragging their great tails they move hither and thither, aggressively. Their faces are lightly bearded, pointed and grey as indiarubber. A secret personal sin directs them, holding them now, as in reaction, to constant malevolence. One is clasping about his body a torn flannel jacket; another complains monotonously as his beard catches in the stiff weeds. They move about me, enclosing me, that old sin sharpening their eyes to cruelty, swishing through the fields in slow circles, thrusting upwards their terrific faces. Help!

It is time to go away now-- breakfast is ready. I'll say another prayer... I am hungry, yet I would like to stay here in this quiet chapel where the mass has come and gone so quietly... Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! Tomorrow and every day after I hope I shall bring you some virtue as an offering for I know you will be pleased with me if I do. Now, goodbye for the present... O, the beautiful sunlight in the avenue and O, the sunlight in my heart!

Dublin: at Sheehy's, Belvedere Place

Joyce-- I knew you meant him. But you're wrong about his age.
Maggie Sheehy-- (leans forward to speak seriously) Why, how old is he?
Joyce-- Seventy-two.
Maggie Sheehy-- Is he?

Yes-- they are the two sisters. She who is churning with stout arms (their butter is famous) looks dark and unhappy; the other is happy because she had her way. Her name is R... Rina. I know the verb 'to be' in their language.

-- Are you Rina?--

I knew she was.

But here he is himself in a coat with tails and an old-fashioned high hat. He ignores them: he walks along with tiny steps, jutting out the tails of his coat... My goodness! how small he is! He must be very old and vain-- maybe he isn't what I... It's funny that two big women fell out over this little man... But then he's the greatest man on earth.

Mullingar: a Sunday in July: noon

Tobin-- (walking noisily with thick boots and tapping the road with his stick) ...O there's nothing like marriage for making a fellow steady. Before I came here to the Examiner I used to knock about with fellows and boose... Now I've a good house and... I go home in the evening and if I want a drink... well, I can have it... My advice to every young fellow that can afford it is: marry young.

In Mullingar: an evening in autumn

The Lame Beggar-- (gripping his stick) ...It was you called out after me yesterday.
The Two Children-- (gazing at him) ...No, sir.
The Lame Beggar-- O, yes it was, though... (moving his stick up and down) ...But mind what I'm telling you... D'ye see that stick?
The Two Children-- Yes, sir.
The Lame Beggar-- Well, if ye call out after me any more I'll cut ye open with that stick. I'll cut the livers out o' ye... (explains himself) ...D'ye hear me? I'll cut ye open. I'll cut the livers and the lights out o' ye.

The Young Lady-- (drawling discreetly) ...O, yes... I was... at the... cha... pel...

The Young Gentleman-- (inaudibly) ...I... (again inaudibly) ...I...

The Young Lady-- (softly) ...O... but you're... ve... ry... wick... ed...

Hanna Sheehy-- O, there are sure to be great crowds.
Skeffington-- In fact, it'll be, as our friend Jocax would say, the day of the rabblement.
Maggie Sheehy-- (declaims)-- Even now the rabblement may be standing by the door." [cw69]

Mrs Joyce-- (crimson, trembling, appears at the parlour door) ...Jim!

Joyce-- (at the piano) ...Yes?

Mrs Joyce-- Do you know anything about the body? ...What ought I do? ...There's some matter coming away from the hole in Georgie's stomach... Did you ever hear of that happening?

Joyce-- (surprised) ...I don't know...

Mrs Joyce-- Ought I send for the doctor, do you think?

Joyce-- I don't know... What hole?

Mrs Joyce-- (impatient) ...The hole we all have... here. (points)

They are all asleep. I will go up now... He lies on my bed where I lay last night! they have covered him with a sheet and closed his eyes with pennies... Poor little fellow! We have often laughed together. He bore his body very lightly... I am very sorry he died. I cannot pray for him as the others do. Poor little fellow! Everything else is so uncertain!

Dublin: in the National Library

Skeffington-- I was sorry to hear of the death of your brother... sorry we didn't know in time...to have been at the funeral...
Joyce-- O, he was very young... a boy...
Skeffington-- Still... it hurts...

That is no dancing. Go down before the people, young boy, and dance for them... He runs out darkly-clad, lithe and serious to dance before the multitude. There is no music for him. He begins to dance far below in the amphitheatre with a slow and supple movement of the limbs, passing from movement to movement in all the grace of youth and distance, until he seems to be a whirling body, a spider wheeling amid space, a star. I desire to shout to him words of praise, to shout arrogantly over the heads of the multitude 'See! See!' ...His dancing is not the dancing of harlots, the dance of the daughter of Herodias. It goes up from the midst of the people, sudden and young and male, and falls again to earth in tremulous sobbing to die upon its triumph.

A white mist is falling in slow flakes. The path leads me down to an obscure pool. Something is moving in the pool; it is an arctic beast with a rough yellow coat. I thrust in my stick and as he rises out of the water, I see that his back slopes towards the croup and that he is very sluggish. I am not afraid but thrusting at him drive him before me. He moves his paws heavily and mutters words of some language which I do not understand.

Dull clouds have covered the sky. Where three roads meet and before a swampy beach a big dog is recumbent. From time to time he lifts his muzzle in the air and utters a prolonged sorrowful howl. People stop to look at him and pass on; some remain, arrested, it may be, by that lamentation in which they seem to hear the utterance of their own sorrow that had once its voice but now is voiceless, a servant of laborious days. Rain begins to fall.

Her arm is laid for a moment on my knees and then withdrawn and her eyes have revealed her-- secret, vigilant, an enclosed garden-- in a moment. I remember a harmony of red and white that was made for one like her, 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 I remember that response whereto the perfect tenderness of the body and the soul with all its mystery have gone: Inter ubera mea commorabitur.

The quick light shower is over but tarries, a cluster of diamonds, among the shrubs of the quadrangle where an exhalation arises from the black earth. In the colonnade are the girls, an April company. They are leaving shelter, with many a doubting glance, with a prattle of trim boots and the pretty rescue of petticoats, under umbrellas, a light armoury, upheld at cunning angles. They are returning to the convent-- demure corridors and simple dormitories, a white rosary of hours-- having heard the fair promises of Spring, that well-graced ambassador...

Amid a flat rain-swept country stands a high plain building, with windows that filter the obscure daylight. Three hundred boys, noisy and hungry, sit at long tables eating beef fringed with green fat and vegetables that are still rank of the earth.

A long curving gallery: from the floor arise pillars of dark vapours. It is peopled by the images of fabulous kings, set in stone. Their hands are folded upon their knees, in token of weariness, and their eyes are darkened for the errors of men go up before them for ever as dark vapours.

Faintly, under the heavy summer night, through the silence of the town which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary lover whom no carresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the Dublin road. Not so faintly now as they come near the bridge: and in a moment as they pass the dark windows the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. They are heard now far away-- hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as diamonds, hurrying beyond the grey, still marshes to what journey's end-- what heart-- bearing what tidings?

The spell of arms and voices-- the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces, and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone,-- come. And the voices say with them, We are your people. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.

London: in a house at Kennington

Eva Leslie-- Yes, Maudie Leslie's my sister an' Fred Leslie's my brother-- yev 'eard of Fred Leslie? ...(musing)... O, 'e's a whoite-arsed bugger... 'E's awoy at present...

(later)I told you someun went with me ten toimes one noight... That's Fred-- my own brother Fred... (musing)... 'E is 'andsome... O I do love Fred...

The human crowd swarms in the enclosure, moving through the slush. A fat woman passes, her dress lifted boldly, her face nozzling in an orange. A pale young man with a Cockney accent does tricks in his shirtsleeves and drinks out of a bottle. A little old man has mice on an umbrella; a policeman in heavy boots charges down and seizes the umbrella: the little old man disappears. Bookies are bawling out names and prices; one of them screams with the voice of a child-- "Bonny Boy!" "Bonny Boy!" ...Human creatures are swarming in the enclosure, moving backwards and forwards through the thick ooze. Some ask if the race is going on; they are answered "Yes" and "No." A band begins to play... A beautiful brown horse, with a yellow rider upon him, flashes far away in the sunlight.

They pass in twos and threes amid the life of the boulevard, walking like people who have leisure in a place lit up for them. They are in the pastry-cook's, chattering, crushing little fabrics of pastry, or seated silently at tables by the café door, or descending from carriages with a busy stir of garments, soft as the voice of the adulterer. They pass in an air of perfumes: under the perfumes their bodies have a warm humid smell... No man has loved them, and they have not loved themselves: they have given nothing for all that has been given them.

She comes at night when the city is still, invisible, inaudible, all unsummoned. She comes from her ancient seat to visit the least of her children, mother most venerable, as though he had never been alien to her. She knows the inmost heart; therefore, she is gentle, nothing exacting, saying, I am susceptible of change, an imaginative influence in the hearts of my children. Who has pity for you when you are sad among the strangers? Years and years I loved you when you lay in my womb.

I lie along the deck, against the engine-house, from which the smell of lukewarm grease exhales. Gigantic mists are marching under the French cliffs, enveloping the coast from headland to headland. The sea moves with the sound of many scales... Beyond the misty walls, in the dark cathedral church of Our Lady, I hear the bright, even voices of boys singing before the altar there.

She is engaged. She dances with them in the round-- a white dress lightly lifted as she dances, a white spray in her hair; eyes a little averted, a faint glow on her cheek. Her hand is in mine for a moment, softest of merchandise.

-- You very seldom come here now.--

-- Yes I am becoming something of a recluse.

-- I saw your brother the other day... He is very like you.--

-- Really?--

She dances with them in the round-- evenly, discreetly, giving herself to none. The white spray is ruffled as she dances, and when she is in shadow the glow is deeper on her cheek.

Two mourners push on through the crowd. The girl, one hand catching the woman's skirt, runs in advance. The girl's face is the face of a fish, discoloured and oblique-eyed; the woman's face is small and square, the face of a bargainer. The girl, her mouth distorted, looks up at the woman to see if it is time to cry; the woman, settling a flat bonnet, hurries on towards the mortuary chapel.

[Dublin: at the corner of Connaught St, Phibsborough]

The Little Male Child-- (at the garden gate) ..Na.. o.

The First Young Lady-- (half kneeling, takes his hand)-- Well, is Mabie your sweetheart?

The Little Male Child-- Na... o.

The Second Young Lady-- (bending over him, looks up)-- Who is your sweetheart?

My hypothesis is that this collection of epiphanies, arranged in autobiographical order, gave birth to Stephen Hero by a process of gap-filling.

Mary Daedalus           John Butler
Simon Daedalus          William Judge
Stephen Daedalus        Joseph Magennis
Maurice Daedalus        John Andrews
Isabel Daedalus       Christopher McCann
   _    _             Hon Mrs Ambrose
  (  ><  )            James MacCormack
   ~    ~                  _    _
Mrs Riordan               (  ><  )
John Casey                 ~    ~
Aunt Essie                              Clare Howard
Uncle John              Eileen Dixon
Aunt Brigid             Emma Clery         Gertrude Mayne [exxed]
Uncle Jim               Martha Albin/Sarah Albin
Mike Flynn              Charlotte Harrington
Richard Sleater         Esther Osvalt
Vincent Hearne/Heron    Elinor Forde
Fr MacNally
Mr ?Demers/Mr Tate
   _    _
  (  ><  )
   ~    ~
Fr Webster
Fr Dillon
Miles Davin
James Brennan                       Chap VIII
Matthew Lister
Thomas Nash                   1) Business complications
Oliver Flanagan               2) Aspect of the city.
Patrick Hoey                  3) Christmas party
Owen Hoey                     4) Visits to friends
Annie Hoey                    5) Belvedere decided on

WBY in 1903 wrote up his version of his first encounter with JAJ in Oct 1902: [e102]

I went out into the street and there a young man came up to me... I asked him to come with me to the smoking room of a restaurant in O'Connell Street, and read me a beautiful though immature and eccentric harmony of little prose descriptions and meditations. [ie, epiphanies] He had thrown over metrical form, he said, that he might get a form so fluent that it would respond to the motions of the spirit...

09Mar 1903: "I have written fifteen epiphanies-- of which twelve are insertions, and three additions" [SL17] (so there was a sequence)

"By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. He told Cranly that the clock of the Ballast Office was capable of an epiphany. ...'I will pass it time after time... It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublin's street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany... Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised... After the analysis which discovers the second quality [symmetry, following wholeness] the mind makes the only possible synthesis and discovers the third quality [claritas or radiance]. This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany." (JAJ, Stephen Hero) [more]

Gogarty: "Probably Fr. Darlington had taught him, as an aside in his Latin class-- for Joyce knew no Greek-- that 'Epiphany' meant 'a showing forth'. So he recorded under 'Epiphany' any showing forth of the mind by which he considered one gave oneself away." [aiwgdss295]

Curran: Part I of D'Annunzio's Il Fuoco was titled 'Epiphany of Fire' which may have been where the word first caught Joyce's attention [cpc110] (Joyce was reading D'A in Italian in 1900, Il Fuoco had been translated into English in 1899.) [cpc9, 110]

S&K: 01 03 06

06 refers to the novels of Erckmann-Chatrian which Joyce probably read in his last year at Belvedere, 1897-98.

The following is offered in Stephen Hero as being the inspiration of the series, described as taking place in Eccles street, which would have been along the way home from downtown between Oct 1901 and Sept 1902 when the Joyce family was living at 32 Glengariff parade, or, even more likely, directly on the way home after Sept 1902, in Cabra:

(Ibsen turned 72 in March 1900. cf treatment of Maggie here with "he began loftily diagnosis of the younglings" PoA04)

(cf SH169 'acme of unconvincingness')

[Stannie claims this represents him, written pre Mar 1904: cdd20]

attends race-meeting? [pc204]

Links: article, ditto, multipage, Tim O'Brien

Translations: Danish

Settings: Victory

cf Portrait [context] [Aquinas] (halfway down page). Essays: Valente, Landow, Eco, Schiralli, Manty

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Ulysses:
chapters: summary : anchors : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12a 12b 13 14a 14b 15a 15b 15c 15d 16a 16b 17a 17b 18a 18b
notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
reference: Bloom : clocktime : prices : schemata : Tower : riddles : errors : Homeric parallels : [B-L Odyssey] : Eolus tropes : parable : Oxen : Circe : 1904 : Thom's : Gold Cup : Seaside Girls : M'appari : acatalectic : search
riddles: overview : Rudy : condom : Gerty : Hades : Strand : murder : Eccles
maps: Ulysses : WRocks : Strand : VR tour : aerial tour : Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe
editing: etexts : lapses : Gabler : capitals : commas : compounds : deletes : punct : typists
drafts: prequel : Proteus : Cyclops : Circe
closereadings: notes : Oxen : Circe

Finnegans Wake:
txt: [I.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 II.1 2 3 4 III.1 2 3 4 IV] : [HTML]
shorter: main : I.1-4 : 5-8 : II.1-2 : 3-4 : III.1-2 : 3 : 4 : IV
reference: thunder : Quinet : waves : [MP3 ALP] : FrALP : ItalALP : ch4 digest : Finn's Hotel : JAJquotes : search
drafts: NewGame : ROC : Kev : B&P : T&I : HCE : Mmlj : Cad : Rev : Pacata
closereadings: notes : ROC : T&S : Kev : B&P : T&I : HCE : Mmlj : Cad
theory: AI : archetypes : WakeOS : notes : origin : Scribble

Portrait:
ref: main : ch1 : ch1 notes : ch2 : 3 : 4 : 5a : 5b : Pinamonti : [notes] : [Cave] : [Gabler]

SHero: outline : quotes : PoA04

Dubliners:
etexts: Sis : Sis04 : Sis05 : Enc : Araby : Evel : After : 2Gall : Board : LitCl : Cntr : Clay : Pain : Ivy : Moth : Grace : Dead
guides: main : [Cave] : [Peng]

Other:
Exiles: Ex1 : 2 : 3

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