A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — John Shaqi
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManJoyce, James
General
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James
Artists -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; Bildungsromans; Dublin (Ireland) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
—Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union when
Bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess
Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of
their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they
denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confession box?
And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of Terence Bellew MacManus?
His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his
own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw
of coarse scorn.
—O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of
God’s eye!
Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:
—Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion
come first.
Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:
—Mrs Riordan, don’t excite yourself answering them.
—God and religion before everything! Dante cried. God and religion
before the world.
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with
a crash.
—Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for
Ireland!
—John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled
up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the
air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside
a cobweb.
—No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too much God in Ireland.
Away with God!
—Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost
spitting in his face.
Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again,
talking to him from both sides reasonably. He stared before him out of
his dark flaming eyes, repeating:
—Away with God, I say!
Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table, upsetting
her napkinring which rolled slowly along the carpet and came to rest
against the foot of an easychair. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed
her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently and
shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage:
—Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!
The door slammed behind her.
Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on
his hands with a sob of pain.
—Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!
He sobbed loudly and bitterly.
Stephen, raising his terrorstricken face, saw that his father’s eyes
were full of tears.
The fellows talked together in little groups.
One fellow said:
—They were caught near the Hill of Lyons.
—Who caught them?
—Mr Gleeson and the minister. They were on a car.
The same fellow added:
—A fellow in the higher line told me.
Fleming asked:
—But why did they run away, tell us?
—I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of
the rector’s room.
—Who fecked it?
—Kickham’s brother. And they all went shares in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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