3.1  Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought

3.2  through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and

3.3  seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust:

3.4  coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he

3.5  was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his

3.6  sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO

3.7  DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane,

3.8  adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if

3.9  not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

3.10  Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and

3.11  shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A

3.12  very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the

3.13  NACHEINANDER. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the

3.14  audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles

3.15  o'er his base, fell through the NEBENEINANDER ineluctably! I am getting on

3.16  nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do.

3.17  My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, NEBENEINANDER.

3.18  Sounds solid: made by the mallet of LOS DEMIURGOS. Am I walking into

3.19  eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea

3.20  money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

3.21  WON'T YOU COME TO SANDYMOUNT,

3.22  MADELINE THE MARE?

3.23  Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs

3.24  marching. No, agallop: DELINE THE MARE.

3.25  Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I

3.26  open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. BASTA! I will see if I can see.

3.27  See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world

3.28  without end.3.29They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently,

3.30  FRAUENZIMMER: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet

3.31  sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty

3.32  mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp

3.33  poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence

3.34  MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride

3.35  Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing.

3.36  What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord,

3.37  hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of

3.38  all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your

3.39  OMPHALOS. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought,

3.40  nought, one.

3.41  Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had

3.42  no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut

3.43  vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from

3.44  everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

3.45  Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the

3.46  man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her

3.47  breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the

3.48  ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A LEX ETERNA

3.49  stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son

3.50  are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring

3.51  his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred

3.52  heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With

3.53  beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a

3.54  widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

3.55  Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming,

3.56  waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds

3.57  of Mananaan.

3.58  I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half

3.59  twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.

3.60  Yes, I must

.3.61  His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My

3.62  consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother

3.63  Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt

3.64  Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell

3.65  us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into!

3.66  De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother,

3.67  the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter

3.68  sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no3.69wonder, by Christ!

3.70  I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take

3.71  me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.

3.72  --It's Stephen, sir.

3.73  --Let him in. Let Stephen in.

3.74  A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.

3.75  --We thought you were someone else.

3.76  In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over

3.77  the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the

3.78  upper moiety.

3.79  --Morrow, nephew.

3.80  He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the

3.81  eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and

3.82  common searches and a writ of DUCES TECUM. A bogoak frame over his bald

3.83  head: Wilde's REQUIESCAT. The drone of his misleading whistle brings

3.84  Walter back.

3.85--Yes, sir?

3.86  --Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?

3.87  --Bathing Crissie, sir.

3.88  Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love.

3.89  --No, uncle Richie ...

3.90  --Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!

3.91  --Uncle Richie, really ...

3.92  --Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.

3.93  Walter squints vainly for a chair.

3.94  --He has nothing to sit down on, sir.

3.95  --He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.

3.96  Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs

3.97  here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better.

3.98  We have nothing in the house but backache pills.

3.99  ALL'ERTA!

3.100  He drones bars of Ferrando's ARIA DI SORTITA. The grandest number,

3.101  Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.

3.102  His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air,

3.103  his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.

3.104  This wind is sweeter.

3.105  Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry

3.106  you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of

3.107  them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's

3.108  library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For

3.109 whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his

3.110  kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the

3.111  moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine

3.112  faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father,--

3.113  furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! DESCENDE,

3.114  CALVE, UT NE AMPLIUS DECALVERIS. A garland of grey hair on his comminated

3.115  head see him me clambering down to the footpace (DESCENDE!), clutching a

3.116  monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace

3.117  and echo, assisting about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of

3.118  jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat

3.119  with the fat of kidneys of wheat.

3.120  And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it.

3.121  Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.

3.122  Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own

3.123  cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that,

3.124  invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his

3.125  brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second

3.126  bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard

3.127  (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong.

3.128  Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were

3.129  awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might

3.130  not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the

3.131  fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet

3.132  street. O SI, CERTO! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a

3.133  squaw. More tell me, more still!! On the top of the Howth tram alone

3.134  crying to the rain: Naked women! NAKED WOMEN! What about that, eh?

3.135  What about what? What else were they invented for?

3.136  Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was

3.137  young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause

3.138  earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one

3.139  saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles.

3.140  Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful.

3.141 O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply

3.142  deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the

3.143  world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few

3.144  thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like

3.145  a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels

3.146  that one is at one with one who once ...

3.147  The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a

3.148  damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the

3.149  unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.

3.150  Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward

3.151  sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden

3.152  of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up,

3.153  stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of

3.154  dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark

3.155  cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach

3.156  a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown

3.157  steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.

3.158  He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going

3.159  there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the

3.160  firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse.

3.161  --QUI VOUS A MIS DANS CETTE FICHUE POSITION?

3.162  --C'EST LE PIGEON, JOSEPH.

3.163  Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar

3.164  MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird,

3.165  he lapped the sweet LAIT CHAUD with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face.

3.166  Lap, LAPIN. He hopes to win in the GROS LOTS. About the nature of women he

3.167  read in Michelet. But he must send me LA VIE DE JESUS by M. Leo Taxil.

3.168  Lent it to his friend.

3.169  --C'EST TORDANT, VOUS SAVEZ. MOI, JE SUIS SOCIALISTE. JE NE CROIS PAS EN

3.170  L'EXISTENCE DE DIEU. FAUT PAS LE DIRE A MON PERE.

3.171  --IL CROIT?

3.172  --MON PERE, OUI.

3.173  SCHLUSS. He laps.

3.174  My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I

3.175  want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other

3.176  devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: PHYSIQUES, CHIMIQUES ET

3.177  NATURELLES. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of MOU EN CIVET, fleshpots of

3.178  Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone:

3.179  when I was in Paris; BOUL' MICH', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched

3.180  tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere.

3.181  Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was

3.182  seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat,

3.183  nose. LUI, C'EST MOI. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.

3.184  Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a

3.185  dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door

3.186  of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache.

3.187  ENCORE DEUX MINUTES. Look clock. Must get. FERME. Hired dog! Shoot him

3.188  to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass

3.189  buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all

3.190  right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a

3.191  shake. O, that's all only all right.

3.192  You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after

3.193  fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt

3.194  from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: EUGE! EUGE! Pretending to speak

3.195  broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the

3.196  slimy pier at Newhaven. COMMENT? Rich booty you brought back; LE TUTU,

3.197  five tattered numbers of PANTALON BLANC ET CULOTTE ROUGE; a blue

3.198  French telegram, curiosity to show:

3.199  --Nother dying come home father.

3.200  The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.

3.201  THEN HERE'S A HEALTH TO MULLIGAN'S AUNT

3.202  AND I'LL TELL YOU THE REASON WHY.

3.203  SHE ALWAYS KEPT THINGS DECENT IN

3.204  THE HANNIGAN FAMILEYE.

3.205  His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows,

3.206  along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled

3.207  stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is

3.208  there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.

3.209  Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of

3.210  farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.

3.211  Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed

3.212  housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne

3.213  and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth

3.214  CHAUSSONS of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the PUS of FLAN BRETON.

3.215  Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.

3.216  Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through

3.217  fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his

3.218  white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. UN DEMI

3.219  SETIER! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at

3.220  his beck. IL EST IRLANDAIS. HOLLANDAIS? NON FROMAGE. DEUX IRLANDAIS, NOUS,

3.221  IRLANDE, VOUS SAVEZ AH, OUI! She thought you wanted a cheese HOLLANDAIS.

3.222  Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a

3.223  fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his

3.224  postprandial. Well: SLAINTE! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined

3.225  breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained

3.226  plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the

3.227  Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E,

3.228  pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes

3.229  our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian

3.230  shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M.

3.231  Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen

3.232  Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. VIEILLE OGRESSE with the DENTS

3.233  JAUNES. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, LA PATRIE, M. Millevoye, Felix

3.234  Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, BONNE A TOUT FAIRE,

3.235  who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. MOI FAIRE, she said, TOUS

3.236  LES MESSIEURS. Not this MONSIEUR, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a

3.237  most private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother,

3.238  most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.

3.239  The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose

3.240  tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw

3.241  facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away,

3.242  authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms,

3.243  drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed,

3.244  wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.

3.245  Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell

3.246  you. I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love

3.247  he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls

3.248  of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward

3.249  in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides,

3.250  Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the

3.251 dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short

3.252  night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the

3.253  gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her

3.254  outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers.

3.255  Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and

3.256  undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a

3.257  job one time. MON FILS, soldier of France. I taught him to sing THE BOYS

3.258  OF KILKENNY ARE STOUT ROARING BLADES. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice

3.259  that. Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes

3.260  like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.

3.261 O, O THE BOYS OF

3.262 KILKENNY ...

3.263  Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he

3.264  them. Remembering thee, O Sion.

3.265  He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his

3.266  boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air

3.267  of seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship,

3.268  am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking

3.269  soil. Turn back.

3.270  Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in

3.271  new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the

3.272  barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are

3.273  sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep

3.274  blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback

3.275  chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to

3.276  clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes.

3.277  A shut door of a silent tower, entombing their--blind bodies, the

3.278  panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his feet up from

3.279  the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My

3.280  soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the

3.281  path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood.

3.282  The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get

3.283  back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the

3.284  sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant

3.285  in a grike.

3.286  A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the

3.287  gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. UN COCHE ENSABLE Louis Veuillot called

3.288  Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted

3.289  here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats.

3.290  Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the

3.291  past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the

3.292  bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my

3.293  steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman.

3.294  A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand.

3.295  Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be

3.296  master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther

3.297  away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The

3.298  two maries. They have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see

3.299  you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who?

3.300  Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their

3.301  bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs

3.302  of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of

3.303  gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting,

3.304  hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of

3.305  jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling,

3.306  hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their

3.307  blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen

3.308  Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke

3.309  to no-one: none to me.

3.310  The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my

3.311  enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. TERRIBILIA MEDITANS.

3.312  A primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you

3.313  pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The

3.314  Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's

3.315 false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and

3.316  Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All

3.317  kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from