James Joyce

“ BLOOM: No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms down.)
CORNY KELLEHER: (Scratches his nape.) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls to Stephen.) Eh! (He calls again.) Eh! He’s covered with shavings anyhow. Take care they didn’t lift anything off him.
BLOOM: No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
CORNY KELLEHER: Ah, well, he’ll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I’ll shove along. (He laughs.) I’ve a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. ”

“ BLOOM: I say, look...
STEPHEN: Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (He cries, his vulture talons sharpened.) Hola! Hillyho!
(Simon Dedalus’ voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.)
SIMON: That’s all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings.) Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn’t let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! Haihoop! ”

“ A gnawing sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelings though not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of evening falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. ”

“ Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits.
—Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.
—I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered.
Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes. ”

“ Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at his tail. ”

“ He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore’s rocks or what you will, the sea’s voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the father. ”

“ By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind’s darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
Talbot repeated:
—Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Through the dear might...
—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. ”

“ Strength of character had never been Reggy Wylie’s strong point and he who would woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be a man among men. But waiting, always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and would soon be over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and wondrous love at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey, and who would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort her with a long long kiss. ”

“ As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don’t you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody...? (He bites his thumb.)
BELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that’ll send you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! ”

“ Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out of that and not get on her nerves no hour to be out and the little brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a kind of waft. ”

“ High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. ”

“ She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.
Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. ”

“ ELLEN BLOOM: (In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, widow Twankey’s crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm.) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all? ”

“ Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!
BLOOM: (Clasps his head.) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff...
(He weeps tearlessly.)
BELLO: (Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.) ”

“ Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood, Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son? ”

“ MRS BREEN: (Screams gaily.) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: For old sake’ sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you. (Gloomily.) ’Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She puts out her hand inquisitively.) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there’s a dear.
BLOOM: (Seizes her wrist with his free hand.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! ”

“ Pain is far.
And no more turn aside and brood.
His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another’s foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all. ”