“ He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. ”
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). copy citation
| Author | James Joyce |
|---|---|
| Source | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man |
| Topic | reading poetry verses |
| Date | 1916 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4217/4217-h/4217-h.htm |
Context
“The Universe That was in his writing: and Fleming one night for a cod had written on the opposite page: Stephen Dedalus is my name, Ireland is my nation. Clongowes is my dwellingplace And heaven my expectation. He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe? nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?”
source
Meaning and analysis
