Ye Olde Motley Readers

Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.

A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls' tender fire.

I'm wondering really who is dead here. The people at this party go through all the motions of a lively evening, but it seems stilted and reeks of dust and coffins.There is the formal ness of music, and people giving polite lip service to the musicians/singers. There was that long, ornate description of the food, which to me sounds more alive than the people in the room.

(another side oddity was Mr Brown always referring to  Freddy Malins as "Teddy"?)

Gabriel thinks he feels love seeing Gretta sleeping, but he more feels his own "death" in life as he sees her as someone in love with someone who died long ago- he sees Gretta as being among the walking dead?? But Gabriel seems just as dead in life too. And thus, he sweeps grander, as the snow falls, falls just the same on the living as the dead.

And with that, does Joyce then paint all of this country as dead, even the living, through all of the flawed characters of this book? I'm still wrestling to what the over all message is; certainly not uplifting like a Hollywood movie, but even in its grim-ness, it speaks to me in a way that wants to be most "un-dead" in life.

Received this beauty in the mail yesterday...

It's a postcard from hinting at what may be my favorite story in "Dubliners" so far: "A Painful Case". Who is it from? "The Imitator", apparently!

or maybe the mail.

He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a square table on which lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung above the washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below upwards according to bulk.

So if Duffy is so wanting to be alone form the messiness of the world around him, in his self created island, the curios thing is what he seeks, because he does pursue the attention of Emily, and anyone reading the story cannot miss the clue that she is attracted to Duffy. 

Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable loneliness. 

What Duffy is in love with is Emily idolizing him and his austere pedestal. Can you say "fear of intimacy" any more so than:

One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.

So he walks away from Emily, or more apt, slams a door in her face. and resumes his monastical life for 4 years, until he learns of Emily's "Painful Case" which of course is no accident, her pain, a direct consequence of Duffy's fear/selfishness, led her to walk into a train. And Duffy, is he touched by this? Even Scrooge came around, but not Duffy, he actually looks farther down his nose at Emily, he is disgusted by her:

Not merely had she degraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her vice, miserable and maladorous...

But that she could have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself so utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.... 

As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand touched his. The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now attacking his nerves. 

Duffy only expresses the lukest warm words of remorse, yet still finds complete moral justification in his choices. And in the end, pondering the train-- might he reach a real human emotion and jump in front himself?? -- No, he places Emily's memory on the train, and lets it run off in the distance, leaving him and his alone soul in "peace".

Now I am feeling fairly sure this is the farthest we can go from Araby in how love can play out (or not) between two Dubliners. 

But I bet.... one could even go farther, and that looks really grim.

Like the other stories, reading Clay was at least a two pass process. There seemed to be a face pace, a lot of people, movement, but I reah the end, and was scratching my head. Who is Maria and what really happened?

For some reason I kept getting stuck on Joyce's repeated description of her "nose almost touching her chin" which seems cartoonish, and exaggerated. Not physically possible, Why was this important? She seems to buss arounf with all the tiny tasks and duties she performs, all like clockwork precision (until she loses the plum cake, which wrecks the clock work).So she is always in motion doing-- but is she living? Isn't that another variation of paralysis we even know today, that sens of always doing things (email, phone, twitter, facebook, email, twitter... ) but not really doing anything.

So she operates in her world where she is pious and devoted and accomplishes everything, but she does not see her lack of ultimate precision (loses the cake, misunderstands the game, sings the song wrong). There is te Donnelly family which seems to treat her like an extra special family member, and they seem genuine, and there is a suggestion of a mother substitute relationship to Joe- but is this expressed warmth really love? duty? neighborly?

And what is the whole clay bit about? I assume it is the substance placed in the bowl for her during the game, which sets her of guard 9and everyone else). Is clay messiness in her orderly minutiae filled life? Is it represent earth, death, the clay we go to?

There is this crescendo of emotion that seems to build with her singing a song that touches Joe, who is restless himself with his place, his estranged brother... and the culmination of what might be a real human moment is focused on an unimportant object (the corkscrew).

I see all these people as going through motions of life, without much feeling or awareness of it. It boils down to routines done on the outside, and emptiness on the inside.

And yet, I am still confused with who Maria is- tormented empty vessel or a happy little package?

From a city I've never been but wish to go, with a msg that resonates with my own reading. And yet I find an aesthetic in this gritty, dark, often dreary depiction of normal lives. Everything is far from perfect; no one is as they imagine themselves to be; and yet they persist...