“It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. 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” (21: 67-76).
This passage takes place while Talbot, a “swarthy boy,” reads part of Milton’s Lycidas to the class. However, this passage does not describe the reading itself, but rather, Stephen’s drifting consciousness during Talbot’s reading. Through Stephen’s drifting thoughts, and unusual imagery of “light” and “dark,” the reader is privy to what Joyce has to say about the act of reading and the affect it has on people, all while his own words are “fed” to the reader’s brain.
When Stephen thinks, “it must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible,” he ponders reading as a type of movement of the mind. This first sentence mildly philosophizes that one cannot brainstorm what is not already real or “possible,” and that when one reads, it is but a different version of reality, and not something pulled out of nothing.
Stephen’s consciousness then shifts from “Aristotle’s phrase” to “the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night.” The “fed and feeding brains about (him)” refer to all of the people reading around Stephen, some already “fed” and “full” of knowledge, and others currently “feeding” themselves the books of the library, other people’s thoughts, and other people’s stories. Stephen and those around him in the library read voraciously, “under glowlamps, impaled with faintly beating feelers.” The use of the word “impaled” is interesting here, because Joyce is describing the eyes or “faintly beating feelers” as instruments that can pierce or “impale” the words on a page. The language used here is a rather violent way to describe the reading process, implying some causality in the uptake of the words of others.
However, Joyce does not stop here with his unusual word choice. Instead, he continues, still through Stephen’s consciousness, with an even more unusual figurative description of reading. In Stephen’s “mind’s darkness, a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds,” Joyce reveals the image of Stephen’s mind, quite possibly the human mind, as “dark” and lazy, not only like a sloth, but a “sloth of the underworld.” This metaphor is partly animalistic, but it is also religious, as Sloth is considered one of the seven deadly sins. Descriptions such as “shy of brightness,” and “her dragon scaly folds” conjure up mythological images of deceitful dragons sitting on top of their treasure, unwilling to move or to be moved. The image of the dragon also connects back to the mention of the underworld, as dragons were often tied with serpents and linked to the idea of death or decay in the myths and stories in which they appeared (“Serpents and Dragons…”).
After an unusual metaphor of a “scaly,” “shy” dragon, Stephen’s mind jolts back to more straightforward thinking as he muses that “thought is the thought of thought,” once again suggesting the idea that thought springs from thought itself—something coming from something. Stephen then describes thoughtful reading as illuminated, “tranquil brightness,” implying an opposition against the dark, scaly, dragon-like human mind. It is interesting that Stephen thinks of reading as a “tranquil brightness” and not a blinding flash. The “tranquility” and “brightness” caused by reading are put in direct opposition with the underworld of the natural human mind, and reading is therefore associated with some form of heaven through words.
Joyce concludes this lovely paragraph with a Stephen’s thoughts on the soul. Stephen thinks, “the soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.” Joyce has again used imagery of tranquility and light, to convey the soul—the simplified vessel through which people experience and share their existence. However, because this paragraph occurs during the middle of a student reading aloud, and is primarily concerned with reading, Stephen appears to praise reading as a “movement” from darkness to light, as an illuminator of the soul, and Joyce’s commentary on extraordinarily complicated and philosophical questions is left only partially visible, “shy,” just underneath Stephen’s chain of thoughts, as a schoolboy reads aloud.
“Serpents and Dragons in Irish Mythology.” The Atlantic Religion. n.p., 26 June 2014. Web. 18 Jan. 2015.
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