We stopped with the following sentence in Latin: "et a verbis tuis formidavit cor meum." (Penguin 288.3; Gabler 10.205)
After having spent many hours with an episode of heavy discussions, of echoes and of allusions, we have moved to an episode whose main feature is one of movement. This episode feels like a breath of fresh air after the heaviness of the vaulted cell, of a room in the National Library. This episode, named aptly as wandering rocks, is highly cinematic. All kinds of people are walking around, the paths of many, if not all, cross.
The pages we read today are devoted to Father Conmee. We could easily call these pages as one morning in the life of Father Conmee.
Father Conmee SJ was a real person. He was the rector at Clongowes Wood College when Joyce was enrolled as a student there in 1888. Connie was also instrumental in getting Joyce and his brothers into Belvedere College in 1890. (See: http://jamesjoyce.ie/tag/fr-john-conmee/). In Joyce's works, he first appeared in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, where as the rector of Clongowes, Stephen's college, he shows lots of understanding for the young boy, who has been unfairly pandied by Father Dolan. But here in Ulysses, Father Conmee is portrayed as a condescending person, one who has little empathy for others, one who seems to be good in making small talk when needed.
The walk of the very reverend John Conmee S. J. this morning takes him along the Gardiner street, Mounty square, Great Charles street, North Circular road, North Strand road, into a tram at Newcomen bridge to traverse past Mud Island, crossing the river Tolka at Annesley bridge, getting off the tram at the Howth road stop. But it is not yet clear to where the very reverend John Conmee S. J. is bound.
On his walk he meets a onelegged sailor, whom he blessed in the sun instead of giving any coin, the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P. with whom he exchanges pleasantries, and three little schoolboys from Belvedere, whom he asks to post a letter. He salutes and is saluted by Mrs M'Guinness, by Mr William Gallagher standing in the doorway of his shop, and by a constable on the beat. He sees a billboard of Mr Eugene Stratton, dressed as a black man, and wonders about what happens to the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night.
Soon after he alights from the tram, it is time for him to read from breviary. He should have read the Nones before lunch. Being occupied so, he sees - but does not really notice - a flushed young man followed by a young woman coming from a gap of a hedge. Father Conmee blesses both gravely and turns a thin page of his breviary, reading the 21st section of Psalm 119.
After having spent many hours with an episode of heavy discussions, of echoes and of allusions, we have moved to an episode whose main feature is one of movement. This episode feels like a breath of fresh air after the heaviness of the vaulted cell, of a room in the National Library. This episode, named aptly as wandering rocks, is highly cinematic. All kinds of people are walking around, the paths of many, if not all, cross.
The pages we read today are devoted to Father Conmee. We could easily call these pages as one morning in the life of Father Conmee.
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The walk of the very reverend John Conmee S. J. this morning takes him along the Gardiner street, Mounty square, Great Charles street, North Circular road, North Strand road, into a tram at Newcomen bridge to traverse past Mud Island, crossing the river Tolka at Annesley bridge, getting off the tram at the Howth road stop. But it is not yet clear to where the very reverend John Conmee S. J. is bound.
On his walk he meets a onelegged sailor, whom he blessed in the sun instead of giving any coin, the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P. with whom he exchanges pleasantries, and three little schoolboys from Belvedere, whom he asks to post a letter. He salutes and is saluted by Mrs M'Guinness, by Mr William Gallagher standing in the doorway of his shop, and by a constable on the beat. He sees a billboard of Mr Eugene Stratton, dressed as a black man, and wonders about what happens to the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night.
Soon after he alights from the tram, it is time for him to read from breviary. He should have read the Nones before lunch. Being occupied so, he sees - but does not really notice - a flushed young man followed by a young woman coming from a gap of a hedge. Father Conmee blesses both gravely and turns a thin page of his breviary, reading the 21st section of Psalm 119.
