J. Joyce: Ulysses - Circe - Stephen's dream

STEPHEN Ho!

(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

THE CHOIR

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum...
Iubilantium te virginum...


(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)


BUCK MULLIGAN She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (He upturns his eyes.) Mercurial Malachi.


THE MOTHER (With the subtle smile of death's madness.) I was once the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.


STEPHEN (Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who are you? What bogey man's trick is this?


BUCK MULLIGAN (Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into the scone.) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton.


THE MOTHER (Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes.) All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too. Time will come.


STEPHEN (Choking with fright, remorse and horror.) They said I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.


THE MOTHER (A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth.) You sang that song to me. Love's bitter mystery.


STEPHEN (Eagerly.) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.


THE MOTHER Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is all powerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual, and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.


STEPHEN The ghoul! Hyena!


THE MOTHER I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brain work. Years and years I loved you, O my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.


ZOE (Fanning herself with the grate fan.) I'm melting!


FLORRY (Points to Stephen) Look! He's white.


BLOOM (Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy.


THE MOTHER (With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell!


STEPHEN (Panting.) The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones!


THE MOTHER (Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.) Beware! (She raises her blackened, withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched fingers.) Beware! God's hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.)


STEPHEN (Strangled with rage.) Shite! (His features grow drawn and grey and old.)


BLOOM (At the window.) What?


STEPHEN Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam!


FLORRY Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out.)


THE MOTHER (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O divine Sacred Heart!


STEPHEN No! No! No! Break my spirit all of you if you can! I'll bring you all to heel!


THE MOTHER (In the agony of her deathrattle.) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.


STEPHEN Nothung!
For a commentary see The ghosts of Ulysses pp 87 e seguenti

A dream within a dream, E. A. Poe

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

To be or not to be ....to dream....

Life's but a walking hadow

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

--Macbeth, Act V, scene v

W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 43

When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show

To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

Martin. Luther King, I have a dream

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Published by Le Monnier, 2001

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The narrated dream in modern literature

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