Houses of decay, mine, his and all - Il croit? ****23
(His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.
This wind is sweeter.)
Houses of decay, mine his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The hundredredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws, Abbas father,-- furious dean, What offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut ne amplius decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.
Houses of decay, mine his and all.
-There are houses of decay. I have one. He has one. We all have one.
-There are decaying houses. We all have one.
-My house is decaying. His house is decaying, All of our houses are decaying
Houses of decay, mine his and all.
There are houses that contain things that are decaying. I have one. He has one. We all have one.
Houses of decay, mine his and all.
There are houses dedicated to decomposition. We all have one.
Cf. Zed and Two Noughts, Peter Greenaway.
Let’s talk this out. Houses of decay, something we all own. Well, literally, every house is doomed to decay, if it stands long enough. That would even count being destroyed; a kind of rapid decay.
Is that what Stephen is talking about?
Maybe. he was just at his uncle's house.
Not everybody owns a house though. To be nitpicky, some people have apartments. A lot of folks are straight up homeless.
What does everyone have that could be referred to as a house of decay? Bodies, and they are certainly decaying. How can a body equal a house?
Corinthians 6: 19-20 What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
This also fits with the previous sentences.
You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army.
You told the Clongowes
Cf. (*****6)
Come out of them, Stephen.
Bodies are decaying. Come out of them. A body stands in front of me, no two bodies, One is a judge the other is a general. The judge starts to split apart as Stephen’s face appears where a skull and cartilage should be.
Jesus wept
(****21)
A general on the other hand is crusty, dull and opaque. The back cracks revealing soft pink. The hems split . The Stephen vibrates his soft body from the shell of the general
Beauty is not inside of them
Beauty is not inside of your uncles, the judge and general.
Beauty is not inside decaying houses
Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas.
Nor in the stale nook Marsh’s library where you read the fading prophecies of an abbot named Joachim of Fiore
For whom?
whom?
Used as the object of a verb or a preposition.
The hundredredheaded rabble of the cathedral close.
The hundredredheaded rabble
I love this. Is there a name for this kind of thing?
A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars.
His mane foaming in the moon,
1.I don’t get it? Here is the line I am following:
2. Redheaded rabble of the close >
3. Lots of red headed intellectuals>
4. Lots of Irish Intellectuals>
5. Stephen is among the these intellectuals>
6. He mentally ran away from these intellectuals, specifically to a place of madness, or maybe a place never experienced before>
7. Stephen mentally dispersed himself throughout space>
8. His foaming mane connects to 2.
But why is it foaming?
I guess I’ll move on
his eyeballs stars.
This was making no sense to me. So, I just started looking up definitions, and guess what I found? Stars are relevant in the world of horses! Check out the glossary
A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars.
Really though, I have no idea,
Wait. Hold on.
A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars.
his mane foaming
Turns out, horses actually do foam up. Weird.
ran from them to the wood of madness
Wild horses or Mustangs, if you will, are social animals. Actually all horses are social animals.
Houhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces,
Horses! (****19)
The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws, Abbas father,-- furious dean, What offence laid fire to their brains?
Temple
A nifty transition from face talk to friend talk, but is Temple a person? I’ll put it down just in case
What offence laid fire to their brains?
Hundredredheaded rabble
What offence laid fire to their brains?
Heap coals of fire on one’s head
To make a special effort to cause one to feel remorse.
Romans 12:20 - ‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head’
Descende, calve, ut ne amplius decalveris
Go down bald one, so that you don't become totally bald
This is a variation opening sentence from a book called Vaticinia de Summis
Pontificibus.
Go up, O bald one lest you be made more bald you, who are not afraid to make your wife bald in order to nourish the shebear’s hair.
There is a weird play on words here,
Descende, calve
Decalvis
2 Kings 2 23-24, Two bears and forty two children.
Cf. (****16) St. Columbanus, regarding friendship with bears.
A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed.
A garland of grey hair on his comminated head
A wreath of grey hair on his cursed head
A garland of grey hair
Bald on top
(Un)tonsured(*****3)
comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace
Who has the time for comas anway?
Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.
tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.
Deuteronomy 32: 13-14
Again, joyceproject.com, seriously
Old priests preaching poverty while prancing with precious opulence.
Stephen’s brain:
/We all have bodies that are decaying. You told the who’s who of your school that you had an uncle that was a judge and another uncle who was a general. Either draw upon their inspiration or cast them away. Stephen, there isn't anything beautiful inside these decaying containers, whether they are bodies or buildings. Nor was there beauty inside Marsh’s library where you spent your time learning about Abbot Joachim of Fiore and his thoughts about the apocalypse. Why? For whom did you spend all that time and effort? All the high class Irish folks who live around the Cathedral./
The Narrator:
/Stephen hated the society to which he belonged. To avoid thinking about this, he mentally retreated, to a place of insanity where he was likely to get lost. He is now scattered around in space/
Or
/Stephen jumps head first into horse metaphors. He is a wild mustang, running from his herd into a forest of insanity. Look at him run. If you can keep up, you will see his mane foaming against the light of the moon. And his eyes are gleaming like stars/
Stephen’s Brain:
/These are the faces of people that I know. I am comparing them to that pack of horses, the horses I want to escape from. What caused their heads to catch on fire? I am thinking about the signature Irish red hair and how I associate that with fire. And now that fire has burned away all that hair. Which reminds me of a thing I read in Joachim’s prophecies about popes. Although I’m tweaking it a little bit. Look at me and imagine Joachim of Fiore, us both stepping down a few steps. This reminds me of the first word of the Pope Prophecies. We're stepping down holding up a communion bread display case and with gazes that look like they could kill you.
A Scene:
/a fluid figure mixing between Dedalus and Joachim calls upon himself in Latin, “Descende!” An angry choir with a horn section responds “Get down, Baldpoll!” Average, everyday priests are shuffling around, speaking latin. They are representing themselves in a manner that Jesus might not approve of./
Wow, this is a dense pile of words. What is my take away? Stephen may be wasting his life. He thought all his time studying and networking would make him special, but he found out that everyone is the same, decaying, lying, and greedy.
Going down
A lot of words were spent on the idea of going down, what is he trying to say? I think it maybe a personal plea to climb down from the high society of intellectuals to be a regular person again.
