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What is beauty, what is art?
James Joyce: A portrait of the artist as a young man
Excerpts from Joyce's novel
Page 13
The verses passed from his mind to his lips and, murmuring them over, he felt the rhythmic movement of a villanelle pass through them. The roselike glow sent forth its rays of rhyme; ways, days, blaze, praise, raise. Its rays burned up the world, consumed the hearts of men and angels: the rays from the rose that was her wilful heart. -
Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways? -And then? The rhythm died away, ceased, began again to move and beat. And then? Smoke, incense ascending from the altar of the world. -
Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days. -Smoke went up from the whole earth, from the vapoury oceans, smoke of her praise. The earth was like a swinging smoking swaying censer, a ball of incense, an ellipsoidal ball. The rhythm died out at once; the cry of his heart was broken. His lips began to murmur the first verses over and over; then went on stumbling through half verses, stammering and baffled; then stopped. The heart's cry was broken.
Cf. Goethe on Tragedy (in German) | Aristotle Anthology | Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom
