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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 7
Up! Up! my Friend, and quit your booksUP! up! my Friend, and quit your books; \ Or surely you'll grow double: \ Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; \ Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun, above the mountain's head, \ A freshening lustre mellow \ Through all the long green fields has spread, \ His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: \ Come, hear the woodland linnet, \ How sweet his music! on my life, \ There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! \ He, too, is no mean preacher: \ Come forth into the light of things, \ Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth, \ Our minds and hearts to bless-- \ Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, \ Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood \ May teach you more of man, \ Of moral evil and of good, \ Than all the sages can. \ Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; \ Our meddling intellect \ Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:-- \ We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art; \ Close up those barren leaves; \ Come forth, and bring with you a heart \ That watches and receives.
From: W. Wordsworth, The Tables Turned, 1798
-It amuses me vastly, he said, to hear you quoting him time after time like a jolly round friar. Are you laughing in your sleeve?
-MacAlister, answered Stephen, would call my esthetic theory applied Aquinas. So far as this side of esthetic philosophy extends Aquinas will carry me all along the line. When we come to the phenomena of artistic conception, artistic gestation and artistic reproduction I require a new terminology and a new personal experience.
-Of course, said Lynch. After all Aquinas, in spite of his intellect, was exactly a good round friar. But you will tell me about the new personal experience and new terminology some other day. Hurry up and finish the first part.
-Who knows? said Stephen, smiling. Perhaps Aquinas would understand me better than you. He was a poet himself. He wrote a hymn for Maundy Thursday. It begins with the words Pange lingua gloriosi. They say it is the highest glory of the hymnal. It is an intricate and soothing hymn. I like it: but there is no hymn that can be put beside that mournful and majestic processional song, the Vexilla Re is of Venantius Fortunatus.
Lynch began to sing softly and solemnly in a deep bass voice: -
Impleta sunt quae concinit
David fideli carmine
Dicendo nationibus
Regnavit a ligno Deus. --That's great! he said, well pleased. Great music! ...
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
