-- interesting only to the parish clerk. i mean, we have the plays. i mean when we read the poetry of king lear what is it to us how the poet lived? as for living, our servants can do that for us, villiers de l'isle has said. peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. we have king lear: and it is immortal.
mr best's face appealed to, agreed.
flow over them with your waves and with your waters,mananaan, mananaan maclir...
how now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
marry, i wanted it.
take thou this noble.
go to! you spent most of it in georgina johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter. agenbite of inwit.
do you intend to pay it back?
o, yes.
when? now?
well... no.
when, then?
i paid my way. i paid my way.
steady on. he's from beyant boyne water. the northeast corner. you owe it.
wait. five months. molecules all change. i am other i now. other i got pound.
buzz. buzz.
but i, entelechy, form of forms, am i by memory because under everchanging forms.
i that sinned and prayed and fasted.
a child conmee saved from pandies.
i, i and i. i.
a.e.i.o.u.
-- do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? john eglinton's carping voice asked. her ghost at least has been laid for ever. she died, for literature at least, before she was born.
-- she died, stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. she saw him into and out of the world. she took his first embraces. she bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his deathbed.
mother's deathbed. candle. the sheeted mirror. who brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. liliata rutilantium.
i wept alone.
john eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.
-- the world believes that shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could.
-- bosh! stephen said rudely. a man of genius makes no mistakes. his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.