/lit/ - Literature

N A T I O N A L I S M

That one went way over my head

“What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read … I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly and monotonous child’s play.”

fucking wrecked me

>>11473099
>>11473126
yeah that one is a pretty good pleb filter

>>11473099
Nora was cutie - I think I understand Joyce's obsession with her farts.

>>11473455
that's his daughter retard

>>11473099
Do you know anything about Charles Parnell?

broadly speaking, ivy day in the committee room is about the general regret, apathy, and depression setting in with the loss of parnell (and with him, ireland's best shot at home rule). it's a bitter piece of political history that divided the irish and left them utterly broken and hopeless, producing the aimless and half-hearted political meandering you observe in this particular short story.
also, two gallants is by far the worst story in the book. change my mind.

That story aged the worst of all the stories in Dubliners I think, due to it being so very much about a specific cultural / political phenomenon. Anyway, it’s great, but you’ve gotta do your research.

>>11473653
The worst story in the book is either Araby or The Dead

>>11473659
i can't help but disagree, at least on the dead. i'd have to reread araby to get a better grasp of my thoughts on it.

>>11473664
He’s being contrarian those two stories are considered the best in Dubliners

>>11473668
that's kind of what i figured, but i'm hoping that he has something interesting to offer. my personal favorite was probably eveline, or maybe a little cloud.

>>11473132
Araby really is god-tier.

>>11473659
Nice bait, have a you

>>11473677
Sorry mang, it was pure undiluted shitpost. I can’t imagine how someone could argue that for real

>>11473732
how could you do this to me
you might as well have made a nora brap post

OFFICIAL /lit/ DUBLINERS RANKINGS

GOD TIER
The Dead

GREAT TIER
A Little Cloud
Araby
Counterparts
A Painful Case

VERY GOOD TIER
An Encounter
After the Race
Clay
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
The Sisters

GOOD TIER
Two Gallants
Eveline
Grace
The Boarding House
A Mother

An Encounter was my personal favourite.

>>11473653

2 gallants is one of those stories that works better in an Irish cultural context.

We have a culture of "borrowing" like what is depicted in two Gallants. There are a huge amount of people in Ireland who subsist exactly as those men do, jumping from small debt to small debt and putting in a days grafting of the relatives and friends.

Source: my entire fucking extended family

>>11474324
I have always liked that story desu

>>11473455
BRAAAAAPP

Why did Joyce wear the eye patch?

>>11474470
pink eye

>>11474470
“No single problem made Joyce's eye operations, most of them on the left eye, necessary. With varying constancy between 1917 and 1941, he suffered from glaucoma, synecchia, iritis, conjunctivitis, episclerotis, retinal atrophy, and primary, secondary, and tertiary cataracts - all of them painful and incapacitating disease whose gravity and scariness no healthy-sighted person should underestimate. Iritis, in early stages it is said to give the sufferer the sensation of having gritty sand in the eye, and so it forces him into incessant, involuntary tearing and blinking whose unrelieving effect is only to exacerbate the condition. Closing the eye, far from relieving the pain, deepens it, and in severe cases, the pain radiates into the brow, the nose, the cheek, and the teeth, ultimately to bring on severe headaches. While sand can be washed out of the eye, iritis cannot. It either goes away or it doesn't, and in the latter case it can spread. Left untreated, it can ravage the affected eye entirely and overtake the second by "sympathetic infection." Advanced cases of iritis were "cured," in Joyce's day, by removing the entire eyeball. Hence the earliest of Joyce's eye operations: an iridectomy on the right eye (his "good eye") in 1917 was followed by two iridectomies on the left.
The "cures" seems as painful as the affliction. Joyce would have been conscious during these operations, his eyelid forced back and held open with a speculum, his eyeball grasped with a pair of forceps to prevent any involuntary flinching. He would have "seen" the surgical knife, razored on both edges to allow the doctor a minimum of movement, approach his cornea and cut its way, with a sawing motion, through to the anterior chamber and then into the iris, where its work would have been to slice out any infected tissue. Joyce would have undergone in reality, in short, a kind of horror conceived in a film like Un Chien Andalou to be surreal. And he would also have had occasion, during these procedures, to consider how objects can enter the eye of a subject in ways not usually explored in Newtonian or Helmholtzian treatments of optics”

>>11474488

>>11473099
Am I a pleb for liking a little cloud more than the dead?

>>11474488
Jesus

>>11473653
pleb

In a letter to Grant Richards, Joyce voiced his fondness of the story saying “to omit the story from the book would really be disastrous. It is one of the most important stories in the book. I would rather sacrifice five of the other stories (which I could name) than this one.”

>>11474993
>find that quote
>It could be a bluff (and I think it probably was)
fuck off

>>11475098
p l e b

>>11475122

>>11475098
Ivy gives the collection an explicit political relevance and ties Joyce's abstract critiques of Irish society to more practical matters. In Ivy you see how the diffidence and posturing depicted in A Painful Case and A Little Cloud doesn't merely ensure a mediocre personal life--this psychology also keeps Ireland in thrall to Britain

>>11475293
oh i'm not shittalking ivy: i like the story quite a bit. this is about two gallants.

>>11474993
He only likes it because they show up again in the James Joyce EU

>>11473659
*SNAP*

>>11473099
Be not afeared, the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand _____ will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices (?) that, had I been dreaming, would wake me(?)

Idk I forgot but that’s all the poetry i memorize.

>>11474488
>And he would also have had occasion, during these procedures, to consider how objects can enter the eye of a subject in ways not usually explored in Newtonian or Helmholtzian treatments of optics
Fucking lol

>>11475595
i really like a portrait of the artist for this exact reason, among others. that established familiarity with stephen's character really enhances ulysses.

>>11473460
Then swap out Nora for Lucia, same deal

>>11473656
Its not like you can't relate it to any current cultural phenomenon

The stories get progressively worse as the book goes along.

>>11474488
>He would have "seen" the surgical knife, razored on both edges to allow the doctor a minimum of movement, approach his cornea and cut its way, with a sawing motion, through to the anterior chamber and then into the iris, where its work would have been to slice out any infected tissue.

you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me

>>11476861
The closest thing to it in an American context is sad Bernie fans famalam

>>11476923
Nice try brocialist, but the obvious analogue is the betrayal of Hillary Clinton by hypocritical and schoolmarmish Amerikkkan voters

>>11476991
I’m not so sure - the people that liked Bernie really believed in him. My conception is that most Hillary voters simply didn’t want Trump to win, but they didn’t believe she was going to be a great thing for this country.

For real, why do you all enjoy arguing about what you hate most instead of what you like most? What does that say about you?

>>11477082
You say this as if we don’t know we are negative