PRETENCIOSIDAD

—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create afigure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet thoughI admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry. —All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of hisshadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to usideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of artis out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau isthe painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamletbring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world ofideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strikeme! —The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.Aristotle was once Plato's schoolboy. —And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. Onecan see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, theheavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos whosuffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon thealtar. I am the sacrificial butter.Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A. E., Arval, the NameIneffable, in heaven hight: K. H., their master, whose identity is no secret toadepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they canhelp. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouledvirgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric isnot for ordinary person. O. P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs CooperOakley once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H. P. B.'s elemental.O, fie! Out on't! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn't to look, missus, so younaughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental.Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand withgrace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright. —That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet's musings aboutthe afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant andundramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato's.
John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth: —Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotlewith Plato. —Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from hiscommonwealth?Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness ofallhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in thestreet: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Throughspaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl afterBlake's buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow.Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague. —Haines is gone, he said. —Is he? —I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't youknow, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn't bring him in tohear the discussion. He's gone to Gill's to buy it.

ULYSES (EPISODE 9 - SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS), JAMES JOYCES

El protagonista del hiperbreve, empequeñecido, mira hacia arriba, estira los brazos e intenta sostener la cita que se le viene encima.