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Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 27

Six other guests only, in addition to the host and the hostess of Matcham, made up the company, and each of these persons had for Maggie the interest of an attested connection with the Easter revels at that visionary house. Their common memory of an occasion that had clearly left behind it an ineffaceable charm—this air of beatific reference, less subdued in the others than in Amerigo and Charlotte, lent them, together, an inscrutable comradeship against which the young woman’s imagination broke in a small vain wave.

[Maggie of Lady Castledean] Her ladyship’s assumption was that she kept, at every moment of her life, every advantage—it made her beautifully soft, very nearly generous; so she didn’t distinguish the little protuberant eyes of smaller social insects, often endowed with such a range, from the other decorative spots on their bodies and wings.

[Adam] He brought it out straight, made it bravely and beautifully irrelevant, save for the plea of what they should lose by breaking the charm: “I guess we won’t go down there after all, will we, Mag?—just when it’s getting so pleasant here.” That was all, with nothing to lead up to it; but it was done for her at a stroke, and done, not less, more rather, for Amerigo and Charlotte, on whom the immediate effect, as she secretly, as she almost breathlessly measured it, was prodigious.

[The prince]. He KNEW HOW to resort to it—he could be, on occasion, as she had lately more than ever learned, so munificent a lover: all of which was, precisely, a part of the character she had never ceased to regard in him as princely, a part of his large and beautiful ease, his genius for charm, for intercourse, for expression, for life. She should have but to lay her head back on his shoulder with a certain movement to make it definite for him that she didn’t resist.

[Maggie to the prince]“It’s as if we had been missing each other, had got a little apart—though going on so side by side. But the good moments, if one only waits for them,” she hastened to add, “come round of themselves. Moreover you’ve seen for yourself, since you’ve made it up so to father; feeling, for yourself, in your beautiful way, every difference, every air that blows; not having to be told or pushed, only being perfect to live with, through your habit of kindness and your exquisite instincts.

[Maggie to the prince]“Your taking the child down yourself, those days, and your coming, each time, to bring him away—nothing in the world, nothing you could have invented, would have kept father more under the charm. Besides, you know how you’ve always suited him, and how you’ve always so beautifully let it seem to him that he suits you. Only it has been, these last weeks, as if you wished—just in order to please him—to remind him of it afresh.”

[Maggie and prince]“And would you like to be here alone with her for a month?”
“I could do with it beautifully. Or we might even,” she said quite gaily, “go together down to Fawns.”
“You could be so very content without me?” the Prince presently inquired.

[Maggie and prince]“We shall simply go on as we are.”
“Well, we’re going on beautifully,” he answered—though by no means with the effect it would have had if their mute transaction, that of attempted capture and achieved escape, had not taken place. As Maggie said nothing, none the less, to gainsay his remark, it was open to him to find himself the next moment conscious of still another idea.

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 28

[‘Young friend’ =Maggie] The perception of this high result caused Mrs. Assingham fairly to flush with responsive joy; she glittered at her young friend, from moment to moment, quite feverishly; it was positively as if her young friend had, in some marvellous, sudden, supersubtle way, become a source of succour to herself, become beautifully, divinely retributive.

[Maggie wanting to say this to Adam] She was powerless, however, was only more utterly hushed, when the interrupting flash came, when she would have been all ready to say to him, “Yes, this is by every appearance the best time we’ve had yet; but don’t you see, all the same, how they must be working together for it, and how my very success, my success in shifting our beautiful harmony to a new basis, comes round to being their success, above all; their cleverness, their amiability, their power to hold out, their complete possession, in short, of our life?”

[Maggie wanting to say this to Prince] She couldn’t—and he knew it—say what was true: “Oh, you ‘use’ her, and I use her, if you will, yes; but we use her ever so differently and separately—not at all in the same way or degree. There’s nobody we really use together but ourselves, don’t you see?—by which I mean that where our interests are the same I can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve you for everything, and you can so beautifully, so exquisitely serve me. The only person either of us needs is the other of us; so why, as a matter of course, in such a case as this, drag in Charlotte?”

[Maggie, Prince] She couldn’t so challenge him, because it would have been—and there she was paralysed—the NOTE. It would have translated itself on the spot, for his ear, into jealousy; and, from reverberation to repercussion, would have reached her father’s exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep. It had been for many days almost as difficult for her to catch a quiet twenty minutes with her father as it had formerly been easy; there had been in fact, of old—the time, so strangely, seemed already far away—an inevitability in her longer passages with him, a sort of domesticated beauty in the calculability, round about them, of everything.

[Maggie and Father] They had never availed themselves of any given quarter-of-an-hour to gossip about fundamentals; they moved slowly through large still spaces; they could be silent together, at any time, beautifully, with much more comfort than hurriedly expressive. It appeared indeed to have become true that their common appeal measured itself, for vividness, just by this economy of sound; they might have been talking “at” each other when they talked with their companions, but these latter, assuredly, were not in any directer way to gain light on the current phase of their relation.

[Principino] She saw, of a sudden, everything she might say or do in the light of that undertaking, established connections from it with any number of remote matters, struck herself, for instance, as acting all in its interest when she proposed their going out, in the exercise of their freedom and in homage to the season, for a turn in the Regent’s Park. This resort was close at hand, at the top of Portland Place, and the Principino, beautifully better, had already proceeded there under high attendance: all of which considerations were defensive for Maggie, all of which became, to her mind, part of the business of cultivating continuity.

[Maggie of Father] She groaned to herself, while the vain imagination lasted, “WHY did he marry? ah, why DID he?” and then it came up to her more than ever that nothing could have been more beautiful than the way in which, till Charlotte came so much more closely into their life, Amerigo hadn’t interfered.

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 29

[Maggie and Father]. It had made him think indeed a little longer than she had meant; but he came up again, as she might have said, smiling. “Well, I don’t know. We get nothing but the fun, do we?”
“No,” she had hastened to declare; “we certainly get nothing but the fun.”
“We do it all,” he had remarked, “so beautifully.”
“We do it all so beautifully.” She hadn’t denied this for a moment. “I see what you mean.”
“Well, I mean too,” he had gone on, “that we haven’t, no doubt, enough, the sense of difficulty.”
“Enough? Enough for what?”
“Enough not to be selfish.”
“I don’t think YOU are selfish,” she had returned—and had managed not to wail it.
“I don’t say that it’s me particularly—or that it’s you or Charlotte or Amerigo. But we’re selfish together—we move as a selfish mass. You see we want always the same thing,” he had gone on—”and that holds us, that binds us, together. We want each other,” he had further explained; “only wanting it, each time, FOR each other. That’s what I call the happy spell; but it’s also, a little, possibly, the immorality.”

But the beauty of it is, at the same time, that we ARE doing; we’re doing, that is, after all, what we went in for. We’re working it, our life, our chance, whatever you may call it, as we saw it, as we felt it, from the first. We HAVE worked it, and what more can you do than that?

He had hesitated, but only a moment. “I never told you so.”
“Well, Charlotte herself soon enough told me.”
“But I never told HER,” her father had answered.
“Are you very sure?” she had presently asked.
“Well, I like to think how thoroughly I was taken with her, and how right I was, and how fortunate, to have that for my basis. I told her all the good I thought of her.”
“Then that,” Maggie had returned, “was precisely part of the good. I mean it was precisely part of it that she could so beautifully understand.”
“Yes—understand everything.”

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 30

[Maggie] There was a blankness in her blandness, assuredly, and very nearly an extravagance in her generalising gaiety; a precipitation of cheer particularly marked whenever they met again after short separations: meetings during the first flush of which Maggie sometimes felt reminded of other looks in other faces; of two strangely unobliterated impressions above all, the physiognomic light that had played out in her husband at the shock—she had come at last to talk to herself of the “shock”—of his first vision of her on his return from Matcham and Gloucester, and the wonder of Charlotte’s beautiful bold wavering gaze when, the next morning in Eaton Square, this old friend had turned from the window to begin to deal with her.

[Maggie] If she had dared to think of it so crudely she would have said that Fanny was afraid of her, afraid of something she might say or do, even as, for their few brief seconds, Amerigo and Charlotte had been—which made, exactly, an expressive element common to the three. The difference however was that this look had in the dear woman its oddity of a constant renewal, whereas it had never for the least little instant again peeped out of the others. Other looks, other lights, radiant and steady, with the others, had taken its place, reaching a climax so short a time ago, that morning of the appearance of the pair on the balcony of her house to overlook what she had been doing with her father; when their general interested brightness and beauty, attuned to the outbreak of summer, had seemed to shed down warmth and welcome and the promise of protection.

[What Maggie might say to Father with respect to Charlotte] This last advantage for her, was, however, too sadly out of the question; her sole strength lay in her being able to see that if Charlotte wouldn’t “want” the Assinghams it would be because that sentiment too would have motives and grounds. She had all the while command of one way of meeting any objection, any complaint, on his wife’s part, reported to her by her father; it would be open to her to retort to his possible “What are your reasons, my dear?” by a lucidly-produced “What are hers, love, please?—isn’t that what we had better know? Mayn’t her reasons be a dislike, beautifully founded, of the presence, and thereby of the observation, of persons who perhaps know about her things it’s inconvenient to her they should know?” That hideous card she might in mere logic play—being by this time, at her still swifter private pace, intimately familiar with all the fingered pasteboard in her pack.

[Maggie, Mrs. Assingham] For a minute after this they remained face to face; Maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. It had accumulated, considerably, by this time, round Mrs. Assingham’s ample presence, and it made, even to our young woman’s own sense, a medium in which she could at last take a deeper breath. “I’ve affected you, these months—and these last weeks in especial—as quiet and natural and easy?”
But it was a question that took, not imperceptibly, some answering. “You’ve never affected me, from the first hour I beheld you, as anything but—in a way all your own—absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. In a way, as I say,” Mrs. Assingham almost caressingly repeated, “just all your very own—nobody else’s at all. I’ve never thought of you but as OUTSIDE of ugly things, so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. I’ve never mixed you up with them; there would have been time enough for that if they had seemed to be near you. But they haven’t—if that’s what you want to know.”

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 31

[Assinghams] This, on each occasion, put the matter so at the worst that repetition even scarce controlled the hot flush with which she was compelled to see the parts of the whole history, all its ugly consistency and its temporary gloss, hang together. She enjoyed, invariably, the sense of making her danger present, of making it real, to her husband, and of his almost turning pale, when their eyes met, at this possibility of their compromised state and their shared discredit. The beauty was that, as under a touch of one of the ivory notes at the left of the keyboard, he sounded out with the short sharpness of the dear fond stupid uneasy man. “Conspiring—so far as YOU were concerned—to what end?”

[Assinghams] “Down even to the facility of your minding everything so little—from your own point of view—as to have supplied him with the enjoyment of TWO beautiful women.”
“Down even to THAT—to the monstrosity of my folly. But not,” Mrs. Assingham added, “‘two’ of anything. One beautiful woman—and one beautiful fortune. That’s what a creature of pure virtue exposes herself to when she suffers her pure virtue, suffers her sympathy, her disinterestedness, her exquisite sense for the lives of others, to carry her too far. Voila.”
“I see. It’s the way the Ververs have you.”
“It’s the way the Ververs ‘have’ me. It’s in other words the way they would be able to make such a show to each other of having me—if Maggie weren’t so divine.”

{Fanny of Maggie] If I’ll keep them quiet, in a word, it will enable her to gain time—time as against any idea of her father’s—and so, somehow, come out. If I’ll take care of Charlotte, in particular, she’ll take care of the Prince; and it’s beautiful and wonderful, really pathetic and exquisite, to see what she feels that time may do for her.”

{Fanny of Charlotte and the Prince] “There must be people in possession of it? Ah, it isn’t all,” she always remembered, “up and down London. Some of it must connect them—I mean,” she musingly added, “it naturally WOULD—with other places; with who knows what strange adventures, opportunities, dissimulations? But whatever there may have been, it will also all have been buried on the spot. Oh, they’ve known HOW—too beautifully! But nothing, all the same, is likely to find its way to Maggie of itself.”

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 32

[Maggie] If Charlotte, while she was about it, could only have been WORSE!—that idea Maggie fell to invoking instead of the idea that she might desirably have been better. For, exceedingly odd as it was to feel in such ways, she believed she mightn’t have worried so much if she didn’t somehow make her stepmother out, under the beautiful trees and among the dear old gardens, as lavish of fifty kinds of confidence and twenty kinds, at least, of gentleness.

{Maggie and Prince] He might tell her only what he wanted, only what would work upon her by the beauty of his appeal; and the result of the direct appeal of ANY beauty in him would be her helpless submission to his terms. All her temporary safety, her hand-to-mouth success, accordingly, was in his neither perceiving nor divining this, thanks to such means as she could take to prevent him; take, literally from hour to hour, during these days of more unbroken exposure. From hour to hour she fairly expected some sign of his having decided on a jump. “Ah yes, it HAS been as you think; I’ve strayed away, I’ve fancied myself free, given myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because I thought you were different—different from what I now see. But it was only, only, because I didn’t know—and you must admit that you gave me scarce reason enough. Reason enough, I mean, to keep clear of my mistake; to which I confess, for which I’ll do exquisite penance, which you can help me now, I too beautifully feel, to get completely over.

More and more magnificent now in her blameless egoism, Maggie asked no questions of her, and thus only signified the greatness of the opportunity she gave her. She didn’t care for what devotions, what dinners of their own the Assinghams might have been “booked”; that was a detail, and she could think without wincing of the ruptures and rearrangements to which her service condemned them. It all fell in beautifully, moreover; so that, as hard, at this time, in spite of her fever, as a little pointed diamond, the Princess showed something of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive, the creative hand.

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 33

[Maggie] There could perhaps have been no stronger mark than this sense of well-nigh romantic opportunity—no livelier sign of the impression made on her, and always so long retained, so watchfully nursed, by any observation of Charlotte’s, however lightly thrown off. And then she had felt, somehow, more at her ease than for months and months before; she didn’t know why, but her time at the Museum, oddly, had done it; it was as if she hadn’t come into so many noble and beautiful associations, nor secured them also for her boy, secured them even for her father, only to see them turn to vanity and doubt, turn possibly to something still worse.

[Fanny, ‘her companion’= Maggie] She was reminded of the terms on which she was let off—her quantity of release having made its sufficient show in that recall of her relation to Charlotte’s old reappearance; and deep within the whole impression glowed—ah, so inspiringly when it came to that! her steady view, clear from the first, of the beauty of her companion’s motive.

[Maggie of Prince] “It’s quite as if he had an instinct—something that has warned him off or made him uneasy. He doesn’t quite know, naturally, what has happened, but guesses, with his beautiful cleverness, that something has, and isn’t in a hurry to be confronted with it. So, in his vague fear, he keeps off.”

“Not, at any rate, to care for me as you cared for Amerigo and for Charlotte. They were much more interesting—it was perfectly natural. How couldn’t you like Amerigo?” Maggie continued.
Mrs. Assingham gave it up. “How couldn’t I, how couldn’t I?” Then, with a fine freedom, she went all her way. “How CAN’T I, how can’t I?”
It fixed afresh Maggie’s wide eyes on her. “I see—I see. Well, it’s beautiful for you to be able to. And of course,” she added, “you wanted to help Charlotte.”
“Yes”—Fanny considered it—”I wanted to help Charlotte. But I wanted also, you see, to help you—by not digging up a past that I believed, with so much on top of it, solidly buried. I wanted, as I still want,” she richly declared, “to help every one.”

Fanny Assingham met it as she could. “You’ve been only too perfect. You’ve thought only too much.”
But the Princess had already caught at the words. “Yes—I’ve thought only too much!” Yet she appeared to continue, for the minute, full of that fault. She had it in fact, by this prompted thought, all before her. “Of him, dear man, of HIM—!”
Her friend, able to take in thus directly her vision of her father, watched her with a new suspense. THAT way might safety lie—it was like a wider chink of light. “He believed—with a beauty!—in Charlotte.”
“Yes, and it was I who had made him believe. I didn’t mean to, at the time, so much; for I had no idea then of what was coming. But I did it, I did it!” the Princess declared.
“With a beauty—ah, with a beauty, you too!” Mrs. Assingham insisted.

Book TWO Part 4 Chapter 34

[Maggie and Prince] He had, not unnaturally, failed to see this occurrence represented by the three fragments of an object apparently valuable which lay there on the floor and which, even across the width of the room, his kept interval, reminded him, unmistakably though confusedly, of something known, some other unforgotten image. That was a mere shock, that was a pain—as if Fanny’s violence had been a violence redoubled and acting beyond its intention, a violence calling up the hot blood as a blow across the mouth might have called it. Maggie knew as she turned away from him that she didn’t want his pain; what she wanted was her own simple certainty—not the red mark of conviction flaming there in his beauty. If she could have gone on with bandaged eyes she would have liked that best; if it were a question of saying what she now, apparently, should have to, and of taking from him what he would say, any blindness that might wrap it would be the nearest approach to a boon.

[Of the broken golden bowl] It was shown me, and I was struck with it and took it—knowing nothing about it at the time. What I now know I’ve learned since—I learned this afternoon, a couple of hours ago; receiving from it naturally a great impression. So there it is—in its three pieces. You can handle them—don’t be afraid—if you want to make sure the thing is the thing you and Charlotte saw together. Its having come apart makes an unfortunate difference for its beauty, its artistic value, but none for anything else. Its other value is just the same—I mean that of its having given me so much of the truth about you. I don’t therefore so much care what becomes of it now—unless perhaps you may yourself, when you come to think, have some good use for it. In that case,” Maggie wound up, “we can easily take the pieces with us to Fawns.”

Amerigo was at any rate having the sensation of a particular ugliness to avoid, a particular difficulty to count with, that practically found him as unprepared as if he had been, like his wife, an abjectly simple person. And she meanwhile, however abjectly simple, was further discerning, for herself, that, whatever he might have to take from her—she being, on her side, beautifully free—he would absolutely not be able, for any qualifying purpose, to name Charlotte either.

[Maggie and Prince] “Oh, I’m far from wanting it back—I feel so that I’m getting its worth.” With which, before he could reply, she had a quick transition. “The great fact about the day we’re talking of seems to me to have been, quite remarkably, that no present was then made me. If your undertaking had been for that, that was not at least what came of it.”
“You received then nothing at all?” The Prince looked vague and grave, almost retrospectively concerned.
“Nothing but an apology for empty hands and empty pockets; which was made me—as if it mattered a mite!—ever so frankly, ever so beautifully and touchingly.”

Book TWO Part 5 Chapter 35

[‘Her’= Maggie] There was no one to help her with it—not even Fanny Assingham now; this good friend’s presence having become, inevitably, with that climax of their last interview in Portland Place, a severely simplified function. She had her use, oh yes, a thousand times; but it could only consist henceforth in her quite conspicuously touching at no point whatever—assuredly, at least with Maggie—the matter they had discussed. She was there, inordinately, as a value, but as a value only for the clear negation of everything. She was their general sign, precisely, of unimpaired beatitude—and she was to live up to that somewhat arduous character, poor thing, as she might. She might privately lapse from it, if she must, with Amerigo or with Charlotte—only not, of course, ever, so much as for the wink of an eye, with the master of the house.

[Merchant who sold bowl, Maggie.] That the partner of her bargain had yearned to see her again, that he had plainly jumped at a pretext for it, this also she had frankly expressed herself to the Prince as having, in no snubbing, no scandalised, but rather in a positively appreciative and indebted spirit, not delayed to make out. He had wished, ever so seriously, to return her a part of her money, and she had wholly declined to receive it; and then he had uttered his hope that she had not, at all events, already devoted the crystal cup to the beautiful purpose she had, so kindly and so fortunately, named to him. It wasn’t a thing for a present to a person she was fond of, for she wouldn’t wish to give a present that would bring ill luck. That had come to him—so that he couldn’t rest, and he should feel better now that he had told her. His having led her to act in ignorance was what he should have been ashamed of; and, if she would pardon, gracious lady as she was, all the liberties he had taken, she might make of the bowl any use in life but that one.

During those of Maggie’s vigils in which that view loomed largest, the image of her husband that it thus presented to her gave out a beauty for the revelation of which she struck herself as paying, if anything, all too little. To make sure of it—to make sure of the beauty shining out of the humility, and of the humility lurking in all the pride of his presence—she would have gone the length of paying more yet, of paying with difficulties and anxieties compared to which those actually before her might have been as superficial as headaches or rainy days.

Book TWO Part 5 Chapter 36

[Maggie] Nothing in fact was stranger than the way in which, when she had remained there a little, her companions, watched by her through one of the windows, actually struck her as almost consciously and gratefully safer. They might have been—really charming as they showed in the beautiful room, and Charlotte certainly, as always, magnificently handsome and supremely distinguished—they might have been figures rehearsing some play of which she herself was the author; they might even, for the happy appearance they continued to present, have been such figures as would, by the strong note of character in each, fill any author with the certitude of success, especially of their own histrionic.

Such a glimpse of her conceivable idea, which would be founded on reasons all her own, reasons of experience and assurance, impenetrable to others, but intimately familiar to herself—such a glimpse opened out wide as soon as it had come into view; for if so much as this was still firm ground between the elder pair, if the beauty of appearances had been so consistently preserved, it was only the golden bowl as Maggie herself knew it that had been broken. The breakage stood not for any wrought discomposure among the triumphant three—it stood merely for the dire deformity of her attitude toward them.

Charlotte had marched straight in, dragging her rich train; she rose there beautiful and free, with her whole aspect and action attuned to the firmness of her speech. Maggie had kept the shawl she had taken out with her, and, clutching it tight in her nervousness, drew it round her as if huddling in it for shelter, covering herself with it for humility.

[Maggie] “You must take it from me that your anxiety rests quite on a misconception. You must take it from me that I’ve never at any moment fancied I could suffer by you.” And, marvellously, she kept it up—not only kept it up, but improved on it. “You must take it from me that I’ve never thought of you but as beautiful, wonderful and good. Which is all, I think, that you can possibly ask.”

Book TWO Part 5 Chapter 37

[Adam, Maggie] It was positively as if, in short, the inward felicity of their being once more, perhaps only for half-an-hour, simply daughter and father had glimmered out for them, and they had picked up the pretext that would make it easiest. They were husband and wife—oh, so immensely!—as regards other persons; but after they had dropped again on their old bench, conscious that the party on the terrace, augmented, as in the past, by neighbours, would do beautifully without them, it was wonderfully like their having got together into some boat and paddled off from the shore where husbands and wives, luxuriant complications, made the air too tropical.

[Adam, Maggie]Her father listened to this declaration as if the precautions of her general mercy could still, as they betrayed themselves, have surprises for him—to say nothing of a charm of delicacy and beauty; he might have been wishing to see how far she could go and where she would, all touchingly to him, arrive.

[Adam, Maggie] “No, we’re not proud,” she answered after a moment. “I’m not sure that we’re quite proud enough.” Yet she changed the next instant that subject too. She could only do so, however, by harking back—as if it had been a fascination. She might have been wishing, under this renewed, this still more suggestive visitation, to keep him with her for remounting the stream of time and dipping again, for the softness of the water, into the contracted basin of the past. “We talked about it—we talked about it; you don’t remember so well as I. You too didn’t know—and it was beautiful of you; like Kitty and Dotty you too thought we had a position, and were surprised when I thought we ought to have told them we weren’t doing for them what they supposed. In fact,” Maggie pursued, “we’re not doing it now. We’re not, you see, really introducing them. I mean not to the people they want.”

“Well, you admitted”—Maggie kept it up—”that that was a good difficulty. You confessed that our life did seem to be beautiful.”
He thought a moment. “Yes—I may very well have confessed it, for so it did seem to me.” But he guarded himself with his dim, his easier smile. “What do you want to put on me now?”
“Only that we used to wonder—that we were wondering then—if our life wasn’t perhaps a little selfish.” This also for a time, much at his leisure, Adam Verver retrospectively fixed. “Because Fanny Assingham thought so?”

Besides, who but himself really knew what he, after all, hadn’t, or even had, gained? The beauty of her condition was keeping him, at any rate, as he might feel, in sight of the sea, where, though his personal dips were over, the whole thing could shine at him, and the air and the plash and the play become for him too a sensation.

[Maggie, Adam] With which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back, his legs a little apart, he seemed to plant or to square himself for a kind of assurance it had occurred to him he might as well treat her to, in default of other things, before they changed their subject. It had the effect, for her, of a reminder—a reminder of all he was, of all he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her perfect little father, she might take him as representing, take him as having, quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been capable of, and as therefore wishing, not—was it?—illegitimately, to call her attention to. The “successful,” beneficent person, the beautiful, bountiful, original, dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was—these things struck her, on the spot, as making up for him, in a wonderful way, a character she must take into account in dealing with him either for pity or for envy.

Book TWO Part 5 Chapter 38

A few days of this, accordingly, had wrought a change in that apprehension of the instant beatitude of triumph—of triumph magnanimous and serene—with which the upshot of the night-scene on the terrace had condemned our young woman to make terms. She had had, as we know, her vision of the gilt bars bent, of the door of the cage forced open from within and the creature imprisoned roaming at large—a movement, on the creature’s part, that was to have even, for the short interval, its impressive beauty, but of which the limit, and in yet another direction, had loomed straight into view during her last talk under the great trees with her father. It was when she saw his wife’s face ruefully attached to the quarter to which, in the course of their session, he had so significantly addressed his own—it was then that Maggie could watch for its turning pale, it was then she seemed to know what she had meant by thinking of her, in she shadow of his most ominous reference, as “doomed.”

[Charlotte] One of the attentions she had from immediately after her marriage most freely paid him was that of her interest in his rarities, her appreciation of his taste, her native passion for beautiful objects and her grateful desire not to miss anything he could teach her about them. Maggie had in due course seen her begin to “work” this fortunately natural source of sympathy for all it was worth.

[Charlotte] Charlotte hung behind, with emphasised attention; she stopped when her husband stopped, but at the distance of a case or two, or of whatever other succession of objects; and the likeness of their connection would not have been wrongly figured if he had been thought of as holding in one of his pocketed hands the end of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck.

[Maggie] Charlotte’s one opportunity, meanwhile, for the air of confidence she had formerly worn so well and that agreed so with her firm and charming type, was the presence of visitors, never, as the season advanced, wholly intermitted—rather, in fact, so constant, with all the people who turned up for luncheon and for tea and to see the house, now replete, now famous, that Maggie grew to think again of this large element of “company” as of a kind of renewed water-supply for the tank in which, like a party of panting gold-fish, they kept afloat. It helped them, unmistakably, with each other, weakening the emphasis of so many of the silences of which their intimate intercourse would otherwise have consisted. Beautiful and wonderful for her, even, at times, was the effect of these interventions—their effect above all in bringing home to each the possible heroism of perfunctory things.

The sound was in her own ears still—that of Charlotte’s high coerced quaver before the cabinets in the hushed gallery; the voice by which she herself had been pierced the day before as by that of a creature in anguish and by which, while she sought refuge at the blurred window, the tears had been forced into her eyes. Her comprehension soared so high that the wonder for her became really his not feeling the need of wider intervals and thicker walls. Before THAT admiration she also meditated; consider as she might now, she kept reading not less into what he omitted than into what he performed a beauty of intention that touched her fairly the more by being obscure. It was like hanging over a garden in the dark; nothing was to be made of the confusion of growing things, but one felt they were folded flowers, and their vague sweetness made the whole air their medium.

Book TWO Part 6 Chapter 39

No mentions.

Book TWO Part 6 Chapter 40

[Maggie to Prince] “I’ll do anything you like,” she said to her husband on one of the last days of the month, “if our being here, this way at this time, seems to you too absurd, or too uncomfortable, or too impossible. We’ll either take leave of them now, without waiting—or we’ll come back in time, three days before they start. I’ll go abroad with you, if you but say the word; to Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Italian Alps, to whichever of your old high places you would like most to see again—those beautiful ones that used to do you good after Rome and that you so often told me about.”

Book TWO Part 6 Chapter 41

[Maggie] After which while Amerigo watched her, and in fact quite because of it, she had an inspiration, to which she presently yielded. If he was wondering what she would say next she had found exactly the thing. “In that case he will leave you Charlotte to take care of in our absence. You’ll have to carry her off somewhere for your last evening; unless you may prefer to spend it with her here. I shall then see that you dine, that you have everything, quite beautifully. You’ll be able to do as you like.”

[Maggie, Prince] They were all, apparently, queer for him, but she had at least, with the lapse of the months, created the perception that there might be something in them; whereby he stared there, beautiful and sombre, at what she was at present providing him with.

[Maggie to Prince of Charlotte] This was eminent sense, but it didn’t arrest the Princess, who, the next moment, had found a form for her challenge. “But shan’t you then so much as miss her a little? She’s wonderful and beautiful, and I feel somehow as if she were dying. Not really, not physically,” Maggie went on—”she’s so far, naturally, splendid as she is, from having done with life. But dying for us—for you and me; and making us feel it by the very fact of there being so much of her left.”

“You spoke just now of Charlotte’s not having learned from you that I ‘know.’ Am I to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?”
He did the inquiry all the honours—visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response. “You think I might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?”
“It isn’t a question of any beauty,” said Maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.”
“Oh, the quantity of truth!” the Prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured.
“That’s a thing by itself, yes. But there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.”
“Of course there are!” the Prince hastened to reply. After which he brought up more slowly: “If ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.

He was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him, kiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his face—frowning, smiling, she mightn’t know which; only beautiful and strange—was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in dreams. She closed her eyes to it, and so, the next instant, against her purpose, she had put out her hand, which had met his own and which he held.

Book TWO Part 6 Chapter 42

The question of the amount of correction to which Charlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered, for the instant, only to sink, conspicuously, by its own weight; so high a pitch she seemed to give to the unconsciousness of questions, so resplendent a show of serenity she succeeded in making. The shade of the official, in her beauty and security, never for a moment dropped; it was a cool, high refuge, like the deep, arched recess of some coloured and gilded image, in which she sat and smiled and waited, drank her tea, referred to her husband and remembered her mission. Her mission had quite taken form—it was but another name for the interest of her great opportunity—that of representing the arts and the graces to a people languishing, afar off, in ignorance

[‘His sentiment’ =Adam’s] The tenderness represented for her by his sacrifice of such a treasure had become, to her sense, a part of the whole infusion, of the immortal expression; the beauty of his sentiment looked out at her, always, from the beauty of the rest, as if the frame made positively a window for his spiritual face: she might have said to herself, at this moment, that in leaving the thing behind him, held as in her clasping arms, he was doing the most possible toward leaving her a part of his palpable self.

[Of Charlotte] “Oh, but naturally!” On which, as the warranted truth of it hung in the air—the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present opportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted—she found herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet known, in the vision of all he might mean. The sense of it in her rose higher, rose with each moment that he invited her thus to see him linger; and when, after a little more, he had said, smoking again and looking up, with head thrown back and hands spread on the balcony rail, at the grey, gaunt front of the house, “She’s beautiful, beautiful!” her sensibility reported to her the shade of a new note. It was all she might have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the note of possession and control; and yet it conveyed to her as nothing till now had done the reality of their parting. They were parting, in the light of it, absolutely on Charlotte’s VALUE—the value that was filling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play, and with which the Prince, on his side, was perhaps making larger acquaintance. If Maggie had desired, at so late an hour, some last conclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might have found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon high values. Somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her gifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of Charlotte’s! What else had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as great? Great for the world that was before her—that he proposed she should be: she was not to be wasted in the application of his plan. Maggie held to this then—that she wasn’t to be wasted. To let his daughter know it he had sought this brief privacy. What a blessing, accordingly, that she could speak her joy in it! His face, meanwhile, at all events, was turned to her, and as she met his eyes again her joy went straight. “It’s success, father.

A compilation of excerpts from the main passages in which ‘The Fear’ is discussed in Kafka’s letter’s to Milena. Some passages of especial interest to me were:

• Letter of Milena to Max Brod, Jan.-Feb., 1921. Maybe the most direct statement about ‘the fear’, Milena calls it a fear of all that’s “shamelessly alive.” (How does this comport with Kafka’s idea of what the fear is?)
• Letter of Kafka to Milena, Aug., 1920. Kafka’s most involved statement, the letter contrasts fear and longing and discusses a casual affair Kafka had with a shop girl.
• Letter of Kafka to Milena, Aug. 1920. Kafka mentions that his story ‘The Judgment’ has very much to do with the fear. (Another of his now published works mentioned in this connection is his letter to his father –see the letters of June & Aug. 1920.)

Elsewhere, he calls it the fear “inherent in all faith since time began” and in another place compares it to a spouse. The translator is Philip Boehm; the page numbers refer to the Shocken edition.

[43, June 12, 1920] “I cannot determine whether you still want to see me after my letters of Wednesday and Thursday; I know my relationship to you (you belong to me, even if I should never see you again) […] these I know, insofar as they do not fall into the indistinct realm of fear, but I don’t know your relationship to me at all; this belongs entirely to fear. Nor do you know me — I repeat this, Milena.”

[45, June 13, 1920] “(understand, Milena, my age, the fact that I am used up, and, above all, my fear, and understand your youth, your vivacity, your courage. And my fear is actually growing, since it is a sign of my retreating from the world; which causes the world in turn to exert more pressure, which causes a further increase in fear; your courage, however, indicates an advance, hence a decrease in pressure, hence an increase in courage)

[45, the same letter] “But whenever these letters come, Milena […], then, Milena, I literally start to shake as if under an alarm bell; I am unable to read them and naturally I read them anyway, the way an animal dying of thirst drinks, and with that comes fear and more fear; I look for a piece of furniture to crawl under; trembling, totally unaware of the world, I pray you might fly back out of the window the way you came storming in inside your letter. After all, I can’t keep a storm in my room; in these letters you undoubtedly have the magnificent head of Medusa, the snakes of terror are quivering about your head so wildly, while the snakes of fear quiver even more wildly about my own.”

[pp. 56, June 23, 1920] “The only thing I do fear –and I fear this with my eyes wide open, I am drowning in this fear, helpless (if I could sleep as deeply as I sink into fear I would no longer be alive) — is this inner conspiracy against myself (which the letter to my father will help you understand better, although not entirely, since the letter is much too focused on its purpose), which is based on the fact that I, who am not even the pawn of a pawn in the great chess game, far from it, now want to take the place of the queen, against all the rules and to the confusion of the game– I, the pawn of a pawn, a piece which doesn’t even exist, which isn’t even in the game– and next I may want to take the king’s place as well or even the whole board. Moreover, if that were what I really wanted, it would have to happen in some other, even more inhuman way. That’s why the suggestion I made to you means more to me than it does to you. At the moment it’s the only thing beyond doubt, the only thing not sicklied over, the only thing which makes me unconditionally happy.”

[86-7, July 15, 1920 / whole letter] “Just briefly before I leave for the office: I didn’t want to say anything, at least now, while you are fighting this terrible battle- I’ve been choking on it for 3 days — but it’s impossible not to, I have to, after all it’s my battle as well. You may have noticed that I haven’t slept for several nights. It’s simply the “fear.” It really is stronger than I am, it tosses me around at will, I don’t know up from down anymore or right from left. This time it began with Stasa. There truly is a sign above her saying: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” Besides that, there were 2,3 remarks which got mixed up in your last letter. These remarks made me happy, but only despairingly so, since although what you say about the fear is very persuasive –to mind, heart, and body all at once– I have an even deeper conviction– I don’t know exactly where- which evidently nothing can persuade. Finally –this really contributed to weaken me– the wonderful calming-uncalming effect left by your physical presence is wearing off as the days go by. If only you were already here! As it is I have no one, no one here except the fear, together we roll through the nights locked in each other’s arms. This fear is really something very serious which strangely enough was always only directed at the future, no, that’s not right. Moreover, it is partly explained by the fact that it constantly forces me to realize I must admit–and this is a great confession–that Milena, too, is only human, What you say about this is really very beautiful and kind–having hear that I would want to hear anything else; nevertheless, to maintain that the stakes here are not very high is a very questionable assertion. After all, this fear is not merely my private fear –although it also, terribly enough– but it is also the fear inherent in all faith since time began.
………..Just having written you that cools my head.”

[pp.90, July 16, 1920] “There was no letter today, but I’m not afraid, Milena, please don’t misunderstand me; I’m never afraid about you, even if it sometimes seems that way and it often does –it’s simply a weakness, a mood of the heart, which knows exactly why it’s beating nevertheless. Giants have their weaknesses as well; I believe even Hercules fainted once. With my teeth clenched, however, and with your eyes before I can endure anything: distance, anxiety, worry, letterlessness. […] To continue what I was saying above: With you in my heart I can bear everything, and even if I did write that the days without letters were horrifying, it’s not true; they were just horribly difficult — the boat was heavy and it’s draught was horribly deep, but on your tide it floated nonetheless. There’s only one thing I cannot bear without your express help, Milena: the “fear.” I’m much too weak for that, it’s so immense I cannot see beyond it– and this monstrous flood is washing me away.
………..“What you say about Jarmila is precisely one of those weakness of the heart; your heart stops being true to me just for a moment and that’s when such an idea pops into your head. In this sense are we still two different people? And is my ‘fear’ much different than the fear of self-abuse?”

[96-97, July 19, 1920] Fourth, all the doubts you so quietly express concerning the trip to Prague are correct. ‘Correct’ is also what I wired, although there it referred to speaking with your husband, and that was indeed the only correct thing to do. This morning, for instance, I suddenly began to fear, to fear out of love, to fear in anguish that you might come to Prague, misled by some trivial, accidental whim.”

[100-01, July 21, 1920] “Furthermore: it’s not a question of what will happen later on, the only certainty is that I cannot live apart from you without completely submitting to fear, giving it even more than it demands, and I do this voluntarily, with delight, I pour myself into it.
………..“You are right to reproach me in the name of fear for my behavior in Vienna, but this fear is particularly mysterious; I do not know its inner laws, only its hand on my throat –and that really is the most terrible thing I have ever experienced or could experience.
………..“Perhaps the logical conclusion is that we’re both married: you in Vienna, I to my fear in Prague, in which case you’re not the only one tugging vain at marriage. For you see, Milena, if you had been completely convinced by me in Vienna (even agreeing to take that step of which you were unsure), you would no longer in Vienna in spite of everything: oor rather in that case there would not be an ‘in spite of everything’ — you’d simply be in Prague. Moreover, everything you console yourself with in your last letter really is mere consolation. Don’t you agree?
………..“Had you come to Prague right away or had you at least decided right away to do so, it would still not have served as any proof for you — I don’t need any proofs for you; there is nothing in my mind as clear and certain as you. but it would have been a tremendous proof for me and this is what I’m missing now. Occasionally the fear feeds on this lack as well.
………..“In fact it may even be much worse and I myself, the ‘savior,’ may be tying you down in Vienna like no one else has ever done.”

[pp.146-148, Aug 8-9, 1920] “I’ll try answering the question of ‘strach–toucha [footnote: fear–longing]’. I probably won’t succeed in my first attempt, but if I keep coming back to it, I may manage after several letters. It would help if you read my (incidentally bad and unnecessary) letter to my father. Maybe I’ll take it along to Gmund.
………..“If we restrict ‘fear’ and ‘longing’ the way you do in your last letter, the question is not easy, but very simple to answer. In that case I ONLY have ‘fear.’ It’s like this:
………..“I recall the first night. At the time we lived in the Zeltnergasse, opposite a clothing store, a shopgirl was always in the door. I was constantly pacing back and forth in my room upstairs, a little over 20 years old, nervously preparing for the first State examination, trying to cram facts that made no sense to me into my head. It was summer, very hot, probably this time of year, completely unbearable. I kept stopping in front of the window, my mouth full of disgusting Roman law; finally we came to an understanding using sign language. I was to pick her up at 8:00, but when I went down that even somebody else was already there. That didn’t really change much, however; I was afraid of the whole world, hence afraid of this man as well; I also would have been afraid of him had he not been there. Although the girl did indeed take his arm, she nonetheless gave signs for me to follow them. This way we came to the Schutzeninsel, where we all drank beer; I sat at the next table. They then walked to the girl’s apartment, slowly, with me in tow; it was somewhere near the Fleischmarkt. There the man took his leave, the girl ran into the house, I waited for a while for her to reappear and then we went to a hotel on the Kleinseite. It was all enticing, exciting, and disgusting, even before we reached the hotel, and it wasn’t any different inside. And as we walked home over the Karlsbrucke toward morning –it was still hot and beautiful– I was actually happy, but this happiness was only because my eternally grieving body had given me some peace at last, and above all because the whole thing had not been more disgusting, more dirty than it was. I met the girl once again –2 nights later, I think — everything went as well as the first time, but then right away I left for the summer holidays. In the country I played around a bit with another girl, and could no longer bear the sight of the shopgirl in Prague; I never spoke to her again, she had become (from my point of view) my evil enemy, although in reality she was friendly and good-natured. She kept on following me with her uncomprehending eyes. And although the girl had done something slightly disgusting in the hotel (not worth mentioning), had said something slightly obscene ( not worth mentioning), I don’t mean to say this was the sole reason for my animosity (in fact, I’m sure it wasn’t); nonetheless the memory remained. I knew then and there I would never forget it and at the same time I knew –or thought I knew– that deep down, this disgust and filth were a necessary part of the whole, and it was precisely this (which she had indicated to me by one slight action, one small word) which had drawn me with such amazing force into this hotel, which I would have otherwise avoided with all my remaining strength.
………..And it’s stayed that way ever since. My body, often quiet for years, would then again be shaken by this longing for some very particular, trivial, disgusting thing, something slightly repulsive, embarrassing, obscene, which I always found even in the best cases — some insignificant odor, a little bit of sulfur, a little bit of hell. This urge had something of the eternal Jew — senselessly being drawn along, senselessly wandering through a senselessly obscene world.
………..On the other hand there were times when my body wasn’t calm, when actually nothing was calm, but when I nonetheless felt no pressure whatsoever; life was good, peaceful, it’s only unease was hope (do you know a better one?). I was always alone at such times, for as long as they lasted. Now for the first time in my life I am encountering such times when I am not alone. This is why not only your physical proximity but you yourself are quieting-disquieting. This is why I don’t have any longing for smut (during the first half of my stay in Meran I kept making plans day and night –against my own clear will– about how I could seduce the chambermaid– and even worse. Toward the end of my stay a very willing girl ran right into my arms; I more or less had to translate her words into my own language before I could even begin to understand her). More to the point, I just don’t see any smut — nothing of the kind that stimulates from the outside, but there is everything that can bring forth life from within; in short, there’s some of the air breathed in Paradise before the Fall. Enough of this air that there is no ‘longing,’ but not enough that there isn’t any ‘fear.’ — So now you know. And that’s also why I ‘feared’ a night in Gmund, but this was only the usual ‘fear’ (which unfortunately is quite sufficient) I have in Prague as well; it wasn’t any special fear of Gmund.

[pp.150, Aug 9, 1920] ” Your most beautiful letters (and that’s saying a lot, since in their entirety as well as in almost every line, they are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me) are the ones where you accept me ‘fear’ as justified and simulatneously attempt to explain why it isn’t necessary. Because deep down I also resemble a defense lawyer whom it has bribed: it really is a part of me and perhaps the best part. And since it’s the best part it may also be the only part you love. What else about me could be so loveable? But this is worthy of love.
………..“And when you once asked how I could have called that Saturday ‘good’ with this fear inside my heart, it isn’t difficult to explain. Because I love you (you see, I do love you, you dimwit, my love engulfs you the way the sea loves a tiny pebble on its bed– and may I be the pebble with you, heaven permitting) I love the whole world […]

[173. August 28, 1920] [Of The judgment]. “The translation of the final sentence is very good. Every sentence, every word, every –if I may say so– music in that story is connected with the ‘fear.’ It was then, during one long night, that the wound broke open for the first time, and in my opinion the translation catches this association exactly, with the magic hand which is yours.”

[194. September 14, 1920]. “This couldn’t last. Although you were stroking me with the kindest of hands, you had to recognize certain peculiarities pointing to the forest, my true home and origin. Next came the necessary and necessarily repeated discussions about the ‘fear,’ which tortured me (and you, but you were innocent), to the point of touching my raw nerve; the feeling kept growing inside me what an unclean pest I was for you, disturbing you everywhere, always getting in your way.”

[219. November 1920]. ” I keep trying to convey something that cannot be conveyed, to explain something that cannot be explained, something in my bones, which can only be experience in these same bones. In essence it may be nothing more than that fear we have already discussed so often, but extended to everything, fear of the greatest things as well as the smallest, fear, convulsive fear of pronouncing a single word. On the other hand, maybe this fear isn’t simply fear, but also longing for something greater than anything that can inspire fear.
………..“‘Dashed to pieces on me’ is utter nonsense. Only I am at fault, because there was too little truth on my part, still far too little truth, still mostly lies, lies told out of fear of myself and fear of people […]”

[248, 249/ Milena to Max Brod, Jan-Feb, 1921]. “I understand his fear down in my deepest nerve. Furthermore, it was always there, before he met me, all the time he didn’t know me. I knew his fear before I knew him. I armed myself against it by understanding it. In the four days Frank was next to me, he lost it. We laughed about it. I know for certain that no sanatorium will succeed in curing him. He will never be healthy, Max, as long as he has this fear. And no psychic reinforcement can overcome this fear, because the fear prevents the reinforcement. This fear doesn’t just apply to me; it relates to everything that is shamelessly alive, also to the flesh, for example. Flesh is too uncovered; he can’t stand the sight of it. This is what I was able to dispel back then. Whenever he sensed this fear, he would look me in the eye, and we would wait a while, as if our feet hurt or we had to catch our breath, and after a moment it would pass […]

[The Same.] “If I could have brought myself to go with him, he would have been able to live happily with me. But it’s only today I realize all of this. At the time, I was an ordinary woman, like all women in the world, a small, impulsive female. And that is what led to his fear. It was correct. Is it possible for this man to feel anything that isn’t correct? He knows ten thousand times more about the world than everyone else. This fear of his was correct.”

A list suggested by Stuart Gilbert in his James Joyce’s Ulysses (though, looking casually, I think that ‘eye’ is mentioned about as much in this chapter as it is in others). Gutenberg.

292 (286): “I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D.M.P at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye.” “Did you see that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush?”

295 (289): “Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he: –What’s your opinion of the times?”

296 (290): “The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero.”

296 (290): “The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower.”

297 (291): “The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare.”

297 (291): “So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid O, as true as I’m telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.”

297 (291): “I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill land and Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up all the guts of the fish.”

298 (292): “And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth […]”

299 (293): “The long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old lunatic is gone round to Green Street to look for a G. man.”

299 (293): “Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long John’s eye. U. p…”

303 (296): “The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat.”

303 (297): “So Bloom slopes in with his cod’s eye on the dog and he asks Terry was Martin Cunningham there.”

309 (302): Hand by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously.

310 (303): Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage

311 (305): And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the belt.

311 (305): “Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws.”

312 (305): “We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a contributor D.O.C. points out in an interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous Raferty and of Donald MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye.”

314 (307): And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging.

315 (308): “Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears sometimes with Mrs. O’ Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of fat all over her. Couldn’t loosen her farting strings but old cod’s eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do it.”

318 (311): “What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and the training of the eye.”

319 (312): “The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and, when the bell went, came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime.”

320 (313): “Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, drinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders.”

320 (314): “Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing.”

321 (314): “Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.”

321 (314): “The signor Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street.”

322 (315): “And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.”.

322 (315): “Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody blarney.”

322 (315): “Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.”

322 (316): “And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feast day of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law.”

325 (318): “So J.J. puts in a word doing the toff about one story was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their civilization.”

326 (319): “Some people, says, Bloom, can see the mote in others’ eyes but they can’t see the beam in their own.”

326 (320): “Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.”

327 (320): “Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays […]”

327 (321): “And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen.”

331 (324): “Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about.”

332 (325): “Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness […]”

333 (326): Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye.

335 (328): Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in anger in his life?

336 (329): “Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show.”

338 (331): “Not as much as would blind your eye.”

340 (332): “And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags’ horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns.”

341 (334): “Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver.”

342 (335): “…and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, jew…”

343 (336): “Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left him for dead.”

344 (337): “From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character.”

344 (337): “Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed south west by west.”

Wax
Ambiguities
directions scene
1…. 2…. 3…. 4 …. 5…. 6
Psalm 137 The Burrow respice finem
re: the reading experience. Hannah chart. tamarisk.

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