March 1 to March 31
I had no plans to reread James Joyce's "The Dead" for ISSM3 until a few days ago, having already posted on his story, "A Painful Case" this month until I saw that several of the short story writers who have done Q and A sessions for the month have said they thought that was the greatest of the world's short stories. (I do not feel yet ready to say this based on the limits of my erudition but I can think of nothing to beat it as of now.) Two days ago I read a story of marvelous beauty and power "The Weaver's Grave" by Seamus O'Kelly (from 1906) in William Trevor's must have anthology, The Oxford Book of the Irish Short Story. Trevor says the story is kind of a transitional work in the history of the Irish short story, from stories in a purely traditional mode to those of James Joyce and George Moore. By coincidence the very next story in Trevor's anthology was James Joyce's "The Dead" so I read it again. These two stories taken together come pretty close to telling the story of the transition from the days of the wandering Irish short story teller to the modern literary Irish short story. There is only eight years difference in composition times but the stylistic differences are amazing.
"The Dead" is not written in an experimental style that you need a hypertext guide to follow. It has a plot, a beginning and end. It is set in 1904 at a party given every year by the Moran sisters. The central character is Gabriel Conway. Gabriel seems well read, he likes Robert Browning, he is self conscious, reflective and seems a good man. He is also tentative and does not quite feel comfortable in the company of others. In his conversations with others at the party, most of whom seem his social inferiors in his eyes, he uses the standard bits of Irish nationalism to come up with something to say. His wife Greta came to the party with him but he did not seem to pay much attention to her. He sees an attractive looking woman sitting on the stairs and it takes a moment for him to realize it is his wife deep in thought. I do not like spoilers myself so I will stop here but Gabriel does achieve an epiphany that may change the rest of his life and his marriage. I will quote from the opening of the story to give a glimpse of his style:
He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognize from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education.
He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure.
As the story advances the prose becomes increasingly more and more beautiful until the last few sentences in which Gabriel achieves his epiphany and we read some of the most beautiful lines in the English language. It is as if the progression of the prose is pushing us to our own epiphany. The last few pages are simply stunning.
I hope now to at least reread this story for all subsequent Irish Short Story Month events. I could see rereading it enough times until you pretty much knew it by heart as very much worth the effort.
Mel u
1 comment:
I like that in this story Gabriel doesn't seem to know himself until the end - he feels himself to be so superior to the people he is in company with, and doesn't recognise his own insecurity. He thinks about what to recite - Browning might go over their heads, so maybe some well-known Shakespeare. He thinks that the others would see him as attempting to show off his superior education if he chooses something that they wouldn't recognise, and though he doesn't want to give that impression, that is indeed his motivation. He wants people to know how much better he is, how intelligent and cultured he is, but in reality all of this comes from a deep seated insecurity. I find this a fascinating story and look forward to reading it again in full. It's been a while. Thank you for your post, and I look forward to seeing more on Irish literature here. I wrote a tiny bit about symbolism in The Dead (and another text) for a class I was taking and posted it on my blog if you'd like to have a look. There's so much more that could have been discussed, but with the word limit I just chose to focus on a couple of things: http://www.learningandwriting.com/1/post/2013/04/symbolism-in-james-joyces-the-dead-and-mary-lavins-a-wet-day.html
Thanks,
Elissa M
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