Associations

Reading Stephen’s translation from infant consciousness into the consciousness of a budding artist, I am reminded of a Taoist anecdote:

Before enlightenment, the mountain and the river are just mountains and river.
During enlightenment, the mountain and the river are more than just mountains and rivers.
After enlightenment, the mountain and the river are only just mountains and rivers.

And when Stephen exclaims the following epiphany:

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning. (268, 269)

I am reminded of what E. M. Cioran writes of in A Short History of Decay (trans. Richard Howard), in which a relation between thought and prostitution is uttered as follows: “Everything I know I learn in the School of Whores!” should be the exclamation of the thinker who accepts everything and rejects everything, when, following their example, he has specialized in the weary smile, when men are to him merely clients, and the world’s sidewalks the marketplace where he sells his bitterness, as his companions sell their bodies.