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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
arable from a repudiation of mythological forms of knowledge,
he also pits himself against the revivalists, who were making a
similar claim.
The two-handed logic persists in Joyce s treatment of other
themes. Take race: on the one hand, the lecture rightly argues that
the Irish are a chronically impure race. Irishness is an immense
woven fabric in which very different elements are mixed (cw, p. 118).
Yet, by the end of the very paragraph in which this argument
appears, Joyce is writing of the present race in Ireland and
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describing it as belonging to the Celtic family. He equates Irish and
Celts throughout the essay, and discusses the Irish problem as part
of the larger predicament of British Celts. He even goes so far as to
assert that, whilst the Irish may be a composite people, it is this in
itself that constitutes them as a new Celtic race (cw, p. 114). If Irish
blood is always mixed, why say, as Joyce does, that most of the
heroes of the modern Irish movement had no Irish blood in them?
Once again, he is walking a precarious tightrope. He wants to insist
on the distinctiveness of Ireland and the significance of its history.
But he also wants to set them at a distance, to put both in propor-
tion. For he knows how unmodern this insistence is.
But if the lecture teeters on the edge of paradox, it does so for
very good reason. The twilight of colonial rule leaves the writer in
a practically impossible situation. He must promote the cause of
his own and his nation s future independence. The difficulty lies in
knowing how best to think about the national history. It draws the
writer into identification, as a history of oppression and suffering
that demands respect. It also repels him, because it is a history of
failure and subservience. As a history of dependence, it must be
surmounted, left behind; yet a conception of freedom that pays
no serious and lasting tribute to those who worked, struggled,
suffered and died en route to it is a dangerously trivial one. The
writer, then, must simultaneously claim and disown the past. He
must identify with historical passions and urgencies and remain
faithful to historical tragedy, not least because from them derives
the struggle for independence itself. Yet he must also point beyond
them, because he knows that healthy independence means separa-
tion from history, and even a degree of historical oblivion.
Thus Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages says two quite different
things about English rule and the English-Irish relation. At one
point, Joyce refers to a man tied to a carriage and having his insides
whipped out by British troops. In the lecture, at least, this comes
quite close to being Joyce s symbol for the English treatment of the
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Irish. The English in Ireland have been wantonly brutal, cunning
and venal oppressors. Joyce says that repeatedly, and quite baldly.
His closeness to Fenian and nationalist tradition made him al-
together aware, both of how ruthless an invader England could be,
and how unusually good it was at concealing the fact, even from
itself. But on the other hand, he is extremely tough-minded. He
refuses to opt for Fenian and nationalist outrage. There are no stir-
ring or heart-rending denunciations of the vile injustice of the colo-
nizer. Joyce the modern intellectual and writer defies colonial history
by rising superior to it and shrugging it off, whilst everywhere
showing that a massive effort is required to do so. It is naïve to rail
against the ferocity of a colonial power, he asserts, since ferocity
is the name of the colonial game. Indeed, putting up a moral protest
even colludes with the colonizer s myth of himself, the idea that
there are moral principles at stake in colonial activity. There can be
no debate about the morality of Empire. Empires, by definition, are
monstrous and unprincipled. This is as true of the Roman Catholic
as it is of the British one. The Irish, however, are unhelpfully ambiva-
lent about imperial rule. They fulminate against the English. But
the tyranny of Rome still holds the dwelling place of the soul
(cw, p. 125), and peremptorily throttles any true will to liberty.
The conduct of the colonial overlord, then, is not what matters
most. What matters is the possible resurgence of Ireland as a
self-assertively modern nation (cw, p. 125). The self-assertion in
question is spiritual, economic, cultural, material and practical
together. Certainly, it means vigorously resisting the two imperial
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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