drmstream[writing]

Yes, the news­pa­pers were right: snow was gen­eral all over Ire­land. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, fur­ther west­wards, softly falling into the dark muti­nous Shan­non waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely church­yard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and head­stones, on the spears of the lit­tle gate, on the bar­ren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the uni­verse and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the liv­ing and the dead.

The Dead
James Joyce

First, take away the adverbs:

• softly
• softly
• thickly
• slowly
• faintly
• faintly

Then the adjectives:

• dark
• muti­nous
• Shan­non
• lonely
• crooked
• lit­tle
• bar­ren
• last

Now, read it again, with­out the adverbs and the adjectives:

Yes, the news­pa­pers were right: snow was gen­eral all over Ire­land. It was falling upon the Bog of Allen and, fur­ther west­wards, falling into the waves. It was falling too upon every part of the church­yard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crosses and head­stones, on the spears of the gate, on the thorns. His soul swooned as he heard the snow falling through the uni­verse and falling, like the descent of their end, upon all the liv­ing and the dead.

What do the grace notes do to this pas­sage, and to our expe­ri­ence of Gabriel’s quiet end­ing of hope­less­ness, divorced from true pas­sion in his his­tory, his life and his love? Through the entire novella, illu­mi­na­tion is flick­er­ing and per­cep­tions are shrouded in shadow and col­ored by the rit­ual of the hol­i­day din­ner. The gaslights can not hold their light. At this moment of the end, defied in the inti­mate soul of his wife, Gabriel has lost his place.

The unadorned writ­ing in the para­graph pro­vides a firm cadence and strong Anglo-Saxon words. The words selected to inform the actions — the adverbs — are like a mother’s gen­tle whis­pers to a child in the unset­tled night. The words selected to inform the objects — the adjec­tives — are black and empty, dimin­ished and weary… dark, lonely, bar­ren, last.

At the end, as he’s lifted us into the dark poetry of Gabriel’s vision, sep­a­rat­ing our per­cep­tion from the expe­ri­ence of the man and let­ting us glide unfet­tered in the gen­tle cush­ion of the win­ter night, Joyce brings us down firmly with his final phrase.

upon all the liv­ing and the dead.

A bene­dic­tion granted not from the altar of faith but the altar of life, where a man’s accu­mu­lated expe­ri­ence and mis­be­got­ten acts become the trap­door that he opens to look inward, only to find that within there is the same thing as with­out: nothing.

The dead are a class unto them­selves, not requir­ing the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of “all.”

Joyce doesn’t take life away from Gabriel, just the pro­tec­tion of his self-delusions. After this night, Gabriel will have to live life know­ingly in the shadow of the dead.

It’s such a beau­ti­ful piece of writing.