'Who is good?' asked Parsifal.
That was a strange question which the innocent Parsifal
asked-- 'Who is good?' and it is recalled to mind when one
reads certain criticisms and biographies, for which the
influence of a modern writer, misunderstood as the
worship of broad-cloth, is answerable. When these
criticisms are insincere they are humourous, but the case
is worse when they are as sincere as such things can be.
And so, when Mangan is remembered in his country (for he
is sometimes spoken of in literary societies), his
countrymen lament that such poetic faculty was mated
with so little rectitude of conduct, surprised to find this
faculty in a man whose vices were exotic and who was
little of a patriot. Those who have written of him, have
been scrupulous in holding the balance between the
drunkard and the opium-eater, and have sought to discover
whether learning or imposture lies behind such phrases as
'from the Ottoman' or 'from the Coptic': and save for this
small remembrance, Mangan has been a stranger in his
country, a rare and unsympathetic figure in the streets,
where he is seen going forward alone like one who does
penance for some ancient sin. Surely life, which Novalis has
called a malady of the spirit, is a heavy penance for him
who has, perhaps, forgotten the sin that laid it upon him, a
sorrowful portion, too, because of the fine artist in him
which reads so truly the lines of brutality and of weakness
in the faces of men that are thrust in upon his path. He
bears it well for the most part, acquiescing in the justice
which has made him a vessel of wrath, but in a moment of
frenzy he breaks silence, and we read how his associates
dishonoured his person with their slime and venom, and how
he lived as a child amid coarseness and misery and that all
whom he met were demons out of the pit and that his father
was a human boa-constrictor. Certainly he is wiser who
accuses no man of acting unjustly towards him, seeing that
what is called injustice is never so but is an aspect of
justice, yet they who think that such a terrible tale is the
figment of a disordered brain do not know how keenly a
sensitive boy suffers from contact with a gross nature.
Mangan, however, is not without some consolation, for his
sufferings have cast him inwards, where for many ages the
sad and the wise have elected to be. When someone told him
that the account which he had given of his early life, so full
of things which were, indeed, the beginnings of sorrows,
was wildly overstated, and partly false, he answered--
'Maybe I dreamed it.' The world, you see, has become
somewhat unreal for him, and he has begun to contemn that
which is, in fine, the occasion of much error. How will it be
with those dreams which, for every young and simple
heart, take such dear reality upon themselves? One whose
nature is so sensitive cannot forget his dreams in a secure,
strenuous life. He doubts them, and puts them from him for
a time, but when he hears men denying them with an oath
he would acknowledge them proudly, and where
sensitiveness has induced weakness, or, as here, refined
upon natural weakness, would even compromise with the
world, and win from it in return the favour of silence, if no
more, as for something too slight to bear a violent disdain,
for that desire of the heart so loudly derided, that rudely
entreated idea. His manner is such that none can say if it be
pride or humility that looks out of that vague face, which
seems to live only because of those light shining eyes and
of the fair silken hair above it, of which he is a little vain.
This purely defensive reserve is not without dangers for
him, and in the end it is only his excesses that save him
from indifference. Something has been written of an affair
of the heart between him and a pupil of his, to whom he
gave lessons in German, and, it seems, he was an actor
afterwards in a love-comedy of three, but if he is reserved
with men, he is shy with women, and he is too
self-conscious, too critical, knows too little of the soft
parts of conversation, for a gallant. And in his strange
dress, in which some have seen eccentricity, and others
affectation-- the high, conical hat, the loose trousers many
sizes too big for him, and the old umbrella, so like a
bagpipes-- one may see a half-conscious expression of this.
The lore of many lands goes with him always, eastern tales
and the memory of curiously printed medieval books which
have rapt him out of his time-- gathered together day by
day and embroidered as in a web. He has acquaintance with
a score of languages, of which, upon occasion, he makes a
liberal parade, and has read recklessly in many literatures,
crossing how many seas, and even penetrating into
Peristan, to which no road leads that the feet travel. In
Timbuctooese, he confesses with a charming modesty
which should prevent detractors, he is slightly deficient,
but this seems no cause for regret. He is interested, too, in
the life of the seeress of Prevorst, and in all phenomena of
middle nature and here, where most of all the sweetness
and resoluteness of the soul have power, he seems to seek
in a world, how different from that in which Watteau may
have sought, both with a certain graceful inconstancy, 'what
is there in no satisfying measure or not at all.'
JAMES A. JOYCE (1902)
From an essay on one of my ancestral relations James Clarence Mangan
Kwaw
). Next thing I know I am being briefed by the NSW Tactical Response Group. They stick me out the front as bait and hid and watch ... thanks for that guys!
