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“OMNIUM GATHERUM”
225
and nonconformity characterize Joyce’s portrayal of his
younger alter ego, Stephen, who famously claims in
A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man
that “I will not serve”: “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”; he aims “to forge in the smithy of [his] soul
the uncreated conscience of [his] race” (1964: 239, 246-247,
253). In
Ulysses
, Stephen asserts his ideal again: “
Non
serviam!
” (1986: 475). It is noteworthy that Bloom shares this
characteristic to some degree despite being styled a man of the
masses:
3
both he and Stephen “indurated by early domestic
training and an inherited tenacity of heterodox resistance
professed their disbelief in many orthodox religious, national,
social and ethical doctrines” (544). The picture of the
independent and nonconforming intellectual functioning as the
conscience of the people and speaking the truth seems to be
gravely distorted in “Aeolus,” which brings together several
pressmen, a solicitor, a professor, and a poet. Yet except
perhaps for Stephen the poet, these Dublin intellectuals act as
simple orators rather than permanent persuaders, pursue
personal gain instead of public welfare, and fall short of the
production of truth; they fail, in brief, to perform the
intellectual function. As the episode is set in the newsroom and
dominated by the editor and other pressmen, my discussion
will start with the “talents” of the press.
4
3
For Joyce’s portrayal of Leopold Bloom as loveable mass man, see Carey
(2002: 19-20).
4
Although “Aeolus” brings together intellectuals from various walks of life, it
is the pressmen that dominate the entire episode. A larger proportion of this
paper is therefore devoted to the dissection of the pressmen.