Extracts from Walter Pater's work compiled by James Joyce
while living at Via Sanità 2, Trieste (17 October 1919 to 3 July 1920)

Details:
[material omitted by Joyce] set off in square brackets (usually hyphens, i.e. [-])
^material added by Joyce^ set off between carets
Original title, page-numbers: added by editors.

VIII.B, page 8

Walter Pater “Marius the Epicurean”

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, pp. 106f:

They comprehended a multitude of both sexes and of all ages, already initiated into the divine secret, clad in fair linen, the females veiled, the males with shining tonsures, and every one carrying a sistrum—the richer sort of silver, a few very dainty persons of fine gold—rattling the reeds, with a noise [like the jargon] of innumerable birds and insects awakened from torpor and abroad in the spring sun. Then, borne upon a kind of platform, came the goddess herself, undulating above the heads of the multitude as the bearers walked, in mystic robe embroidered with the moon and stars, bordered gracefully with a fringe of real fruit and flowers[,] and with a glittering crown upon the head. The train of the procession consisted of the priests in long white vestments, close from head to foot, distributed into various groups, each bearing, exposed aloft, one of the sacred symbols of Isis—the corn[-]fan, the golden asp, the ivory hand of equity, and among them the votive ship itself, carved and gilt, and adorned [bravely] with ^brave^ flags flying. Last of all walked the high priest[;]^:^ the people kneeling as he passed to kiss his hand, in which were those well[-]remembered roses.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, p. 162:

Down the dewy paths the people were descending from it, to keep a holiday, high and low alike in rough, white[-] linen smocks. A homely old play was just begun in an open[-] air theatre, with seats hollowed out of the turf[-]grown slope. Marius caught the terrified expression of a child in its mother's arms, as it turned from the yawning mouth of a great mask, for refuge in her bosom. The way mounted[,] and descended again[,] down the steep street of another place, all resounding with the noise of metal under the hammer; for every house had its brazier's workshop, the bright objects of brass and copper gleaming, like lights in a cave, out of their dark roofs and corners. Around the anvils the children were watching the work, or ran to fetch water to the hissing, red[-]hot metal; and Marius

VIII.B, page 9

too watched, as he took his hasty mid[-]day refreshment, a mess of chestnut[-] meal and cheese, while the swelling surface of a great copper water[-] vessel grew flowered all over with tiny petals under the skilful strokes. Towards dusk, a frantic woman at the roadside, stood and cried out the words of some philter[,] or malison[,] in verse, with weird motion of her hands, as the travellers passed, like a wild picture drawn from Virgil.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, p. 173:

The temple^s^ of Antoninus and Faustina [was] ^were^ still fresh in all the majesty of its closely arrayed columns of cipollino; but, on the whole, little had been added under the late and present emperors, and during fifty years of public quiet[,] a sober brown and gray had grown apace on things. The gilding on the roof of many a temple had lost its garishness: cornice and capital of polished marble shone out with all the crisp freshness of real flowers, amid the already mouldering travertine and brickwork, though the birds had built freely among them.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, p. 177:

Marius could distinguish, could distinguish clearly, the well[-]known profile, between the floating purple curtains.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, p. 191

The nostrils and mouth seemed capable almost of peevishness[;]^:^ and Marius noted in them, as in the hands[,] and in the spare body generally, what was new to his experience—something of asceticism, as we say, of a bodily gymnastic[,] by which, although it told pleasantly in the clear blue humours of the eye, the flesh had scarcely been an equal gainer with the spirit.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, p. 211

The discourse ended almost in darkness, the evening having set in somewhat suddenly[,] with a heavy fall of snow. The torches, made ready to do him a useless honour, were of real service now[,] as the emperor was solemnly conducted home; one man rapidly catching light from another—a long stream of moving Hghts across the white

VIII.B, page 10

Forum, up the great stairs, to the palace. And, in effect, that night winter began, the hardest that had been known for a lifetime. The wolves came from the mountains[;]^:^ and, led by the carrion scent, devoured the dead bodies which had been hastily buried during the plague[,] and, emboldened by their meal, crept, before the short day was well past, over the walls of the farmyards of the [C]^c^ampagna. The eagles were seen driving the flocks of smaller birds across the dusky sky. Only, in the city itself the winter was all the brighter for the contrast[,] among those who could pay for light and warmth. The habit[-]makers made a great sale of the spoil of all such furry creatures as had escaped wolves and eagles[,] for presents at the {i}Saturnalia[;]^:^{/i} and at no time had the winter roses from Carthage seemed more lustrously yellow and red.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. I, p. 239

It might be almost edifying to study minutely the expression of his face[,] while the assistants corded and pegged him to the bench, cunningly; the servant of the law waiting by[,] who, after one short cut with his knife, would slip the man's leg from his skin, as neatly as if it were a stocking.

——

Walter Pater “Imaginary Portraits”

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 156

And meantime those dreams of remote and probably adventurous travel lent the youth, still so healthy of body, a wing for more distant expeditions than he had ever yet inclined to, among his own wholesome German woodlands. In long rambles, afoot or on horseback, by day and night, he flung himself, for the resettling of his sanity, on the cheerful influences of their simple imagery; the hawks, as if asleep on the air below him; the bleached crags, evoked by ^the^ late sunset among the dark oaks; the water[-]wheels, with their pleasant murmur, in the foldings of the hillside.

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 2

a marvellous tact of omission ^(Watteau)^

——

Imaginary Portraits, pp. 7-8

Methinks I see him there, when his long summer[-] day's work is over, enjoying the cool

VIII.B, page 11

shade of the stately, broad[-]foliaged trees, each of which is a great courtier, though it has its way almost as if it belonged to that open and unbuilt country beyond, over which the sun is sinking.

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 34

“The evening will be a wet one.” The storm is always brooding through the massy splendour of the trees, above those sun[-]dried glades or lawns, where delicate children may be trusted thinly clad; and the secular trees themselves will hardly outlast another generation[.]

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 58

He was always a seeker after something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure[,] or not at all

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 78

The pavement of the choir, removed amid a surging sea of lugubrious chants, all persons fasting, discovered as if it had been a battlefield of mouldering human remains. Their odour rose plainly above the plentiful clouds of incense, such as was used in the king's [private] chapel. The search for the [S]^s^aint himself continued in vain all day and far into the night. At last from a little narrow chest, into which the remains had been almost crushed together, the bishop's red[-]gloved hands drew the dwindled body, shrunken inconceivably, but still with every feature of the face traceable in a sudden oblique ray of ghastly dawn.

——

Imaginary Portraits, pp. 63-4

a flask of lively green glass

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 64

the riotous and earthy heat of [old] paganism

——

Imaginary Portraits, pp. 77-8

Tears rose in the eyes of needy children, of old or weak people like children, as they woke up again and again to sunless, frost[-]bound, ruinous mornings; and the little hungry creatures went prowling after scattered hedgenuts or dried vine[-]tendrils.

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 147

From a comfortless portico, with all the grotesqueness of the Middle Age, supported by brown[,] aged bishops, whose meditations

VIII.B, page 12

no incident could distract, Our Lady looked out no better than an unpretending nun[,] with nothing to say the like of which one was used to hear.

——

Imaginary Portraits, pp. 162-3

the young Duke had often peered at the faded glories of the immense coroneted coffins, the oldest shedding their velvet tatters around them.

——

Imaginary Portraits, p. 174

[And his] ^His^ goodwill sunned her wild[-]grown beauty into majesty, into a kind of queenly richness. There was natural majesty in the heavy waves of golden hair folded closely above the neck, built a little massively; and she looked kind, beseeching also, capable of sorrow. She was like clear sunny weather, with bluebells and the green leaves, between rainy days, and seemed to embody {i}Die Ruh auf dem Gipfel{/i}—all the restful hours he had spent of late in the wood[-]sides and on the hilltops.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. II, p. 65f

The air there, air supposed to possess the singular property of restoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. An even veil of lawn[-]like white cloud had now drawn over the sky; and under its broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time came out upon the yellow old temples, the elegant pillared circle of the shrine of the patronal Sibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient fundamental rock. Some half[-]conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to have determined their grouping[;]^:^ in part resisting, partly going along with the natural wildness and harshness of the place, its floods and precipices. An air of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetation around—a world of evergreen trees—the olives especially, older than how many generations of men's lives! fretted and twisted by the combining forces of life and death, into every conceivable caprice of form. In the windless weather all seemed to be

VIII.B, page 13

listening to the roar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to count, even in this time[-]worn place, as an image of unalterable rest. Yet the clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was silently quickening everything in the late February afternoon, and the unseen violet refined itself through the air. It was as if the spirit of life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate revelation of itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work[.]

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. II, p. 96

Lastly, herb and tree had taken possession, spreading their seed[-]bells and light branches, just astir in the trembling air, above the ancient garden[-] wall, against the wide realms of sunset.

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Marius the Epicurean vol. II, p. 137

Men and women came to the altar successively, in perfect order, and deposited below the lattice[-]work of pierced white marble, their baskets of wheat and grapes, incense, oil for the sanctuary lamps[;]^:^ bread and wine especially—pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculan vineyards. …
and thereafter, with an increasing mysticity and effusion, the rite proceeded.

——

Marius the Epicurean vol. II, p. 197

Among the captives, amid the laughter of the crowds at his blowsy upper garment, his trousered legs and conical wolf[-]skin cap, walked our own ancestor, representative of subject Germany, under a figure very familiar in later Roman sculpture; and, though certainly with none of the grace of the {i}Dying Gaul{/i}, yet with plenty of uncouth pathos in his misshapen features[,] and the pale, servile[,] yet angry eyes.