The philosophic mind inclines always to an elaborate life—the life of Goethe or of Leonardo da Vinci; but the life of the poet is intense—the life of Blake or of Dante—taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music.
ATTRIBUTION:
James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish author. address to the Literary and Historical Society of University College (1902); published in St. Stephen’s magazine, May 1902. “James Clarence Mangan,” The Critical Writings, eds. Richard Ellmann and Ellsworth Mason, Viking (1959).
Joyce later included a version of the passage in his unfinished novel, Stephen Hero.
