Silver Streams Issue 2 | Page 18

of his voice . The voice , made plaintive by distance and by the singer ' s hoarseness , faintly

45 illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief .

In a mirroring of what happened between Gretta and Michael , her past love , that the song has newly brought to life , the tenor leaves with Miss Callaghan , to whom the song was addressed . As Gabriel fantasizes over her wife , dreaming of possessing her body and continuing to see her as ‘ distant music ’, she is lost in her grief : man and wife seemingly live in two incommunicable worlds , with separate thoughts and emotions . The song , however , induces Gretta to reveal the truth on her past to her husband . Her speech is clear , simple , but bearing great dignity , defeating every attempt by Gabriel to mock Michael ’ s story . In the end , after listening to his wife , Gabriel too experiences an epiphany , at last crying for her and himself :

The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree . Other forms were near . His soul

46 had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead .

Gabriel feels he cannot compete with the memory of a young man who died for Gretta ’ s sake . It would seem that greatness , in love and in deeds , could only be attained in the past , in more ‘ spacious ' times ’. Though , he feels authentic love for his wife . This is a real , imperfect love , as every kind of existing relationship . A mature , everyday love , that has nothing of the excess and dreams of the youth , but is nonetheless worth having and cherishing . Gabriel glimpses outside the window , his love shifting from his sleeping wife to the outside world . Through a simple song , sung in the dark in a feeble voice , a notable , positive transformation has

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occurred : man and wife , after all these years , live in sincerity and are reconciled . Gabriel now sees his wife no more as an ​objet d ’ art or a riddle , but as a person capable of deep feelings and emotions , that has loved another man before him , and perhaps still loves his memory . Gabriel comes to accept this . Ultimately , he feels a sense of communion between the living and the dead : the outside world is no more a promise of flight , but a place where even the boundaries between the living and the dead – special ‘ guests ’ in the form of spirits or memories – are embraced by the pure , all-encompassing symbol of the snow :

It was falling , too , upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried . […] His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the

48 universe and faintly falling , like the descent of their last end , upon all the living and the dead .

Notice the beautiful symmetry of the last three paragraphs : though the snow is silent , it is not associated with death , but is a ​trait d ’ union with life , as the idea of movement suggests . The chiasmic , alliterative repetition , ‘ falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling ’ and the soft alliteration , convey a sense of rhythm and motion , opposite both to the abrupt beginning of ‘ The Sisters ’ and to the despairing conclusion of ‘ A painful Case ’ quoted above .

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Far from being incurable , Gabriel ’ s solitude and his path are allegorical for Everyman ’ s struggles .

While composing ‘ The Dead ’, Joyce began to rewrite ​Stephen Hero​ , turning it into one of the most famous and debated ​Künstlerroman ​of literature : ​A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man​ . It was a

149-173 .