James Stephens
James Stephens was an Irish novelist and poet. James' mother worked in the home of the Collins family of Dublin and was adopted by them. He attended school with his adopted brothers Thomas and Richard (Tom and Dick) before graduating as a solicitor's clerk. They competed and won several athletic competitions despite James' slight stature (he stood 4'10" in his socks). He was known affectionately as 'Tiny Tim'. He was much enthralled by tales of military valour of his adoptive family and would have been a soldier except for his height. By the early 1900s James was increasingly inclined to socialism and the Irish language (he could speak and write Irish) and by 1912 was a dedicated Irish Republican. He was a close friend of the 1916 leader Thomas MacDonagh, who was then editor of "The Irish Review", manager of the Irish Theatre and deputy headmaster in St Enda's, the radical bilingual Montessori school run by PH Pearse, and spent most with MacDonagh in 1911. His growing nationalism brought a schism with his adopted family.
James Stephens produced many retellings of Irish myths and fairy tales. His retellings are marked by a rare combination of humour and lyricism (Deirdre, and Irish Fairy Tales are often especially praised). He also wrote several original novels (Crock of Gold, Etched in Moonlight, Demi-Gods) based loosely on Irish fairy tales. "Crock of Gold," in particular, achieved enduring popularity and was reprinted frequently throughout the author's lifetime.
Stephens began his career as a poet with the tutelage of "Æ" (George William Russell). His first book of poems, "Insurrections," was published in 1909. His last book, "Kings and the Moon" (1938), was also a volume of verse.
During the 1930s, Stephens had some acquaintance with James Joyce, who mistakenly believed that they shared a birthday. Joyce, who was concerned with his ability to finish what later became Finnegans Wake, proposed that Stephens assist him, with the authorship credited to JJ & S (James Joyce & Stephens, also a pun for the popular Irish whiskey made by John Jameson & Sons). The plan, however, was never implemented, as Joyce was able to complete the work on his own.
During the last decade of his life, Stephens found a new audience through a series of broadcasts on the BBC.
“The toxin generates the anti-toxin. The end lies concealed in the beginning. All bodies grow around a skeleton. Life is a petticoat about death.”
“It has occurred to me, brother, that wisdom may not be the end to everything. Goodness and kindness are, perhaps, beyond wisdom. Is it not possible that the ultimate end is music and gaiety and a dance of joy? Wisdom is the oldest of all things. Wisdom is all head and no heart.Behold, brother, you are being crushed under the weight of your head. You are dying of old age while you are yet a child.”
“A poem is a revelation, and it is by the brink of running water that poetry is revealed to the mind.”
“There is a difference between this world and the world of Faery, but it is not immediately perceptible. Everything that is here is there, but the things that are there are better than those that are here. All things that are bright are there brighter. There is more gold in the sun and more silver in the moon of that land. There is more scent in the flowers, more savour in the fruit. There is more comeliness in the men and more tenderness in the women. Everything in Faery is better by this one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness you will know that you are there if you should ever happen to get there.”
“Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.”
“We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell.”
“Fionn went [...] to carve a name for himself that will live while Time has an ear and knows an Irishman”
“In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Fairy, and in the beating of a pulse we may live for a year or a thousand years.”
“After a lie truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and serene goddess knew or hoped for—it is a disease, it is a moral syphilis and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been purged.”
“But outside of the North of Ireland there is no religious question, and in the North it is fundamentally more political than religious.”
“Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.”
“What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow”
“There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil,are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other of these qualities.”
“It is by love alone that we understand anything”
“Tell me your past, my beloved, for a man is his past, and is to be known by it.”
“Let the past be content with itself, for man needs forgetfulness as well as memory”
“Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera.”
“Curiosity will conquer fear more than bravery will.”