his companion.

--I know you are poor, he said.

--Damn your yellow insolence, answered Lynch.

This second proof of Lynch's culture made Stephen smile again.

--It was a great day for European culture, he said, when you made up
your mind to swear in yellow.

They lit their cigarettes and turned to the right. After a pause
Stephen began:

--Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. I say--

Lynch halted and said bluntly:

--Stop! I won't listen! I am sick. I was out last night on a yellow
drunk with Horan and Goggins.

Stephen went on:

--Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of
whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with
the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the
presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and
unites it with the secret cause.

--Repeat, said Lynch.

Stephen repeated the definitions slowly.

--A girl got into a hansom a few days ago, he went on, in London. She
was on her way to meet her mother whom she had not seen for many years.
At the corner of a street the shaft of a lorry shivered the window of
the hansom in the shape of a star. A long fine needle of the shivered
glass pierced her heart. She died on the instant. The reporter called
it a tragic death. It is not. It is remote from terror and pity
according to the terms of my definitions.

--The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards
terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I use
the word ARREST. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or rather
the dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by improper art are
kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to
something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts
which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper
arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore
static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.

--You say that art must not excite desire, said Lynch. I told you that
one day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of
Praxiteles in the Museum. Was that not desire?

--I speak of normal natures, said Stephen. You also told me that when
you were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces of
dried cowdung.

Lynch broke again into a whinny of laughter and again rubbed both his
hands over his groins but with