England was after all only an island like Ireland - a little larger, but an island - and he though he would like a continent to roam in. The French cathedrals were more beautiful than the English, and it would be pleasant to wander in the French country in happy-go-lucky fashion resting when one was tired, walking when it pleased one, taking an interest in whatever might strike one’s fancy. [5]

[Do Irishmen say “one”?]

This lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was tired of those mountains, melancholy as Irish melodies, and as beautiful. [6]

No doubt there is a moment in everyone’s life when something happens to turn him into the road which he is destined to follow; for all that it would be superficial to think that the fate of one’s life is dependent upon accident. The accident that turns one into the road is only the means that Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends. [8]

[The following is underlined by a previous reader in my HB copy: ‘Very wonderful is life’s coming and going, but however rapidly life passes, there is always time for wrong-doing; and only time for repentance is short.’ [32] Of course, this is precisely the priestly sentiment that Moore is putting in brackets; not that he has an answer, but that he questions the sensibility behind it.]

Kilronan Abbey - ‘Father Gogarty wondered if God were reserving the bright destiny for Ireland which He had withheld a thousand years ago, and he looked out for the abbey that Roderick O’Connor, King of Connaught, had built in the twelfth century.’ [70]

Jews: ‘Father Moran held his peace for a little while, and then began talking about the penal times, and how religion in Ireland was another form of love of country ... Like the ancient Jews, the Irish believed that the faith of their forefathers could bring them into their ultimate inheritance; this was why the proselytiser was hated so intensely.’

Underlined by reader: ‘So long as one does not despair, so long as one doesn’t look upon life bitterly, things work out fairly well in the end.’ [In this case it’s difficult to measure how near or far from the core of the novel this sentiment is - that is, now near to a structured reading the underliner comes.]

Marbhan’s poem [158]

So a taste for learning and a sensual temperament might exist in the same person and concurrently. [185]

”There are times, Gogarty, when one’s doesn’t want to think, when one’s afraid, aren’t there? - when one wants to forget that one’s alive. You’ve had that feeling, Gogarty. We all have it” [196]

But as all roads are said to lead to Rome, so do man’s thoughts lead to the woman that lives in his heart; and as Father Oliver stumbled to his feet ... he began to think he must tell Rose of the miracle that had just happened ... . [Moore equates the magnetism of the romantic object with the centralism of Roman Catholicism, here represented in an aphorism which has no ostensible connection with it.]

SOUL: It seemed to him that somebody had lost her soul. He must seek it. It was his duty. Being a priest, he must go forth and find the soul, and bring it back to God. And then he remembered no more until he found himself suddenly in the midst of a great wood ... Every now and again a large leaf floated down, and each interested him till it reached the wet earth. [201]

He was looking for her soul, for her lost soul; and something had told him he would find the soul he was seeking in the wood. ... She had descended from the trees into his arms, white and cold ... she had descended into his arms, and this time he would have lifted the veil and looked into her face, but she seemed to forbid him to recognise her under penalty of loss. His desire overcame him ... [201-02]

Gogarty to Rose: Without a leader the people are helpless; they wander like sheep on a mountain-side, falling over rocks or dying amid snowdrifts. Sometimes the shepherd grows weary of watching, and the question arises if one has no duty towards one's self. Then one begins to wonder what is one’s duty and what is duty—if duty is more than the opinions of others—a convention which no one would like to hear called into question, because he feels instinctively that it is well for everyone to continue in the rut [...] But following of the rut is beset with difficulties; there are big holes on either side. Sometimes the road ends nowhere, and one gets lost in spite of one’s self. [The Lake, London: William Heinemann 1905, p.43; Internet Archive.]

You want to see people living, not for the next world, but for this, and there is no place where people enjoy life as much as in Italy. Not only the men, but the women enjoy themselves, even the very poorest. [208]

[One of the themes of the novel is the importance of flowers - the colour of, the liking for - in the rejuvenation of Irish sensibility after the aesthetic massacre of Jansenist Catholicism. Religious instruction and then the teaching of Irish supplanted botany in the Irish classroom syllabus.]

In the fields along the hillside one finds lavender and rosemary and myrtle and sweet-bay growing wild -every sort of sweet-scented thing. [209]

You have struck the right note - the wistful Irish note - and if you can write a book in that strain I am sure it will meet with great success.’ [Rose’s praise of Fr. Gogarty’s account of Marbhan the Hermit. Joyce seems to have borrowed her usage for A Little Cloud.] [211]

Great as the pain of loss undoubtedly was it seemed to him that he could bear that pain with greater fortitude if there had not been added the possibly greater pain of finding her unworthy. [213]

The blackness of the loveless death he saw in front of him turned his thoughts heavenward, and he began to think of how it would be if they were to meet on the other side. ... But the Lord says that in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage and what would heaven be to him without Rose. No more than a union of souls, and he wanted a her body more than her soul. [215]

... to ask for Rose’s body as well as her soul was not very orthodox. [217]

... when you think how helpless my people are, and how essential is the kindly guidance of the priest. [219]

He had played the hypocrite long enough; he had spoken about her soul, but it was herself he wanted. [222]

“You did not know that you cared for me - you only thought of atonement.” [231]

“I don’t like priests; the priest was the only thing about you I never liked.”

[Ellis:] “better that you should live in conventions and prejudices, with them you life would be impossible.” [233]

They were no more than animated clay, whereas this woman seemed to him a spirit ... Other women think as their mothers thought, and as their daughters will think, expressing the thoughts of countless generation ... But this woman was never moved by impulses ... She was a mysterious as the breadth f spring; she was springtide, and henceforth he thought of her as Primeverae. [236]

She just thought as she pleased, and spoke as she pleased, and he returned to the idea that she was more than anyone else like what the primitive woman must have been.

.. her beauty was part of the great agency ..

Was she Miranda, or Puck, or Ariel. Shakespeare had created many of these creatures, apparently emancipated from reality, and yet expressing a great deal of reality ... he turned to joyous animality of woodland antiquity, feeling sure there must be some pagan myth in which a goddess came down to earth to take her joy among men, an irresponsible being obedient to no human laws. [237]

He must put his confidence in Nature; he must listen to her. She would tell him. And he lay all the afternoon listening to the reeds and the ducks talking together in the lake. Very often the wood was like a harp ... [241]

materialism is not fleshly lust but conformity to a code. [236]

His perception seemed to have been indefinitely increased, and it seemed to him as if the pat and the future had become one.

The moment was one of extraordinary sweetness ... [245]

“I owe to you my liberation from prejudices and conventions” ... [254]

.. the priesthood seemed to offer opportunities of realising myself, of preserving the spirit within me ... I might as well have been a policeman ..Everyone must try to cling to his own soul, to cherish what is inly. And that is the only law, the only binding law I can believe in. If we are here for anything, it is surely that. [255]

Moran: “It is woman that kills the faith in men.” Gogarty: “I think you’re right: woman is the danger. The Church dreads her. Woman is life.” [the preface to Muslin is much concerned with the impact of the Doll’s House on the young Moore, and on Western consciousness.]

cf. 267, Gogarty’s cover-up; “Love of woman means estrangement from the Church, because you have to protect her and her children.”

Gogarty: “I’ve thought a good deal on the subject, and it has come to seem to me that we are too much in the habit of thinking of the intellect and the flesh as separate things, whereas they are one thing.” [277]

He owed his life to these flowers. [281] [Flowers are the beginning of the appreciation of colour and of art.

Episode: the stealing of the baby for the Protestant and Catholic baptisms. 314]

the apostate priest is always anathema in the eyes of the Church; the doctrine always has been that a sin matters little if the sinner repent. [323]

[one of the devices of the novel is a sort of fantasy realm in which Gogarty’s distressed mind encounters its fears and hopes in chimerial forms.]

There is a lake in every man’s heart ... and every man must ungird himself for the crossing. [333]