There is a certain symmetry to the aesthetic philosophy espoused by the immature Stephen to Lynch, which in its way mirrors other
key conversations with Davin and Cranly. It is easy to see the dovetailing of the 'applied Aquinas' of 212:1; the integritas,
consonantia, claritas, and the progressive forms of art; the lyrical, the epical, and the dramatic. But when put
alongside the conversation with Davin on 213:26 where he describes 'the nets flung about the young soul'; nationality, language, and
religion, and the conversation with Cranly on 247:1 where he enumerates similar barriers to his freedom; home, fatherland and
church, and the tools he will use to escape them; silence, exile and cunning, we can begin to see a parallel. This is informed by
information from the Perspectives on Ireland program, specifically the Condren book, The Serpent and The Goddess, and
the connection of the printing press and national languages in your lecture. Where the aesthetic relates to the perceived in relation
to the self , in connection to the self and the other, and finally in relation to the other, the nets and barriers relate to the kinship,
kingship, and worship periods of cultural progression. Kinship and home is to self and wholeness, as kingship and national language
is to interrelation/mediation and harmony, and church and religion is to the other and radiance, or 'whatness'. In this way silence
towards his familial connections/obligations, exile to nationalism and language, and cunning to the 'mirthless' Catholicism are the
only means by which Stephen can manifest his soul's desire 'in art or life to express itself in unfettered freedom'.
In the combination of the Temptress and the Virgin in the villanelle, Stephen is making a bold statement about the duplicity or
multiplicity of the feminine, which the Church would prefer separate. In an even more 'cunning' heresy he is, as Scholes points out,
echoing the felix culpa of Milton's Paradise Lost. Here the feminine functions as a dark reflection of the
suggestion that the Son, being present at the beginning, was the reason for the first fall of the seraphim from Heaven, and thus
necessitating/validating the second fall from Eden. Mary's explicit association with the Morning Star or Lucifer is a reinforcement
of Eve's pride in the eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Stephen suggests a combining of the son and the father, or consubstantiation in the final prayer of 253:3. Daedalus, whom Stephen
shares a name with, and his son Icarus whom he is constantly associated with through the bird and water symbolism, function in
the same way as 'the Vilanelle of the Temptress' works to combine Eve and Mary. Even though he seems to be praying to
Daedalus, as the son Icarus, he has already left behind the tumultuous flight of Icarus in his disavowal of a 'vocation' in the church.
While it is Stephen/Joyce who will manage to escape the labyrinth of Minos like Daedalus; and in fact it is Joyce, the artificer who
will then create the greater labyrinths of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, in his exile