Stephen Daedalus

“An abyss of fortune or of temperament sundered him from them. His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth. No life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred in them. He had known neither the pleasure of companionship with others nor the vigour of rude male health no filial piety. Nothing stirred within his soul but a cold and cruel and loveless lust. His childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simple joys and he was drifting amid life like barren shell of the mood.

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless…?

He repeated to himself the lines of Shelly’s fragment. Its alternation of sad human ineffectiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.” (James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, pp. 96-97)