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The Joyce Project : Ulysses : History is a nightmare

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Feeling that some "wisdom" is being expected of him in Nestor (and not just sardonic replies), Stephen weighs an answer to the triumphalist version of history that he has been hearing from Deasy: benighted Jews eternally cursed by enlightened Christians, anarchic Fenians held at bay by resolute Tories, spendthrift Catholics bested at the bank by thrifty Protestants. His counter-vision is a simple statement of despair: "History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." The metaphor implies that human history is no place to look for enlightenment or justice. Citing a note by J. Prescott, Thornton finds an analogue to Stephen's statement in a letter of the French poet Jules Laforgue (1860-87): "Life is too sad, too coarse. History is a gaudy old nightmare who does not suspect that the best jokes are the shortest." (I.e., get them over with as quickly as possible, because there is not very much to relish in the telling?) Robert Spoo quotes several early 20th century writers who us

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