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The Joyce Project : Ulysses : No mistakes

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Two sentences in Scylla and Charybdis are frequently quoted and no less frequently misunderstood. In the library John Eglinton suggests that Shakespeare's marriage to Anne Hathaway was a "mistake," one that the playwright "got out of" as quickly as he could. "— Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." Readers who attend to the context here will see that Stephen is not saying that Shakespeare (or, by implication, Joyce) writes infallibly. He is arguing only that a great artist can make art out of anything in his life, for example a bad marriage. When the exchange with Eglinton occurs, Stephen has been speculating about Anne's infidelity, and Russell has objected: "Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into

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