"Immortal Beloved..." CXXXIV...
PG-13
Disclaimer: If ya are fan-fic writers, where's your disclaimers? Disclaimers? We ain't got no disclaimers...I don' need to show you no stinkin'...No, Joss, no...I make no claims, put that thing down!
It's all yours and ME's...
Spoilers for Angel to the bitter end...Flee at once!...
Summary: Though the standard IB format, one of (134) versions of events following the end of Angel S5 episodes from "Girl in Question" through to "Not Fade Away" and beyond... (Not a continuous story, though some are multipart...)
UCLA subcampus …Evening adult extension class…
"Lit 311… "Shakespeare, Swift, and Joyce…A brief tour…" written on the large chalkboard at the auditorium hall's front…Thirty-seven students scattered about the only room available…
"The word known to all men…" written and underlined on the board…The instructor eyeing the class as best he could, given the scattering…A few, mostly women concentrated in the first two rows…A number clearly in hiding in the sides and rear…
"Right then…Nice to see a few of you have returned…To return to the theme we began at the end of class Tuesday… '…the word known to all men…' in 'Ulysses'…We've established from the earlier passage in the National Library scene that the word Stephen wishes from his mother's ghost… '…the word known to all men…' is love…"
Oh, yeah…One young brown-haired woman in front row nodded eagerly at the young teacher, rather too-good-looking for such a class despite his sedate beige suit pausing before her…
That's that word…
"Now the lines we discussed confirming that from the passage include a line conjoining two phrases from Thomas Aquinas's 'Summa contra gentiles', namely distinguishing between two forms of love…That unselfish love which in the first six words 'amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult' genuinely wishes another's good and the selfish desire of one to secure pleasure for him- or her- self 'unde et ea quae concupiscimus'…"
"Jesus…" one young man in the back, left side, reasonably secure from the teacher's direct attention, whispered to the girl next to him…She even better hidden by a cement pillar… "He's giving us Latin now?..."
"Shut up…" the girl whispered back…
The man frowned but, noticing that despite the distance the young brown-haired teacher was now clearly eyeing him, was silent, pulling back a bit in his chair…
So much for that…Girl's cute but just a bookhead…Like a lot of the girls in this damned class, he noted to himself…
Ah…Sides, she's wearin' a wig…Probably got cancer or something and she's all "soulful"…Not worth the trouble…He resumed the doodling in his notebook he'd been at since the class' start…God, did Jackie steer me wrong on this class… 'You'll get good lines to pick up girls', he said…
Uh-huh…What…Am I gonna quote Latin in a bar?…And all the good girls exceptin' Ms. Snotface here are down there droolin' at the guy…
"So we see the larger implications of 'Ulysses' follow from the accord of Bloom and Stephan Dedalus about love. If we consider the book as a whole, the theme of love will be seen to pervade it… 'Love's bitter mystery', quoted repeatedly from Yeats's poem 'Who goes with Fergus?' appears repeatedly, primarily as the song Stephen remembers having sung to his mother on her deathbed. Although Buck Mulligan is the first to quote the poem, he can't understand it, being a spirit that always denies. It's also alien to the experience of our womanizer Blazes Boylan. Yet Bloom understands it, and so does Molly, and both show us that they cherish moments of affection from their lives together as crucial points from which to judge later events."
Pen drop by a very young brown-haired woman in large hat, barely out of her teens if that, seated next to the woman in wig…She leaned to pick up the pen, holding hat firmly…
" …In the last episode of the book, Molly Bloom, after some equivocation between her physical longing for Boylan and her thoughts of Bloom, comes down firmly on the side of Bloom and of their old feelings for each other. 'Ulysses' ends in a vision of reconciliation rather than of sundering…"
Sound of book hitting floor…Hasty grab by woman in wig…
"Joyce, following his master, Dante, has made the case for love…Love in its various forms, sexual, parental, filial, brotherly, and by extension, social…Obliquely, to preserve the novel from didacticism or sentimentality…Like Dante, he tells us that affection between human beings, however transitory, however qualified, is the closest we can come to paradise…"
Oh…Yeah…Collective sigh from various women and men across the large auditorium…Gazes fixed on the teacher…He, catching, just a bit disconcerted for a second…
Ummn…He caught sight of the young woman usually hidden by the pillar…She staring back a moment, then pulling up her copy of 'Ulysses'…
"Ummn…Yes…That this affection may at times lose its force does not invalidate it…Dante claimed that Adam and Eve's paradise lasted only six hours and Proust reminds us that the only true paradise…" he stared again, a moment…
"…is the one we have lost…But, the word know to all men has been defined and affirmed, regardless of whether or not it may be subject to diminution…"
"Say, he's good…" Dawn hissed…Pulling hat down as the instructor eyed her as well…
"He went to Cambridge…" Buffy replied, a tad proudly, adjusting her brunette wig…
"How do you spell 'Aquinas'?" she whispered…
***
