Letter from Stanislaus Joyce to Italo Svevo, Trieste, 18th January 1927
“Dear Mr Schmitz, […] I am convinced that there never was any crisis of belief. The vigour of the life within him drove him out of the church, that vigour of life that is packed into the seven hundred and odd quarto pages of Ulysses. […] … on almost all points of the first importance his attitude is more like that of the gargoyles outside the church than of the saints within it.
And another thing. The Jesuits in Dublin lay a kind of claim to him. […] Now the purpose of Jesuit training is to develop the conscience so as to make cowards of us all. My brother’s conscience has certainly been abnormally developed, but in the main purpose of Jesuit training – to enslave it – they have failed signally”.
> coll. Museo Svevo – Epistolario
