In the space of a few sentences in Proteus, Stephen
manages to associate himself both with Christ ("Come. I
thirst") and with Satan ("Clouding over. No black clouds
anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud
lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit
occasum"). In terms of his personal mythologizing, this
makes sense: both figures appeal to Stephen, as they did to
Joyce. There is also some connection in the name Lucifer,
which can apply to both Christ and Satan.
In John 19, the Savior hangs on the cross: "After this, Jesus
knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the
scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now
there was set a vessel full of vinegar, and they filled a
spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his
mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said,
It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost"
(28-30). The scripture which is being fulfilled is Psalm
69:21, "They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst
they gave me vinegar to drink." Stephen's thirst is almost
certainly for alcoholic beverages, which he has promised to Mulligan but
will instead enjoy with the men he meets in the newspaper
office.
Tradition holds that, before he fell from heaven, Satan's
name was Lucifer (in Latin, "light-bearer"). The name Lucifer
has also been applied to the morning star—a bright planet,
usually Venus, seen in the east before sunrise. In Isaiah 14,
the decline of the morning star images the fall of an enemy
(human?) of God: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,
son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which
didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I
will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the
stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the
congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above
the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet
thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider
thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble,
that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness,
and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of
his prisoners?" (12-17). In Luke 10, Jesus refers to Satan
falling from heaven not as the morning star but as lightning:
"And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven" (18).
But the morning star and the name Lucifer sometimes symbolize
Christ. Stephen's Latin sentence means "Lucifer, I say, who
knows no setting." Thornton notes that Father John P. Lahey
identified the source of the phrase in a hymn sung by the
deacon in praise of the paschal candle during the Easter week
Holy Saturday service: "Flammus eius lucifer matutinus
inveniat. Ille, inquam, lucifer qui nescit occasum"
("May the rising star of morning find it burning
still—that morning star that knows no setting"). Gifford notes
that, in the language of the 1962 Layman's Missal,
this chant acclaims "the light of the risen Christ"—a star
that knows no setting.
Gifford suggests that the light-bearer who died on the cross
and the one who fell from heaven may also be linked through
the "Thunderstorm" coming to Dublin. Luke's
image of Satan falling from heaven like lightning informs
Stephen's thought about the "proud lightning of the
intellect." But Christ's death too was linked, if
not with lightning, then at least with cataclysmic natural
events: "And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness
over the whole land until the ninth hour. . . . And Jesus
cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil
of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.
And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that
he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this
man was the Son of God" (Mark 15:33-39). This darkness,
interpreted as an eclipse of the sun in Luke and linked with
an earthquake in Mark, is never attributed to a thunderstorm
in the gospels, but it seems possible that Stephen is making
such a connection.
