A villanelle is a poetic form with a very specific style to it.

It consists of an aba rhyme scheme, nineteen lines, and five tercets followed by a quatrain. Stephen Dedalus wrote "The Villanelle of the Temptress" soon after turning eighteen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The poem is, in its most basic essence, Stephen speaking to the woman he had an erotic dream about earlier that day, while also having himself reflect on his life filled both with sin and a devoted life to the church. Looking back through Stephen's life, this poem becomes his first major attempt at art, hence the title of the book. While the temptress is a woman whom Stephen dreamt about, she is also the people and things that Stephen lusts after in his life, and this can be seen in the religious diction and repetition that is present in the poem. The second line of the poem refers to the Temptress as a "fallen seraphim", an angel-like being. This churchy word-choice is followed in the later stanzas with words such as "chalice" and "Eucharistic hymn". This would make it seem as though the Temptress is almost being revered by Stephen, and in a way, she is. Earlier in his life, Stephen had spent his teen years practicing to become a pastor. He spent each day of his week praying to some religious figure or another, "On each of the seven days of the week he further prayed that one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost might descend upon his soul and drive out of it day by day the seven deadly sins which had defiled it in the past;" (Joyce 136). After being scared of a fiery eternity of hell by a guest speaker at his church in the previous chapter, Stephen had become a very pious man. However, he soon gave up being a pastor, as he realized that his thoughts and fantasies were immoral for a pastor to be having and were not his "call of life" (Joyce 156). The villanelle also refers to the, "the flame the smoke of praise" surely referring to how Stephen now sees the church as a place where the men in power like to control the masses by talking of the evils of sin and hell. Stephen no longer sees the church as a guiding beacon, but a place the detracts from the

religious aspect of actual religion, and the diction in the villanelle helps the audience see that Stephen sees past the ruses that both lives of religious rule and sin seeking gets nobody anywhere, but there is a good in moderation. There is also an equal balance of two certain stanzas throughout the villanelle. The two lines, "Are you not weary of ardent ways?" and "Tell no more of enchanted days." appear four times each, nearly encompassing half of the villanelle. This repetition throughout the poem tells more about Stephen's character than the rest of the poem does. These two stanzas represent the constant struggle between Stephen's life as a rising artist and all the other aspects of his life. It could be argued that each tercet represents a differ part of Stephen's youth, with the first two being representatives of when Stephen first fell into the "lures" of prostitutes and later, his indulgences with both them and material goods. The next two talk about when Stephen joined the church life, and his disappointment with the discovery of what the church really stood for and how it was not his true calling in life. The final quatrain, however, talks about how his desires have always been there, "With languorous look and lavish limb!" and how art will always be his true calling, even if he tries to turn to other aspects of life for fulfillment. This villanelle is not simply a poem that Stephen chose to write because he had to put into words something he was feeling. It was an open letter to all people that even though you may struggle with the different challenges of life, there will always be your one true calling, waiting for you when you come to it. The novel is autobiographical and Joyce actually wrote this villanelle several years before he wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, showing that he felt the need to include, out of all his poems, this one in his work. It is proposed that Joyce also wrote this when he was around Stephen's age in the novel, and could represent Joyce's turning point in his life from religious worship to art as an avenue for him to make a living from. This

villanelle is not just an old villanelle, but it is representative of everything that a young artist may face when they are still discovering themselves.

Are you not weary of ardent ways, Lure of the fallen seraphim? Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set mans heart ablaze And you have had your will of him. Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise Goes up from ocean rim to rim. Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays Rise in one eucharistic hymn. Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise The chalice flowing to the brim, Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze With languorous look and lavish limb! Are you not weary of ardent ways? Tell no more of enchanted days.