by James Joyce (1882 - 1941)
I Will Not Serve! See original
Language: English
...
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do.
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe,
whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church:
and I will try to express myself in some mode of life
or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can,
using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use,
silence, exile and cunning.
Notes: Text is a prose selection. Line breaks added arbitrarily. Excerpt is a quote from Stephen.
Composition:
- Set to music by Frederic Rzewski (1938 - 2021), "I Will Not Serve!", <<2013, lines 2-8 [ speaker, SATB chorus, instrumental ensemble ], from Ode to the Deserter, no. 1, Sound Pool Music (BMI)
Text Authorship:
- by James Joyce (1882 - 1941), no title, appears in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, B. W. Huebsch, first published 1916
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Researcher for this page: Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2019-10-20
Line count: 8
Word count: 91