A review by alexoc4
The Dead by James Joyce

5.0

Beautiful, haunting, and evocative - a bittersweet lament for fading and the passing of youth. I was tremendously moved by this section.

“But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.”

Perhaps, indeed it is, "Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. "