SOURCE: Dyer, Joyce Coyne. “Desire in the Prose of James Stephens, 1920–1928.” Eire Ireland 19, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 119–36.

In the following essay, Dyer explores the theme of desire in Stephens's short fiction.

James Stephens's famous poem of 1929, “Theme with Variations,” eloquently summarizes his attitude toward desire, an attitude that marks most of his fiction throughout the 1920s. “Who wishes,” writes Stephens, “Hath not: / And to wish / Is to have lived / In vain: / I do not / Wish / For anything; / And shall not wish / Again.”¹ Stephens's attitude toward the person “Who wishes” is as important to the meaning and structure of his major prose works between 1920 and 1928 as it is to the meaning and structure of his long 1929 poem. The artist's concern with the desirer appears in Deirdre, In the Land of Youth, and Etched in Moonlight and is deeply responsible for the idea, form, and beauty of each work.

Desire is not...