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[ Aetat. 24-25 ] J O Y C E 239warm. He compared Griffith with the Italian Labriola, whom he admired,in his opposition to parliamentary process, and cited Labriola'sview that parliaments can never change the social order. 69When Stanislauscalled Labriola an intellectualized socialist, James replied that, onthe contrary, he sought an immediate emergence of the proletariat, aproletariat as politically and religiously inclusive as possible. (Such a proletariatmight include even an unnamed indigent foreign writer.) Stanislausinsisted that his brother's socialism was thin, and James agreed atonce, it is so and unsteady and ill-informed.' 70 Within a few months hewould prefer to say that like Ibsen, he was an anarchist, though not apractical anarchist after what he called the modern style. 71He continuedto pursue the question with great energy, but with decreasing confidencein prevalent nostrums.His liking for Griffith, and his reservations about all Irish writers buthimself, had soon an opportunity to combine. At the beginning of February1907, the riot at the Abbey Theatre over Synge's The Playboy ofthe Western World occurred. The phrase that caused it was, in Joyce'smisquotation, if all the girls in Mayo were standing before me in theirshifts.' On this he commented, dryly, 'wonderful vision.' 72But he wasparticularly interested in Padraic Colum,* who, haled to police court fordisorderly conduct, announced 'that nothing would deter him from protestingagainst such a slander on Ireland.' He was fined 40 shillings orfourteen days. Joyce recounted the proceedings—which he found in theDaily Mail—with gusto, but to Stanislaus's surprise sided with the nationalistsagainst the literary men. i believe Columb and the Irish Theatrewill beat Y and L. G. and Miss H, which will please me greatly, asYeats cannot well hawk his theatre over to London. . . . Synge willprobably be condemned from the pulpit, as a heretic: which would bedreadful: so that Stiffbreeches [Eglinton] and Ryan really ought to startanother paper in defence of free thought, just for a week or so.' 73Likethe Irish goddess, the Morrigu, Joyce fed on conflict.For Yeats he had no sympathy at all. He was 'a tiresome idiot' and'quite out of touch with the Irish people, to whom he appeals as theauthor of "Countess Cathleen." ' (Joyce had been misinformed; Yeatshad angrily and rather successfully confronted the Abbey Theatre mobwith the words, 'The author of Cathleen ni Houlihan [an entirely differentplay] addresses you.' 74 ) Synge repelled Joyce a little less, for he atleast could 'set them by the ears.' 75But this was one Irish row Joycehated to miss. 'This whole affair has upset me,' he wrote Stanislaus onFebruary 11, 1907. i feel like a man in a house who hears a row in thestreet and voices he knows shouting but can't get out to see what the hellis going on. It has put me off the story I was "going to write"—to wit:The Dead.' Stanislaus, who had no patience with Colum's attitude, couldNot the writer, but the writer's father, as it turned out.