Yet so far his mind had produced little; it turned and turned, but the turning, though arduous, was sterile. Some great man had said, 'A thought is like a flash between two dark nights': at present Stephen's nights were running into one uninterrupted darkness, lit by no gleams at all. The coca-leaves he chewed had the property of doing away with hunger and fatigue, giving some degree of euphoria, and making one feel clever and even witty; he certainly had no appetite and he did not feel physically tired, but as for the rest he might have been eating hay.
Stephen's mind felt unproductive, caught in a cycle of thought that yielded no creative insights. Despite his efforts, he struggled against a profound darkness of ideas, without any flashes of inspiration to guide him. A quote about thought describes it as a brief illumination in a sea of darkness, but for Stephen, this was far from his experience; he found himself engulfed in an ongoing emptiness.
Even though he was using coca-leaves to stave off hunger and fatigue while experiencing a mild euphoria, he sensed that the mental stimulation was lacking. While he was physically unburdened and had no cravings, his mind remained devoid of vibrancy, devoid of the sharp clarity he sought. It was as if the substances he consumed offered no nourishment to his intellect, leaving him feeling as if he might as well have been consuming something insubstantial.
