Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The movement of Chapter 2 is one of upheaval, change. Young boyhood is now a distant memory – Stephen is in his early teens. He is no longer at Clongowes. His family has sold their property – and have moved to Dublin. Stephen is dismayed at Dublin. He finds it gloomy, and a restlessness overcomes him. He takes long walks (“wanderings”) – where he tries to either shake off his uneasiness, or try to get to the heart of what is wrong. The unconsciousness of being a child is gone. Stephen looks back on his life, and feels the gap between then and now. He is in another school – a much more rowdy school than Clongowes, although still Jesuit-run. He has a group of friends and rivals. Girls suddenly come into the picture. Stephen becomes obsessed with one girl. This is the awakening of the “beast” – meaning: lust.
Joyce was tormented by lust, and he writes about it with feverish accuracy. The other boys tease him about his crush, and Stephen is baffled by this. He doesn’t find there to be anything funny at all about girls, and the feelings they arouse in him. The chapter ends with him, on one of his wanderings, encountering a prostitute, who comes over to him and kisses him on the cheek. It seems almost like Ireland is hellbent on separating its citizens from their natural impulses. Perhaps civilization in general is hellbent on such a thing – but Joyce has a big problem with that. He doesn’t like hypocrisy, and he hates piety and self-righteousness. He wants to be able to just BE with other people. Stephen does, too. Dublin alienates him completely.
Stephen has moments during his walks when he looks back over his life … seeing it as a whole … the years at Clongowes, the death of Parnell, the geometry lessons … and now that he has made the break with boyhood, he trembles on the edge of a precipice.
There’s a marvelous scene with his father – the two of them have taken a trip back out into the country, not sure why – but it’s just the two of them, Simon and Stephen Dedalus. Simon reminisces about something to Stephen, telling him a long story – and he almost begins to weep at the end of it. Stephen, listening to his dad, suddenly has an eerie detached sensation – like he has pulled back from everything, and is looking DOWN – on himself, on life, on all of humanity. It is the birth of awareness. It’s a profound moment. Stephen keeps saying to himself: “I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking with my father Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork.” Just listing of facts. “Names”. It is like the very prosaic nature of life suddenly seems distinct, amazing, singular. Stephen is becoming himself.
The amniotic-fluid prose of the first chapter is no more. But we are still in a vast stream-of-consciousness narrative.
Stephen is involved in a school play – and during the play he begins to go back over some memories – and we are catapulted back in time, to his first year at the new school – and then brought back to the present – and then back into memories … It’s how life is, sometimes. You can be walking down the street, but your mind is back in the 2nd grade. Stephen is starting to be able to connect the dots of his life. He still is under the power of his parents and the church and his teachers – but he is beginning to disengage. This is the birth of the artist.
I chose the excerpt below because it has to do with writing. Stephen writes an essay for school, which causes a great controversy. Joyce said, much later in his life, something along the lines of, “I have discovered that I cannot write without offending people.” Joyce was a controversial man from the very beginning. He had unorthodox ideas. He had unorthodox literary idols. He broke from the pack. Ireland is a very conformist country – perhaps something about being an island nation … but also because of its very culture – the Catholic Church and the manner of education … Joyce never fit in with all of that. I’m not sure he even tried. Stephen worked hard on his essay. It meant a lot to him. And suddenly, he is put in the position of having to defend it – to the teachers as well as to his fellow classmates, who sniff out the difference in Dedalus, and try to crush it. It reminds me a bit of the character of Edmund in Long Day’s Journey, who spends all his time reading modern authors, mostly French – people his father degrades as atheists and terrible poets. According to James Tyrone, Shakespeare is the only true author. He truly fears for his son’s soul, that it will be corrupted by reading such “filth”. The same vibe is true here in Portrait, when the literary canon was much more set than it is now. There is an orthodoxy. Stephen bucks up against it. He loses some of the battles – because he doesn’t realize the rules yet … but this sort of assertion of self, of opinion, of TASTE … is one of the most important developments of any serious artist. What you LIKE reveals who you ARE. And if someone tries to take that away from you, that person is attacking your identity, your very self. These are not “just” books and authors to Joyce. They are the breath of life. Stephen has found himself connected, emotionally, to Byron – he writes poems for his crush in the style of Byron … To Stephen, Byron is a genius. Byron, however, was not “approved” of in the canon. So you’ll see what happens below.
Like I said in my other post: Joyce is not re-inventing the wheel with this book. It is a coming-of-age story. I Am the Cheese, Catcher in the Rye, The Pigman – all of these books are in the Portrait of the Artist continuum. But it is in the manner of the writing that Joyce makes his mark. And not just the writing … he’s not just a beautiful prose writer … it’s the IDEAS he makes the reader confront that truly elevates him. He’s an intellectual novelist. We’ll get to that later in Ulysses – one of my favorite chapters in Ulysses is the long “Scylla and Charybdis” chapter – when Stephen Dedalus and his friends sit in the National Library, talking about Shakespeare, arguing about Hamlet and Prospero. When I recently read Will of the World, the author references this chapter in Ulysses repeatedly. It makes you take another look at Shakespeare, it really does. And any author who can do that – without ruining his story, or turning it into a pamphlet, or somehow academic – has my highest regard!
We are back in a memory here. Stephen is thinking back on his “heretical” essay and the argument with his friends. So at the end, we come back to the present.
Okay – so here’s the excerpt.
EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
It was towards the close of his first term in the college when he was in number six. His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivined and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years’ spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose gibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings.
The essay was for him the chief labour of his week and every Tuesday, as he marched home to the school, he read his fate in the incidents of the way, pitting himself against some figure ahead of him and quickening his pace to outstrip it before a certain goal was reached or planting his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of the footpath and telling himself that he would be first and not first in the weekly essay.
On a certain Tuesday the course of his triumphs was rudely broken. Mr Tate, the English master, pointed his finger at him and said bluntly:
— This fellow has heresy in his essay.
A hush fell on the class. Mr Tate did not break it but dug with his hand between his crossed thighs while his heavily starched linen creaked about his neck and wrists. Stephen did not look up. It was a raw spring morning and his eyes were still smarting and weak. He was conscious of failure and of detection, of the squalor of his own mind and home, and felt against his neck the raw edge of his turned and jagged collar.
A short loud laugh from Mr Tate set the class more at ease.
— Perhaps you didn’t know that, he said.
— Where? asked Stephen.
Mr Tate withdrew his delving hand and spread out the essay.
— Here. It’s about the Creator and the soul. Rrm … rrm … rrm … Ah! without a possibility of ever approaching nearer. That’s heresy.
Stephen murmured:
— I meant without a possibility of ever reaching.
It was a submission and Mr Tate, appeased, folded up the essay and passed it across to him, saying:
— O … Ah! ever reaching. That’s another story.
But the class was not so soon appeased. Though nobody spoke to him of the affair after class he could feel about him a vague general malignant joy.
A few nights after this public chiding he was walking with a letter along the Drumcondra Road when he heard a voice cry:
— Halt!
He turned and saw three boys of his own class coming towards him in the dusk. It was Heron who had called out and, as he marched forward between his two attendants, he cleft the air before him with a thin cane, in time to their steps. Boland, his friend, marched beside him, a large grin on his face, while Nash came on a few steps behind, blowing from the pace and wagging his great red head.
As soon as the boys had turned into Clonliffe Road together they began to speak about books and writers, saying what books they were reading and how many books there were in their fathers’ bookcases at home. Stephen listened to them in some wonderment for Boland was the dunce and Nash the idler of the class. In fact after some talk about their favourite writers Nash declared for Captain Marryat who, he said, was the greatest writer.
— Fudge! said Heron. Ask Dedlaus. Who is the greatest writer, Dedalus.
Stephen noted the mockery in the question and said:
— Of prose do you mean?
— Yes.
— Newman, I think.
— Is it Cardinal Newman? asked Boland.
— Yes, answered Stephen.
The grin broadened on Nash’s freckled face as he turned to Stephen and said:
— And do you like Cardinal Newman, Dedalus?
— O, many say that Newman has the best prose style, Heron said to the other two in explanation. Of course he’s not a poet.
— And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland.
— Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron.
— O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash. We have all his poetry at home in a book.
At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been making and burst out:
— Tennyson a poet! Why, he’s only a rhymester!
— O, get out! said Heron. Everyone knows that Tennyson is the greatest poet.
— And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, nudging his neighbour.
— Byron, of course, answered Stephen.
Heron gave the lead and all three joined in a scornful laugh.
— What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.
— You, said Heron. Byron the greatest poet! He’s only a poet for uneducated people.
— He must be a fine poet! said Boland.
— You may keep your mouth shut, said Stephen, turning on him boldly. All you know about poetry is what you wrote up on the slates in the yard and were going to be sent to the loft for.
Boland, in fact, was said to have written on the slates in the yard a couplet about a classmate of his who often rode home from the college on a pony:
As Tyson was riding into Jerusalem
He fell and hurt his Alex Kafoozelum.
This thrust put the two lieutenants to silence but Heron went on:
— In any cae Byron was a heretic and immoral too.
— I don’t care what he was, cried Stephen hotly.
— You don’t care whether he was a heretic or not? said Nash.
— What do you know about it? shouted Stephen. You never read a line of anything in your life except a trans or Boland either.
— I know that Byron was a bad man, said Boland.
— Here, catch hold of this heretic, Heron called out.
In a moment Stephen was a prisoner.
— Tate made you buck up the other day, Heron went on, about the heresy in your essay.
— I’ll tell him tomorrow, said Boland.
— Will you? said Stephen. You’d be afraid to open your lips.
— Afraid?
— Ay. Afraid of your life.
— Behave yourself! cried Heron, cutting at Stephen’s legs with his cane.
It was the signal for their onset. Nash pinioned his arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was lying in the gutter. Struggling and kicking under the cuts of the cane and the blows of the knotty stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence.
— Admit that Byron was no good.
— No.
— Admit.
— No.
— Admit.
— No. No.
At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself free. His tormentors set off towards Jones’s Road, laughing and jeering at him, while he, torn and flushed and panting, stumbled after them half blinded with tears, clenching his fists madly and sobbing.
While he was still repeating the Confiteor amid the indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the scenes of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no malice now to those who had tormented him. All the memory of it called forth no anger from him. All the descriptions of fierce love and hatred which he had met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even that night as he stumbled homewards along Jones’s Road he had felt that some power was divesting him of that suddenwoven anger as easily as a fruit is divested of its soft ripe peel.
