The Books: “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (James Joyce)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – by James Joyce

Joyce’s first novel. A book in 5 chapters. I’ll excerpt from each of the chapters – since the parts are all so important to the whole. It’s interesting that he called this “Portrait” – when it seems like “Journey” would be more applicable – there is a very clear sense of movement in the book, even in the long so-called stagnant sections, like the Jesuit retreat. What Joyce is showing is how one becomes an artist. Where it comes from. What steps along the way have brought Stephen Dedalus to the incredible last sentence: “Old father, old artificer, stand me now and in ever good stead”? Stephen Dedalus is headed for exile. He is obviously James Joyce’s alter ego. And he is also the “star” of Ulysses which takes up (give or take a couple months) where Portrait left off. Stephen Dedalus is a young Irish boy, and the “portrait” we get of him is multi-faceted, and subjective. There is no one way to become an artist. This is what happened to Stephen, this is HIS way.

One of the things that was so arresting about this book when it first came out was its stream-of-conscious narration, and its faithful rendering of what the world seems like from the inside. Meaning: from the inside of Stephen Dedalus. It is not so much his literal experience that we are getting. It is his experience, and experience mainly comes to us through the five senses. Marcel Proust also went at his narration in this manner. It is not literal. The point is not to describe. The point is to render into words life’s subjective journey, from the perspective of one particular individual. We are not outside of Stephen Dedalus looking in. Joyce is behind the eyeballs of his narrator. What he gets, we get. If it’s beyond comprehension to Dedalus, then it is beyond comprehension to us.

The first chapter is Dedalus’ journey as a young boy, a small child. So the language is simple and kind of incantatory … not an adult’s perspective at all. Things happen that are beyond his comprehension, things in the adult world. We see them, but we only get snippets – we don’t get the whole picture. If it were a film, it would be filmed from Dedalus’ perspective as a 3 foot tall child, staring at the knees of the adults, overhearing fragments, going off into his dream world, trying to understand. The first sentence of the book launches us into Dedalus’ childhood mind:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo …

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

Blunt language, things seen not literally but figuratively. Or perhaps that’s wrong. Perhaps what Joyce is getting at is just how literal chidren are. They do not interpret. They do not deal in subtleties. His father “looked at him through a glass” – glasses? Yes, but Stephen does not have a word for glasses. He just has the sensation, the image of his father looking “at him through a glass”.

The thing about Joyce is: he is so imitated now, he is such a reference point – that sometimes it is difficult to see just how influential all of this really was. Stream-of-conscious stuff is almost cliche now. It’s funny, though: you read his imitators, even the good ones – and then you go back and read Portrait and you once again realize that nobody can touch Joyce. Still.

Joyce said (and I think this quote is awesome, and goes a long way towards explaining Joyce’s attitude, and his “way in” to writing): “Why all this fuss and bother about the mystery of the unconscious? What about the mystery of the conscious? What do they know about that?”

His work does not delve into the unconscious. He is interested in “the mystery of the conscious” – what it is like, what it is actually like, to be alive.

Samuel Beckett said, of Joyce: “Joyce’s work is not about the thing, it is the thing itself.”

The majority of writers write “about the thing”. No slam on them. Writing that is “about the thing” is very often fantastic, and it is what we are accustomed to. But to read Joyce is to burrow down into the very heart of what language actually is. And you no longer feel that a book has to be ABOUT anything … Joyce’s books ARE “the thing itself”. He was always a nutcase about language anyway – I suppose anyone who lives in a country whose language was stomped out of existence by an outside force has that relationship to language. (Derek Walcott, West Indian poet, is eloquent on this matter … but there are countless examples). Joyce said, “I’d like a language which is above all languages, a language to which all will do service. I cannot express myself in English without enclosing myself in a tradition.”

These are explosive issues.

Language becomes a political tool, language becomes a weapon, a symbol … all of that postmodern Edward Said stuff … Why can’t you just write in English, bub? Isn’t English good enough for you? There were morons who took that approach to him then, and there are morons who look at him in that way now, too. Well, no, English was NOT good enough for Joyce – and that attitude eventually brought him to Finnegans Wake, a book that took him 17 years to write, a book written in … well, it’s certainly not English (although if you read it out loud, it’s amazing how much sense it really makes). Joyce created his own language, one that was more appropriate to what he wanted to express. English had been imposed on him (or – on Ireland), let’s not forget. It was not HIS. If the Irish had been left alone, who knows what their language would have developed into. These are issues that make up academia today, the voices of those who had been colonized – even if it had been generations before. What was done to language – especially languages that had been wiped out – affects not just how we speak, but how we see things. It is difficult for an English-speaker, one who grew up in, say, England, to understand the issues here. When Joyce writes in English, he is writing in “the language of the oppressor” (it is hard to write about all of this without using the obnoxious lingo. Joyce could do it – but I can’t!!) It happens whether he is conscious of it or not. He cannot write in English without “enclosing” himself “in a tradition”. Is this the tradition of his choice? Nope. It was imposed from the outside. Long before Joyce was born, but obviously – he has inherited those battles. Joyce was not really a political kind of guy, but in this case, he was as political as they come. He wrote, “To me, an Irish safety pin is more important than an English epic.” Can’t get more unambiguous than that.

The scene in Portrait where Stephen talks to the English professor about the word “tundish” lays it all out. It may be invisible to modern-day eyes and ears, or maybe it’s just invisible (at first) to those of us who speak English as a native, and never have had to grapple with nationalistic cultural issues merely from the language we have grown up with. The “tundish” scene, taken in and of itself, and seen in the right context, can explain the terrorism of the North. It’s that big a deal. (And please don’t misunderstand: I did not say “EXCUSE” the terrorism of the North. I said “explain”. Thanks for working on your reading comprehension.) What happens to a people when their language is destroyed. Systematically.

Like I said before, Joyce didn’t write pamphlets and his books are not propaganda. He is writing from within. If you’re not looking for the clues, then the subtlety of the “tundish” scene might go over your head. But it is very very important: not just to Ireland as a whole, but (more essentially) to Stephen Dedalus’ development as an artist. – Joyce is doing two things at once there. In order to be an artist, you must speak with your own voice. Everybody knows that. But if the language you speak was imposed on you, and not just imposed – but if there is a history of violence and death behind that imposed language – then where does that leave you as an artist? Seamus Heaney writes about this, lots of people write about this.

The “tundish” scene is, rightly, the most famous of all of the famous parts of this story. It is where Joyce (without really indicating that that is what he is doing) takes the gloves off. But his interest in it is personal, and that is what elevates it from propaganda, or a Joycean version of “Brits go home”. Joyce said: “Ireland remains the brain of the United Kingdom. The British, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget — the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.” Ouch. Joyce said it himself … that he would like a language that is above all languages. He dreamt of it. He worked on it. He filled notebooks with symbols and so-called gibberish. He was trying to imagine his way into the most proper expression of his thoughts, his soul, his experience. And in order to do so, he had to shed his mind of English. English was not HIS language.

An example of this is the following anecdote: Joyce tutored two young women in English, while living in Zurich. He read to them from Ulysses. He did this to demonstrate to the girls that English was also inadequate at times.

The girls asked him: “Aren’t there enough words in English?”

Joyce replied: “Yes, there are enough, but they aren’t the right ones.”

So basically, Joyce was a genius. I mean, that’s obvious. But within the man were multiple contradictions, and it is this that elevates his art to something transcendent, consistently mysterious and challenging. Frank McCourt wrote:

Joyce’s work has liberated many an artist while his life stands as a lesson for all of us. He suffered greatly: the growing failure of his eyes, the growing madness of his daughter. All his days he skirmished for pennies and fought pitched battles for his art. He was a family man, fiercely tribal, and we must not forget he was driven by love.

Did he love Ireland? As the squirrel loves the nut.

Did he love Catholicism? Imagine his work without it.

“We must not forget he was driven by love.” Amen.

Okay, so let’s get back to Portrait.

In the book it is clear that in order to become an artist, Stephen Dedalus must shed the influences of family, religion, and culture (in this case, Irish-ness). There’s an episodic feel to the book – because life often feels that way. We don’t look back over our life’s journey and see a linear narrative. We jump around in time. Events rise up from the depths, fully three-dimensional – only to be submerged again. We are 6 years old, and then next thing we know we are 9 years old. This is the structure of the book. Joyce is interested in the development of Stephen Dedalus’ soul.

Stephen, at the beginning of the book, is a small child – at the mercy of adult events. There is a sense of victimization almost – how things happen that a child cannot comprehend. How a child has no power. Suddenly, you find yourself in a boarding school. Because the adults in your life have chosen that school, and so that is where you must go. But the memory of being in the bosom of your family is still warm and fresh. Where did that go? Oh well, it’s gone now … here I am, in the present moment, dealing with the sensations and experiences of my new environs … A child doesn’t often stop to question these things. Perhaps they throw tantrums, a true sign that they are aware of their own powerlessness, aware of the fact that they have NO agency … choices are made FOR them.

In the beginning of the book – Stephen Dedalus is still in thrall to his family. To Ireland. To the Catholic Church. He has inherited his tradition, without choosing it or questioning it. As the book moves on, and as Dedalus grows up, he begins to question things, and examine the influences that have made up his life. Is the Catholic Church the one true religion? How do I feel about my family? How do I feel about Ireland? How do I feel about the way I am educated? Who am I REALLY? Joyce is not inventing the wheel, in terms of plot. It’s a typical coming-of-age story. Nothing new there. But it is in the manner of expression that Joyce breaks all the rules, and makes other books and writers seem pale, insubstantial.

Another thing that is so amazing about this book is its autobiographical thrust. Joyce was not “creating” anything. He was expressing what it was like for him. He was imagining himself back into his past selves, on a journey of discovery. So Joyce, although a master already, was also learning. It was always about process for Joyce, which is why his publishers and powerful writer friends were often driven to distraction – by the delays, and how long it took for him to write anything. He was not on a schedule. Finnegans Wake took him 17 years and he was still working on it right up to publication (the poor publishers. They’d send him a draft copy and it would come back covered in corrections. MINUTE corrections. A comma could change everything.) To someone who is not a genius, this kind of meticulous insanity looked, well, insane and annoying. Why do you agonize over commas, Jimmy? Well, because he was James Joyce, that’s why, and not some run-of-the-mill writer who was a good boy and played by the rules, played well with others. He followed his own star. Such people are often misunderstood by those who are not geniuses.

There is nothing about Joyce’s work that is not deeply personal. Every sentence that is in each book needs to be there. He worked and worked and worked at these things. He didn’t go off into a Kerouac-ian trance, spouting out gibberish that he felt came from the music of the spheres, or whatever. He wasn’t spontaneous at all. He was a craftsman. He was OCD probably. He was obsessive. Everything he did was pored over, agonized about – worked on. The fact that the books are so damn powerful is a testament to his gift as a writer.

You definitely feel the artist at work – Joyce himself never takes a back seat. He’s a showoff, a showman. He glories in language, in the fact that he can do this. But all of it has a purpose. All of it is intentional.

The scope and impact of the books are astonishing, to this day. T.S. Eliot, after reading Ulysses, stated, “He has killed the 19th century.” Indeed he did. He didn’t do so out of a contempt for all those who went before. He wasn’t like that. It was just that he was trying to encompass ALL of experience into his work, and he did so in a way that was new, and startling. He is still new and startling. I’ll never be done with him. Never.

Richard Ellmann, in his magesterial biography of James Joyce, writes about Portrait:

The book begins with Stephen’s father and, just before the ending, it depicts the hero’s severance from his mother. From the start the soul is surrounded by liquids, urine, slime, seawater, amniotic tides, “drops of water” (as Joyce says at the end of the first chapter) “falling softly in the brimming bowl.” The atmosphere of biological struggle is necessarily dark and melancholy until the light of life is glimpsed. In the first chapter the foetal soul is for a few pages only slightly individualized, the organism responds only to the most primitive sensory impressions, then the heart forms and musters its affections, the being struggles towards some unspecified, uncomprehended culmination, it is flooded in ways it cannot understand or control, it gropes wordlessly toward sexual differentiation. In the third chapter shame floods Stephen’s whole body as conscience develops; the lower bestial nature is put by. Then at the end of the fourth chapter the soul discovers the goal towards which it has been mysteriously proceeding – the goal of life. It must swim no more but emerge into air, the new metaphor being flight. The final chapter shows the soul, already fully developed, fattening itself for its journey until at last it is ready to leave. In the last few pages of the book, Stephen’s diary, the soul is released from its confinement, its individuality is complete, and the style shifts with savage abruptness.

As always, Joyce works on multiple interwoven levels – the metaphoric, the literal events that change the course, the imagery changes – the beginning of the book is all dark and liquidy – with dark greens and reds, the water of Ireland, a womblike place. Stephen is not developed. And by the end – we no longer have an outside narratory – we just read Stephen’s diary, and he is preparing his exile. He is Icarus. Putting on his wings. He has shed the ties that bind – the ties of family, Ireland, and Catholicism. He is now free. Free to create. To write. The ending of the book is a launch-pad. Stephen propelling himself up, up, up … into Ulysses, the next book. Stephen (Joyce) could never have written Ulysses if he had not openly grappled with who he was, his soul’s journey and structure, and how such immutable things as family/God/education/culture … have limited him, defined him. Gone, gone, gone, begone … Stephen has become an artist.

Ellmann writes:

The book moves from rudimentary meanings to more complex ones, as in the conception of the call and the fall. Stephen, in the first chapter fascinated by unformed images, is next summoned by the flesh and then by the church, the second chapter ending with a prostitute’s lingual kiss, the third with his reception of the Host upon his tongue. The soul that has been enraptured by body in the second chapter and by spirit in the third (both depicted in sensory images) then hears the call of art and life, which encompass both without bowing before either, in the fourth chapter; the process is virtually complete. Similarly the fall into sin, at first a terror, gradually becomes an essential part of the discovery of self and life.

Now Stephen, his character still recomposing the same elements, leaves the Catholic priesthood behind him to become “a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everlasting life.” Having listened to sermons on ugliness in the third chapter, he makes his own sermons on beauty in the last. The Virgin is transformed into the girl waiting on the strand, symbolizing a more tangible reality. In the last two chapters, to suit his new structure, Joyce minimizes Stephen’s physical life to show the dominance of his mind, which has accepted but subordinated physical things. The soul is ready now, it throws off its sense of imprisonment, its melancholy, its no longer tolerable conditions of lowr existence, to be born.

So here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Portrait. Stephen is away at Clongowes, a Jesuit-run boarding school. He cannot really understand what is happening to him. He is a small child. He becomes sick and goes to the infirmary. And it is there that he hears the sudden wails outside. Parnell is dead. As a child, Stephen cannot understand the implications – although he knows the name Parnell – having heard it round the supper table. But the vision he gets – of overwhelming grief and loss – is precocious. The sensitivity of children to outside events. Parnell comes up later (as he always does in Joyce’s work – excerpt here) – and a huge argument about him takes place at the supper table – with pros and cons, and patriots and skeptics – accusations, loyalty questioned, etc … Joyce lays it all out. The issues of the Irish people. Marvelous. If you want to understand the history of Ireland, you cannot leave Joyce out of the picture. You would do well to read history books, too, but Joyce writes about history from the inside.

Here’s the excerpt. The reference to “Dante” is interesting: “Dante” is the name of Stephen’s aunt – who becomes important later, in reference to Parnell. The associations here are primitive – Parnell = Dante, in Stephen’s childlike mind. I also find it interesting that names like “Dedalus” and “Dante” abound here. They are not “Fitzpatrick” and “O’Flaherty”. Joyce is reaching back – to antiquity, to the middle ages … for his important names … resisting enclosing himself in that “tradition” that is meaningless to him. The names are always clues with Joyce. Also: look for the clue of impending exile – it’s already there – the desire to leave, to get away, to travel … even though the boy does not yet understand his own soul’s wishes.

Needless to say, since Stephen Dedalus here is feverish and sick – the prose is feverish and sick as well. Weak impressions, the mind unhinged – wandering from place to place – the way things ARE when you have a fever. Again: Joyce does not describe. He inhabits.

His writing is not “about the thing” – it is the thing itself.

EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – by James Joyce

That was the infirmary. He was sick then. Had they written home to tell his mother and father? But it would be quicker for one of the priests to go himself to tell them. Or he would write a letter for the priest to bring.

Dear Mother
I am sick. I want to go home. Please come and take me home. I am in the infirmary.
Your fond son,
Stephen

How far away they were! There was cold sunlight outside the window. He wondered if he would die. You could die just the same on a sunny day. He might die before his mother came. Then he would have a dead mass in the chapel like the way the fellows had told him it was when Little had died. All the fellows would be at the mass, dressed in black, all with sad faces. Wells too would be there but no fellow would look at him. The rector would be there in a cope of black and gold and there would be tall yellow candles on the altar and round the catafalque. And they would carry the coffin out of the chapel slowly and he would be buried in the little graveyard of the community off the main avenue of limes. And Wells would be sorry then for what he had done. And the bell would toll slowly.

He could hear the tolling. He said over to himself the song that Brigid had taught him.

Dingdong! The castle bell!
Farewell, my mother!
Bury me in the old churchyard
Beside my eldest brother.
My coffin shall be black,
Six angels at my back,
Two to sing and two to pray
And two to carry my soul away.

How beautiful and sad that was! How beautiful the words were where they said Bury me in the old churchyard! A tremor passed over his body. How sad and how beautiful! He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music. The bell! The bell! Farewell! O farewell!

The cold sunlight was weaker and Brother Michael was standing at his bedside with a bowl of beeftea. He was glad for his mouth was hot and dry. He could hear them playing on the playgrounds. And the day was going on in the college just as if he were there.

Then Brother Michael was going away and the fellow out of third of grammar told him to be sure and come back and tell him all the news in the paper. He told Stephen that his name was Athy and that his father kept a lot of racehorses that were spiffing jumpers and that his father would give a good tip to Brother Michael any time he wanted it because Brother Michael was very decent and always told him the news out of the paper they got every day up in the castle. There was every kind of news in the paper: accidents, shipwrecks, sports and politics.

— Now it is all about politics in the paper, he said. Do your people talk about that too?

— Yes, Stephen said.

— Mine too, he said.

Then he thought for a moment and said:

— You have a queer name, Dedalus, and I have a queer name too, Athy. My name is the name of a town. Your name is like Latin.

Then he asked:

— Are you good at riddles?

Stephen answered:

— Not very good.

Then he said:

— Can you answer me this one? Why is the county Kildare like the leg of a fellow’s breeches?

Stephen thought what could be the answer and then said:

— I give it up.

— Because there is a thigh in it, he said. Do you see the joke? Athy is the town in the county Kildare and a thigh is the other thigh.

— O, I see, Stephen said.

— That’s an old riddle, he said.

After a moment he said:

— I say!

— What? asked Stephen.

— You know, he said, you can ask that riddle another way?

— Can you? said Stephen.

— The same riddle, he said. Do you know the other way to ask it?

— No, said Stephen.

— Can you not think of the other way? he said.

He looked at Stephen over the bedclothes as he spoke. Then he lay back on the pillow and said:

— There is another way but I won’t tell you what it is.

Why did he not tell it? His father, who kept the racehorses, must be a magistrate too like Saurin’s father and Nasty Roche’s father. He thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his mother played and of how he always gave him a shilling when he asked for sixpence and he felt sorry for him that he was not a magistrate like the other boys’ fathers. Then why was he sent to that place with them? But his father had told him that he would be no stranger there because his granduncle had presented an address to the liberator there fifty years before. You could know the people of that time by their old dress. It seemed to him a solemn time: and he wondered if that was the time when the fellows in Clowngoes wore blue coats with brass buttons and yellow waistcoats and caps of rabbit-skin and drank beer like grownup people and kept greyhounds of their own to course the hares with.

He looked at the window and saw that the daylight had grown weaker. There would be cloudy grey light over the playgrounds. There was no noise on the playgrounds. The class must be doing the themes or perhaps Father Arnall was reading a legend out of the book.

It was queer that they had not given him any medicine. Perhaps Brother Michael would bring it back when he came. They said you got stinking stuff to drink when you were in the infirmary. But he felt better now than before. It would be nice getting better slowly. You could get a book then. There was a book in the library about Holland. There were lovely foreign names in it and pictures of strangelooking cities and ships. It made you feel so happy.

How pale the light was at the window! But that was nice. The fire rose and fell on the wall. It was like waves. Someone had put coal on and he heard voices. They were talking. It was the noise of the waves. Or the waves were talking among themselves as they rose and fell.

He saw the sea of waves, long dark waves rising and falling, dark under the moonless night. A tiny light twinkled at the pierhead where the ship was entering: and he saw a multitude of people gathered by the waters’ edge to see the ship that was entering the harbour. A tall man stood on the deck, looking out towards the flat dark land: and by the light at the pierhead he saw his face, the sorrowful face of Brother Michael.

He saw him lift his hand towards the people and heard him say in a loud voice of sorrow over the waters:

— He is dead. We saw him lying upon the catalfaque.

A wail of sorrow went up from the people.

— Parnell! Parnell! He is dead!

They fell upon their knees, moaning in sorrow.

And he saw Dante in a maroon velvet dress and with a green velvet mantle hanging from her shoulders walking proudly and silently past the people who knelt by the water’s edge.