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    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans)
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans)
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans)
    Ebook333 pages5 hours

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans)

    By James Joyce

    3.5/5

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    Originally published in serial format in “The Egoist” between 1914 and 1915, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” is the semi-autobiographical portrayal of James Joyce’s early upbringing as an Irish Catholic in late 19th century and early 20th century Dublin. The novel was originally planned as a 63-chapter autobiographical novel in a realistic style entitled “Stephen Hero” however Joyce reworked the novel into five condensed chapters, dispensing with the strict realism which he originally planned in favor of the use of free indirect speech, a narrative style which allows the reader to peer into the developing mind of the protagonist. At the center of the novel is Stephen Dedalus, whose life, based on Joyce’s own experiences, is depicted from its various stages starting in childhood and moving through early adulthood. The language of the novel changes throughout the book to correspond with the artistic development of Stephen Dedalus as he ages and matures. “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is a masterful depiction of the process of self-discovery and rebellion against authority that is indicative of youth, one which would establish Joyce as a central figure of the modernist literary movement. This edition includes an introduction by Fallon Evans and a biographical afterword.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateNov 17, 2015
    ISBN9781420952117
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans)
    Author

    James Joyce

    James Joyce kam 1882 in Rathgar nahe Dublin zur Welt. Katholisch erzogen und ausgebildet wandte er sich nach dem Studium von der Kirche ab. 1904 verließ Joyce seine Heimat und lebte u. a. in Triest, Zürich und Paris. Das erste Prosawerk von Joyce war der Kurzgeschichtenzyklus „Dubliner“ (1914). Mit dem autobiografischen Roman „A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man“ (1916, dt. zunächst „Jugendbildnis“, später „Ein Porträt des Künstlers als junger Mann“) artikulierte Joyce in der Form des Künstler- und Bildungsromans die Position des modernen Schriftstellers, der sich aus den Bindungen der Kirche, des Staats und der Gesellschaft löst und auf künstlerischer Freiheit besteht. Der Roman „Ulysses“ (1922), der als moderne „Alltags-Odyssee“ in die Weltliteratur einging, gilt als Joyces Hauptwerk, als „der Roman des 20. Jahrhunderts“. In „Finnegans wake“ (1939) radikalisierte Joyce seine auf sprachliche Verschlüsselungen und Wortspiele zurückgreifende (und deshalb kaum übersetzbare) Schreibweise, u. a. indem er Traumfragmente verwendete. James Joyce starb 1841 in Zürich. Die drei erstgenannten Werke wurden – teils in intensiver Zusammenarbeit mit dem Autor – von Georg Goyert ins Deutsche übertragen. Aus „Finnegans wake“ übersetze Goyert das Kapitel „Anna Livia Plurabelle“.

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    Reviews for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans)

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    • 4/5
      Despite having been a professor of literature, I haven't read much by James Joyce. I loved his story collection, Dubliners, but I've never tackled what are considered his great novels--and I'm not really sure that I want to. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a short novel that showcases Joyce's stream-of-consciousness style in an accessible way. It's the story of his later hero, Stephen Daedalus, from childhood through his university years. I would agree with those who say that it's tied to a particular time and place (Ireland in the early 20th century); note, for example, Stephen's idolization of Parnell and the overwhelming influence of the Catholic church. Yet many of the struggles young Stephen goes through, such as breaking out from under his parents' wings and finding his own place in the world, are still prevalent for the youth of today. There's a lot of humor in the novel that helps it to rise above the usual coming of age story.I listened to the book on audio, wonderfully read by Colin Farrell, an actor of whom I'm not usually fond. One rather funny note: When I originally downloaded the book, the cover title appears as 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman"! I see that someone must have reported the error and a correction has been made. I usually delete books once I've read them, but this one will stay on my iTunes for the novelty factor.
    • 3/5
      I have never read James Joyce before and I had heard that A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man is considered to be his most accessible work so I decided this was where I would start with this author. In this book we follow the early years of Irishman Stephen Dedalus, starting from his boyhood and taking us through to the end of his university years. It is apparent immediately that James Joyce is a master wordsmith. His writing paints vivid pictures but I disagree with those who call this book timeless. I felt it was quite dated and specific to it’s time and place. It is a barely concealed autobiographical piece and takes the main character through his adolescence while he searches for his own identity. His views on family, religion and the very essence of being Irish clearly date this piece as early 20th century writing. Joyce is brilliant but I struggled through this short and quite readable book so I am not reassured that I will appreciate his more complex works and I expect they will be pushed to the bottom of the 1,001 pile.
    • 3/5
      In Portrait, James Joyce dramatises incidents and periods from his own childhood and adolescence, and I don’t really know what to feel about this book. Parts of this were brilliant: the writing, the rhythm, the selection of words and images. This book is excellent at expressing the unscratchable ache that is growing pains: the death of a child’s naïve belief in Justice when unfair punishment is handed out; the intensity of adolescent frustrations, both sexual and religious; and the search for fundamental meaning in life. On the other hand, well, there were numerous occasions where I felt like rolling my eyes at the text, because I’ve read too many books about sensitive, intelligent, precious little main characters who struggle mightily against their schoolboy tormentors and an understimulating environment. I know that I can’t really hold that against this book -- the century of intervening literature that makes this kind of story feel so trite is not this book’s fault. But still: the story feels so trite in many places.This book left me feeling very ambiguous. For example: a very large section of this book is taken up by a series of fire-and-brimstone sermons delivered by a Jesuit hell-bent on frightening children into good old Catholic obedience through extensive and lascivious descriptions of torture. I can appreciate what Joyce was going for here, and it’s well done indeed: I can really taste the hunger for power, the emotional manipulation, the all-encompassing prison that this kind of mentality wants to enforce. But these sermons take up 12% of the text. 12%! That is way, way too long, and spoils the effect. Then there are later bits, where the main character expounds his views on beauty and art which serve as a replacement for his earlier religiosity, and which are intellectually impressive, but they are shoehorned in in the clumsiest of ways. Again, the effect is spoiled.Both of these -- the fire-and-brimstone, and the intellectualizing theories -- overstay their welcome and tip the balance from “Impressive, well done” into “Man, Joyce really loves hearing himself talk”. And self-important smugness is a sin I find hard to forgive. So yeah. Three stars?
    • 3/5
      An autobiographical novel, it is very conventional compared to where he was going for the rest of his life. He chooses his framework characters, the male parts of the Daedalus family, and thyeir relationships to the growing Stephen.
    • 3/5
      (Original Review, 1981-02-16)"April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."How much I love/hate Joyce when I read about him...how could he have denied his mother on her deathbed? That act disturbed me - he did not even kneel when she died.I am not speaking of hypocrisy here just thinking of a young poseur who was thinking of himself above all - as you do at that age - especially if you are the ''favourite'. How much are the writings of Joyce autobiographical? Is the 'real 'Stephen Dedalus - AKA Joyce - a 'self-obsessed arsehole' - and did Joyce realise that about himself during his writing? As regards the Portrait Joyce changed the original title from ‘Stephen Hero’ - why did he do that? When did Stephen stop being a Hero?Read it again recently - skipped loads of 'the sermon because being brought up a Catholic have kind of heard it all before but have never been on a Retreat where apparently, in the olden days, you would receive the hell-fire message in spades. I found it interesting in the book that Stephen had to find an anonymous confessor to his 'sins'. He seemed too proud or ashamed to confess to a priest at the school who may have recognised his voice.I think one of the best things I learned from The Portrait was how much Joyce loved his jovial, irascible Father. The last chapter in The Portrait seems a bit of a 'cop-out' with its diary entries...a bit rushed-but maybe that was all meant.The last entry is particularly poignant (vide quote above)The bits that stick in my mind aside from the obvious passages (Hell Fire Sermon ) are the childhood passages, Dedalus remembering his uncles' tobacco smoke, listening to and trying to make sense of the adults arguing about current affairs as a bystander, the bewilderment of starting a new and strange school and trying to understand and navigate the adult rules and language of the constitution chimed with my own memories of childhood. The child is the father of the man, I think Joyce says we cannot shake off these experiences, they form who we are. You are always going to be an exile from them even if you leave physically and geographically.
    • 4/5
      The rhythm and detail of Joyce is here as he captures the passion, extremism, and narcissism of the adolescent mind.
    • 5/5
      It's a great novel about all aspects of the Christian life...........................The part where he stops being deathly afraid of sin is actually really necessary. (“Supererogation”). Sunday was dedicated to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Monday to the Holy Ghost, Tuesday to Guardian Angels, Wednesday to saint Joseph, Thursday to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Friday to Suffering Jesus, and on Saturday he went to the jazz club with Thomas Merton. It doesn’t mean.... I don’t know. “Father forgive me; it’s been a day since my last confession, and I looked at Eva Cassidy the jazz singer for twenty seconds.”“Father forgive me; it’s been eight months since my last confession, and I’ve been really whoring it up the whole time.” There’s a difference. ...............................Really, by the last part, when he was “disillusioned with church and society”, or whatever, it could very well be, “A Portrait of the Scholastic as a Young Man”. If he was annoyed with the rowdy students, it was because they couldn’t follow all his quotes of Aquinas in Latin. As he was once a rowdy student himself, it’s quite the transformation. And yet he was not weighed down with a sense of sin, but carried with him a certain satisfaction. ...................................The closest any of them come to sinning, if you will, (excluding, for some reason, “I’ll be the death of that fellow one time”), in the end is questioning various doctrines, which is not a sin. It’s only a “nationalist” church which would curse that, and it’s not a nationalist book, or, more to the point, a nationalist *reality*. .... He just doesn’t sound like a cursing cynic to me. [reposted 2/3/18].
    • 1/5
      All I can say is: Thank goodness that's over!! I'm sure I really didn't understand it, but it doesn't make me even halfway interested in trying to understand it. At least I know what it's about, and I can mark it off the list!1 like
    • 4/5
      After having read "Ulysses" when i was 13, i read this book at 16 and found it a bit disappointing, since it was so much more conventional. This is not to say this is not a worthwhile read. And i realized it was written before "Ulysses", and some of the same characters make there appearance in that later book.
    • 3/5
      In youth, Stephen begins to experience doubts about god and the church, as well as his faith in the way he perceives the world. Finally as a young man, he solidifies his beliefs in the world and moves toward creating his life as an artist. There is some really beautiful writing in this book, and I most enjoyed those sequences when he's walking through whatever town he's living in at that time and his emotions are fluctuating as he experiences the world around him. However, there are also long bouts of sermonizing and lecturing, discussing things in a purely theoretical manor, which really dragged on the story. I lost a lot of interest through those passages. While I definitely can't claim that this is a great book, I saw enough beauty throughout much of it to make it through to the end.
    • 2/5
      I started this book in June and just finished it. I was really hoping to love this book. I don't know why, but ever since middle school I believed that James Joyce would become one of my all time favorite authors. I felt an unexplainable pull towards him, but I decided to wait until I was in college to read him because I heard that he was difficult. Boy, is he ever! I enjoyed a few of the passages in this book, particularly the priest's sermon on Hell (which will haunt me until my dying day) and Stephen's monologue on beauty and aesthetics. So much of the novel just went straight over my head, though. The interaction between the boys completely eluded me. At times, Cranly came off as bipolar to me. I couldn't understand their extreme reactions to things and how they would pick a fight over nothing (Cranly being the worst of all of them about this), but I guess that's how boys are? I also didn't like how they would always use Latin in their everyday conversation. It made them seem very pretentious. Perhaps that was the point of it. I have to take some blame for not enjoying this book that much. I turned my reading of it into work rather than pleasure. Since I didn't have an annotated copy, I had to look up all the Irish slang and Latin phrases. I made sure that I always had a pen and highlighter with me, and for the first half of the book I always had to have my laptop available too until I decided to print out the glossary I was constantly referring to.I put so much effort into it because I knew that I would reread it one day, and I wanted to make sure that I would be able to focus on the story rather than the academics of it. I'm a bit too turned off from it right now to begin rereading it right away, but maybe after a few months I can prepare myself to pick it up again. And hopefully I'll enjoy it much more.
    • 4/5
      This work shows Joyce's talent. It is well written, easy to follow and portrays characters that the reader can easily like. Man, did Joyce ever change when ego set in.
    • 4/5
      et ignotas animum dimittit in artesOvid, metamorphoses, viii, 18
    • 2/5
      This is as far as my Joyce adventure will go, I think. I've looked at "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake", and I doubt I will make it any further. "A Portrait..." was interesting, if not exactly world-changing; perhaps I approached it in the wrong frame of mind, and wasn't open to the possibilities it suggests and has suggested in others.
    • 5/5
      This novel took me three times as long to read as it might have. A third of my time I spent reading it, a third reading about it, and another third lost in daydreaming and memories as time after time Joyce hit something from my experience so squarely on the nose that it sent me reeling.It didn't begin at all well. A title that reads like a subtitle, an opening line about a moocow, a stream-of-consciousness narrative with glimpses of scenes in fits and starts ... I feared the whole novel would be like this, until I understood it was a child's apprehension of the world. Confusion swiftly gave way to respect. James Joyce had a great talent for recapturing not only the events of childhood but also the much more difficult to remember perceptions, how a young boy takes in and processes what he learns about the world. I would never have recalled it quite this way, and yet it echoes with truth. The boy ages and the same truth shines from the page with each passing year and event, as how he perceives and what he perceives alter with time. He discovers the world is not black-and-white, that not all arguments have tidy resolutions, that the opposite sex is only human too, that religion cannot provide definitive answers, that destiny calls from within. He's still got his blind spots, though: he's stubborn about letting the world in, about taking responsibility for anyone or caring about his roots, and he's far too full of himself and his accumulated learning. But what's an artist without a surfeit of pride?I took the title to be self-referential to Joyce, but it's meant more generically; this is the development of a fictional artist's mind from childhood to self-identity as such, although with biographical elements borrowed from Joyce's own life. Surprisingly accessible (if not so much as "Dubliners"), the only sticking part for me were the big long diatribes about hell and damnation which don't really get examined but pull no punches as an example of what was being knocked into Catholic Irish boys' heads, and maybe still are in some dark corners of the world. I'm bound to deeply admire this book, one I'm stunned by for how well it got inside my head and toured me through episodes from my own life, like a tourist guide who remembers me better than I do.
    • 3/5
      Joyce uses beautifully poetic language, and his portrayal of Catholic guilt was magnificent. However, the frequent jumps between the present and the thoughts in Dedalus's head made this a frustrating read.
    • 1/5
      Sorry everybody. I know that Joyce is one of the quintessential authors of the twentieth century, but I just couldn't stand this book. And it's not that I don't like stream-of-consciousness...it's just the story--rather pathetic and rambling.
    • 5/5
      Excellent wording and so well written it is scary.
    • 4/5
      I don't much care for the later parts in the book, but the beginning--Stephen's childhood--is, in my opinion, one of the greatest and most beautiful bits of words ever put to paper. That alone is reason to pick this up, and as a sort of "gateway" book between the easy-to-read Dubliners and the notoriously difficult Ulysses, it works beautifully.
    • 3/5
      Portrait is certainly more accessible than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, but it lacks the delightful wordplay and zany, ambitious flights that leave the reader in wonderment. It has its obscure parts, but for the most part chronicles Stephen Dedalus's life from young childhood through college, recording everything that influenced him.Some of these influences were recorded in more meticulous detail than makes for entertainment. For instance, the long, long passage giving the priest's sermon on sin and Hell was a flawless rendition of a classic fire and brimstone harangue. To describe it is to describe the problem with it.I thought I had read this in college, but listening to the audio version made me wonder. If I did read it, I deserved a very bad grade for comprehension and retention.
    • 4/5
      One of the most personal books in my reading: incarcerated as I was at the time in a Jesuit prep school, and not Roman Catholic, quite the lode.
    • 4/5
      A portrait differs from an autobiography in that it is a subjective impression of the character from a certain point of view, and distorted to some degree through the use of a specific style. Whereas biography is more objective.Though the work is predominantly autobiographical in its source material, it is more a self portrait in its presentation, dressed up as a novel on the childhood and young adulthood of "Stephen Daedalus" who later takes a role in Joyce's Ulysses. Two things make this book interesting: the style in which it is written, and the subject matter. Though far more accessible and plainly-written than either Ulysses, or the even more formiddable Finnegan's wake, there are embryonic hints here of his characteristic style that would develop more fully in his later works.Joyce had an atypical childhood both from the modern viewpoint, and to a lesser degree for his time. He was initially educated in a Jesuit college in Ireland, before moving to another one due to his father's financial difficulties.This education seemed to encourage his propensity toward a religious disposition, which he showed for many of his earlier years, before a lapse into temptation and "pleasures of the flesh". Toward the end of the book he goes on to think about aesthetic theory, inspiring discussion with his peers at university. This would be a good introduction to reading Joyce, both because it gives the reader an understanding of Joyce's experiences, and because it is less challenging than his later works.
    • 3/5
      I read this in preparation for a Joyce class I will start next week, focusing on Ulysses. I am very glad I did, because this book has inventive style, a gripping storyline and a representation of social issues not unlike Quebec's in the 50's and 60's - and is a good introduction to the kind of experiments Joyce makes in Ulysses.The development of an artistic mind striving for freedom is fascinating when put in Joyce's lyricism and grand eloquence. I was scared by Joyce at first but now I feel more confident than ever that I can enjoy and appreciate his work.
    • 5/5
      Impossibly good (as is all Joyce). For weeks after finishing this one, I wished that I were an Irish Catholic schoolboy, and I threw myself into a fit of reading Byron.
    • 3/5
      I feel like I don't really get Joyce and why he's so admired.
    • 5/5
      Overweening bastard that he is, Stephen Dedalus goes to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race. And I think: Wow, now I finally understand what Ulysses was all about. It was Joyce's great thesis and his canticle of canticles, his attempt to speak of Irish ghosts in their own language. And Portrait needs to come first, set the scene. Ye Artificer his Remarkable Historie.

      But it's so much more. It's an incredible invocation of the fears and fancies of childhood in a dark and brutal island off the coast of civilization, for we scattered generations of the Commonwealth a shivering memory of the disciplinary yoke of the imperial world-system out of which we came, its origin on another small cold island and its combination, in enchanted Ireland, with an ancient tyranny of soulmongers--Church and Charter, Christ and King. Joyce teases out the stunted schoolboy resistance that persists furtively under that hideous weight and, in the first section, makes it stand tall and proud and relate one small victory in a way that makes it an exemplar, a rebel ballad which will echo and shift, with none of the unavoidable self-neutering fascism of Another Brick in the Wall. When the dean offers to chastise the priest that paddled young Stephen, I want to throw my cap in the air, clutch my rock candy and shout "Haroo!"

      It is also, and here I see how Riddley Walker is the Dedalus of his culture, an ecstatic linguistic myth. Stephen languishes in phantasmagoria, transfixed by the Church's imagery even as its language leads him down scholastic and aesthetic rabbit holes. No site of resistance in thee, O Lord. He breaks free, but languishes too in sex and jealousy and a sense of his sex as sin that keeps him yoked to Sweet Baby Jay as much as he was when he thought he had a vocation--more, since there is now no intellectual tradition for him to inhabit and hone to a rapier point. And like Wittgenstein, this is what brings him back to language--the emptiness of any Irish emancipatory project that is not reflexive, that doesn't come to terms with rape and pillage of a people's speech and culture. The fact that the ghosts of Eire are now strangers, hostile and hungry ghosts. English priests will come and run your parish schools and be rebelled 'gainst in a mummer's show, but there ain't no English firbolg. The fact that the working and peasant classes are as estranged, slouched low inside the Celtic soul, and Stephen/young Joyce is so transfixed and compromised as to attack the people on one side with the class attitudes of the oppressor while still grasping after the deep insights and magic words with which the house Irish or say the native boy can convincingly and with the heart of a believer--one that no matter how effete and Anglified, hates righteously the foreign muck that encrusts him--can fight back as comfortable in his weapons as the car-bomber or the Gaelic association athlete or the balladeer. "Oh tell me Sean O'Farrell" is an anti-colonial weapon too, no doubt about it, but it's not the right one for Joyce/Dedalus, the freaky eyepatch, the adept who feels and the aesthete who believes and the fart-sniffing genius who moves away to Paris and unsettles the whole non-Celtic and imperial world with the queerness of his offerings.

      Meaning: Joyce's Sean O'Farrell is "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". Dedalus's pikes hidden under haystacks and gleaming together at the rising of the moooooon are "The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea" and "Come forth Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job" and "If others have their will Ann hath a way" and perhaps even "End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousandsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs". Speaking English like a foreign language, like not only your Irish politics and desires and fears but indeed your Irish lips and mouth and brain are different. The extraordinary final third of Portrait of the Artist is where a callow young smartass engages intensively with others of his ilk in words, words, words, leavened with occasional fists; learns to quit yammering about what needs to be done and think about how to just maybe start to do it; and understand that the first step for the poor tongueless Irishman is to make words strange. This book reveals Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as, at least in part, a great project of national liberation. It is their prospectus and methodology.

    • 1/5
      Totally worthless.
    • 2/5
      Definitely a disappointment, after the glowing reports I'd gotten from reviews and from friends' recommendations who've read the book. There were some inspiring passages that I really resonated with, like Stephen Dedaelus's conversion experience, eventually disinherited.. or his walk along the coast where he describes the scene in such detail that you know James Joyce is speaking out of personal experience... But if you don't identify with the author at any point, how can you even want to suffer through it? In general, this book is a rambling exercise in pointless intellectual thoughts, which is anticlimactic enough to feel entirely purposeless. What IS the story, anyway? Ok, a boy grows up... and fantasizes about girls and sex a lot. Where's the story there? I've rarely been this hard on a proven "classic" before, but I'll make an exception. Note to editors: please don't put footnotes in your novels, it's incredible annoying no matter how much you might think it illuminates the text. Repeatedly suggesting that the reader isn't understanding something in a book SO vague that, clearly, NOTHING should be understood, and then only citing irrelevant history, dates & all, behind the song or the building or the person just mentioned, is infuriating. I mean, I take all this trouble to page ALL the way to the back of the book for an explanation that may somehow transform this whole tiresome reading experience for me, and you're giving me a 3-paragraph long HISTORY LESSON? How about making your first and only footnote about the elusive point of this book?
    • 5/5
      The classic Bildungsroman. Of course, I hate to use the term Bildungsroman cause you sound like a pompous ass. However, since I am in fact a pompous ass, it works out ok.
    • 3/5
      Very enjoyable for its influential literary style. As someone reading from quite a different generation, the story wasn't enough to keep it afloat on its own but more than makes up for it in punctuation. Moved through it fairly quickly, so would be worthy of a second read to reveal more depth- it is certainly there.

    Book preview

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (with an Introduction by Fallon Evans) - James Joyce

    cover.jpg

    A PORTRAIT OF THE

    ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

    By JAMES JOYCE

    Introduction by FALLON EVANS

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    By James Joyce

    Introduction by Fallon Evans

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5210-0

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5211-7

    This edition copyright © 2015. Digireads.com Publishing.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

    Cover Image: Photograph of James Joyce, taken by C. P. Curran ca. 1904. Colorization copyright Digireads.com Publishing 2015.

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    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

    Introduction

    THE PORTRAIT AS A LITERARY WORK{1}

    One day last week, after a particularly trying class, I was encountered in the hall of the library by a delegate of the aesthetics group who asked that I offer for their record a subtitle to this speech, one that showed that this speech, a part of the integration series, could be related to the aesthetics program. In that unguarded moment I offered the pompous subtitle: An approach to an aesthetic judgment. Or perhaps it was: "The Portrait of the Artist, an attempt at an approach to an aesthetic judgment." Pompous and ill-considered as that subtitle is, it does illustrate the method of this speech. I shall back away from the book, back slowly through a field of sere and matted truisms, then take a running jump into the novel itself.

    Let us consider then some of the ways that we might approach a novel as a work of art. Perhaps the most common way, and so the one that we shall mention first, is to examine the particular work in relation to contemporary or preceding works of the same kind. Quite literally there is nothing like Finnegans Wake, or for that matter, nothing quite like Ulysses; but the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a first novel, and is a story of the maturation of a young man. As such it is of the same stripe as George Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, and Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy. To examine Joyce’s work in relation to these two novels would reveal interesting, and perhaps illuminating, parallels and analogues.

    Another valid and instructive method is to examine the particular work in relation to the earlier works of the same author. In this instance, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we are fortunate in having earlier published, and earlier unpublished works. Unpublished works are usually the most interesting. These are the pieces that the author, or the publishing houses of the time, thought unworthy of publication. Such works are usually valuable because they reveal clearly the author’s intentions. Art conceals art, Horace remarked, and in a highly polished literary work we are less apt to be aware of techniques and artistic devices. In the earlier attempts, the artificial quality of the work stands out more clearly. In bald attempts and poorly carried out techniques we can, as it were, see into the artist’s workshop. The Portrait of the Artist can be examined in relation to Stephen Hero, the recently published portion of the first, and discarded novel, in which Joyce tried to set forth the story of Stephen Dedalus’ maturation.

    The particular literary work at hand can sometime be profitably examined in relation to the author’s earlier published works even though these be of a different genre. Such works are the result of an earlier and hence less mature, less cunning genius; and again artistic intentions appear more obvious. It would be revelatory of much if we were to examine the Portrait of the Artist in relation to Joyce’s collection of short stories, The Dubliners.

    Another closely allied method of approaching a single literary object is to examine it in relation to later works of the same author if these show definite trends, definite movements, clear developments of themes and techniques. Sometimes in these later works we can find architectonic developments that make significant minor details of the work under study. A study of The Portrait of the Artist in relation to Ulysses and to Finnegans Wake would be a worthwhile effort.

    And finally, having backed nearly all the way across the field of possible relationships, I now tense my withered hams for the running start, finally a literary work of art may be examined as though it were a unique work: a self-contained entity. Such a view Finnegans Wake demands, Ulysses encourages, and to such a study The Portrait of the Artist extends most rewards. It is such an examination I shall attempt, considering the Portrait as though it were unique, the only novel.

    This view, and all the other views, imply that we know what the thing is that we are studying: whether it is a novel, or an autobiography, or a tragedy, or a painting, or a photograph.

    In approaching a novel, however, the danger seems to me lies not in failing to distinguish what kind of an art object lies before us, but rather the present danger lies in the failure to realize that what we have before us is a work of art. The novelists themselves have perpetrated this obfuscation, maintaining in vague and unseemly metaphor that they were presenting a slice of life. Even such a conscious craftsman and literary tinker as Henry James could obscure the artificial element of the novel. I cite against him two of his most ubiquitous pronouncements concerning the novel. A novel, he wrote, is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life, that, to begin with, constitutes its value. And later in the same essay, The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. What these pronunciamentoes do is to suggest that the novel is ah! life! The novel is no such a thing; the novel is an art object. That is the very critical point that James ignores, or blandly implies. The only obligation to which we may truly hold a novel in advance is that it have an artistic form commensurate with its being as an art object. The novel is not an impression of life; it is an expression of life, or of beliefs, or of what Maritain calls spiritual super-abundance, an expression that is manifested in an aesthetically pleasing form.

    The best working definition of the novel that I know is that offered by Howard Mumford Jones in an introduction to Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews—a novel incidentally that employs the story of Odysseus as a controlling theme in the same way that Joyce used the epic in his novel, Ulysses. Jones wrote, The novel is a probable story dealing with recognizable people, the substance of the tale being molded for the aesthetic satisfaction of seeing an artistic form properly fulfilled.

    I find that statement particularly valuable because it clearly delineates what seems to be the central problem of the novelist: the difficulty of reconciling the portrayal of recognizable people with the artistic molding of the tale. After all, in the life we see about us, the recognizable people are seldom capable of molding their affairs to an artistic pattern, if the novelist molds his tale too much, the characters do not ring true; if he portrays his characters with painful accuracy, the substance of his tale becomes unwieldy and formless. Between these two contrasting demands the novelist must effect a compromise.

    Now, let us see how James Joyce handled the difficulty in his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. First let us turn to the problem of presenting recognizable people.

    "The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper ran last desk. Stephen’s heart leapt up in fear.

    —Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? Any lazy, idle loafers that want flogging in this class? . . . Hoho! . . . Who is this boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your name boy?"

    (And later)

    "Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan’s whitegray not young face, his baldly whitegray head with fluff at the sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his nocoloured eyes looking through the glasses.

    —Lazy, idle little loafer."

    Father Dolan appears with almost staggering intensity. It isn’t Stephen alone who cringes before the pandybat and the nocoloured eyes; it is every reader (perhaps most particularly those who have experienced Jesuitical disciplines) but all who have cowered before petty tyranny. The concept of Father Dolan, the reader accepts as true. Then too, there is Father Dolan’s speech. Joyce had a pure ear and the knack of presenting on paper speech cadences. Father Dolan sounds real.

    Most significant of all perhaps are the details Joyce chose to evoke the image of Father Dolan: the swish of the soutane, the crack of the pandybat, the whitegray not young face. These details were chosen with care according to a well-defined device of characterization. The plan itself Joyce explained in a section of the unpublished Stephen Hero. In that fragment of his first effort he explained what he meant by epiphany. By epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation. The choice of that word, epiphany, shows that James Joyce’s mind, like that of his creation, Stephen Dedalus, was supersaturated with religion. The Epiphany celebrated by the Church was, of course, the showing forth of the God-Man to the Gentiles. Joyce’s epiphany is the sudden showing forth of the individual soul in an incident, a scene, a gesture, a phrase, a coincidental set of circumstances. The individual essence might be revealed by a detail or an object to which it has only a fortuitous relation. The pandybat, for instance, epiphanized the soul of Father Dolan, not because it resembled him in any way, but because it is associated with him in an act that marked him forever in the eyes of Stephen. In Stephen Hero Joyce wrote, He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. And Oliver Saint John Gogarty has remarked with annoyance how the young James Joyce himself would sometimes excuse himself from a conversation to retire hastily to the bathroom where he could jot down, while still fresh in his mind, the phrase or set of circumstances by which one of his companions had seemed to epiphanize himself.

    To record an epiphany an artist must be able to absorb a scene or a situation in its totality, to understand the meaning of that scene, then he must be able to single out from among the meaningless circumstances the precise detail that shows forth the essence of the scene, or that shows forth the soul of a character. Joyce wrote, The artist who could disentangle the subtle soul of the image from its mesh of defining circumstances most exactly and re-embody it in artistic circumstances chosen as the most exact for its new office, he was the supreme artist. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is filled with such moments of revelation. As Joyce rewrote the profuse autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero, he constantly refined his memories, disentangling the soul of each from its defining circumstances. So for instance, Stephen’s brothers and sisters, counted and named in the first work, become in the Portrait disembodied voices, for it was in their voices that they manifested their essential spirit.

    They would sing so for hours, melody after melody, glee after glee, till the last pale light died down on the horizon, till the first dark, nightclouds came forth and night fell . . . He was listening with pain of spirit to the overtones of weariness behind their frail fresh innocent voices. Even before they set out on life’s journey they seemed weary already of the way.

    It is in the voices recreated through imagery, assonance, alliteration and delicate prose melody that Joyce presents Stephen’s siblings. Dante is epiphanized in the two brushes, the brush with the green velvet back and the brush with the red velvet back. Priests are announced and epiphanized by fluttering soutanes. Such devices of epiphanies divorced from the narrative base are not unlike verbal leitmotifs, and Joyce employed them as such, as we shall see when we get to the problem of how Joyce molded the substance of his story.

    Let us examine one of the more complex epiphanies, one that has been commented on by Hugh Kenner,{2} remembering that the individual essence can be revealed by details that have only fortuitous relations to it. In Chapter Three we find Stephen enmeshed in mortal sin, clinging to his sin, passing through the whole dreadful catalogue of capital sins. From the evil sin of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth. Stephen, all the more a logician and theologian because of his sins, sits in the class room waiting for the rector to begin the catechism lesson; and his mind turns on all the nice problems of logic that he can present to the rector in order to prevent the rector from asking questions on the assigned lesson. If a man had stolen a pound in his youth and had used that pound to amass a huge fortune how much was he obliged to give back, the pound he had stolen only or the pound together with the compound interest accruing upon it or all his huge fortune? . . . Is baptism with mineral water valid? School boys, and college students too, have ever though up such delaying tactics; but note the epiphany that is to occur, the sudden showing forth of a thing in its essence. Stephen continues to ponder, "If wine changes into vinegar and the host crumbles into corruption after they have been consecrated, is Jesus Christ still present under this species as God and as man?

    "Here he is! Here he is!

    A boy from his post at the window had seen the rector come from the house.

    But Joyce had seen more than that, and perhaps this incidental connection is the most revelatory explanation of Joyce’s anticlericism. The cry of the boy, Here he is! Here he is! suddenly reveals the identity between the rector and Stephen’s concept of the corrupting bread of the Eucharistic Sacrament. The rector comes into the class room to announce the retreat, and the rector thus becomes a part of Father Arnall, and of Father Dolan, and of Dante’s priest who had turned from Parnell, and of all the Irish clergy: the Priest-Punisher. Here it is important to note that Stephen’s cry against the Church is never, "Non credo, but Non serviam, I will not serve. He sees in the clergy crumbling decay and vinegar, and in the Irish laity blind, offensive obedience. Poor Parnell. . . . They killed my king!"

    And the question of blind, repellent obedience, cowering, joyless obedience brings us back to Father Dolan of the pandybat and the nocoloured eyes. We have seen how Father Dolan was epiphanized by the pandybat, but why, we might ask, did Joyce emphasize the white hair, the whitegray face, and the nocoloured eyes of the priest? The answer to that leads us into the critical area of Joycean symbolism.

    The images of Joyce’s world are primarily audial images. They are speeches and sounds that Stephen records rather than sights; at the climactic moment of Chapter Four when Stephen dedicates himself to art, it is not a vision that he apprehends, but rather it is a call that he hears, A voice from beyond the world calling. However, throughout the first two chapters of the book, Joyce heavily accents his use of the color, white, and each time white is associated either with a feeling of revulsion, or with blind obedience to some code. In the image of Father Dolan, of course, and later in the book, these two symbolic values of white are combined. Let us trace briefly Joyce’s methods of charging white with symbolic value.

    The word first occurs as Stephen ruminates on the ugly word, suck; that word reminds him of dirty water draining noisily from a wash basin. To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him cold and then hot. Stephen recalls this scene during the arithmetic class at school, where under the goading of Father Arnall he is compelled to work difficult sums at high speed. The class has been divided into two teams, the houses of Lancaster and York; Stephen wears the white silk badge of the house of York. Stephen tried his best but the sum was too hard and he felt confused. The little white silk badge that was pinned on the breast of his jacket began to flutter. He fails at the sum, and thought his face must be white. The bell rings and the class marches to the refectory where a clumsy scullion girl with a white apron pours tea. And Stephen wonders whether all white things were cold and damp. They are in this book. Stephen ill (Sick in your bread basket because your face is white.) takes to his bed. The fever seizes him, shakes his narrow shoulders; shivering, trembling, fearing death, the young boy reverts to the memorized prayers of his infancy. ‘God bless my father and mother and spare them to me’ . . . Tucking the end of his nightshirt under his feet, [he] curled himself together under the cold white sheets, shaking and trembling. . . . he would not go to hell. These images, all of white, appear in a cluster; the incidents cover less than ten pages of the first chapter, but the connection between white, unthinking servility and revulsion has been established. The next cluster of white images occurs in the description of Father Dolan, he of the whitegray face, white hair, steel spectacles, and nocoloured eyes. It is Joyce, and by now the reader, who is aware of this association of white with cold (that is, loveless), and damp (that is lifeless) obeisance to an unworthy code. Stephen is unaware of the symbolic value of white, and this makes for some rich irony. For Stephen, older now, having seen his father and the city of Cork for what they are, remembers his trip to Cork in terms of a maid in a white cap and apron . . . watering a box of plants in a sill which shone like a slab of limestone.

    In Chapter Three Stephen, having confessed his sins and returned to the Sacraments, attempts a life of Ignatian obedience and austerity. Till that moment he had not known how beautiful and peaceful life could be. On the dresser was a plate of sausages and white puding and on the shelf there were eggs. They would be for the breakfast in the morning after the communion in the college chapel. White pudding and eggs and sausages and cups of tea! How simple and beautiful was life after all. Joyce has very neatly repeated his theme: Stephen shivering in his childish bed reciting by rote prayers of infancy so he will not go to hell is the same Stephen who is appealing to the church to save him from the terrors of Father Arnall’s hell. The reader suspects how long this view will satisfy the questing Stephen.

    The symbolic use of color is similar to the verbal leitmotifs of the ephiphanies, and because both are used not only to define character and motive, but to advance the story, we can thus easily move from the question of character portrayal to the problem of how Joyce molded the substance of his tale to an artistic form.

    The most profound meanings of this book reveal themselves to an analysis of the structure of the novel. The most casual examination of the structure reveals that this book is not a simple autobiographical account of Joyce’s maturation. The actions are too highly patterned, too exquisitely counterpointed, to be taken as the chronological listing of the events in a young man’s life. Though this book is entitled somewhat lengthily, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the truth is that Joyce presents us with an account of the growth of an exile. The artist, Joyce tells us, is an exile, a wanderer in a world not his making.

    There is no introductory observation on this world; it is boldly presented to the reader in the first pages, as seen through the eyes of the young Stephen Dedalus.

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

    These first pages serve as an overture to the novel itself; and as an overture to a symphony presents the major musical themes of the whole composition, so these pages present in microcosm all the major themes of this novel: Stephen’s relationship to his father, his mother, his community, his religion, himself, his language, and his art. Each of these themes is dealt with in turn.

    After the overture the novel is divided into five chapters, the fifth and climactic chapter occupying nearly a third of the book. Each of the chapters is built on the same pattern, so that for each of the chapters the main line of development follows this four step structure. One, Stephen nourishes a dream. Two, he puts this dream into practice; he tries to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. Three, Stephen’s dream is destroyed by reality. Four, Stephen appeals to a higher authority for rectification of this injury. Broadly then, each chapter illustrates one of his thwarted attempts to compromise with his environment. It is this main line of development that defines the growing sense of exile, for each time that Stephen’s dream is dashed, he abandons that realm of experience and appeals to a higher until there is no one to whom he can appeal, nowhere he can turn for justice.

    Each chapter has, in addition to this dominant theme, one controlling emotion; and each has for that particular emotion a single controlling image. Such a structural device was a normal method of the Elizabethan drama, and the genesis of Joyce’s organizational devices can be traced with ease to his careful study of the works of Ben Jonson. It was undoubtedly from Jonson that he learned to organize clusters of images around a controlling emotion.

    For instance, in Chapter One, the controlling emotion is fear, and the dominant image to emerge is that of Father Dolan and his pandybat. Young Stephen Dedalus, the youngest boy at Clongowes Wood College, becomes slowly aware of the world about him, and this awareness is accompanied by fear, fear of pain, fear of failure, fear of darkness. He is impressed by the immensity of the universe and he puzzles over the flyleaf of his geography book on which he had written:

    "Stephen Dedalus

    Class of Elements

    Clongowes Wood College

    Sallins

    County Kildare

    Ireland

    Europe

    The World

    The Universe"

    Then he reads the words from bottom to top. Next he is impressed by the complexity of language. He puzzles over the meanings of words: belt, and suck, and to kiss, and God. By thinking of things you could understand them, but it made him very tired to think, and he is unable to understand much of the world or many of the words that he hears. Confronted with a bewildering and frightening world, Stephen seeks defense in conformity: his first attempt to conform with his environment. He conforms to the schoolboy code, one first enunciated by his father, and refuses to tell who it was that had shouldered him into the drainage ditch. "His father had told him whatever he did, never to preach on a fellow." And he conforms to the academic code of the school, obeying his teachers and superiors. For this attempt to conform he is beaten by Father Dolan. And for the first time the disenchanted Stephen appeals to a higher authority, to Father Conmee, the rector. For the first time of five this appeal fails, but the account of the failure is reserved for the next chapter. This chapter, as all the chapters, ends on a note of triumph: Stephen has carried his appeal to a higher court. Father Conmee promises to speak to Father Dolan.

    In Chapter Two the dominant theme is Stephen’s rejection of his father; but each chapter gathers up the thematic material of the preceding ones and entwines them with its own dominant theme{3} so Father Conmee is involved in Stephen’s rejection of his father. He learns that not only did Father Conmee fail to censure Father Dolan, he had made Stephen the butt of a joke.

    I told them all at dinner and I and all of us had a hearty laugh together over it!

    Worse, Stephen hears of the laughter at his expense from his father, Simon Dedalus. The rector had preached on him, preached on him to his father who approved heartily.

    Shows you the spirit in which they take the boys there. O, a jesuit for your life, for diplomacy.

    The controlling image of Chapter Two is Dublin, represented by that city’s three prepossessions: music, sports, and religion. This triple image of Dublin is first embodied in the person of Uncle Charles; Uncle Charles singing in the outhouse. Uncle Charles teaching Stephen to run, Uncle Charles reading above his breath from a thumb-blackened prayer book. In the converted chapel of Belvedere college, given over on a festive night to the display of gymnastic teams and the brazen clashes of the soldier’s band, in the chapel converted to sports and music, the three symbolic images of Dublin are brought together. That night standing outside the chapel, Stephen’s mind goes back to Father Dolan and the pandybat episode. Stephen is forced by his teasing classmates to admit of a love that he doesn’t feel, and he remembers how he once was forced to deny admiration for a poet, Byron, whom he revered; how he was once forced to admit to a heresy which he didn’t believe. His three prepossessions: love, art, and personal independence, have been attacked by Dublin, and so, to Stephen, conformity, centered now in the image of Dublin, appears false. And yet he persists in his attempt to come to terms with the world about him, even when the cities of Cork and Dublin become identified in song and sports and blasphemy, even when, on the trip to Cork, the past and present become identified on the same three notes, and all, his country Ireland past and present, become identified with his drunken father who challenges him publicly to meet him in any of the three areas that define his life.

    No, by God, I’ll sing sing a tenor song with him, or I’ll run with him after the hounds across the county as I did thirty years ago along with the Kerry Boy and the best man for it.

    Still Stephen attempts to compromise, and with the prize money from his essay he tries to conform to the Dublin modes. But he fails, the pink enamel paint gave out and the wainscoat of his bedroom remained with its unfinished and ill plastered coat. As Stephen appealed from Father Dolan to Father Conmee, so now, his dream dashed by his failure to come to terms with Dublin, Stephen appeals from the city of

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