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| (C) William Cook |
The narrative style, of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, involves
the reader in the search for meaning. While there may seem to be no definable
authorial presence on the surface, the narrator is a creation of the author’s
and speaks the language of modernism. Our understanding of Stephen’s character
is more explicit and yet more complicated, because of the style of narration,
which uses a vivid stream-of-consciousness dialogue. The apparent lack of
“narrative cues” is what distinguishes Joyce’s novel as different, to the
standard format and narration style of conventional fiction, and
characteristically difficult, a common trait of modernist literature.
The difficulty of such a
novel is that we (the reader & critic) have to read meaning by our own
comprehension of the interior (and exterior) world of Stephen, with our own
intellectual perceptions, beliefs, preconceptions, and experience. The problem
with this is explicitly emphasized by Wayne Booth in his essay on The Problem of Distance between author,
character, and reader in Portrait:
Whatever intelligence Joyce postulates in
his reader – let us assume the unlikely case of its being comparable to his own
– will not be sufficient for precise inference of a pattern of judgements which
is, after all, private to Joyce . . . many of the refinements he intended in
his finished Portrait are, for most
of us, permanently lost.[i]
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| (C) William Cook |
The language and words Joyce uses are not
foreign to most literate English readers, yet the style and the complexity of
the meaning of the prose, is what makes it difficult. Moreover, because we are
effectively in the mind of the narrator, we also presume that meaning will come
from within the language of his speech and thought. This sense of anticipation
preludes the reader’s understanding of what the meaning signifies to and within
Stephen’s world. In other words, we expect to find meaning through the
narrator, yet until we find our way through the labyrinth of allusion and
metaphor that is Stephen’s narration, we can not begin to comprehend the state
of Stephen’s consciousness.
Making reading difficult, as
it does, Portrait lends itself to
many forms of criticism. Its difficulty has extended its critique beyond the
realms of modernism into contemporary post-modern analysis and debate. The
structural coherence of the narrative depends on the type of reading practiced.
For instance, a psychoanalytical (or Freudian) reading would envisage Portrait as a densely coherent
structural novel, due to the narrator’s ‘stream-of-consciousness dialogue and
psychological elements that dominate the text. Whereas a feminist critique,
would assume it was incoherent or misogynist due to the negative or apparently
disempowered portrayals of women in the novel. This reading is difficult because
it is hard to prove whether Stephen is a factually autobiographical portrait of
Joyce.
The ‘problem of distance’ makes it hard for critics to
determine the author’s involvement/responsibility in his character’s beliefs
and actions. It is also hard to determine whether his depictions of women are
stereotypically patriarchal, and therefore negatively depicted according to
general feminist critique, in character
(are beautiful girls that are transformed into birds, being oppressed by
the male visionary oppressor?).
By writing a complex and
evocative work that seems to defy definition, Joyce effectively works the text
so that the reader seeks meaning, and distances himself from criticism that
lacks definitive judgements due to the difficulty of the text. While this
elusiveness works well for Joyce, and promotes criticism and ‘art for art’s
sake’, it also generates a negative reaction to the difficulty of Portrait. This negative (pessimistic may be a better term)
interpretation is essentially a reaction to the exclusiveness of modernism and
its practitioners, Joyce being the head of the house.
What most readers (and
critics) of fiction enjoy is a work capable of appreciation and intellectual
stimulation, for having a story with a coherent message, meaning, or
‘portrait’. What Portrait proposes,
is a scholarly interpretation requiring more than mere involvement and more
like devotion, in order to salvage meaning from the depths of Stephen’s mind
and the text. There is a danger of the work being too abstract and mutually
exclusive, almost a work of inoperative fiction, or mere curiosity, to the
general reader.
While this may seem a
presumptuous view of A Portrait (depending
on the reader response), it must be remembered that because of the demands it
places on the reader, we are forced to make these critical assumptions
regarding authorial intent, in order to understand the text more completely. In
my view, this is the intention behind Joyce’s style and the reason why his work
is so amenable to different critique and debate, yet considered difficult and
obscure by the average reader.
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| (C) William Cook |
Like anything that challenges
the intellectual faculties, Portrait
provokes an element of frustration and satisfaction with its many levels of
difficulty. The apparent simplicity of the first chapter drags us into
Stephen’s labyrinth of memory and experience. The increasingly complex
narration and imagery disorientate the reader; just as Stephen seems to have a
deep ambivalence toward all things, so too do we (those of us still reading).
Whether it is ambivalence toward Stephen, Joyce, or that which is related (the
content of the narration), a certain amount of mistrust and caution guides us
through the dichotomous corridors of narrative. As ambiguous as it may seem, because of its perceived
difficulties and lack of authorial direction, there is still a story within the
structure that seeks the eye (and ear) of the astute reader.
There is a strong
relationship between the aesthetic and the character. The novel is after all a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
and as such, he displays characteristics of the aggressive ideology of youth
and artistic temperament. Stephen Dedalus’s life advances from childhood to
adulthood, in a continual odyssey for meaning and vocation that differs from
convention, tradition, and expectation of his peers and guardians. We see the
world through Stephen’s perceptions, rebelling against reality and looking for
a deeper truth that seems to prove as elusive for him as it does for the
reader. A sense of isolation and subjective relativism envelops his character
and his sense of pilgrimage. He searches for camaraderie in other like minds,
envisioning other young artists on the same spiritual/artistic journey, he
hears their voices calling him “making ready to go, shaking the wings of their
exultant and terrible youth” (p.253).
He sees himself as “their
kinsman”, the embodiment of all artists, yet with an egotistical difference
that still sets him apart from all the others. Stephen’s project is the height
of allusion: he wants to create what he feels has never been created. With an
abundance of self-generated inspiration and confidence he states, “I go to
encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the
smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” (p.253).
It is not a self-less
personal identity that is to be created from Stephen’s experience, but the
“uncreated conscience” of his “race”, a universal paragon that will set him up
as the mythological figurehead of his people. Stephen’s ‘soul’ is exposed and
opened to the reader, his soul being essentially the novel itself. Stephen has
been creating (epiphanies, aesthetic objects, and artistic theories) throughout
the novel; his ultimate objective is to create a work of art and experience
that is of a genius previously unheard of. The genius being in the creation of
an aesthetic object that represents more than itself, that embodies a moral
sense of responsibility, as a production of an artistic breed that has historically
pursued art for its own sake. He believes that he is the artist to accomplish
this unconventional task, seeing his ‘art’ as something striving toward genius.
Two main questions need to be
asked of this proposal: is “the reality of experience” such that it is unique
or essentially different from that which has been experienced and recorded
before, enough so to create a new “uncreated conscience”? In addition: what “race” is Stephen
referring to? Is it the human race, the Irish race, the race of time and space[1],
the idealized race of artistic ‘kinsmen’, or the ‘race’ of family that he now
hopes to give some moral fortitude and imagination to?
The
first question is answered with a single word: no! No individual mortal being,
or subjective experience, could hope to create an entirely new moral being
(conscience that has not been ‘created’ before) free from the influence of that
which has come before, within themselves, let alone in a whole ’race’. The
aesthetic object (or work of art) can not create and impart a wholly original
sense of being, or moral sensibility, by itself, that is capable of embodying
the collective “conscience”, of whatever race it is that Stephen claims as his
own. Stephen’s success depends on
his understanding and involvement, in a totally anthropological (not
self-justified, or assuming, about the universal nature of humankind) manner,
with humanity and reality as a consequence. Leaving a reality behind that is
dealt with by the imagination, rather than the heart, does not suggest that
Stephen's project will be successful. Yet, it does imply that his naivete will
be confronted by similar archetypes of experience that will force him to
confront reality, which defines the human condition, with his heart.
The second question of ‘race’
can only be answered definitively by Joyce himself. I personally feel that
Stephen’s race is that of the artist and that he is looking to blow apart
artistic convention and tradition by ‘forging’ a new style that will act as a
paragon to the rest of the art-world. Stephen may not do this himself, with his
attempts at poetry and vision, yet Joyce does
create this uniquely influential work of art and style (apparently original
& incomparable in style, except maybe to Blake’s visionary works), in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
There seems an element of
hope about Stephen’s intended voyage: an elation that exudes life and dreams.
However, the final sentence reeks of impending doom and mythological regression
(rather than looking to the future and a new “conscience”): “Old father, old
artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead”(p.253). Stephen is looking to a
role model; it is not his biological father, but the mythological “artificer” –
Daedalus. Will he stand Stephen in good stead? Not if Stephen is Icarus (son of
Daedalus), rebelling against his father’s requests and flying too close to the
burning sun of freedom, melting his wings and drowning. Nor will he, if Stephen
is the son of Daedalus’s sister, whom Daedalus killed by throwing him off Minerva’s
sacred citadel.
So, why use an analogy that
ends in tragedy to represent Stephen. Myth and biology are as much “nets” of
the soul as is convention, tradition, and expectation. Because his character is
doomed to failure from the beginning, he can not escape the past and be the
great creator. His own philosophy on acquiring knowledge neutralizes his
aspirations with its contradictions: “he was destined to learn his own wisdom
apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the
snares of the world”(p.167). How can you learn wisdom from others if you are
“apart” from others, and amongst all the negative things (‘snares’) that you
are trying to differentiate from?
There
remain, no firm answers to our questions. Conjecture and uncertainty, is as
much a part of our reading, as it is of Stephen’s idealistic and seemingly unrealizable aspirations. He yearns for fulfillment and completion in
destructive ideals that he still takes seriously. His name denotes the path he
takes, it is all pre-planned, vocation and all, and not by Stephen or Daedalus,
but by the “artificer” who is Joyce. The spelling of Stephen’s last name is
significant; the changing from Daedalus to Dedalus distances his surname enough
from the myth to imply alternative meaning. As we find out, Stephen’s journey
is a bit of a ‘dead-loss’, his aspirations to an immortal (‘dead-less’) state
of created conscience proving unfounded and invalid in its reliance on myth and
guidance from influential guidance. Like other critics such as Caroline Gordon[ii]
and Marguerite Harkness[iii], I feel
that Stephen is set up to fail. The difficulty of the novel works to meet this
end with much invention and intellectually challenging alternatives. My opinion
is that it is Joyce’s intention to do this with Stephen’s character, so that
once we have reached our conclusion we can concentrate on the text. Stephen’s
character acts as a foil to the testimony of artifice and creation, of the text
as a work of art, a novel of artistic dexterity, genius, and vision, and a
masterpiece of words. In this respect, the difficulty of Joyce’s text does what
it sets out to do.
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| (C) William Cook |
[1] “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet
favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all”(Ecclesiastes
9:11). A biblical reminder that human events do not always turn out in the way
men expect them to, which is poignant in the light of Stephen’s impending
flight from the isle, paralleled with Icarus who burnt his wings and drowned in
the seas of his unnatural aspirations (mortals cannot aspire to the height of
the God’s).
[i] See James Joyce, A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, Text, Criticism, & Notes, ed. by Chester
G. Anderson, The Problem of Distance in A
Portrait of The Artist, by Wayne Booth (New York: The Viking Press, 1968)
pp. 466-467.
[ii] See Joyce’s Portrait,
Criticisms & Critiques, ed. by Thomas E. Connolly, Some Readings and Misreadings, by Caroline Gordon (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962) p. 144.
[iii] See A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man, Voices of the Text, by Marguerite Harkness (Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1990.) p.110.
