James Joyce 2

Struggling and kicking under the cuts of the cane and the blows of the knotty stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence.

—Admit that Byron was no good.

—No.

—Admit.

—No.

—Admit.

—No. No.

At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself free. His tormentors set off towards Jone's Road, laughing and jeering at him. while he, torn and flushed and panting, stumbled after them half blinded with tears, clenching his fist madly and sobbing.

A scene from Joyce's autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The best autobiographical novel ever written, at least as far as I know. Even the name Joyce gives himself in the novel, "Stephen Dedalus," already outshines many other writers. "Stephen" refers to St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Thus, the name implies: "the one who is ready to die first for the sake of his faith." "Dedalus" means in Latin "the cunning artificer," and is the main character in Ovid's Metamorphosis. Dedalus creates a maze so ingeniously designed that it confuses its designer as well, which leads Dedalus to spring wings by magic to escape his own maze. Here, the origins of Stephen Dedalus' name already tells a whole lot about his personality. Only a genius like Joyce is able to fashion such memorable and meaningful name for himself.

The above quote does not convey any deep idea or philosophy, but I think it is the most important part of the book because it tells what really matters to Stephen. Stephen is the kind of teenage boy who takes a stand on what he believes, and what he believes is the art of writing. It is already striking to me to find out that Irish kids had fights over who is the best poet, for a fight only breaks over something that is cared so much by the fighters — I wonder, what would be a common thing to fight over in my culture? — but it is also amazing to see Stephen so passionately defending Byron, as if the fall of Byron's reputation implies a direct dishonour on Stephen's part as well.

Reading this story, Joyce has become, for me, not only a teacher of art and philosophy, but also a teacher of life. French thinker Jacques Lacan once said that after Jean-Paul Sartre's death, there still remained model "thinkers," but no "life-teacher" was left for the French people. Lacan himself modeled his life around Sartre's way of life. The world hasn't changed too radically since Joyce's lifetime. It makes sense for me, therefore, to try and follow Joyce's way. If not all his life, at least the way in which he has spent his youth until the age of 25.

The Portrait focuses perhaps most intensely on Stephen's relationship with Christian faith. Here, Joyce's candor concerning his own beliefs and their implications resembles that of Augustine's in the Confessions. Joyce is clearly gifted with the talent of vividly and clearly communicating the essentials of the struggles of a young man trying to come to terms with what the priests and his parents teach. But Joyce, unlike Augustine, never retreats into internal isolation. Instead, Joyce always hurls Stephen Dedalus out in the social world, where he is forced to walk on the pavement of the city streets, meeting people and questioning his faith in response to his relationships with others. Stephen Dedalus is thus not a privileged young man with extraordinary experiences. Quite on the contrary, Stephen is just another typical student walking in early 20th century Ireland. This centralization of the common makes Joyce's prose realistic and appealing compared to Augustine's meditative writings.

And now, time to move on to the first of the two colossi: the Ulysses.

James Joyce

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening to-night to the names of all these great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.

It's a speech given at the dining table in The Dead, the longest and last story in Joyce's Dubliners. Written some time between 1900 to 1907. Joyce was only 18 when he started writing his own stories as well as reviews for other great artists including Ibsen. Joyce simultaneously worked on Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Just finished reading Dubliners, I am now moving on to the Portrait (the story of a "moocow" and his "tuckoo.")

Joyce never wrote for a living. Thus, his motive for writing is very pure, for art's sake only. He doesn't repeat or add ideas, events, and extra sentences that do not contribute to the forwarding of the artistic form of literature. After reading Joyce's short story, Tolstoy begins to seem like a less competent writer who needed to rely on voluminous texts in order to express something that Joyce is able to express better in just a few lines.

What astonishes me is the fact that Joyce actually had really "new ideas and principles" which he later put into tangible forms in the Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Finnegans Wake in particular is still the pinnacle of literature in the world across history. As such, obviously it's not for readers who lack knowledge of history, literature, science, and language. I need to rely on Joseph Campbell's assistance in order to fully decipher the meaning of the text. But it's well worth the effort. A new style of writing is analogous to a new style of life. Even when the plot of the told story (or the lived life) can be summarized in worn-out terms that make it seem repetitive, a different style (or attitude) towards this repetition reveals differences, radical differences, that free people from the false cliche that associates repetition with nihilism, a nihilism that is then converted to either despair or mysticism.

Back to the Portrait.