Re-Reading Favourite Books 1: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Part 2

My copy of Joyce's book.

Continued

There are many other points I'd like to mention but I will confine them to the following to keep this post from getting too long and even too boring:

(vi) Corporal punishment was outlawed by the Irish Government in 1981.  Needless to say, it was an acceptable practice in the late nineteenth century when Joyce was a student at Clongowes and Belvedere College.  The scene where the prefect of studies, one Fr. Dolan S.J., enters and cracks his leather strap or pandybat against one of the classroom desks is indeed repulsive to our postmodern sensibilities but would have caused little consternation to the reading public back in those Victorian times (1837 - 1901). A pandy is a stroke or blow on the palm of the hand as corporal punishment. The tool used to deliver that blow is the pandybat which consists of thick strips of leather sewn together, often reinforced internally with whalebone, and used to inflict punishment against the open uplifted hands of schoolboys.  Indeed Dolan asks the gentler teaching Jesuit whether any lazy boys in his class needed "flogging." (p 48)  Fleming is the first boy in the class to receive six pandies on either hand. The use of the word "flogging" would obviously indicate the cruel nature of the dean of studies.  "The noise of the pandybat was terrible.  Stephen's heart was beating and fluttering." (p. 49)  Then, poor innocent Stephen, who had been bullied by another boy who broke his spectacles sometime previously and who could not see to do his Latin classwork properly, is picked upon by the bullying Dolan: "Lazy little loafer.... Broke my glasses!  An old schoolboy trick!  Out with your hand this moment!" (p. 50) The description of both boys' punishment is indeed graphic, and that it is inflicted by a follower of Christ, and a Jesuit at that, is all the more reprehensible.  (See p. 52 - 55)

(vii) The pages indicated immediately above are worthwhile pondering as the young 11-year-old boy describes how he felt after being beaten, how he discussed the injustice of his punishment with another boy, and how he decided to report the matter to the rector.  This is a somewhat redeeming passage for the Jesuit school as the rector, Fr John Conmee S.J. treats the young boy civilly and with great respect: "Very well, the rector said, it is a mistake and I will speak to Fr. Dolan myself." (p. 58)

(viii) Again, Joyce was not openly hostile to people who practised their religion with genuine devotion.  What he excoriated was the hypocrisy of those so-called religious who preached one thing and did not conform to that teaching in their own lives.  For example, here is the young Stephen talking about the piety of his grand-uncle: "Stephen knelt at his side respecting, though he did not share, his piety." (p. 62)

(ix) Joyce got along very well with his father, John Stanislaus Joyce, who despite his profligacy with property and money, and his over-indulgence in alcohol, lived to the ripe old age of 82, dying in 1931.  John Stanislaus is represented with affection here in Portrait.  James left Clongowes when he was 11 years old and then attended Belvedere College in Dublin.  The young Stephen says early on in the book: "In a vague way he understood that his father was in trouble and that this was the reason why he himself had not been sent back to Clongowes." (p. 64)  Furthermore the young lad describes the "two great caravans" of the removal vans that arrive to bring them to another house in a less expensive area. (p. 65) 

(x) Stephen's train journey to Cork with his father Simon is told with great clarity and insight, and the emotional bond between the two of them is lovingly evoked.  He realises on the train that they are on a journey, the aim of which is the auction of his father's property in the southern city.  It is very much a downward journey financially for the family: "He knew, however, that his father's property was going to be sold by auction, and in the manner of his own dispossession he felt the world give the lie rudely to his phantasy." (p. 87)  This phantasy is the young Stephen's artistic dream which he has described some twenty pages prior:  He well knew that "he was different from others.  He did not want to play.  He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image, which his soul so constantly beheld.  He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him.... and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured...." (p. 65)  Notwithstanding the occasional proclamation of bouts of depression, we know throughout this book that the young Dedalus will stick passionately to his artistic vision, "unsubstantial" as it is.  After all, Joyce does not call his young alter ego Stephen Dedalus for nothing as the Greek mythical character is the supreme inventor, architect, and artist, creator of the infamous labyrinth from which he escaped by fashioning wings of wax and feathers.  Stephen Dedalus knows that like his hero he, too, will embrace his vision eventually.  

(xi) Like father, like son, so the saying goes.  James had a wonderful tenor voice and could sing bel canto, as could his father John Stanislaus.  In Cork, they stay at the Victoria Hotel, which no longer functions as such, though the building has been lovingly restored: Victoria Hotel today  The scene of their rising on the first morning is rendered with deft brush strokes, and portrays the father singing a well-known ballad " 'Tis youth and folly makes young men marry..."  Stephen tells his father that the particular ballad he has just sung is "much prettier than any of your other come-all-yous."   (p. 89). During the trip to Cork, Simon dispenses adult advice to his son on growing up in a kind and humourous way: "When I was a young fellow I tell you I enjoyed myself ... but we were gentlemen ...." and so on (p. 91 - 92). We are treated to their conversation, really a monologue, by the senior Dedalus as they travel across Cork City.  Old Simon becomes somewhat upset as he reminisces about his own father and the old times.  This conversation lasts several pages and they spend some hours in a local pub where Simon meets old friends who further reminisce about their golden youth.  The conversation in the pub is so real and authentic that it reminds this reader of the times he spent in such pubs as a young boy with his own father over fifty years ago.  This whole episode lasts from pages 90 to 96 and is worth reading several times for its sheer authenticity in describing such a simple but kindly encounter between a father and his adolescent son.

(xii) This little novel shows us that Stephen is just as profligate with his money as his father as he spends all the exhibition prize money he won generously on his friends and family within weeks: "for a swift season of merrymaking the money of his prizes ran through Stephen's fingers." (p. 97).  He even candidly describes one of several visits he made to a brothel. (p.101).  Joyce then offers the reader a very long and excoriating account of the denigration of the human body, and most especially that of the sexual act, especially any sexual act outside marriage, by the Roman Catholic Church.  He practically verbatim recounts many sermons of his Jesuit teacher priests during the period of his education with them.  They are extremely negative centering mostly on the Sixth Commandment and pointing out that lust is the ultimate evil so much so that Stephen believes that "From the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth." (p. 106)  These sermons are replete with hell-fire and damnation: "the fire of hell is of another quality and was created to torture and punish the unrepentant sinner." (p. 121)  It was these sermons and the whole suffocating Catholic culture that led the young Stephen to dread "the mystery of his own body." They are really a very depressing read and will make very heavy reading for any lover of Joyce.  However, they are a necessary evil for our understanding of the stranglehold the Roman Catholic Church had on the people of Ireland in the early and middle years of the twentieth century and why Joyce had such a negative view of the institutional Roman Catholic Church.  It was a Church that sought to control every aspect of the lives of its members. Not for him the exhortation to meditate upon the four last things:  death, judgment, heaven, and hell.   His vocation was a calling, equally as sacred as that of a religious vocation, and he felt it was a far more authentic one, namely that of an artist and a writer and he describes a necessary part of his artistic vocation thus: "The wisdom of the priest's appeal [to join the Jesuits] did not touch him to the quick.  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. 162).

(xiii) Let me finish these random musings on this lovely little book by saying a bit more about Stephen's artistic vision.  I should also recommend the reader to re-read this classic before reading Joyce's Ulysses as it provides a wonderful background to both the author and the text.  When Stephen gets to university his vision is strengthened.  He describes his artistic vision thus: "Yes! Yes! Yes!.  He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable." (p. 170).  The price he has to pay for this artistic vision, like all artists, is that of loneliness and dedication to his craft: "Dedalus, you're an antisocial being, wrapped up in yourself." (p. 177)  Stephen ignores all criticism, and using some religiously-inspired language comforts himself with such witty sayings as "O! In the virgin womb of the imagination the world was made flesh!" and declares that his ear is better for listening than "the latticed ear of a priest!" (p. 217) In fact, he looks upon the artist in him as "the priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life." (p. 221)  Isn't that term "everliving life" wonderful in its connotations! The imagination is the very source of all creativity, as it certainly is for Stephen and his aesthetics has taken on for him a truer spiritual reality than that of Roman Catholicism.  

By the time he was studying at university, Joyce had turned his back completely on religion.  In the persona of Stephen, he says simply:  "I will not serve."  Having put away religion, Stephen comments on his beliefs as a young boy, "I was not myself then as I am now, as I had to become." (p. 240) In other words, he has found his authentic personal identity as an artist as he is discovering "the mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom." (p. 246).  And that is, indeed, what Joyce did in all his literary writings.  The young artist in Stephen is content with his agnosticism and his rejection of all institutional religion.  He decides to leave Ireland and head for the continent and says as he closes the cover of his suitcase: "Welcome, O life! 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.)

End