Tag: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Art and Torment James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“A brief anger had often invested him but he had never been able to make it an abiding passion and had always felt himself passing out of it as if his very body were being divested with ease of some outer skin or peel. He had felt a subtle, dark and murmurous presence penetrate his being and fire him with a brief iniquitous lust: it too had slipped beyond his grasp leaving his mind lucid and indifferent. This, it seemed, was the only love and that the only hate his soul would harbor” (Joyce 126)

The vivid language and style paints the bitter internal struggle between Steven’s desires and his strict piety. Desire is portrayed as an ominous presence that always seems to get past his piety which makes Steven intensely ashamed for. He tries to fight desire but it is useless—his soul allows it to enter and leave which he remains bitter over. To him, his desire and passion and lust are seen as sinful yet his heart allows it which only makes him more resentful towards it even though it is implied that he secretly wishes for it (for him to let passion take over.)

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Oxford University Press, Oxford,2000, page 126.

Art & Artistry in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man

“The tiny flame which the priest’s allusion had kindled upon Stephen’s cheek had sunk down again and his eyes were still fixed calmly on the colourless sky. But an unresting doubt flew hither and thither before his mind. Masked memories passed quickly before him: he recognised scenes and persons yet he was conscious that he had failed to perceive some vital circumstance in them. He saw himself walking about the grounds watching the sports in Clongowes and eating chocolate out of his cricketcap. Some jesuits were walking round the cycle- track in the·company of ladies. The echoes of certain expressions used in Clongowes sounded in remote caves of his mind.” (Joyce, 182)

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. New York: B.W. Huebsch Inc., 1916. Print.

Stephen’s recalling of these vivid memories shows his artistic mind, and the creativity he holds in while studying and trying to be a good Christian boy. It shows the struggles he faces as an artist, and as a young man, ultimately relating again to the school novel genre.

Art and Artistry in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Their piety would be like their names, like their faces, like their clothes and it was idle for him to tell himself that their humble and contrite hearts, it might be, paid a far richer tribute of devotion than his had ever been, a gift tenfold more acceptable than his elaborate adoration.”

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, page 140.

Stephen’s Fulfillment; Art and Artistry

“He felt his cheeks aflame and his throat throbbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces” (Joyce 122).

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Dover Publications, 1994

Stephen’s urge to sing emphasizes how much more he wants from his life. He is trying to force himself to live a life of intense piety, relying on religion as a sole means of fulfilling his needs. However, it is only causing him to feel deep resentment for religion itself and those around him. Art is a motivator for him; a way to explain and understand life, and to feel he has a purpose within it. When he can begin to accept the fact that he does not need to be solely defined by God or by restrictive and oppressive behaviors, he can begin to heal and grow as a person, and truly contribute his talent to the world.

Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”: Art and Artistry

“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” (175).

Stephen decides that he is going refuse to conform to the organized forms of society or religion and forge his own path. He’s beginning to embrace his desire to become a great artist.

James, Henry. “The Middle Years.” H. James Complete Stories 1892-1898, The Library of America, 1996, page 337.

Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, Art and Artistry Within Prose

“The phrase and the day and the scene harmonised in a chord.
Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue
after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure
of waves, the greyfringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not their
colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then
love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations
of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was
shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing
sensible world through the prism of language many coloured and
richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of
individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic
prose?” (Joyce 140).

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press, 2000.

In his religious devotion, Stephen still focuses on artistry and the imagery behind each word of a phrase. From a single phrase he reads, Stephen extrapolates its meaning and how it serves to create a world within its reader’s imagination.

 

Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Topic: Art and Artistry

“Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, a hawklike man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?” (Joyce 142).

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press, 2000.

I’m unsure if the prophecy is calling for him to go to the church or to pursue his art, Stephen seems to think about it in terms of the artist creating art in either scenario

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Childhood

“He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in poetry and rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry.”

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press, 2000.

This line to me is really, really eye-catching. It really brings the reader back to the feeling of being a child and wishing you could be older, stronger, etc., which is an obviously important detail when you’re reading Stephen’s story.

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce Commonplace-Book Entry: Childhood Magic of Christmas Decorations

“There were coloured lanterns in the hall of his father’s house and ropes of green branches. There were holly and ivy round the pierglass and holly and ivy, green and red, twined round the chandeliers. There were red holly and green ivy round the old portraits on the walls. Holly and ivy for him and for Christmas. Lovely…”

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press Inc., 2000, page 16.

I do not know if this passage in particular is from a dream or from a scenario that Stephen is wishfully thinking about in his head based on past experiences, but it seems so magical and exciting as a child to come home for the first day of winter break and seeing your house already decorated for the holidays. By Stephen focusing on the holly and ivy that are put up around certain areas of the house, it made me realize that part of what makes the holidays so special is seeing the house decorated in the same way that it always is, with the same decorations in the same spots that they are always put up, which gives everyone such a unique, but shared sense of familiarity, since each family’s way of decorating is different, but it is always one of the first signs that the holidays are approaching. Stephen’s way of describing the holly and ivy around his family’s house, with their specific placements, colors, and calling them lovely gives me the sense that he likes to observe and pay attention to little details, and also thinks that the little, simple things in life are beautiful, which I think are good traits for a child who is going to become an artist to have.

Commonplace-Book Entry: “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce, Childhood Innocence

“He felt the touch of the prefect’s fingers as they had steadied his hand and at first he had thought he was going to shake hands with him because the fingers were soft and firm: but then in an instant he had heard the swish of the soutane sleeve and the crash.”

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press Inc., 2000, page 43.

I thought that it was interesting that Stephen thought that Father Dolan was going to do something nice and polite in his gesture even though he had just seen what he had done to Fleming previously and knew that he was going to get hit as well. This makes me think that Stephen seems to always perceive adults in his life as kind, and I feel that this is perhaps because, at least up to this age, that every adult seems to have treated him kindly, such as those in his family, or maybe his soft, firm hands reminds him of someone that was kind to him, such as his father. Maybe this is also because of his childhood innocence, as he is a very timid child who seems to think more fondly of adults like his mother over his peers, who he tends to judge.

Portrait: Too Young to Contemplate Existence?

“Stephen Dedalus is my name,

Ireland is my nation,

Clongowes is my dwellingplace

And heaven my expectation

… That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe? Nothing” (Joyce 12).

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Oxford University Press, 2000. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Jeri Johnson