Tags
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, books, Buddhism, christianity, community, James Joyce, Life, literature, spirituality, Stephen Hero, Ulysses
Tackling, or ‘studying’ A Portrait again, probably after doing so long ago in some literature class at school? Why not read Stephen Hero in the process? Joyce had written upwards of a thousand pages of his story, shopped them around to all the publishers he knew, and then ended up throwing the manuscript on the fire in a fit of despair.
Couldn’t get it past the censures, couldn’t get what he wanted to say past the safe keepers of the public mores. He then reworked it and after endless compromises at their behest finally succeeded in publishing it as A Portrait.
Does the fact that it was published make A Portrait part of the canon and leave out what Joyce truly wanted to say, and in a much simpler straightforward fashion? In academia’s eyes, yes.
However, for those truly curious as to Joyce’s underlying magic, his genuine genius, Hero is a great read, focusing primarily on the absolutely crucial years of around nineteen and twenty, or what is covered more circumspectly in A Portrait towards the end.
And as far as the Indian philosophy goes, good luck. Know that Joyce got to a place beyond Indian or any other kind of philosophy. A place of the living realities which actually underpins all philosophies in fact.
A place where Life takes precedence, the flow of it that is. The fact that we are born and raised into a community, a psycho/spiritual/intellectual group, hopefully become functioning members of it, form ties with others and perhaps procreate and then in turn raise children into it as well, and then eventually to age, wither, and die.
A place where the individual is nothing, the flow of the group everything.
That being said, there are those who don’t succeed in joining the common lot, who resist what might be called the indoctrination process, who step outside and peer down on it from above. Take in not the teachings and lessons of the group but those beyond it. Delve into what some call the ‘ultimate mysteries.’ The Buddhas, the Jesus’s, and countless others.
And that is Joyce’s story, what is taking place in A Portrait, Stephen Hero, and Ulysses. A raising into and yet rejection and moving beyond, to something else, to the timeless and eternal values.
You see what happens when I get comments? You see what you’ve brought upon yourself?
Thanks though, it was fun.
Omphalos Cafe 
Jeff, thanks a lot for your always expected posts. I am reading Ulysses with your help and company, and have alredy read to chapter nine.. Next week I will have the toss on my second son’s wedding, and I will start (or finish) with your words “life is all there is”…… Salud from Bogotá , Colombia
Thanks for the encouragement, Rafael, and congratulations on your son’s wedding. My son is only thirteen. I started late, probably due to too much reading, so that’s a little way off for me.
Nine looks like a difficult chapter, we being back into the thoughts and impressions of Stephen, but don’t be intimidated, as I’m working towards saying in my next video.
Just rereading Stephen Hero in preparation. Know that Joyce/Stephen has been formulating and trying out his theories on art and aesthetics on just about anybody who’ll listen for years by this point. Mulligan makes fun of the fact in the first episode. We see that a bit in A Portrait but much more in Stephen Hero.
But in Ulysses the theories are breaking down. He even says so towards the end of the episode, when he answers “no” to the question “do you believe all that stuff?” He’s tired of them, and more and more knows them to be made of nothing but straw. He’s searching for something else. Earlier he was pondering whether the love of a mother for her child is the ‘one true thing,’ as well as repeatedly wondering ‘what is the word that all men come to know?’
Here is where the simplicity at the heart of Joyce comes in. The thing he is trying to learn is precisely what your son has come to know with your help no doubt. Life is simply the acceptance of it, the agreeing to participate in it, the meeting of a young woman and joining with her to raise the next generation. Those are the lessons Bloom can teach, whether by word but probably more importantly by deed.
It’s the same story everywhere and whatever language or culture we find ourselves members of. And that is actually what Joyce then goes on to relate in Finnegans Wake. The father is all fathers everywhere, all place and time past and present, the mother all mothers throughout all the ages. The sons, like your sons and mine, are growing to maturity and striving to take their place. There are two in the Wake, one a Mulligan-like extravert, accomplished and capable, the builders and maintainers, the other the rarer, the quiet introverted artist/Joyce type, reviled and misunderstood throughout the ages. Then there’s the daughter, all daughters and soon to be wives and mothers in their turn.
Oh well, it’s not what the scholars are looking for. Not complex enough. But it’s life, and that’s what burned in Joyce so fiercely.
Better get on with my day. All the very best to you and the family. That’s at the heart of everything I’m am trying to say, when you get right down to it.
Thanks from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.