A Few Notes On James Joyce, 1882-1941

5-18-06 Joyce The Complete Esthete



In his first novel "A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man" J.J. set about recording the The New Scriptures pertaining to Aristotle's "Poetics" and he recycled Aquinas to set his own new secular literary Code. "Portrait" is a brilliant book sharp and clean as a fresh razor. However, it is an extremely limited book as are Joyce's 2 later novels "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake." It is a prodigiously boring chore to read the Scriptures if not to quote juicy passages therefrom which always come in the rarest moments of the longest dullest treatises. I myself quote often from Joyce's "Portrait"---less often from "Ulyssses" and never from "Finnegan's Wake." Mr. Joyce was giving his own version of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures from the Old Testament to the New Testament to Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas to the very Catholic rectory in which he was schooled and knotted. "Portrait" offers the Joycean narrative of his conversion from the Holy Roman Catholic Church in Ireland to secular estheticism---it is his marvellous telling of his discovery of Art as The Source of Salvation and the Only Source. His denigration of the Catholic Church is almost incidental in his telling. For he is bent on forging a new Gospel, the Gospel of pure unadulterated Art.

By the time Joyce conceived and gave birth to "Ulysses" he had already evolved as an author and Artist to the next stage-----the Early Modernist Cubist era of the broken image and the Age of Freud and the free association of Ideas whereby the Omniscient Author has been displaced as it were by the omnipresent kaleidoscopic Consciousness wherein The Imagination performs its labors with no limits to a here or a now but maintains access with a constantly evolving past & present eternally juxtaposed and contending for the rights of the territorial imperative of The Mind. So Joyce's Fairy Tale of the Human Experiment evolves concerning several separate episodes in the lives of his principals, Leopold Bloom, The Father, Stephen Dedalus, The Son, and Molly Bloom The Holy Ghost & Wife & Virgin Mother & Mistress (& finally, The Sacred Muse). She is at once the glue that holds the trinity together.

For Joyce the Real Trinity is the one that occurs in the authentic work of art: Harmony, Wholeness, and Radiance. These are the sine qua nons of any successful work of art by Joyce's lights---taken from Aquinas of course. "Ulysses" is a transformation of scriptures into the New Chaos of Modern linguistics & the New Forms. The time of the novel is Dublin the 16th of June, 1904. And the whole novel occurs during that one day. But one ought to keep in mind the scriptural injunction which states that one day with The Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. For James Joyce is the Lord of "Ulysses" and his is a twentieth century tale of a busted Family in Dublin which is re-living the saga of ancient Odysseus transmigrated into Leopold Bloom to the tunes and riddles & propaganda of the second decade of twentieth century Dublin. Joyce lays a quick intellectual history of himself and The West via his scholarly tryst through the city and bars libraries hospitals stores courts---virtually the Institutions of the Age. There is no emotion in this story which concludes in a non-stop stream of consciousness monologue by Molly Bloom who lies in bed reciting her sexual history of suspicions & longings & delights & descriptions with nary an end punctuation for 30 consecutive pages.

Joyce believed the goal of the work of art is stasis not kinesis. He contended that his tale is intellectual not physical. Here are a few of his important words from "Portrait Of The Artist":

"Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty." (p. 206)

This is brilliant. This whole novel is luminous. But it is not easy. It is not very sexy. It is not sensational. It is a powerful piece of literary propaganda contained in the tale of Stephen Dedalus. It is an intellectual masterpiece.

One more quote from this book which will not leave my mind---probably because it is part & parcel of my own Autobiography. This comes from "Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man" also:

"You made me confess the fears that I had. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too." (p. 247)

Mr. James Joyce is echoing here the audacity of that great love affair that occurred during the Middle Ages between Heloise & Peter Abelard---two Roman Catholics sworn to chastity by their sacred vows to The Church---but who fell totally & irrevocably in love. Heloise took that risk of declaring her passionate and unequivocal love for Abelard in public knowing that very act might result in the eternal damnation of her soul. This was in an age when virtually Everybody who was Roman Catholic The Only Christian Church believed in the literalness of Heaven & Hell and their eternal status. True Love had entered the world of Heloise & Abelard and they could not deny it. Later Abelard recanted. Heloise-----NEVER! In a way, James Joyce is expressing above in that marvellous quotation a similar defiance toward Heaven & Hell & church doctrine. He is expressing his One & Only Allegiance to Art and the sacredness of the Esthetic Way. The whole novel is a testimony to the independence and the purity and the divinity of Art. Everything else in the world takes second place for Joyce. There is no other loyalty. There is no other God. There is Only Beauty!


RLG copyright 2006