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| Penguin's beautiful Deluxe Edition of Portrait. Perhaps my favorite paperback on my shelves. |
Joyce's prose is unbelievably, otherworldly gorgeous.
It's the primary reason I love his work so much. There's the stuff you've got to carve through if you're as basic a reader as myself—the late 19th century Irish politics, the nearly untranslatable contemporary slang that requires reference for a modern reader to understand, transitions into changes in voice and mode that often make it a bit difficult to follow the narrative. But then Joyce hits you with a paragraph of some of the most beautiful prose you've ever read, and it's instantly your favorite thing again:
As he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood. Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than he had felt at Clongowes, 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. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment.
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.
His unrest issued from him like a wave of sound: and on the tide of flowing music the ark was journeying, trailing her cables of lanterns in her wake. Then a noise like dwarf artillery broke the movement.
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| Joyce as a young man |
I read recently that a reviewer whom I respect refuses to consider any prose 'purple'. Perhaps I'm learning why this is, firsthand, as I read through Portrait. A lot of Joyce's work here could be considered purple. It's incredibly ornate, and it's lavishness is possibly overdone. The more I read, the more I considered that this was deliberate. Perhaps Joyce was attempting to depict a young, talented thinker's tendency to try too hard, and maybe the protagonist and titular Young Man, Stephen Dedalus, lacks reservation in the earlier chapters and Joyce's prose strives to depict this overzealousness. If so, then more the fool I, because I greatly enjoyed it nonetheless and did not find it to be too fatty or too flashy for my tastes, which are actually typically more reserved.
One of my favorite early episodes had to do with the timidity with which Stephen approached his infatuation with his muse. As I was reading along I suddenly realized Stephen's internal monologue was now focused on an object of affection. I didn't recall said object being introduced, so I backtracked to see if I had somehow missed something. But I hadn't—Dedalus first approaches the thought of romantic love via his admiration of Dumas' famous novel The Count of Monte Cristo, and the titular count's undying love for Mercedes. This soon morphs into Stephen's infatuation with an unnamed character—something he touches on regularly in the following pages throughout the first half, but rarely ever outright, or in a concrete way. I found it a novel way of displaying the protagonist's fear of confronting his own emotions in any way other than a roundabout one. He looms on the periphery of his feelings and touches them briefly, but rarely indulges in them directly. It's a bit of tantalization by Joyce, the impact of which is helped strongly along by Joyce's sheer, beautiful prose, which imparts his character's strong feelings in a way with which we are able to viscerally empathize.
Such instances of Joyce's artful, beautiful prose carry the book. It's probably, page by page, the single most beautiful book I've ever read. I've got dozens of highlights proving that statement. But as always with Joyce, you've got to take the good with the bad. I understand Catholic guilt occupies a huge chunk of Joyce's character, but do I really need dozens of detailed pages describing, in depth, the tortures of hell?
The ebb and flow between Irish politics, drop-dead gorgeous inner monologue, and Catholic dogma seems paced fairly well, though. The things that didn't appeal to me didn't drag down my overall experience of the book, and I expect as time passes I'll think more and more highly of it—something similar as to what happened with my memory of Dubliners. The drier, more specific portions of the text seem smaller and smaller in the rearview, and the examples of memorable, songlike prose grow all the larger with each recollection.
I didn't find Portrait to be a difficult read, per se, but it is a substantially different read than many other books—even those of the same era by Joyce contemporaries such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Joyce switches gears quite frequently and often without warning, but the quick cuts often feel more smooth than abrupt. I'm not sure why this is... Probably it has something to do with how surreal, introspective, and dreamlike the narrative tends to turn towards while Joyce narrates for us Dedalus' inner thoughts and feels. Thus reading Portrait feels more like experiencing various vignettes into the life of Dedalus, which jump forwards through time without any prefacing or preparation, and change smoothly into different styles. Joyce takes us from a cloudy, ambiguous outpouring of pure emotion and religious epiphany on the part of Dedalus' inner narrative, into an actual concrete, religious sermon delivered by a priest, and then the narrative changes to follow him in a more direct, traditional manner as he seeks to confess his sins. Normally this is not something I'd find interesting, but the way in which Joyce proceeds through different modes keeps it altogether fresh. And, as always, it's all beautifully written in his enveloping, affecting prose.
One of my favorite early episodes had to do with the timidity with which Stephen approached his infatuation with his muse. As I was reading along I suddenly realized Stephen's internal monologue was now focused on an object of affection. I didn't recall said object being introduced, so I backtracked to see if I had somehow missed something. But I hadn't—Dedalus first approaches the thought of romantic love via his admiration of Dumas' famous novel The Count of Monte Cristo, and the titular count's undying love for Mercedes. This soon morphs into Stephen's infatuation with an unnamed character—something he touches on regularly in the following pages throughout the first half, but rarely ever outright, or in a concrete way. I found it a novel way of displaying the protagonist's fear of confronting his own emotions in any way other than a roundabout one. He looms on the periphery of his feelings and touches them briefly, but rarely indulges in them directly. It's a bit of tantalization by Joyce, the impact of which is helped strongly along by Joyce's sheer, beautiful prose, which imparts his character's strong feelings in a way with which we are able to viscerally empathize.
Such instances of Joyce's artful, beautiful prose carry the book. It's probably, page by page, the single most beautiful book I've ever read. I've got dozens of highlights proving that statement. But as always with Joyce, you've got to take the good with the bad. I understand Catholic guilt occupies a huge chunk of Joyce's character, but do I really need dozens of detailed pages describing, in depth, the tortures of hell?
The ebb and flow between Irish politics, drop-dead gorgeous inner monologue, and Catholic dogma seems paced fairly well, though. The things that didn't appeal to me didn't drag down my overall experience of the book, and I expect as time passes I'll think more and more highly of it—something similar as to what happened with my memory of Dubliners. The drier, more specific portions of the text seem smaller and smaller in the rearview, and the examples of memorable, songlike prose grow all the larger with each recollection.
I didn't find Portrait to be a difficult read, per se, but it is a substantially different read than many other books—even those of the same era by Joyce contemporaries such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Joyce switches gears quite frequently and often without warning, but the quick cuts often feel more smooth than abrupt. I'm not sure why this is... Probably it has something to do with how surreal, introspective, and dreamlike the narrative tends to turn towards while Joyce narrates for us Dedalus' inner thoughts and feels. Thus reading Portrait feels more like experiencing various vignettes into the life of Dedalus, which jump forwards through time without any prefacing or preparation, and change smoothly into different styles. Joyce takes us from a cloudy, ambiguous outpouring of pure emotion and religious epiphany on the part of Dedalus' inner narrative, into an actual concrete, religious sermon delivered by a priest, and then the narrative changes to follow him in a more direct, traditional manner as he seeks to confess his sins. Normally this is not something I'd find interesting, but the way in which Joyce proceeds through different modes keeps it altogether fresh. And, as always, it's all beautifully written in his enveloping, affecting prose.
There were parts of the novel that seemed to drone on about an intensely philosophical topic—something common to earlier, 19th century literature, which undoubtedly inspired Joyce—and I found certain portions of this more difficult to trudge through. The aforementioned treatise on hell is guilty of this, and later on as Joyce dives headfirst into describing in specific terms the result of Stephen's gorgeously written aesthetic epiphany on the shore. Stephen goes into painstaking detail, depicted in dialogue with his friend Cranly, as to exactly what he considers to be beauty and art, and how he'd like to pursue it. It was all a bit deep and detailed for my common noggin, but this thorough examination gives way to a later discussion in which Stephen comes as close as he does in the entire book to renouncing his religion altogether. He states to Cranly that he has lost his religion, but is not sure that religion itself is not worthwhile—something I have struggled with myself as I've read more and more Christian scripture and literature and dedicated more and more time to understanding the religion and why it moves its followers so. And the ending few pages in which Joyce completely changes his style to first person, stream-of-consciousness, imparted to me that his character, Stephen Dedalus, had finally found his own voice and succeeded in developing into the artist he decided he wished to be.
Perhaps what this book is best at is moving its reader in a subconscious fashion. Joyce's prose somehow instills into you exactly what he's trying to say, without having to say it outright. I've been to some of the most amazing Catholic churches in the world—the colossal St. Peter's, the gracefully aged Santa Maria del Fiore, the famous Notre Dame (before she burned last year), Cordoba's stunning Mosque-Cathedral—but the religion has never resonated particularly strongly with me despite these memorable encounters with its architectural wonders. And though I'm American, I have been to Dublin—it's a fine city. I'd probably go back. But I have no strong love for the place, nor any substantial attachment. And clearly I'm not old enough to have been in school in the late 19th century.
Point being: I have no real understanding of what it is to be an Irish Catholic young man coming of age at the turn of the 20th century, I've never been particularly artistic or concerned with aesthetic beauty. So I have no reason for any of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to resonate with me as strongly as it does. Somehow, regardless of any of that, Joyce has imparted not only the depth of what that entails, but what it feels like on an emotional, spiritual level, through the sheer power of such viscerally affecting prose. I wasn't just told what it was like for Stephen to have a crisis of faith, but was made to feel it through every fiber of my being. Me—a postmodern American atheist. And I grew to love every bit of it, despite never really caring about the subject matter. It was a pretty memorable experience sliding through this novel, swooning at nearly every page, just bathing in the sheer beauty Joyce's prose provides. What a wonderful book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Perhaps what this book is best at is moving its reader in a subconscious fashion. Joyce's prose somehow instills into you exactly what he's trying to say, without having to say it outright. I've been to some of the most amazing Catholic churches in the world—the colossal St. Peter's, the gracefully aged Santa Maria del Fiore, the famous Notre Dame (before she burned last year), Cordoba's stunning Mosque-Cathedral—but the religion has never resonated particularly strongly with me despite these memorable encounters with its architectural wonders. And though I'm American, I have been to Dublin—it's a fine city. I'd probably go back. But I have no strong love for the place, nor any substantial attachment. And clearly I'm not old enough to have been in school in the late 19th century.
Point being: I have no real understanding of what it is to be an Irish Catholic young man coming of age at the turn of the 20th century, I've never been particularly artistic or concerned with aesthetic beauty. So I have no reason for any of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to resonate with me as strongly as it does. Somehow, regardless of any of that, Joyce has imparted not only the depth of what that entails, but what it feels like on an emotional, spiritual level, through the sheer power of such viscerally affecting prose. I wasn't just told what it was like for Stephen to have a crisis of faith, but was made to feel it through every fiber of my being. Me—a postmodern American atheist. And I grew to love every bit of it, despite never really caring about the subject matter. It was a pretty memorable experience sliding through this novel, swooning at nearly every page, just bathing in the sheer beauty Joyce's prose provides. What a wonderful book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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