“Welcome, O life!” Stephen Dedalus proclaims in his journal at the end of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. “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” (Joyce 224).
These lines are the culmination of Stephen’s transformation, from a life of fairytales and boarding school through religion to his eventual dramatic decision to leave Ireland and become an artist.
Stephen’s Fascination with Language Throughout Joyce’s Novel
Stephen declares his decision to go out as an artist at the end of the novel. His status as an artist, until then, is created largely by the title.
Since the beginning of the novel, Stephen is enthralled by language; he employs language to represent the world of noise, such as the clicking of the guards’ keys or the precise sound of ‘suck’ (Cheuse 453).
He is fascinated with words: “Words which he did not understand he said over and over to himself till he had learned them by heart: and through them he had glimpses of the real world about him” (Joyce 67).
Words also evoke intense tactile associations in Stephen. For example, he describes how “Eileen had long white hands. … long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing” (Joyce 45).
The word ‘wine’, to Stephen, inspired thoughts of “dark purple because the grapes were dark purple that grew in Greece outside houses like white temples”; however, the word also reminds him of the rector’s breath on his first communion (Joyce 54).
Stephen’s Experience of Life as Art
Despite this love for language, however, he never creates anything except one villanelle. Yet, some would contend that being an artist does not always entail creation.
Stephen experiences life intensely. If his vision frames life as art, if his mind interprets the world as poetry, does his life become a masterpiece?
Stephen encounters this question of defining art that his life implicitly challenges during a spelling exercise at Clongowes, remarking that “there were nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were only sentences to learn the spelling from” (Joyce 23).
Stephen’s Isolation and Lack of Identity
Stephen struggles throughout the novel with his isolation and his lack of identity. As Breon Mitchell notes, “gaining a sense of himself is of course one of Stephen’s major preoccupations throughout the novel” (Mitchell 66).
As a student at Clongowes, Stephen writes his name and location in his geography book, all the way on to “Europe/ The World/ The Universe” (Joyce 28). Years later he repeats a similar reassurance to himself: “I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland” (Joyce 92).
In addition to these existential crises, Stephen also feels isolated from his family and friends. He is not close to his family, and does not relate to his peers.
For example, while watching his father drink with friends, Stephen decides that “his mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth” (Joyce 94).
He realizes, paraphrasing Yeats, that “he was drifting amid life like the barren shell of the moon” (Joyce 94). A large part of religion’s appeal to Stephen is its offer of an identity.
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Religion and Art in Joyce's Novel
References
Cheuse, Alan. "Rereading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Sewanee Review 114.3 (2006): 448-455.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. R.B. Kershner. Boston: Bedford’s/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Mitchell, Breon. "A Portrait and the Bildungsroman Tradition." Approaches to Joyce’s Portrait. Ed. Thomas Staley and Bernard Benstock. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976. 61-76.
Rebekah Richards - Rebekah Richards has published fiction and nonfiction in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Brandeis Law Journal, Where the Children Play, ...
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