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James Joyce: The Artist as ExileAuthor(s): David DaichesReviewed work(s):Source: College English, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Dec., 1940), pp. 197-206Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/370369 .

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COLLEGE ENGLISHVol. 2 DECEMBER I 940 No. 3

JAMES JOYCE: THE ARTIST AS EXILEDAVID DAICHES'

James Joyce was bornin 1882 in a Dublin whosemain character-istic was a shabbygentility displayedagainsta ratherdrearyback-ground of politics, religion,and drink. His shiftless and sociablefather,his patient and passivemother,and the bitter and fanaticalgoverness, Mrs. Conway, were the three characterswho presidedover the young Joyce'shomelife as the family descended romcom-parative prosperityto ever increasingpoverty, striving desperatelybut with lesseningsuccess to maintain someappearanceof respecta-bility and continually moving to smallerand shabbierresidencesasthe family income diminished. It was not an encouragingenviron-ment fora potentialartist. Andafter the deathof the Irish nationalleader, Parnell, n 1892 the confusedebb ofpost-ParnellIrishpoliticsaddedto theprevailingatmosphereof decaya noteof muddledhope-lessness that all the heroics of the Irish literaryrevival wereunableto hide. It was into this mess that James Joyce grew up. The onlyaspect of Dublin that he could accept wholeheartedlywas its loveof song, with the result that he almost becamea professional enorsingerhimself. For the rest, growingup in Irelandmeantfor Joycethe gradualrealizationof the necessity for leaving his native land.Joycewas educatedat the Jesuitcollegesof ClongowesandBelve-dere,enteringthe formerat the age of six anda half andleavingthelatter in 1898at the age of sixteen. In the autumn of that year he

' Dr. Daiches, a member of the English Department of the University of Chicago,is author of many books and articles on English literature, including the recentlypublished The Novel and the Modern World and Poetry and the Modern World.

197

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198 COLLEGENGLISHentered the Catholic University of Dublin (University College, apartialrevival of the CatholicUniversityfoundedearlier n the cen-tury by CardinalNewman) where he specializedin modern lan-guages, leavingwith his B.A. degreein 1902 to go immediately ntovoluntaryexilein Paris. Thoughhe returned o Dublina yearlater,fromnecessityand not fromchoice,it was fora comparativelybrieftime. In 1904 he left Irelandagain,this time for an exilewhich, ex-cept for two briefvisits to his native land in 1909 and in 1912, haslasted ever since.It was duringthe yearsof his educationat the three Catholicin-stitutions that he discoveredwhat he deemedto be the necessityforhis exile. The backgroundof his home life, with its religiousandpolitical quarrelsso vividly symbolized in the Christmas dinnerscene in A Portraitof theArtistas a YoungMan andits shabby gen-tility growingever shabbier,was somethingfrom whichhe felt withincreasing urgency that he must escape, while the political andartisticlife of Dublin came to seem to him as narrow,as petty, andas restrictingas his own domesticbackground.At firsthe foundcom-pensating values in religion, and while at Belvedere he passedthrougha periodof intensereligiousdevotion whichhe later came tosee as the sublimationof certain feverish adolescentdesires, Beforehe left Belvederehe had rejectedhis religion, respectingthe intel-lectual quality of its theology (a respect he has always retained)whiledismissing ts values as sterile andfrustrating.But the Catho-lic religionrepresented nlyone of the forcestuggingat himthrough-out his youth: the other waspatriotism,both politicaland cultural,and this too he eventually dismissed, resisting the claims of the"new"Irish literatureof Lady Gregory,W. B. Yeats, and others.Why, we may ask,wasJoyce driven to such extremenonconform-ity? Why washe driven,by the time he wastwenty yearsold, to seein exile his only possibleway of life? In the answerto this questionlies the key to the understandingboth of Joyce the man and ofJoyce the artist.

The answer is given by Joyce himself in his autobiographicalwork,A Portraitof theArtistas a YoungMan. Here, in the story ofthe developmentof StephenDedalus,he recordshis ownprogressiverejectionof his environmentwhichis at the sametime the storyofhisemergenceas an artist. We see the inhibitinghomebackground, he

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JAMES JOYCE: THE ARTIST AS EXILE 199coldoppressiveatmosphereof school,the chatteringtrivialityof theuniversity. We see Stephen (whois Joyce) rejectingone by one hishome,his religion,his country, growingever more aloof and proud,exclaiming"Non serviam"("I will not serve")to all the representa-tives of orthodoxyand convention. And the more aloof he becomes,the morehe removeshimselffrom his fellow-men, he closerhe comesto the objectivevision of the artist. Stephenthe artist beginsto bebornat the momentwhenhe hassuccessfullyresistedthe temptationto enter the Jesuit order: he suddenly realizes that he is born todwellapart,to lookobjectivelyon the worldof men and record heirdoingswith the disinterestedcraftsmanship f the artist:

He wouldneverswing he thurible efore he tabernacles priest.Hisdestinywastobe elusive fsocial rreligiousrders.... He wasdestinedolearnhisownwisdompartrom thersr to learn hewisdom fothers imselfwanderingmonghe snares f the world.His destiny as artist demandshis choiceof exile.A Portraitof the Artist as a YoungMan is thus the recordof theparallel developmentof the artist and the exile. The book closeswith Stephen'sdevelopmentof a philosophyof art-and withhis de-cisionto leave Ireland. From the moment when the scales fall fromhis eyes and he looks out on the world with the eye of the artist-not of the Catholic,or the Irishman,but as a "nakedsensibility,"a pure aesthetic eye--he has renouncedthe normallife of compro-mise and adjustment. From now on his "artistic integrity" is allthat matters to him; he has become aloof and intransigent. Joycemight well have become a priest, but the choice lay only betweenpriest and artist. That type of uncompromisingmind, combiningasceticismwith lust for power,could have satisfied itself only with"the powerof the keys, the powerto bind and loose from sin," orwith the artist'sgodlike powerto re-createthe world with the word.That is why Stephen'srejectionof the call to join the Jesuitorder sthe climaxof A Portraitof theArtist as a YoungMan;henceforth hechoiceof the artist is the onlyoneleft, andthe remainder f the bookis naturallytakenup with the formulationof an aestheticand,on itscompletion,his plans for exile.The aesthetic whichJoyce developed-the onewhichStephendis-cusses at lengthin the Portrait-was of a kindonemightexpectfrom

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200 COLLEGEENGLISHa writer for whom art impliesexile. Art is regardedas movingfromthe lyricalform,whichis the simplest,the personalexpressionof aninstantof emotion,throughthe narrative orm,nolongerpurelyper-sonal, to the dramatic,the highest and most perfect form, where"the artist, like the God of creation,remainswithin or behind orbeyond or above his handiwork, nvisible, refinedout of existence,indifferent,paringhis fingernails."The functionof the highesttypeof artist is thus to cultivatea wholly objective, whollyindifferentandimpersonalpoint of view, to re-create n languagethe world of mento which the artist must not regardhimselfas belonging any morethan Godregardshimself as belongingto the world that he has cre-ated. The artist must becomean exile in orderthat he may becomelike God.In the concludingpart of the Portrait two main themes emerge:the developmentof Stephen'saesthetic and his progressiverejectionof his environment. Somehow hese two processes mplyeachother,and the devices that Joyce employsin order to make this implica-tion clear are worth noting. First, we note that the working-outof the hero's aestheticview is done eitherby himselfalone, in com-plete isolation,or in direct oppositionto his friends. Second,fromthis point in the book to the conclusionStephenlookson his friendsand acquaintanceswith the aloof eye of the artist, not with the eyeof a normalhumanbeing,with the result that he is constantlypre-sented as being alone and different.And, third, the aesthetic viewwhich he is shown as developing-Joyce's own view, of course-isone whichimpliesdistanceandobjectivity on the part of the artist:the worldis somethingto be re-created roma distance,not imitatedfromwithin. Thus Joyce triesto show the developmentof the artistand the exile as part of a singleprocess.If we look carefullyat the manner in which the conceptionofartist as a private ratherthan as a public figureemerged n the latenineteenthcentury,we can understandmoreclearlywhat was hap-pening. With OscarWilde,with the "decadents"of the nineties,wefind the renunciationboth of the function of art ("Allart is perfectlyuseless,"said Wilde) and of the social interests of the artist. Andfrom isolationto exile is but a step.The fact is-and literary history providesabundantillustration

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JAMES JOYCE: THE ARTIST AS EXILE 201of this-that, when the social value frameworkbegins to disinte-grate, the artist's functionbecomesin doubt. He ceases to possessany defined status in society, and he respondsby retreat or exile.This was a generalEuropeanmovement that developedas the sta-bility of the Victorianworldgave way to increasingconfusion. It isnot simply-as some literaryhistorianshave seen it-the rejectionof the middleclassesby the artist: it is the rejectionby the artist ofall implication n society.Thus the birth of StephenDedalus (who is James Joyce) as anartist does not mean his recruitment nto any specificprofession; tdoesnot meanthat he has found his placein the socialhierarchyandthat henceforthhis task is smooth. Onthe contrary, t meansthat hehas discoveredthat he has no place,no recognized unction. As thenineteenthcenturydrewto a close, the status of serious iteratureasa professionbecamemore and moreambiguous. Methodsof recruit-ment into any of the artisticprofessionswereconfused. Arbitersoftaste ceased to exist. It is againstsuch a background hat the artistin self-defenseregardshimselfas an exile andevolves a view of artis-tic integrity that implies complete disinterestedness.Joyce's dis-satisfaction with Dublin was the occasion,not the realcause,of hisretreat.So Joyce, responding o conditionsof whichhe was perhapsbutdimly aware, left Ireland for the Continent to practice his art in"silence,exile,andcunning." His firstworkwas a collectionof shortstories,thumbnail sketches of typical aspectsof that Dublin whichhe had rejected,entitled simply enoughDubliners. Beginningwithsketches of a Dublin childhood,told in the first person, the bookmoves on to moreobjectivestudies, in whichthe authorepitomizeswith consciousaloofnesscharacteristic ituationsin Dublin life. Wesee the developmentfrom "lyrical"to "dramatic"art as Joyce un-derstoodthese terms. Sketchessuchas "Ivy Day in the CommitteeRoom"bring togetherin a singlepictureall the mainpreoccupationsof the averageDubliner and suggest in addition the mood and at-mosphere-a gray mood of dreariness mixed with recklessness-whichsurrounded hem. Thereis a quiet Flemishrealismhere,yetthe stories are more than realisticportraits;they are symbolic,foreach character and each image stands as a symbol of Dublin and its

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202 COLLEGEENGLISHpeople. The last story in Dubliners,"TheDead," standsapartfromthe others. It is less a pictureof a typical Dublin situationthan afabledesignedto illustrate a point. Joyce is attemptingto showthechangefroma wholly egocentricpoint of view, whereyou regardtheworld as revolvingroundyourself,to a pointof viewwhereyourownpersonalityis eliminatedand you can stand back and look disinter-estedlyonyourselfandon the world. The hero of this storystartsoffin a mood of pompousegotism and, as a result of the events of thestory,emergeswith his personalityeliminated n a mood of indiffer-ent acceptanceof all things. Written after the otherstoriesof Dub-liners andno partof the originalcollection,"TheDead" is a kind ofafterthoughtexpressing indirectly Joyce's preoccupationwith thequestionof the properaesthetic attitude. Actually,what is happen-ing to Gabriel s that, like Stephen n the Portrait,he is movingfromthe "lyrical"point of view, the egocentricapproachwhichJoyce re-gardedas the most immature,to the "dramatic"approach,whichfor Joyce was the properaestheticapproach.

The Portrait ollowedDubliners.In this autobiographical ovel-autobiographical,yet, significantly,written in the third person-Joyceattempts to stand back fromhimself and his environmentandwrite of his developmentas an artist with perfectobjectivity. It is,as we have seen, a record of the paralleldevelopmentof the artistand the exile. With this workaccomplished,Joyce couldnow settledown to the writingof his firstgreatopus.Joyce'sviewof the artistas exile,closelyrelatedas it is to his idealof artistic indifferenceand objectivity, naturally determinedhischoice of subject and of technique in his first great work. ThusUlysses s an attempt to portraythe activitiesof menwith completeand utter aloofness-this being the requirementof the "dramatic"mode and the necessaryattitude of the artist as exile. Dublin is theworld, from which Joyce as artist has retired. In his work, then,Dublin must be madeinto a symbolof the worldin generaland theactivity of men in Dublin must be shown as a microcosmof all hu-manactivity. If the duty of the true artistis, asJoyceclaimed,to be"invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent,paring his finger-nails,"thenJoycecouldbe the trueartistin respectto Dublin,whichhe had renounced, o whichhe had made himselfindifferent. Writ-

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JAMES JOYCE: THE ARTIST AS EXILE 203ingof Dublin fromSwitzerlandor Paris,he was "likethe Godof cre-ation" contemplatinghis handiwork rom the remoteheavens.Ulysses s the descriptionof a limitednumberof eventsconcerninga limitednumberof people in a limited environment-Dublin. YetJoyce must make Dublin into a microcosmof the worldso that hecan raisehis distancefrom that city into an aesthetic attitude. Sothe events of the storyarenot told on a singlelevel;the storyis nar-ratedin sucha complexmanner hat depthandimplicationaregivento the events andthey becomesymbolicof the activity of manin theworld,not simply descriptiveof a groupof individualmen in Dublin.The most obvious of the devices which Joyce employs in ordertomake clear the microcosmicaspect of his story is the parallelwithHomer'sOdyssey. Because Joyce regardedHomer'sUlysses as themost complete man in literature-a man who is shown in all hisaspects, beingboth cowardandhero,cautiousandreckless,weakandstrong,husbandandlover,generousand mean, revengefuland for-giving, sublime and ridiculous-he endeavored o model the adven-turesof his hero,LeopoldBloom,an IrishJew, on those of his Hom-ericprototypeUlysses. Thus everyincident n Bloom'sactivity dur-ing that one day of his in Dublin has some kindof parallelwith anadventureof Ulyssesin the Odyssey.BloombecomesEverymanandDublin becomesthe world,while the other charactersrepresent n-completemen-Stephen, for example, reappears n Ulyssesto playan importantpart as "man as artist," exclusivelyartist, whereasBloomis partartist andpartscientist,both his artistic andhis scien-tific facultiesbeingof courseon a much lower evel than they wouldbe in the "pure"artist or scientist.The bookopensat eight o'clock on the morningof June 16, 1904.Stephen Dedalus, summonedback to Irelandby his mother'sdeathafter a year in Paris (just as Joyce was), is living in an old militarytoweron the shore,with BuckMulligan,a rollickingmedicalstudent,and an Englishvisitor. During these earlyepisodesStephen'schar-acter is built up very carefully. He is the aloof, uncompromisingartist, rejecting all advances by representativesof the normalworld,the incompleteman, to be contrasted aterwith the completeLeopoldBloom,whois the representativeof compromise ndconcili-ation. After followingStephenthroughhis early-morning ctivities

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204 COLLEGE ENGLISHand learning, through the presentation of his "stream of conscious-ness," all the main currents of his mind, we are taken to the home ofLeopold Bloom, whom we subsequently follow through the day'sactivities. Bloom at home, attending a funeral, transacting his busi-ness, eating his lunch, walking through the Dublin streets-we followclosely his every activity, while at each point the contents of hismind, including retrospect and anticipation, are presented to thereader, until all his past history is revealed. Finally, Bloom andStephen, who have been just missing each other all day, get together.By this time it is late, and Stephen, who has been drinking with somemedical students, is rather the worse for liquor. Bloom, moved by apaternal feeling toward Stephen-his own son had died in infancy,and in a symbolic way Stephen takes his place-follows him duringsubsequent adventures in the role of protector. The climax of thebook comes when Stephen, far gone in drink, and Bloom, worn outwith fatigue, succumb to a series of hallucinations where their sub-conscious and unconscious come to the surface in dramatic form andtheir whole personalities are revealed with a completeness and afrankness unique in literature. Then Bloom takes Stephen to hishome and gives him a meal. After Stephen's departure Bloom re-tires to bed-it is now 2:o00A.M. on June 17-while his wife, repre-senting the principles of sex and reproduction on which all human lifeis based, closes the book with a long monologue in which her experi-ences as woman are remembered.

In Ulysses Joyce wishes to express everything, to make his accountof the adventures of one small group of people during one day sym-bolic of the sum total of human activity-with no point of view ex-pressed, no preference shown, no standard of values applied. Forthe artist, according to Joyce, must be aloof and indifferent; he musthave no point of view. Thus the numerous technical devices em-ployed in Ulysses serve a double function-to expand the implica-tions of the story so that it includes all human activity and to pre-vent any attitude, any point of view, from emerging. The charactersare shown as having multiple and subtle relations with each other,their relationship being symbolic as well as realistic. And each char-acter is given a Homeric prototype which serves the function of ex-panding the implications of his actions. The events of the story arecarefully patterned so as to form a closely interrelated unit. The

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JAMES JOYCE: THE ARTIST AS EXILE 205events, too, aregivenHomericprototypeswhich have both relationswith eachotherandwith theirrealistic,Dublinaspects. Further,theevents are given meaningon yet a third level, a mystical or philo-sophical evel, utilizedby Joycein orderto introduce n the courseofthe book all the maintypesof speculationwhich the humanmindhasengagedin since the beginningof time. Thus the Homericlevel ofthe story is designedto emphasizethe "completeness"of LeopoldBloom, the hero,while the third level has forits functionthe linkingof the story to dominantmotifsin humanthought, thus enlargingtsgeneral mplications. This thirdlevel also helps to establishJoyce'sindifference: f an action is on the realistic level trivial and unim-pressiveyet on the mysticallevelprofoundandweighty,the implica-tion is that the trivialand theprofoundarereallythe samethingandno real distinctionbetweenmore or less valuablehumanactivitiesispossible. Mr. Bloom raisinghis hat and Mr. Bloom defendingthecause of justice are equally important-or equally unimportant.The heroicandthe trivial, the ludicrousandthe profound, he tran-sient and the permanent,are identifiedby Joyce'smethodof tellingthe story on several levels at once. His "integrity"as an artist-his indifference,his exile from the world-is thus maintained.There are many other devices employedby Joyce to emphasizethe microcosmicaspectof Ulysses,some of themextremely ngeniousandsubtle,but spaceforbidsany discussionof these. Sufficet to saythat through style and techniquean otherwisetrivialstorybecomessignificant n the sense of inclusive,but in noothersense. It is by thecarefulpatterning and writingon severallevels at once that Joyceis able to turnhis pictureof a few events in Dublin into an undiffer-entiated panoramaof life. For Joyce, aesthetic activity meant there-creationof thehumansceneby means of language,withoutthe ex-pressionof any point of view, without the intrusionof any non-aestheticvalue standard. He patternshis story in such a way as toidentify all aspectsof humanexperiencewith each other.This is even clearer n FinnegansWake,his latest work. Here thesurface evel of the story concernsthe dreamof a Dublinerof Nor-wegiandescent,H. C. Earwicker-like Bloom, a sort of Everymanwhoseexperiences expanded nto a symbolof allhumanexperience.(His initials, it will be noted, standfor "HereComesEverybody.")Earwicker'sdream-which is far too complicatedto summarize--is

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206 COLLEGE NGLISHtold in a languagewhich is scarcely English; for in his endeavor tomake the mind of one sleepingmanduringa few hourssymbolizeallhumanlife andhistoryJoyce has to write on abouta dozenlevels atonce, makingeach word have a series of multiple meanings,one oneach of the dozenor so levels on which the story is told. Yet theselevels are not kept distinct,any morethan the differentmeaningsofeach word are kept distinct, but keep fading into each other, com-bining constantlyinto new patterns. The complex puns and "port-manteau words" which Joyce employs in this work are probablyunique in the history of languageand show an incredibledegreeofingenuity. The wholestory is patternedwith a subtlety that defiesexplanationin a short article. In FinnegansWakeJoyce takes aneven shorterspace of time than that which formedthe basis of theplot in Ulyssesandpatternsit withmuchgreatercomplexity n orderto achievethe effect of microcosm-to makeone word mean every-thing-that we have noted as the aim of Ulysses. It is the aimof theartistwho,upsetby the confusionanddisintegrationof valuesin theworld in which he grows up, feels compelledto escape from thatworld, within which his function as an artist is not clear, and toevolve a view of art which makesthat escapeinto a virtue. In orderto avoid the problemof selection-and selectionimpliesa point ofview, whileJoycerejectedall pointsof view, all standardsof value--Joyce tries not to select at all, but to employhis techniqueso skil-fully that in sayingone thinghe says everything. To make a choice,to admit that it is more importantto show a characterdoing thisthan that, wouldbe to involve himself in that worldof values andstandardswhichhe hadrepudiatedbecause t confusedandinhibitedhimas anartist. Thusescaping rom the world,Joycepreferredone-liness and exile and a definitionof art as that technicalvirtuositywhich enables the artist to communicate,withoutpreferenceorem-phasis, everythingat once. In doing so he has producedthe mostbrilliant iterarycraftsmanshipof the modernworld-perhaps of alltime. But craftsmanships not all, and those whoseekfor a purposeor a value pattern to give significanceand permanent"humanin-terest" (the much-abusedpopularterm is not an inaccurateone) toJoyce'swork willbe disappointed.Thereis a fundamentaldifferencebetween art and craft, though the forces that conditionedJoycecausedhim to think it a virtue to equate them.