Stephen's Journal

In the very last section of Portrait, we see the completion of a book-long reversal from a narrative style where we see a rough sketch of how Stephen experiences his moments in the external world, to one in which he must explicitly communicate to us his internal views on what happens around him, with the reader left guessing as to what the events he describes actually would have looked like. The change to a journalistic style seems abrupt at first, because it is the first explicit "technical" shift, but really follows a progression in which Stephen becomes more and more vocal. The book starts with Stephen as an almost totally passive character; most of his time is spent watching the conversations of others, and his few moments of reflection and creativity come in moments of solitude, starting when he composes his first ever "poem" while hiding under the table. Even most of the narration, while clearly colored by Stephen's childish consciousness, is merely descriptive of outside perceptions. Every chapter thereafter sees Stephen become slowly more assertive, with his abstract thoughts bleeding more and more over into his descriptive ones. By the beach scene in Chapter 4 we see long stretches of  imagination on Stephen's part, uninterrupted by the play of his classmates, and which may even include some degree of hallucination. The mental assertiveness Stephen develops over the course of the book peaks in Chapter 5, which consists mostly of quotes of his monologues. For the first time we are given a step-by-step description of Stephen's ideas, and we can't help but see them played out in his now less-detailed descriptions of the physical world.

The shift over to a first-person journalistic style, while allowing us to see even better than before Stephen's opinions, leaves us with an overly-internal understanding of his relationship with the world, and one which is dependent on his mediation; we are no longer seeing Stephen as he is, but rather as he wants to appear. Like his friend Lynch, all we can do is accept everything Stephen says with a nod. By describing his conversation with Cranly in a blatantly deluded light, Stephen makes himself an unreliable narrator in the very first journal entry we see of his. That feeling doesn't go away by the end of the book; I was left feeling mildly disoriented, as Stephen's writing is so recursive and personal that it becomes hard to tell why he chooses to do or write the things he does (not that there's much difference). In particular I found it hard to understand why Stephen felt so strongly that he had to leave Ireland -- I had my clues, but his description of the matter didn't exactly make him seem like an exile, more like someone who had made a relatively banal decision. Leaving his home country seemed for him about on par with moving across the street.

Given the gradual narrative shift over the course of the novel, I have to ask: what is Joyce trying to do in bringing things to such a forceful head in the last section? Stephen's consciousness has already all but taken over the narrative, so why do we need to have that become explicit? Learning about Joyce's actual life was helpful with these questions, although not really for the facts themselves; just having a better sense of Joyce as a real, physical person who once existed made it easier to imagine Stephen stepping out of the book and becoming him. Maybe the point of turning the last few pages of Portrait into pure Stephen-talk is less to complete some kind of cycle (although that's nice too), and more to get us to think of Stephen as the person writing his own story -- a way to unify the fictional Stephen Dedalus with the real author James Joyce. By giving us a few pages out of Stephen's early journal, we are essentially seeing the beginning of the writing of the novel itself. Those few pages are Stephen's first attempts to make the book he's in.

Epiphany

Today in class we talked about how Stephen's ideas about art revolve around the concept of "epiphany," a sudden inner understanding of some previous situation or information. These epiphanies supposedly occur as spontaneous, life-altering bursts of comprehension, and we do see Stephen go through a few such moments: his experience with the rector at Clongowes, his decision to become an artist, and arguably even his first visit to a brothel (and the confession it leads to) serve as these kinds of passionate bursts, in which Stephen realizes he has more options that he at first thought he did. On the surface these four moments are all times when Stephen suddenly breaks from the forces that control his life, but it's hard to say that they lead him into any greater independence. Instead of pulling away from outside control entirely, Stephen just changes the nature of his control.

Stephen's idea of epiphany seems deeply influenced by religion -- he does, after all, view himself at times as a potential saint, and his belief in epiphany seems rooted in the idea of divine revelation. However, this view quickly becomes muddied by physical associations, as Stephen finds himself drawn more and more into the world of the senses. Even as a child Stephen is perceptive, and finds meaning in what he sees, starting with when he imagines himself as "Baby Tuckoo" in his father's story. As he grows older he keeps reading unusual importance into what he sees and feels; his senses of shame and desire and romance all mix together throughout Chapter 2 into something religious by their sheer intensity, until he is able to convince himself that a brothel is indistinguishable from a church. Because his early life is pretty dull outside of religion, he's completely blindsided when he starts feeling other passions. After he burns out on physical pleasure and takes his first confession, he moves back to a life devoted to religious obedience. However, a long enough time away leads to the old pressures of the body building again, imperceptibly at first, until Stephen has his "epiphany" that he can't keep it up for good. What might for most people be just a sign that he can take it a little easier freaks Stephen out enough that he gives up what most people (including him) would consider a very special honor. This is then followed by his decision to devote his life to art, triggered by the beauty of one scene and one woman. When we meet Stephen again in Chapter 5, however, his ecstatic love of art has turned into something prideful, legalistic, and even a little bitter -- against those he considers intellectual inferiors, and against the unnamed woman who fails to live up to his expectations.

A lot of people have commented on this basic pattern, in which Stephen has a lofty, seemingly life-changing experience, only for that experience to settle back into disappointing normalcy. It seems to me that a big part of the problem for Stephen is that, by his own admission, he doesn't usually have very strong emotions, and especially not the kind he's expected to have (i.e love and hate). Instead, he has these seemingly random moments of uncontrollable ecstasy, which he understands as a form of answer, and when they end he seeks to return to them again and again, until the feelings behind them have been totally tapped out and he's back feeling empty. Stephen separates and elevates these moments from the ones around them; that's the whole point of an "epiphany." Unfortunately for Stephen, none of his epiphanies are truly independent.

 Look at the examples I've given: none of them was really a sudden moment of insight, but rather the result of a long process of change in Stephens' feelings, which he lacks the emotional intelligence to diagnose until they all come flooding all at once into his (usually pretty sterile) thoughts. Instead of thinking of these "epiphanies" as out-of-body revelations or invasions, it might be better to think of them as moments where some idea that Stephen's been building towards finally "clicks," and he manages to put everything that's been swirling around inside him together in an easily-understandable way. When I think about these moments this way, it becomes much easier for me to relate to Stephen's coming-of-age; I've never had a moment of divine intervention, but I have had times where I've stopped and thought "oh, I get it now." It's these kinds of moments, whether or not we recognize them as such, that I think really define getting older -- and, based on Joyce, the kinds of things that you remember past all the birthdays and graduations.