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.
I agree with your interpretation of Stephen’s moments of “epiphany” as contrary to Stephen’s desire for them to be complete resolutions but rather derived from thoughts and realizations built up and put together over time.
ReplyDeleteI think, however, that Joyce’s employment of an amount of irony in Stephen’s epiphanies and Stephen’s disheartened return to mundane “emptiness” you point out does more than simultaneously undermine and "challenge" readers to accept the amount of authenticity in the intensity of his experience as discussed in class today. With each of Stephen’s epiphanies, Joyce seems to depict Stephen as increasingly aware of the inevitable pervasiveness of the outside world -- and it’s mundanity -- into the supposedly unadulterated “holiness” of his revelations. Consequently, Stephen becomes more and more “immune” to the effects of the physical world. His subtly growing consciousness of how his moments of ecstasy are undermined helps to formulate his perspective of art, speaking of an “inner world of individual emotions...” and how he speaks to Lynch of the transcendental aspect of the true artist and the necessity of seeing something as individual, a shadow of a light from another world etc in the perception of beauty. Hopefully, I’m not projecting myself onto Stephen too much but I do think that Stephen does free himself from some form of control, becoming more independent with each epiphany in this fashion; perhaps he isn’t just changing the “nature of his control” as you mention. He develops a "long term" belief in the independence of the mind or “soul,” becoming more aware of how these moments come and go, and speaks of documenting these moments in “periodic prose.” In such away he is able to find a mindset that copes with the problem you describe of the beauty of divinity being "muddied by physical associations."
I also think it’s interesting how often in these moments, Joyce describes Stephen as being content in his loneliness, speaking to the detachment Stephen believes is required in art, if we can view these dramatic periods of inspiration and understanding as “art."