A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Annotated Edition (Alma Classics)

This is an enjoyable introduction to the writings of James Joyce. It gives a selective history of Joyce's early life from his childhood up to the end of his university days via the device of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus. It starts straightforwardly but as Stephen Dedalus gets older the writing becomes more complex. There is an increase in the use of his internal monologues and it develops into a young man's artistic manifesto.THE STYLE: James Joyce was not fond of the over-use commas, which he keeps to a minimum. He uses double quotes only for quotations. Direct speech is indicated by a dash on a new line in a style used in several European countries. The text is divided into five parts and each part is sub-divided into untitled sections (see Comments). The writing style changes as Stephen Dedalus grows up. In keeping with his Jesuit education Stephen is strongly influenced by  Thomas Aquinas  and  Aristotle  and references to them occur in the later parts of the book. Stephen has many internal monologues; these are always at the rational level. The more irrational stream-of-consciousness that occurs in  Ulysses  is not found here. The book ends abruptly. There is no conclusion. However, Stephen Dedalus will appear again in Ulysses. Asterisks* in the text indicate an entry in the Notes section.THE BOOK: Buying out-of-copyright classics is a gamble. The cheap ones can be closely printed in dark type on cheap paper. Fortunately this does not apply to this book, which is well printed in a readable font and well bound. The text is 146 pages. This is preceded by a 5 page Introduction and 4 pages of reproductions of black and white photos of Joyce, his parents and Dublin at the time of the book, the start of the 20th century. At the end of the book are: Notes 96 pages; Bibliography 7 pages; James Joyce's Life 4 pages and James Joyce's Works 9 pages. At first I thought there were too many notes but I grew to appreciate them and read the book with two bookmarks, one for the text and one for the Notes, so that I could flip between the two. The text is from the Egoist Press, second edition, 1918.THE STORYPart I: The first two pages are of Stephen Dedalus as a very young child. It continues with his experiences as a boarder at his primary school, Clongowes. There are impressions of the school routine and its control by the Jesuit teaching staff. There are the older boys, the sports, the refectory meals. For a time he is sick and in the infirmary. Another time he is wrongly punished when his glasses are broken in an accident. One teacher thinks he has done it deliberately to avoid school work, but he finds the courage to complain of the miscarriage of justice to the headmaster.Page 1 - as a child: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a little boy named baby tuckoo . . ."Part II: Stephen Dedalus is at home for the school holidays on the outskirts of Dublin, but his father has hit hard financial times and cannot afford the school fees at Clongowes. After an extended period Stephen is sent to another Jesuit school, Belvedere College, in Dublin. Later Stephen accompanies his father to Co9rk where his property is to be sold at auction to clear his debts. After the sale Stephen is with his father in a bar where his father is drinking with the friends of his youth. Stephen feels that he has not had a youth like his father's. Stephen wins an academic prize but squanders the money. Youthful lust takes over and he visits the red light district of Dublin.Page 50 - extended school holiday: "He became the ally of a boy named Aubrey Mills* and founded with him a gang of adventurers in the avenue. Aubrey carried a whistle dangling from his buttonhole and a bicycle lamp attached to his belt while the others had short sticks thrust daggerwise through theirs. Stephen, who had read of Napoleon's plain style of dress,* chose to remain unadorned and thereby heightened for himself the pleasure of taking counsel with his lieutenant before giving orders."Page 78 - in Cork with his father: "Stephen watched the three glasses being raised from the counter as his father and his two cronies drank to the memory of their past. An abyss of fortune or of temperament sundered him from them. His mind seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger earth. No life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred in them."Part III: Stephen reflects on his frequent visits to the brothels and how these mortal sins will lead to his eternal damnation. He attends his school's annual religious retreat and undergoes the hell-fire sermons. Afterwards, distraught, he goes to confession, confesses everything and receives absolution.Page 84 - the brothels: "It would be a gloomy secret night. After early nightfall the yellow lamps would light up, here and there, the squalid quarter of the brothels.* He would follow a devious course up and down the streets, circling always nearer and nearer in a tremor of fear and joy, until his feet led him suddenly round a dark corner."Page 99 - the retreat and the hellfire sermons: The religious retreat covers two days and the hellfire sermons are quoted at length, covering 20 pages. This is excessive, presumably to emphasise just how long and terrorising these sermons were. The Notes say they are based on Pinamonti's 'Hell opened to Christians'."- The horror of this straight and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last days has purged the world. The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that as saint Bonaventure* says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world."Part IV: After his confession Stephen drops his old ways and becomes excessively devout. He is so devout that the Jesuit director of his school asks him if he thinks that he has a religious vocation. Stephen ponders this and conjures up the image of a Reverend Stephen Dedalus S.J., but in the end he knows that he could not live a priest's life.Page 124 - Stephen gets religion: "The rosaries too, which he said constantly - for he carried his beads loose in his trousers' pockets that he might tell them as he walked the streets - transformed themselves into coronals of flowers of such vague unearthly texture that they seemed to him as hueless and odourless as they were nameless."Page 142 - Dedalus will become  Deadalus : "His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable."Part V: Stephen is now at University and there is a lot of student banter but Stephen also has a more serious conversation with some of the students and with himself, where he sets out his ideas on art and beauty, aesthetics and religion. He resists associating himself with the zeitgeist, avoiding both Irish nationalism and Irish Catholicism. Stephen can see that eventually he should leave Ireland for the wider world.Page 174 - Stephen explains his art: "- But we are just now in a mental world, Stephen continued. The desire and loathing excited by improper esthetic means are really not esthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic in character but also because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system."Page 207 - Stephen has lost his religion:"- Then, said Cranley, you do not intend to become a protestant? - I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I has lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?"