sin redemption in a portrait of the artist - murphy-libre

8/9/2019 Sin Redemption in a Portrait of the Artist - Murphy-libre

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A P ORTRAIT OF THE A RTIST AS A Y OUNG M AN

( J AMES JOYCE)

“Sin and Redemption in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

by Neil Murphy, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is constructed arounda series of complex, resonant parallels between the metaphorical

language of Christian mythology and Greek mythology. Joyce usesthe imagery of Christianity to ultimately subvert its own substance, while initiating a transference of key Christian values to the artisticexperience, or what Richard Ellmann called the “transvaluation ofChristian images” (42). One of the focal points of the novel’s struc-tural and thematic tension is embedded in the allusive subtext ofStephen Dedalus’s name: a conjoining of the first Christian martyr,St. Stephen, who was stoned to death, and the great mythic artificer,

Daedelus, who survived an airy escape from Crete while his son, whoflew too near the sun, died. A fusion of the Greek and Christian worlds, Stephen’s doubly allusive name is indicative of the opposingforces within his character. Ultimately, of course, the Christian voca-tion that at one point appears central to Stephen’s destiny gives way tothat of the artist, to Daedelus. roughout this shift, it is clear that theartistic life to which Stephen commits himself is a devotional modeof existence. So, while Stephen’s desire to become an artist ultimately

overwhelms the constraints of being a Jesuit priest, and even a Chris-tian, the art he chooses is one that is infused with the language of


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Christianity. So what appear to be irreconcilable aspects of his nameare also conjoined, although in a definitively secular fashion. An exten-sion of this is the way in which the traditional Christian concepts of

sin and redemption are reconfigured through a series of transferencesand reversals. Stephen’s reinterpretation of Catholicism by way of hisDaedalian aspirations becomes the source of his eventual artistic-spiritual redemption, while the vocational life of the Jesuits is depictedas a life of physical deprivation and denial of vitality. For Stephen, thereligious life in effect becomes a sin against life.

e narrative design of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man isbuilt on an amalgamation of religious and artistic themes, revealed

in both the mythic significance of Daedelus’s status as artisan and inStephen’s eventual reconstruction of himself as artist. e narrativealigns Stephen with Lucifer, both directly and indirectly. e remindersof the shining angel are everywhere; in the shape of wings, and wingbeats, culminating eventually in the “wings of . . . exultant and terrible youth” (275) when Stephen prepares to take flight. e images usedto describe Stephen during moments of sin—or preceding sin—arereplete with significance. Stephen feels “cold lucid indifference . . . in

his soul” when he begins the descent into sin and grows painfully awarethat the “chaos in which his ardor extinguished itself was a cold indif-ferent knowledge of himself ” (110). He is also consumed by “pride inhis own sin” and a “loveless awe of God” (111). e hidden figurativekinship with the fallen angel extends throughout his period of sin, andreappears again in the metaphorical subtext to his flight f rom Ireland. We are also reminded in the sermons that Lucifer was a “son of themorning, a radiant and mighty angel” (126; from Isaiah 14:12) whohad fallen, and of his traditional declaration of rebellion, “non serviam: I will not serve ” (126; from Jeremiah 2:20), which later becomes a kindof artistic declaration of liberation for Stephen, one that coincides with his final rejection of Catholicism. e sermon also emphasizesthat the sin of Eve (woman), influenced by the fallen angel Lucifer, isa sin of the flesh, just like Stephen’s. Symbolically, such parallels pushStephen and the Shining One closer together in a silent brotherhoodof resistance and wild abandonment. Like Lucifer’s, Stephen’s sin isa result of embracing life’s opportunities, while rejecting the life ofdevotional service.

roughout the novel, the characteristic rhetoric of religiousquest becomes infused with that of the artistic. Even as a boy, the


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forbidding imagery of sin, punishment, and hell is everywhere inStephen’s consciousness, framing his particularized sense of being inthe world; his daily existence is perpetually conditioned by a profound

sense of sin and punishment. For example, Stephen comforts himselfthat he will not go to hell when he dies, because he has completedhis prayers (16). He also wonders if it was a sin for Father Arnall tobe in a “wax” or if it was permissible because the boys were idle (48).Stephen’s early experience of punishment for a fake “sin,” meted outby Father Dolan, results in Stephen developing a powerful sense of wrongdoing, punishment, and indignation. is is, of course, a perver-sion of the Christian pattern of sin followed by punishment with

which Stephen is so familiar: His deep indignation is derived as muchfrom the variation to the central narrative of his early experiences ofChristian punishment, as it is from the implicit unfairness of Dolan’sbloody-minded punishment. Furthermore, Stephen’s agonized reac-tion is marked by a deep sense of humiliation: “[S]carlet with shame”he unraveled in his mind the intricacies of the unfair cruelty that haddriven Dolan (53). Shame is the appropriate response to having trans-gressed, but Stephen’s sense of shame is misplaced. e appropriate

Catholic pattern has been muddied by the priest acting improperly.But Stephen’s response mechanism takes some time to adjust to thisfundamental rupture between his sense of the Catholic process andthe living abuse of it. His sense of propriety is partially restored afterhis discussion with the rector, and his sense of obedience and humilityis thereafter strongly emphasized: “He would be very quiet andobedient: he wished that he could do something kind for him [Dolan]to show him that he was not proud” (60–61). At this point, Stephen’sneed for the anchors of authority and moral certitude remain verystrong, even though his victory is extremely shallow and his resistanturges have not yet found full expression.

When Stephen later confesses his sins of the flesh, a sense ofshame again pervades: “His sins trickled from his lips, one by one,trickled in shameful drops from his soul festering and oozing like asore, a squalid stream of vice. e last sins oozed forth, sluggish, filthy”(156). roughout the novel, images of squalor and disgust repeatedlycoincide with the language of sins. Stephen’s cry of sexual desire is “butthe echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wallof a urinal” (106), as he wanders along a “maze of narrow and dirtystreets” (106). Disgust and sin are rhetorically linked; a dark, brooding


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evil accompanies Stephen’s sinful actions. When he sins with pros-titutes, for example, he feels “some dark presence moving irresistiblyupon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a

flood filling him wholly with itself ” (106). Traditional images of hellare not far from his imagining consciousness: Stephen is painfullyaware of the “wasting fires of lust,” the “dark presence,” and the “wailof despair from a hell of sufferers” (106). He positively oozes sin andadvances into another realm of existence, “another world . . . awak-ened from a slumber of centuries” (107). is other world suggestsanother deep linkage between Stephen and the devil and offers crucialforeshadowing of the sermon in the retreat. e sense of dislocation

from the fixed Catholic narratives of his former life is profound, eventhough the language of those narratives remains the central definingaspect of his new experiences.

e focal point for Stephen’s salvation from his sins of the flesh isthe retreat, during which the process of redemption is characterized byfear, a deep awareness, punishment, reverence, regret, and sorrow. Moresignificant in the context of the overall arc of Stephen’s development,however, is the recurring concentration on the oppositional claims

of flesh and spirit: Citing Matthew, “What does it profit a man togain the whole world if he suffer the loss of his immortal soul?” (118;Matthew 16:26), the priest registers the claims of material reality overthose of the eternal spirit, repeatedly drawing attention to lower andhigher forms of existence, to the beast-like, and to the pure and theholy, respectively. After the initial impact of the sermons, Stephen feltthat “[forms] passed this way and that through the dull light. And that was life” (119). Material existence has become spectral, inconsequential; when he later embraces art it coincides with a necessary rapprochement with the stuff of material existence, “the wild heart of life” (185). Butfor now the flesh becomes an emblem of sin and dullness.

Stephen twice seeks redemption. First via confession, repentanceand prayer, after the searing experiences of the retreat, and then viathe liberation of art, when he ultimately takes metaphorical flight. erepresentation of Stephen’s religious experiences is not always accom-panied by the hellish imagery of sin and its consequences. A profoundsense of reverence also accompanies his childhood responses to thetrappings of Catholicism, as is clear from his respect for the sacristy,that “strange and holy place” (41), and his enthusiastic embracing ofthe spiritual path after his redemption from sin. Of course, Stephen’s


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response to his own secular existence, in certain meditative moments,is also depicted in a quasispiritual fashion. For example, his “silent watchful manner” (71) is embraced with almost religious zealousness,

and he positively revels in “the joy of his loneliness” (71). ese arerecurring patterns of devotional response in Stephen, even when anexperience is not strictly religious.

After the intense enthusiasm of Stephen’s redemptive embracingof his religion begins to wane, a growing artistic awareness manifestsitself, most obviously in Stephen’s alertness to the sensual world andin his increasing fixation on language. e “swish of a soutane” attractshis attention, and “Les jupes” (167–168) generates a mini-reverie about

an article of clothing worn by women. Gradually, his old critical eyereasserts itself and he begins to doubt some of the statements of his Jesuit teachers (169), and the “chill and order” of the religious vocationbegin to repel him (174), expressed again in terms of the deprivationof body. Stephen now associates the priestly life with rising in the coldgrimness of early morning and the fainting sickness of stomach. In anironic repositioning, ‘sins’ against the flesh, or sins of self-deprivation,are now offered as negative images, as opposed to sins of the flesh.

Stephen swiftly asserts his conviction that a life of religious vocationimplicitly involves a denial of life, and he chooses another path toredeem his artistic soul:

His destiny was to be elusive of social or religious orders. e

wisdom of the priest’s appeal did not touch him to the quick.

He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or

to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the

snares of the world. (175)

e fixed stasis of the Jesuit order, as he sees it, is represented as beingin opposition to the needs of the artist, necessarily without fetters, freefrom authority. Stephen’s salvation, when it comes, is affected throughan aesthetic apprehension of reality:

. . . a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had

been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood,

a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of

the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable

imperishable being. (183)


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e new vital bond between artistic being and materiality, betweenthe imaginative mind and the body, is crucial here. e body, formerlythe source of repugnant sin, now becomes a central component of

Stephen’s salvation and rebirth. And yet the flesh that was the sourceof his earlier anguish has also been transformed by his new visionary way of seeing. e first prostitute he slept with, “[a] young womandressed in a long pink gown” (107), and the occasion of his sin, is also aprophetic echo of the girl on the strand who initiates his epiphany andsignals his redemption. e contrast between the two events is tangible,particularly because the prosaic descriptions of the earlier encounter with the prostitute are barely memorable, unlike the highly charged

Christian-influenced metaphors that accompany his epiphany:

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had

broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. . . . To live, to err, to fall, to

triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared

to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from

the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of

ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. (186)

e deep religious tone of his response bespeaks a transference ofdevotional need from one sphere to another. She is an angel whoenters his soul in communion with the holy silence of his artisticreverie, she is an emblem of life and the sensuality of living youth, sheis his mortal angel, the replacement of pure spirit with the spirit ofmortal aestheticism. In her Stephen has a perfect example of the fleshremade into art. As such she becomes an agent of his redemption.

Joyce’s use of epiphanies does not mean the manifestation of Christ(as they traditionally might), but the epiphanies do serve an importantfigurative function in Joyce’s efforts to create a secular art to rival thespiritual intensity of Christianity. e explanations of epiphany in Joyce’s earlier unpublished novel Stephen Hero, a precursor to A Portrait ,are fully immersed in the language of Christianity: “the revelation ofthe whatness of a thing . . . the soul of the commonest object . . . seemsto us radiant” (217–218). e epiphany is the most complete exampleof Joyce’s accommodation of Christian imagery; Joyce had experi-mented with simply writing out short epiphany episodes, of which 40still exist, although most are much less extravagant than those readers


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encounter in his first novel ( Joyce 1991, 161–200). In A Portrait , the“apparition” of the girl on the beach signals the initiation of Stephen’smost sustained epiphany in the novel and fully utilizes the trope of the

angel, while also conjuring the Virgin Mary, to elevate the essentiallyhuman aesthetic experience to the level of claritas . Later in the novel,Stephen, paraphrasing Aquinas, declares “the artistic discovery andrepresentation of the divine purpose in anything or a force of gener-alization which would make the esthetic image a universal one, makeit outshine its proper conditions” (231), but he then dismisses this andreplaces it with a secular version that focuses on the “supreme quality[that] is felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in

his imagination” (231). e transference of a Christian to a predomi-nantly aesthetic religious experience is clear, as it is when he fullyidentifies with art, christening himself the “priest of eternal imagina-tion, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant bodyof everlasting life” (240).

Joyce’s appropriation of his former religion’s language to createmetaphors that represent his vision of art is clear. But his decision toadopt the language of Christianity in order to erase the significance

of the religious language itself is both provocative and ingenious. Joyce’s commitment to Christian imagery reveals his awareness ofthe profound metaphorical sophistication of this body of images,from which he would draw inspiration throughout all of his work.A. Norman Jeffares has pointed out that Joyce owed much to theordering cohesion offered by Catholicism, despite his essential rejec-tion of the religion: “Stephen realizes that his true vocation is that ofthe artist, blending aesthetic experience with the logical ordering thathe has learned from his Catholic upbringing” ( Jeffares 222). And it ishere that the central irony of his approximation of Christianity resides.Stephen sins and is redeemed by the traditional Christian procedure ofconfession, penitence, and forgiveness. But he then turns this processin on itself when the Christian vocation is presented as a grievous sinagainst the “fair courts of life,” a sin of avoidance and sacrifice. Ulti-mately, the source of Stephen’s redemption becomes the emblem of sinitself, which is subsequently redeemed by embracing reality. Stephen,like Christ, is resurrected from the dead and goes forth to pursue “thereality of experience” (275). Under the guise of the savior turned artist,he finds redemption.


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W ORKS CITED OR CONSULTED

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin, 1992.

. Stephen Hero. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1963. . “Epiphanies.” Poems and Shorter Writings. Ed. Richard Ellman,

A. Walton Litz, et al. London: Faber and Faber 1991: 161–200.

Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce . New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Jeffares, A. Norman. Anglo-Irish Literature. London: Macmillan, 1982.

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