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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce,

Seamus Deane (Editor),

Jim Norton (Translation),

Hans Walter Gabler,

Jeri Johnson (Editor),

J.M. Gaffney (Editor),

Ludmila Savitzky (Translator)

3.62 · Rating details · 130,931 ratings · 5,482 reviews

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'. Both an insight into Joyce's life and childhood, and a unique work of ...more

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Paperback, 329 pages

Published March 25th 2003 by Penguin Classics (first published 1916)

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Jul 07, 2007 Nathan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shut up James, you had me at 'moo-cow.' ...more

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Nov 22, 2016 Sean Barrs rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modernist-movement, 4-star-reads, classics

“His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.”

Thus awarene “His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.”

Thus awareness is born, awareness of oneself as the shackles of society are thrown down. Stephen realises that he does not want to be what everyone else has deemed him to be; he wants to be his own man; he wants to embrace his own desires and live the life he wants: he wants to be free.

And who can blame him? It’s his life so he may as well live it a way that will cause him some degree of satisfaction. Please note, I deliberately avoided the word “happy” because Stephen isn’t happy; he realises that such a state is fickle: it will always fade with time. So in this process he assesses his own individuality and slowly begins to define his emerging sense of self. To invoke a cliché, Stephen goes on a journey of self-discovery; however, the extent of which goes far beyond the typical discourse: this is about the soul of his art.

“What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express…..”

description

Is this not the entire crux of the work? Stephen struggles, and overcomes, the fight to be his true self in the confines of Irish society, and, by extension, Joyce struggles to produce his art in the confines of traditional narrative expectation: he cannot write his masterpiece by following the rules. The beauty he wishes to express will have to take a new form.

So, this becomes a natural precursor to Ulysses. I view this novel as an experiment; it is Joyce dipping his toe into the pool of experimental realism before he dives in head first with his next work. He plays with his writing; he tests it all for the purpose of exploring how far he can push the limits of storytelling: he prepares himself and his reader for his next work. To call this book autobiographical is to invoke the understatement of the year. As Stephen loses his virginity and the binds of social constraints, Joyce breaks free of all sense of artistic conformity. As Stephen explores his growing sexual appetite without any care for the conventional modes of Catholic morality that imbedded Irish culture, Joyce begins to stand up on his own two feet, erect and proud; he is ready to throw his writing into the world.

The artist is born. ...more

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Oct 07, 2010 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, literature, 20th-century, 1001-book, fiction, irish

736. A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man, James Joyce (1882 - 1941)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology.

Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe. The wor 736. A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man, James Joyce (1882 - 1941)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology.

Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe. The work uses techniques that Joyce developed more fully in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

عنوانها: «سیمای مرد هنرآفرین در جوانی»؛ «چهره مرد هنرمند در جوانی»؛ «سیمای هنرمند در جوانی»؛ «چهره یک مرد هنرمند در جوانی»؛ اثر: جیمز جویس؛ ادبیات ایرلند؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هشتم ماه ژوئن سال 2009میلادی

عنوان: سیمای مرد هنرآفرین در جوانی؛ اثر: جیمز جویس؛ مترجم: پرویز داریوش؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، اساطیر، 1370، در 318ص؛ موضوع سرگذشتنامه، عنوان دیگر: سیمای مرد هنرآفرین در جوانی - سده 20م

عنوان: چهره مرد هنرمند در جوانی؛ اثر: جیمز جویس؛ مترجم: منوچهر بدیعی؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، نیلوفر، 1380، در 384ص، شابک 964448095؛ چاپ دوم در 466ص سال 1385؛

عنوان: سیمای هنرمند در جوانی؛ اثر: جیمز جویس؛ مترجم: اصغر جویا؛ مشخصات نشر آبادان، نشر پرسش، 1381، در 263ص؛ شابک 9646629717؛

عنوان: چهره یک مرد هنرمند در جوانی؛ اثر: جیمز جویس؛ مترجم: امیر علیجانپور؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، آوای مکتوب، 1394، در 288ص؛ شابک: 9786007364093؛

این داستان، ماجراهای پسری را، از دو سالگی، تا بیست سالگی، بیان می‌کند، بسیار پیچیده است، و در آن، به مسائلی از «ایرلند»، «انسان»، «کودک»، «ترس» و «خدا»، پرداخته شده است؛ ناقدان آثار یا همان طوطیان شیرین گفتار پیشین، بر این باور هستند، که این داستان، مقدمه ای بر داستان «اولیس»، شاهکار «جیمز جویس» نیز هست؛ این اثر، به‌ نوعی، خودزندگی‌نامه ی «جیمز جویس» هم هست؛ نویسنده، روایت رمان را، که توسط سوم شخص مفرد، بیان شده، با ذهنیات «استیون ددالوس»، در هم آمیخته، و خوانشگر، در بخشهایی از رمان، با این ادغام «روایت»، و «ذهنیت»، روبرو می‌شود؛ نویسنده به تلاش، و نوسانات روحی «ددالوس»، برای پیروزی روحش، بر عوامل منفی دوروبری های خویش - از جمله بر رفتار نامناسب برخی از آموزگاران، و خشونتی که بین پسرهای مدرسه، رواج دارد - نیز پرداخته‌ است؛ «جویس» در شخصیت اصلی رمان، یعنی «استفان ددالوس»، «تردید» و «آشفتگی»، و «پوچ‌گرایی نسل نو» را هم، به خوانشگرش نشان داده‌ است؛ نگارنده، از تلمیح (اشاره به قصه یا شعر) هم سود برده، و با استفاده از متن کتاب مقدس، صحنه های «مرگ» و «قیامت» را نیز، در این رمان بنگاشته است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Aug 17, 2019 Kenny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: james-joyce, éirinn, desert-island-books, classics, favorites

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~~ James Joyce

This novel ... this fucking, brilliant novel ... I don't even know where to start ...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Rakhi Dalal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: joyce, to-re-read, favorites, journey

"Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes”(And he sets his mind to unknown arts.)
- Ovid
Metamorphoses

The above mentioned quote from Ovid, which appears at the start of the work, best describes the conclusion of a journey of an artist through his self, trying to come up with things that matter most, while still trying to discern his place in this world.

I still remember the day, when as a teenager, ready to explore the world around me, I, once looked up in the sky, which was sunny and inspiring, and ...more

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Feb 02, 2020 Fergus rated it it was amazing

I am concurrently reading two enormously stimulating and intellectually challenging books - both of which I can recommend strenuously - My Bright Abyss and Holy Desperation.

Each of these, distinctly different and imperiously individualistic, is by a writer who takes James Joyce’s commandment to become the conscience of our race at face value.

Each does that differently - the former by a disinterested poetic conscience - and the latter by a socially committed religious conscience.

But each is - o ...more

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Jan 12, 2014 Anthony Vacca rated it really liked it

Shelves: rage-reviews, 2014, irish

Forget The Perks of Being an Insufferable Wimp; forget the hollow, hipster-plasticity of Holden Cauliflower and his phony attempts at wry observations on adolescence; forget that clumsy excuse of an experimental storyteller that is Jonathan Safran Foer, aka “Meat is Murder” Johnny, with his nauseating, gee-I-guess-our-hearts-really-are-just-too-big-to-fit-into-one-sentence-after-all mentality; forget all that useless bullshit, if, like me, you can pick up James Joyce’s The Portrait of an Artist ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction, novels, classics, irish-20th-c

I read this back in high school (and a few times since) and it blew my mind. The textual maturity grows as Stephen Daedalus grows and it is absolutely captivating. The scene where his knuckles are beaten in class (thank goodness we have moved beyond corporal punishment in schools for the most part!) was so real that my hands ached. You of course see Stephen Daedalus again in Stephen Hero as well as Ulysses.
A must read.

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Jul 07, 2008 Meredith Holley rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Zach Braff

Recommended to Meredith by: Mat and Patrick Kearney

Shelves: reviewed

This book is a very dry, written version of the Dead Poet’s Society without Robin Williams. I was already grateful to Whoopi Goldberg this week for her reasonable comments about the most recent Sarah Palin ridiculousness, so I feel kind of bitter at having to be grateful for the other half of that daring duo. I had sworn them as my nemeses – minor nemeses, yes, of nowhere near the caliber of Charlie Kaufman, David Lynch, or Harold Bloom, but nemeses nonetheless. Now, I find myself thinking, “It’ ...more

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Jun 10, 2014 Kalliope rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography, 2014, fiction-english, ireland, joycean

And there he was following the alleys, away from his original filial shell, searching where the way would take him, and there were icons on the walls. Icons of guilt, icons of duty. Some promised a reality beyond those grey walls announcing that there would be more light – but still imagined. Some pretended a glorious past and a glorious and heroic future for the community -- an imaginary polity.

Captivating nets of restricting nationalism, coined discourses and gelled devotions.

He took the tur ...more

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Feb 04, 2017 Shine Sebastian rated it it was amazing

Shelves: wisdom, 2017, ultimate-favourites, impeccable-language, classics, books-i-own

Words, art, life...
Life, art, words...

BEAUTIFUL!

James Joyce,... what a masterful writer!!
This book is insightful, poetic, artistic and profound.
It is , if I may say so, a tour de force of wisdom and language.

I will try to make this review not ridiculously long, but as you can imagine, when a book is this good, there is no way you can write a short review and be satisfied. So let's take a look at Joyce's brilliance,

1. Language - Joyce's language is fresh and unique, his techniques and style ...more

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Jul 08, 2019 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a book of ripening, a story of the complicated and excruciating spiritual struggle.
A boy in the world of adults: he finds out that there is injustice, that there are such things as perfidy and hypocrisy…

It was wrong; it was unfair and cruel: and, as he sat in the refectory, he suffered time after time in memory the same humiliation until he began to wonder whether it might not really be that there was something in his face which made him look like a sc

It was wrong; it was unfair and cruel: and, as he sat in the refectory, he suffered time after time in memory the same humiliation until he began to wonder whether it might not really be that there was something in his face which made him look like a schemer and he wished he had a little mirror to see. But there could not be; and it was unjust and cruel and unfair.

Indoctrination passes as an education: God is above all and there is no free will but only the will of God and everything that is done against the will of God is sin… So eventually, God turns into a frightful monstrosity.

That was the work of devils, to scatter his thoughts and overcloud his conscience, assailing him at the gates of the cowardly and sin corrupted flesh: and, praying God timidly to forgive him his weakness, he crawled up on to the bed and, wrapping the blankets closely about him, covered his face again with his hands. He had sinned. He had sinned so deeply against heaven and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s child.

But boy is growing up – he acquires knowledge, he obtains some life experience so his childish and adolescent fears are left behind… Thus a boy becomes a youth full of poetical visions and artistic hopes… Now Stephen Dedalus is capable of doing daedal deeds…

His heart trembled; his breath came faster and a wild spirit passed over his limbs as though he were soaring sunward. His heart trembled in an ecstasy of fear and his soul was in flight. His soul was soaring in an air beyond the world and the body he knew was purified in a breath and delivered of incertitude and made radiant and commingled with the element of the spirit. An ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes and wild his breath and tremulous and wild and radiant his windswept limbs.

To become a true artist one must break the chains of all dogmas. ...more

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Sep 25, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: joyce, novels

CELEBRITY DEATH MATCH : STEPHEN DEDALUS VS. HOLDEN CAULFIELD

(Note : this is not part of the current ongoing Celebrity Death Match series organised by Manny but I thought I would revive it as a companion piece)

****************

BUCK MULLIGAN : Come on, kinch, you fearful jesuit. I’ve got a tenner on this so I have so get in that square ring and batter this lollybogger senseless.

STEPHEN : Pro quibus tibi offérimus, vel qui tibi ófferunt hoc sacrifícium laudis.

BUCK MULLIGAN : Give us a rest of your g ...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Samadrita rated it really liked it

Shelves: timeless-classics, autobiographical-biography-memoir, human-drama, cherished, literary-criticism, christianity, european-literature, my-god-is-better-than-yours, ireland, 1001-and-more

He longed to let life stream in through the windows of his mind in all its sordid and colorful glory so that he could sift through the layers of feeling, impulse and meaning and find what his restless soul craved for - that shred of truth too primevally pristine for anyone to begrime. But the world intruded rudely upon his solemn preoccupations, planted seeds of insidious doubt wherever it could find the soft, yielding ground of inchoate perceptions. His oppressors were many and unapprehended - He longed to let life stream in through the windows of his mind in all its sordid and colorful glory so that he could sift through the layers of feeling, impulse and meaning and find what his restless soul craved for - that shred of truth too primevally pristine for anyone to begrime. But the world intruded rudely upon his solemn preoccupations, planted seeds of insidious doubt wherever it could find the soft, yielding ground of inchoate perceptions. His oppressors were many and unapprehended - the cruel compulsions of academic discipline, the acts of adolescent savagery of compeers who were abysmally ill-equipped to deal with a difference of opinion, the steadily visible socioeconomic squalor of the milieu which threatened to blunt his senses and the omnipresent fear of every thought or deed of his being tantamount to execrable heresy.

"He had tried to build a break-water of order and elegance against the sordid tide of life without him and to dam up, by rules of conduct and active interest and new filial relations, the powerful recurrence of the tides within him. Useless. From without as from within the waters had flowed over his barriers: their tides began once more to jostle fiercely above the crumbled mole."

But he rebelled and won victories against the accompanying inebriety of religious indoctrination and those who demanded from him an obligatory patriotic fervor for the sake of a suffering fatherland. The relentless barrage of catechisms so forcefully dismissive of humanly considerations failed to induce him to self-loathing and guilt; he found a holiness in carnal love and an enduring beauty in the quiet surrender to mortal desire instead. The labyrinth of diverse lures could no longer throttle his ambition of escaping its narrow confines. Thus, even as friends, enemies and competitors in the arena of life busied themselves with the pursuit of social relevance and prestige, young Stephen Dedalus remained unperturbed.

"This was the call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft his brain."

He now aspired to the fulfillment of a greater goal, having found his one true faith in the legitimacy of art and in its power to bestow sense on the perpetual chaos of existence.

__

P.S.:-This is a Künstlerroman whose author presupposes his own greatness and the conspiratorial insensitivity - villainy, even - of those who surround him. The author's ideas on women are also quite overtly simplistic and even somewhat patronizing. Thus I choose to save my 5 stars for the artist's heftier and more celebrated tomes.

__

Originally published on:- October 19, 2014 ...more

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Dec 03, 2018 Manuel Antão rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1981

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

Hell-Fire: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce

(Original Review, 1981-02-16)

"April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."

How much I love/hate Joyce when I read about him...how could he have denied his mother on her deathbed? That act disturbed me - he did not even kneel when she died.I am not speaking of hypocrisy here just thinking of a young poseur who was thinking of himself above al ...more

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Apr 28, 2014 Renato rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: the-novel-100, 2014, reviewed, 1001, joyce

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
- Introibo ad altare Dei."

Scratch that.

At the last minute, before witnessing Buck Mulligan mocking one of church's most important celebratory traditions and embarking on my odyssey with Ulysses, I decided to take the time to get acquainted with St ...more

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Apr 04, 2015 Seemita rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ireland, me, bio-autobio-memoir, sharp_sword, favorites, philo

APRIL 19 (Evening): Alright. This is insane. It has been almost ~~eighteen~~, 18 (has more impact) hours since I sat down to scribble something about what is going on in my mind but the right words are still elusive. And this eluding is colluding my mind no bounds. No, I did not mean to create any sense of rhythmic rhyme here. Because life is no rhyme. And far from rhythmic. It is a battle – fierce, dark, compounded with many elements and munitions and machineries and what not. It is a forever ragin ...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Ted rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: multiple-reads, have, read-during-college, religion-mythology-rationalism, reviews-most-liked, classics, lit-irish

First off, I have too many shelves, so Joyce must sit on the "lit-british" shelf, spinning him in his grave no doubt. (No longer! now an Irish shelf!)

I read the book first in college (not for a course), then a second time a couple years ago. The 40+ year gap provided an interesting test as to what would seem familiar and what wouldn't. I barely recognized the earlier parts of the novel, more recollection (not very detailed) as I progressed. Finally I reached the end, and was shocked as I read th First off, I have too many shelves, so Joyce must sit on the "lit-british" shelf, spinning him in his grave no doubt. (No longer! now an Irish shelf!)

I read the book first in college (not for a course), then a second time a couple years ago. The 40+ year gap provided an interesting test as to what would seem familiar and what wouldn't. I barely recognized the earlier parts of the novel, more recollection (not very detailed) as I progressed. Finally I reached the end, and was shocked as I read the last two paragraphs, which I recognized almost word for word, forty years after first reading them! The mind is a strange thing.
(view spoiler)

Incidentally, chapter three, relating Stephen's retreat and the hell-and-brimstone sermon to which the boys are subjected, provides a wonderful example of the way in which organized religion (in this case the Irish Catholic version) can so wonderfully scare the crap out of a young adult. The following describes Stephen returning to his room after the sermon.

He could not grip the floor with his feet and sat heavily at his desk, opening one of his books at random ... Every word for him! It was true ... God could call him now ... God had called him. Yes? What? Yes? His flesh shrank together as it felt the approach of the ravenous tongues of flames, dried up as it felt about it the swirl of stifling air. He had died. Yes. He was judged. A wave of fire swept through his body: the first. Again a wave. His brain began to glow. Another. His brain was simmering and bubbling within the cracking tenement of the skull. Flames burst forth from his skull like a corolla, shrieking like voices: - Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell!

Luckily, it passes. And eventually Joyce passed out of the Church. There's an interesting little section in the Wiki article on Joyce titled Joyce and Religion. Some scholars believe that Joyce was reconciled, or never really left, the Catholic Church. This section concludes by relating that, when his burial was being arranged, a Catholic priest tried to convince Joyce's wife that there should be a funeral Mass for him. She is quoted as saying "I couldn't do that to him." ...more

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Jan 28, 2008 John rated it did not like it

Shelves: literature

An semi-autobiographic novel, featuring a fictionalized character as Joyce's alter-ego, it traces his formative childhood years that led him ambivalently away from a vocation in the clergy and into that of literature.

There are sections which appealed to me (a priestly sermon on the damnation of ones soul into hell is particularly vivid), but by and large the plot line was too disjointed for me to engage with. Uncertain of exactly where I had been or what path the novel was taking me, I found m ...more

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Jul 27, 2007 Steve rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

Joyce is brilliant. And he knows it. And he loathes it.

Forget the complexity of his prose (see Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake for the really outlandish bits). Forget his literary stature. Forget his Ireland and his guilt and his Christ. Portrait provides the reader with a character with such depth and realism that I almost can’t stop crapping my pants thinking about it. His approach in crafting Stephen Dedalus (and, thus, himself) is profound, and Joyce would be legend by this invention alone. The ...more

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Mar 22, 2018 Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: list-modern-library, bio-memoir, list-1001, 4-europe, list-redcliffe, list-guardian-1000, list-penguin-g20

Joyce delivers again. The first pages are the best - spent as they are in Stephen's consciousness when he was a very sensitive kid. I thought Stephen would be a born rebel (the way I had imagined Joyce to be) - but he seemed to be an obedient and meek child to began with and have taken a lot of time to make up his mind on various institutions (nationalism, religion, arts etc) In fact, for the most part, he is not an artist at all - the moment of epiphany which sets him onto path of becoming a wr ...more

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Jan 17, 2021 J.L. Sutton rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”

James Joyce's Bildungsroman – A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce's Bildungsroman – A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce's language in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is so evocative. It's not just a story being told (a semi-autobiographical account in which Stephen Dedalus stands in for James Joyce in early childhood to aspiring artist in his youth) but a method at getting to the inner world of his protagonist. This stream of consciousn ...more

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Jul 17, 2011 Lyn rated it really liked it

Enjoyed finally reading this, also very much liked Joyce's style.

**** 2021 reread

“Have read little and understood less.”

Joyce’s first published novel is a cacophony, a fireworks display of words, language, ideas, thoughts and expression. A bildungsroman about his alter-ego, Stephen Dedalus, who moves with his unfortunate family from a comfortable rural home to Dublin. We follow Stephen on a journey of discovery, internal and external, through religion, philosophy and identity, as a spiritual and ...more

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Jun 02, 2007 Madeline rated it did not like it

Shelves: the-list, assigned-reading, ugh

James Joyce is full of crap. I'd like to track down whoever invented stream-of-consciousness writing and kick him in the groin.

Read for: 12th grade AP English ...more

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Mar 19, 2017 Simona B rated it did not like it

Shelves: 1900, in-english

...Sorry I didn't grasp the part about hell. Could you start that all over? ...more

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Jan 20, 2014 Agnieszka rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014, reviewed

We can read A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man as a prequel to Ulyssess but if we reject for a while first associations then what's left ? An intimate, inner portrait of a young man who attempts to define himself as a man and an artist. If we read it this way - then it is simply an universal story about the torments of adolescence and search for his own identity, his own voice.

Stephen Dedalus, overwhelmed by Irish God-and-Homeland tradition, is suffocating by provincionalism of late 19th ...more

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Apr 07, 2014 Barry Pierce rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2014, 20th-century

Oh my god guys JOYCE. This is genuinely one of the best books I've read so far this year. Not really a plot driven novel but more a character study of the young Stephen Dedalus and his journey through his teen years. While some aspects of this novel may be difficult to understand if you don't have just a little knowledge of Irish history (names like Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Davitt, and Wolfe Tone are mentioned quite a lot), I feel like that doesn't effect the enjoyment you can get from t ...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction-20th-century, best-books-ever

“You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.”

I’ve maybe read the great Portrait three four times in my life, teaching it once, ...more

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Nov 04, 2020 Luís rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, favorites, ireland

James Joyce is widely recognized as a great writer ... but often obscure. This almost autobiographical novel belies this reputation. We read it without difficulty, and we do not have to look for complicated literary ulterior motives. Stephen Dedalus, a character the author has featured in several of his books, is clearly Joyce's alter ego. In this "Portrait", we see a boy (first attending college) becoming a young adult. Everything is intelligible in this journey. Everything sounds authentic. Bu ...more

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Aug 16, 2014 Cheryl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Philosophical types

Shelves: vintage, fiction, europe, the-psyche

My college English professor was a huge fan of Greek mythology. So imagine his delight at dissecting the mind of Dedulus, an illusion to the Greek craftsman, Daedulus. I didn't fully understand Stephen Dedulus then, and I'm still unsure how much I understand him now. Come to think of it, can we ever fully grasp the method of James Joyce, this singular author who has managed to create masterpieces of all his novels? Do most of us even truly understand James Joyce's prose, or is it the pressure of My college English professor was a huge fan of Greek mythology. So imagine his delight at dissecting the mind of Dedulus, an illusion to the Greek craftsman, Daedulus. I didn't fully understand Stephen Dedulus then, and I'm still unsure how much I understand him now. Come to think of it, can we ever fully grasp the method of James Joyce, this singular author who has managed to create masterpieces of all his novels? Do most of us even truly understand James Joyce's prose, or is it the pressure of geek camaraderie that forces us to create an illusion of allegiance to the wonderment of mysterious verse? I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that. Frankly, I'm a bit intimidated to try Finnegans Wake and although I read Ulysses in college, I don't remember it enough to have much of an opinion. However, I now see why Portrait was made popular through academic book circles. It is an easier Joyce read (almost like the simple complexity of his short story, Eveline). It is a short read that follows the inner thoughts of a young man coming of age in Ireland. It is about philosophy and self-struggle.

Portrait is prose poetry; it doesn't quite fit the poetic form, yet it is not quite the linear narrative you expect. As I read the beginning of this novel, when Stephen was younger and chanting about baby tuckoo and having conversations about his mother's kiss (the first half of this book is the better part, by the way) I wondered where I had come across Joyce's influence on a contemporary writer and I immediately recalled the beginning of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.

If you're not a fan of literary modernism and its screw tradition stylistic maneuvers, you may find Stephen's religio-philosophical stream of thought daunting. I carried this book with me for years, even after I had discarded several college English books (you know, those huge Anthologies that always fell apart in the middle). Was it the pocketbook size of this book that made me keep it, I wondered, or was I smitten by the idiosyncratic storytelling of this highly unusual bildungsroman? Maybe I kept it so that more than a decade later, I would turn to a page and still see my underlines and notes to myself: Start an outline for an essay based on Joyce's "threefold sting of conscience." I still do remember having a discussion with my professor (via red ink down the margins of my paper) where he agreed and disagreed with my opinions, challenging me at every turn. I didn't understand it then, how could he have so much to say, so many questions to ask me about my analysis, and yet tell me that it was great work? Now I understand. It's impossible to read this book and not have questions, differing opinions, and debate, because the book itself is one big question mark. Our protagonist, Stephen Dedulus, challenges everyone and everything. He is so tough on himself, tough on his weakness and humanity, that at times you want to reach through the book and shake him:

To be alone with his soul, to examine his conscience, to meet his sins face to face, to recall their times and manners and circumstances, to weep over them. He could not weep. He could not summon them to his memory. He felt only an ache of soul and body, his whole being, memory, will, understanding, flesh, benumbed, and weary.

But the tug-of-war is really between the main character and the prose: they compete with each other and you can't help but to pick one. Shake Dedulus. Wow, read this passage again. Back to Dedulus: come on Stephen, you're human, you can't be perfect, stop beating yourself up so--wait, wow, look at the stylistic flow of James Joyce's prose: short and long sentences, back-to-back comma usage, repetition to create lyricism--OK, Focus: back to Dedulus. This was me while reading James Joyce.

It is said that this novel is semi-autobiographical. After receiving a rigorous Jesuit education, Joyce left Dublin in 1902 and renounced his Catholicism. It took him seven years to complete Ulysses, seventeen for Finnegans Wake, and he revolutionized the form and structure of the novel. He did what most struggling writers do: get teaching jobs to pay the bills while working on the book. Yet he managed to complete what most writers won't: masterpieces.

His life seemed to have drawn near to eternity; every thought, word and deed, every instance of consciousness could be made to revibrate radiantly in heaven: and at times his sense of such immediate repercussion was so lively that he seemed to feel his soul in devotion pressing like fingers the keyboard of a great cash register.

...more

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About James Joyce

James Joyce

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James Joyce, Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions James Joyce, Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions.

James Joyce was born in Dublin, on February 2, 1882, the eldest of ten surviving siblings, two other died of typhoid. His father was John Stanislaus Joyce, an impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of other professions, including politics and tax collecting. Joyce's mother, Mary Jane Murray, was an accomplished pianist, whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of their poverty, the family struggled to maintain a solid middle-class facade.

From the age of six Joyce, was educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College, at Clane, and then at Belvedere College in Dublin (1893-97). In 1898 he entered the University College, Dublin. Joyce's first publication was an essay on Ibsen's play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900. At this time he also began writing lyric poems.

After graduation in 1902 the twenty-year-old Joyce went to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. He spent a year in France, returning when a telegram arrived saying his mother was dying. Not long after her death, Joyce was traveling again. He left Dublin in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid who he married in 1931.

Joyce published Dubliners in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, a play Exiles in 1918 and Ulysses in 1922. In 1907 Joyce had published a collection of poems, Chamber Music.

At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved with his family to Zürich. In Zürich Joyce started to develop the early chapters of Ulysses, which was first published in France because of censorship troubles in the Great Britain and the United States, where the book became legally available only in 1933. In March 1923 Joyce started in Paris his second major work, Finnegans Wake, suffering at the same time chronic eye troubles caused by glaucoma. The first segment of the novel appeared in Ford Madox Ford's transatlantic review in April 1924, as part of what Joyce called Work in Progress. The final version was published in 1939.

Some critics considered the work a masterpiece, though many readers found it incomprehensible. After the fall of France in World War II, Joyce returned to Zürich, where he died on January 13, 1941, still disappointed with the reception of Finnegans Wake. ...more

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Dubliners

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