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"A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN".

Images & symbols of initiation into life & art.

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Initiation Imagery
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
In his first novel, James Joyce recounts his own emergence from childhood into the first flowering of his great creativity, his initiation into the life of art. Portrait of the Artist in part describes the journey of a novice preparing for holy office by participating in the pertinent rituals in the requisite order. The hero is baptized in a special way, and beaten into fear. He is tempted. He endures austerities, and he has his moment of doubt leading to choice and revelation. In the tradition of the mystery religions, the rite of initiation is a journey through a number of trials into the presence of the Goddess, the Mother of God. By using the Catholic Church and its priesthood as models, as well as by pointing to special events that signify initiation,

Last, Stephen has his revelation, the moment signalling hisinitiation into secular spiritual power. Stephen bravely complains to the headmaster about his unjustpunishment. It is part of the ritual. Likewise, a newreligion calls for a new Order, a priesthood founded especially to addresschanging conditions. This is not the baptism of the Church, but baptism into the dirtyworld of men, their competition and their petty concerns. The description of the firstcommunion is entangled, and even confused with descriptions of other eventsat school. The priesthood as Joyce came to know it provides the means of theartist's delivery into the circumstances that give his work meaning. They must somehow become priests of anew order. Portrait of the Artist in part describes the journeyof a novice preparing for holy office by participating in the pertinentrituals in the requisite order. Even as his fear for his eternal fate rises, Stephen is temptedagain, by the laughter of a girl. The relationship between Stephen's life at school and the path orsuccessive stations of an initiation rite are made explicit. . A neworder calls for a completely novel religion, formed from the impulses ofthe past, but forged by hitherto unknown processes. . one, theprefect of studies, almost ("pandies") Stephen on the hands, as was thecustom, for losing his glasses. . He endures austerities, and he has hismoment of doubt leading to choice and revelation. Its meaning is both emphasized and secularized in the tellingof an apocryphal story about Napoleon, who is said to have called the dayof his first communion the happiest of his life. "His daily life was laid out in devotional areas" (147). To do so, he must pass down a long, frightening corridor inthe ancient castle that houses his school. In hissin, he has taken his worship of Woman too far, beyond the ordained limits,and it was through the Holy Mother of God that he would be saved: His sin, which had covered him from the sight of God, had led him nearer to the refuge of sinners. Stephen Daedalus enters a different kind of mystery. It is worthconsidering the pun in saying that his initiation is of a novel type.Instead of readying himself for the conventional priesthood of the past, ashe might have done, he becomes a poet, also long regarded by the Irish as asacred calling. The initiation of Stephen Daedalus as a poet isboth a reversal and a confirmation of the social and spiritual forcespresent from the beginning of his life. It is the duty of the masters to lead the novice to the right way. . In the end, thebeating is assimilated to his school experience and is looked on, even bythe kindly rector, as an amusing incident, part of the normal course oflife at school. The next station is Stephen's temptation. . "The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body . It is another station on his path. Although he knows in hisheart that he has not overcome his own pride and his own wrath, he appearsto his masters to be succeeding in following their path of conventionaldevotion. She is the counterpart tothe Virgin, and yet not her opposite. In Stephen's experienceof school there is no dividing the religious from the secular, thesignificant from the insignificant. The hero is baptized in a special way, andbeaten into fear. He crossed the bridge over the stream of the Tolka and turned his eyes coldly for an instant towards the faded blue shrine of the Blessed Virgin . The Hag leads him back into the power ofthe Maiden. His confession is followed by extremes of religious impulse. He sayshis rosary constantly; he mortifies his flesh. Stephen's losing his spectacles, accidental though it was,represented a loss of "vision" that temporarily obstructed his study.Practically and ethically, he was innocent, but spiritually he was guilty(imperfect), and the arbitrary cruelty of the prefect of studies justified. In order to receive the virtues of his quasi-priesthood, Daedalusmust be ordained, or initiated. Stephenkeeps all the saints' days and performs all the appropriate rituals of hisfaith. Along the corridor areportraits of canonized Jesuits, Joyce's way of demonstrating that hishero's ordeal is a crucial part of his spiritual journey. Although he neednot, or even must not set aside his sexuality, because the priesthood heenters is explicitly bound up with sex, Stephen Daedalus must still earnhis right to office through a difficult round of initiation. Finally, he confesses, and in confessinghe turns back to the way of his masters, the priests who are his spiritualand temporal teachers. " (11), heremembered as he tried to figure out the right reply to a taunting questionby the same boy. For example,Stephen's first communion occurred at school, which was undoubtedly commonthen and may still be common in Ireland. Stephen endures pain at the hands of his masters, just as a novicemight. If ever he was compelled to cast sin from him and to repent the impulse that moved him was the wish to be her knight (1 5). In the Ireland of Joyce's boyhood andyouth, as they had throughout Europe for centuries, the Order representedthe most conservative of civil and social forces. Works CitedJoyce, James. (The first chapter of thenovel presents vivid childish memories of the reformer Parnell's fall,which occurred in large part because of his adultery; the Church, guardianof the political and moral order, had seized upon Parnell's "sin" to endhis career.) The constant presence of Jesuits in Joyce's account, recallingtheir dual image as vanguard and establishment, suggests that the authorviews himself (in Daedalus) as a sort of secular Jesuit. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. All is subsumed in a single rite ofpassage. Her [Mary's] eyes seemed to regard him with mild pity; her holiness, a strange light glowing faintly upon her frail flesh, did not humiliate the sinner who approached her. Intertwined with the account of this episode, Stephen's attempt toescape his feeling of degradation, are extensive passages presenting--through the preaching of one of the masters --the Doctrine of the Church ondamnation. The Jesuits, who taught Joyce and who teach Stephen Daedalus, almostperfectly symbolize both the old order and the new. He succumbs to his passionfor women, frequenting the red light district (1 2-1 5). The first "station" in Stephen's initiation cycle is, of course, hisbaptism. " (162).Stephen crosses the bridge from the hermetic environment ordered by thepriests into the sometimes unlovely and always disorderly world in which hemust work. When Ignatius Loyola foundedthe Society of Jesus, the Church needed educated soldiers whose disciplineand intelligence could insure the success of the Counter-Reformation. He is so successful in creating the appearance of devotion that he isapproached by one of his masters and asked to consider whether he has thevocation to be a priest. By using theCatholic Church and its priesthood as models, as well as by pointing tospecial events that signify initiation, James shows how his alter egoStephen Daedalus acquires the forms and receives the experiences thatpermit him to occupy a special position, a higher state of power andcommunion with holiness. At the time, heis sixteen and prefect of the sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There is no easy way to assume the powerand privileges accorded either the poet or the priest. It may be more necessary than ever,therefore, that artists have special experiences that will permit them toconvey the holiness of their vision. Through their history,the Jesuits indicate the possibility of new religious forms designed tomeet the changing needs of a changed world. He considers, he doubts and he chooses: "He would fall . Intheir social and political function, however, the Jesuits embody the oldforms, which were disintegrating as if before the eyes of those who came ofage at the turn of the century. His, temptation leads him to greater faith, away fromconfidence in the tainted women with whom he sinned and toward confidencein the Virgin. In the tradition of themystery religions, the rite of initiation is a journey through a number oftrials into the presence of the Goddess, the Mother of God. Given thechoice, he realizes that he must choose the secular world, the filthy worldof men, as his spiritual arena. He is a peculiarly twentieth-century artist, however,ordained in a new priesthood and destined, as a novelist, to serve a newworld. Indeed, there is the play on words that teachers at an English orIrish school are called masters, just as the senior initiates in a mysteryreligion might be--and Stephen's "masters" are literally priests. Initiation Imagery in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man In his first novel, James Joyce recounts his own emergence fromchildhood into the first flowering of his great creativity, his initiationinto the life of art. Socially, he is stigmatized; the beatingon the hands recalls the actual stigmata of Christ. Stephen has reached the moment inhis quest when he literally looks squarely in the face of the Goddess(171). In our time, the spiritual function of the arts hasbeen almost fully secularized. The moment is, of course,punctuated by the vision of a girl, a woman who embodies the purity of hisimpulse to bind the secular and the spiritual. Not to fall was too hard, too hard: and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling but not yet fallen, still unfallen but about to fall. Portrait of the Artist is Joyce's story of his own spiritual journeyto the point of his "ordination." He invokes conventional religioussymbols and figures as a way of illuminating his original impulses, and heshows how his original constellation is converted into a choice to enter anunconventional priesthood. It is a baptism not only with water, but with "scum," thefilm that coats the affairs of men. . In his attempt to find a church in which toconfess, he is directed by an old woman--an image recalling the journey ofa novice through the mysteries. In addition torenouncing marriage, hence sexual pleasure, a Catholic priest endures anovitiate during which he acquires the tools of his office in part byenduring hardships and performing appropriate rituals. He is tempted. One of the boysat his first school, Clongowes, shoved him into a ditch full of filthywater, because Stephen would not trade one minor trinket for another (1 -11). New York: Penguin, [1916], 1976.----------------------- 8

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