2.5/5

Su šia knyga bandžiau sau kažką įrodyt. Net nežinau,kodėl – gal iš eilės perskaičiusi kelias vidutiniškas knygas maniau, kad va, jei jau paimsiu klasiką, tai bent bus naudinga, nes gi „reikia“ (o iš kur kyla tas „reikia“ tai jau visai kitas klausimas), gal tikėjausi, kad jei ir negausiupačio nuostabiausio pasakojimo, tai bent suprasiu, kodėl autorius taip mylimas ir gerbiamas. Ir visgi vienintelis dalykas, kuriuo įsitikinau – James Joycekūryba ne man.

Pirmi 50-70 knygos puslapių pasirodė gana daug žadantys –įtraukė veikėjai, istorija, o ir stilius neabejotinai turtingas. Tačiau nuo čia viskas leidosi žemyn. Senokai skaičiau knygą, kurioje veikėjas yra toks susikoncentravęs tik į save, savo mintis, kančias, nuodėmes ir panašiai. Nežinau, kaip jūs, bet skaityti ištisus puslapius apie jauną vyrą, kurio gyvenime šiaip objektyviai daug problemų nėra, bet jis vis kenčia, yra jau atskira kančios forma. Autorius bandė patraukti dėmesį religinėmis temomis, bet man viskas pasirodė gerokai perspausta – ištisus puslapius trunkantys kunigų pamokslai, iškankinto veikėjo dejonės apie jo paties nuodėmingumą, visa ta pompastiška kančia ir atgailavimas, kuris net neaišku, kiek nuoširdus... Kažkaip nenatūralu ir visai ne taip, kaip krikščionybę suprantu aš, todėl niekaip negalėjau jaustis pasakotojui artima. O kur dar perspausti dialogai, beveik jokių ryškesnių veikėjų portretų, išskyrus pagrindinį kūrinio personažą, todėl visa kita susilieja į vieną neaiškią masę.

Galėčiau kaltinti knygos senumą, bet juk skaitydama Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf ar kokį John Williams „Stounerį“ absoliučiai mėgavausi kiekviena minute, net jei būdavo ir daugžodžiavimo ar dalykų, su kuriais negaliu tapatintis. Šiuo atveju knyga, mano manymu, sunkiai atlaiko laiko išbandymą. Galiu suprasti, kodėl žmonės ją vertina – autorius puikiai valdo žodį ir sugeba tai daryti nepretenzingai, nagrinėjamos gana aktualios temos, supažindinama su daug kultūrinių aktualijų, – bet perskaičiusi prieš maždaug savaitę neprisimenu beveik nieko, tik tą sunkų yrimąsi per puslapius.

Open your heart to Joyce, believe in James. This is an easy five, or four, or fieve or farr; you lot are dense as shite so y'are

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’s a good thing Whoopi is on the View. Otherwise it might turn into some kind of evil vortex,” and “It’s a good thing that Robin Williams was in Dead Poet’s Society, otherwise those kids all would have been running around having conversations like I’m reading right now.” What type of conversations am I referring to, you ask? Here is an example from when Stephen is, I believe, supposed to be around 12 years old:

“-- And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland.

“-- Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron.

“-- O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash. We have all his poetry at home in a book.

“At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been making and burst out:

“-- Tennyson a poet! Why, he's only a rhymester!

“-- O, get out! said Heron. Everyone knows that Tennyson is the greatest poet.

“-- And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, nudging his neighbour.

“-- Byron, of course, answered Stephen.

“Heron gave the lead and all three joined in a scornful laugh.

“-- What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.

“-- You, said Heron. Byron the greatest poet! He's only a poet for uneducated people.

“-- He must be a fine poet! said Boland.

“-- You may keep your mouth shut, said Stephen, turning on him boldly. All you know about poetry is what you wrote up on the slates in the yard and were going to be sent to the loft for.

“Boland, in fact, was said to have written on the slates in the yard a couplet about a classmate of his who often rode home from the college on a pony:

“As Tyson was riding into Jerusalem
He fell and hurt his Alec Kafoozelum.

“This thrust put the two lieutenants to silence but Heron went on:

“-- In any case Byron was a heretic and immoral too.

“-- I don't care what he was, cried Stephen hotly.

“-- You don't care whether he was a heretic or not? said Nash.

“-- What do you know about it? shouted Stephen. You never read a line of anything in your life except a trans, or Boland either.

“-- I know that Byron was a bad man, said Boland.

“-- Here, catch hold of this heretic, Heron called out. In a moment Stephen was a prisoner.

“-- Tate made you buck up the other day, Heron went on, about the heresy in your essay.

“-- I'll tell him tomorrow, said Boland.

“-- Will you? said Stephen. You'd be afraid to open your lips.

“-- Afraid?

“-- Ay. Afraid of your life.

“-- Behave yourself! cried Heron, cutting at Stephen's legs with his cane.

“It was the signal for their onset. Nash pinioned his arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was lying in the gutter. Struggling and kicking under the cuts of the cane and the blows of the knotty stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence.

“-- Admit that Byron was no good.

“-- No.

“-- Admit.

“-- No.

“-- Admit.

“-- No. No.

“At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself free. His tormentors set off towards Jones's Road, laughing and jeering at him, while he, half blinded with tears, stumbled on, clenching his fists madly and sobbing.”

Who are these kids? The Grand Inquisitor? I don’t know, maybe the boys in the Dead Poets Society were having conversations like that, even with their fun-lovin’ teacher. It’s been years since I saw it. I really wish Robin Williams had come and slapped Stephen Dedalus around for a little while somewhere in this book, though. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a perfect example of how I instinctively dislike people who aren’t funny. And if you tell me that he actually is funny, I say to you that if it takes you longer than 1 minute to explain the joke and at the end of explanation it leaves me with only a vague uneasy feeling, it doesn’t count. The following passage comes closest to being funny of any passage in the book (but still, yawn! Also, note to Joyce, “tundish” is not that interesting a word – Wikipedia, usually so long-winded, barely gives it a page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundish ):

“-- One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to know whether words are being used according to the literary tradition or according to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of Newman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained in the full company of the saints. The use of the word in the marketplace is quite different. I hope I am not detaining you.

“-- Not in the least, said the dean politely.

“-- No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean --

“-- Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point: detain.

“He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.

“-- To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can hold.

“-- What funnel? asked Stephen.

“-- The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.

“-- That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?

“-- What is a tundish?

“-- That. The funnel.

“-- Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.

“-- It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.

“-- A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.”

I kind of want to see Holden Caulfield and Stephen Dedalus cage fight, or at least hear Holden talk for a little while about what a phony good ol’ Dedalus is.

I did not hate this book as much as I thought I would, to be quite honest. A lot of readers that I have great respect for have told me this book is completely unbearable, and Virginia Woolf is so persuasively critical of Joyce in her Writer’s Diary. I don’t know about unbearable. It has mostly unbearable parts, but a couple of bearable boogey-man Catholic Church parts. I can handle the dramatic conversion chapter, but mostly Stephen is such a pipsqueak!

This book fails to be transcendent in my opinion. By that I mean that I believe it does try to be timeless – and fails. I know the counterargument is that it is documenting a specific time and culture. I get that. So are The Iliad, Macbeth, and Pride and Prejudice, though, and they are still fun or tragic and reflective of some basic humanity. Things happen in them. A Portrait of the Artist…, if it is reflective of anything, is reflective of self-absorbed young men, and that is a culture I find it impossible to be patient with. Sorry guys! I want to “accidentally” spill things on your record collections and replace your hair gel with Nair. I think we should go our separate ways.

Goodreaders, I do not forbid you from reading this book, as it is unquestionably influential, but I do warn you that if you are bothered by the use of the word “moocow” in the first sentence, you may not like the rest. Also, don’t listen to the audio version. The reader is a slow-talking, simpery-voiced, Joycian. I’m sure he’s a veryniceperson, and I apologize if I have been scathing. So that you are not left with the impression that I “hate everything”, which I have been criticized for in the past, and to end on a positive note, I leave you with a summary of the things mentioned in this review that I love: Tennyson, Byron, lamp, Virginia Woolf, Holden Caulfield, The Iliad, Macbeth, and Pride and Prejudice. Things I love also include, but are not limited to, baby animals, ice cream, Dr. Seuss, and the Velvet Underground, if you want to know.

Sanatçının Bir Genç Adam Olarak Portresi, James Joyce'un yarı otobiyografik romanı. Bir çocuğun, bir gencin nasıl bir yazara, nasıl James Joyce'a dönüştüğünü anlatıyor. Bir Künstlerroman (Bildungsroman'ın sanatçılarla ilgili bir türü) örneği. Dine, topluma baş kaldıran bir entelektüelin neden bunu yaptığını, hayatın onu nasıl oralara götürdüğünü görüyoruz.

Kitaba küçük Stephen'ın hikâyesi ile başlıyoruz ve büyüyüşüne şahit oluyoruz (ya da olmuyoruz, olamıyoruz). Bu kısım kitabın en kolay okunan kısmı, ortalama bir bilinç akışından daha kolay diyebilirim. Stephen büyüdükçe üslup karmaşıklaşıyor, takip etmek zorlaşıyor. Bu bölümde dinle ilgili temel soruların Stephen'ın aklına nasıl düştüğünü görüyoruz: Din adamlarının tüm o vakur görünüşlerinin ardındaki öfkenin neden kaynaklandığını, adil olmak hakkında vaaz veren bu adamların neden adil olmadıklarını sorguluyor. İçinde büyüdüğü ortamı -kitabın sadece bu kısmında, derinlemesine görüyoruz, çünkü bunlar ileride onun üstünde etkili olacak.

Stephen'ın ergenliğe girişiyle hayatı karmaşıklaşıyor ve kendi sıradan hayatı ile din arasındaki boşluğun bütün çabalara rağmen dolmadığını görüyor. Masum bulduğu şeyleri tanrının nefretle ve hiddetle karşılaması, tanrının neden makul olmadığını sorgulamasına neden oluyor. Dinin (dinlerin) kendi içindeki tutarsızlıklarını fark ediyor. Din adamlarının ise oradaki insanları hizaya sokmak için kullandığı yöntemin cehennem korkusunu yüreklere salmak olduğunu görüyoruz. Kitabın belki de en güçlük kısmı sayfalar süren cehennem tasviri. Stephen giderek dinden uzaklaşıyor. Dinden uzaklaştıkça çevresindekilerden ve ailesinden de uzaklaşıyor.

Kitabın yüz sayfalık son bölümü okuması ve anlaması en zahmetli bölümü. Ne kadarını anladınız deseniz, pek iyimser konuşamam. Stephen'ın sanat ve estetik üzerine düşüncelerini okuduğumuz bölümde ana hikâyeyi takip edebiliyoruz, orası açıkça ilerliyor ama geri kalan her şey dolambaçlı, karmaşık, takip etmesi zor. Murat Belge'nin kelime tercihleri de işimizi hiç kolaylaştıryormıyor.

Ben kitabın genel hikâyesini, çocukluk kısmını, bir insanın dinden uzaklaşmasına neden olan şeyleri ufak ufak irdeleyişini çok sevdim. İletişim baskısının önsözünde de dile getirilen empresyonist üslubu da ilginç bulduğumu söyleyebilirim. Ama estetik yahut şiirsel olanın kapalı olan olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Bu kitabın zorluğunun da çok önemli bir zorluk olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Yani Ses ve Öfke'nin meşhur ilk bölümünün de zor olduğunu düşünüyorum, ama zorluğunun gayet mantıklı bir açıklaması var; oysa bu kitabın beşinci bölümünün neden böyle olduğunu anlamıyorum. Zaten Önsözde de kitabı açıklamak için sürekli Joyce'un çok daha açık ve sade olan ilk taslaklarından bahis açması boşuna değil. Derdim zorlanmak değil, Proust okumak da çocuk oyuncağı değil ama seviyorum, yahut Umberto Eco okumak. Ama bir şeyi, değerinden kaybetmeyeceği en basit haliyle anlatmak bir samimiyet kuralıdır bana kalırsa.

The number of non sequiturs here baffled me untill I gathered that it took Joyce over a decade to finish this. It feels as though it was clumsily stitched together. It could be interpreted, in good spirit I suppose, as sudden, unfounded artistic whims can sometimes take over their own work and that the structure isn't in the artists' hand etc. Yet, this exhausted this reader.

That said, I have to say it's affecting in places. Its relatability is inarguably there. Stephan's whims, his inability to not let words form in his conscience. Polishing it. Reinventing it, his playfulness with the language. It's all there. But I wish his uphill battle to make sense of the world of reality against his world of ideas was more....... readable? enjoyable? I think palatable is the word I'm looking for.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Also this

Whew, I have completed A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, a book that I have been aspiring to read for a lifetime. But alas, James Joyce, I really should have read this before I made my way through your magnificent book, Ulysses. Because in this beautiful book lies the relationship between Simon Dedalus and Stephen Dedalus that looms large in Ulysses. With strong Irish roots, I have been taken with the country and with its authors and artists, most prominent of those being James Joyce. And my promise is to be there in Dublin on Bloomsday some June to celebrate the beautiful book, Ulysses and James Joyce.

This is the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century. Young Stephen attends a strict boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. At some point in his education with the Jesuits, he becomes very religious, as he contemplates whether he may have a vocation to the priesthood. This is thought to be very autobiographical in the life of James Joyce.

n  

"Sunday was dedicated to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Monday to the Holy Ghost, Tuesday to the Guardian Angels, Wednesday to St. Joseph, Thursday to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Friday to the Suffering Jesus, Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary."

n

The beauty of this book is the development of a young man as he grapples with who he is and what he wants for his future as he struggles with new ideas. When he goes on to the University of Dublin, his struggle to find his identity mirrors the Irish struggle for independence in the early twentieth century.

n  

"You are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancing up and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is, is another question."

n

n  "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."n

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 Stephen Dedalus. I figured going to a party where I at least knew one person would be better than facing a whole crowd of strangers.

n  "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 nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."n

I ended up reading Joyce's autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in only three days, and in a way I feel sorry about it because I think I should've given it more time. On certain occasions it felt too dense and it was my own fault for not letting it sink in properly before starting each chapter. It was like watching a film in fast-forward mode.

Even so, it was fascinating accompanying the whole process and conditions in life that turned Stephen Dedalus into an artist. It is said that, at the age of twenty one, Joyce noticed he could become an artist himself by writing about how one becomes an artist. And that he did.

This coming of age story covers Stephen's formation since his early childhood and is divided in five episodes - or epiphanies - and, each one of those, distinctively, had a big impact on his personality - his consciousness and identity - and the artist he eventually became. As the title suggests (...as a young man), Stephen still has a long way to go. And the prospect of watching Stephen's continued development in Ulysses is very exciting.

What made this novel so interesting for me wasn't the fact that Stephen became an artist, it was to watch his gestation as a person. To see and to understand how the surroundings impacted him and how he responded to each and every situation that was sent his way made me try to create a parallel to my own history: I wanted to identify some of the epiphanies I went through to form the person I am today.

Joyce chose a very interesting period to depict in his novel as when we're younger, there's no denying we're more receptive to all kinds of stimuli and in the case of Stephen, his psychological response to them were heightened as he already possessed a sharp sensitivity - something that was key to his final decision of choosing art over his family, the church and his nation.

Also covered here is one of the subjects that usually spark my interest the most: one's devotion to religious life. As I am not a religious person myself, it was very enticing to understand the entire process that built Stephen's decision to follow the religious path, from his encounters with prostitutes, to how impressed he was by Father Arnall's sermons to his sore confession of guilt. I feel books appeal more to me when the characters are as different from me as possible, because I get to study and try to comprehend points of view that I would never have myself. This episode alone encompasses the whole novel's proposition: how the events that happen to you mold you as a person.

n  "His throat ached with a desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. 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."n

However, to put the whole argument that we're products of our environment in perspective and show us that there are other factors in play here, we witness how Stephen's vocation as an artist was stronger than the events that had molded him to that point. When it seemed he would indeed go through the religious route, our young man struggled and freed himself from his early decisions to finally follow his true calling, whether he was exercising his free will or following his fate: to be an artist. And to be able to clearly show this through masterful writing is where Joyce excelled in becoming an artist himself.

Rating: Joyce continues to impress me with his writing qualities and how he develops his stories with originality and precision: 4 stars.

Now, back to Ulysses:

"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."

Çok korkuyordum, korktuğum gibi çıkmadı hatta şaşırttı. Bir gencin düşüncelerini, değişimini, yavaş yavaş inancını yitirişini okuyoruz. Çoğu otobiyografiden daha gerçekçiymiş. Bol bol İncil ve Dante göndermeli...
Çeviri çok anlaşılır, acaba Ulysses'i de mi Sevimay'dan okusam dedim.

UPDATE at bottom:

A proper review, perhaps, tomorrow. But for now, two points:

1.) see my comments on Dubliners: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

2.) One key passage, again from part V. Stephen is already allowing his mind to be drawn away from realism (meaning) towards the 'vocalism' (if I can put it thus) that marks Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake:

"Through this image he had a glimpse of a strange dark cavern of speculation but at once turned away from it, feeling that it was not yet the hour to enter it. But the nightshade of his friend's listlessness seemed to be diffusing in the air around him a tenuous and deadly exhalation and He found himself glancing from one casual word to another on his right or left in stolid wonder that they had been so silently emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled up sighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language. His own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brain and trickling into the very words themselves which set to band and disband themselves in wayward rhythms:"

I cite this passage merely to underline it.

This is a thoroughly brilliant book - a work of genius -- and a work of major literary importance both for its own sake and for what follows it. Whether or not it is always an "enjoyable" read is, of course, irrelevant.

* UPDATE:
Clearly, "vocalism" is a poorly chosen word. But the general idea I raised is confirmed by Jeri Johnson in the introduction to her edition of Ulysses (xvi):

"Now this was a novel with a difference. Larbaud might stress that "the plan, which cannot be detached from the book, because it is the very web of it" was actually subordinate to 'man...', but the extraordinarily intricate and elaborate symbolic systems carry it away from the the domain of more conventional fiction and toward something which, for lack of a better name, we might call the 'hypereliterary'. For this is literature which draws attention to itsself AS literature, as artifact constructed out of words and symbols and correspondences and systems which we take pleasure in precisely because of (rather than despite) their craftedness, precisely because they draw our attention to word AS word, symbol AS symbol, system AS system, rather than simply urging us to see through this artifice toward some meaning residing within. If we have been trained to read novels in such a way as to discover the correlation between the novel and life, or to provide a paraphrase of its 'meaning', or to explicate the moral dilemma, this foregrounding of word, symbol, system, correspondence, frustrates that training. What possible 'moral' can be drawn from the proliferation of flower names in the 'Lotus Eaters' episode?"

Earlier she (Johnson) referred (xiii) to two types of readers: those interested in the book as novel (preoccupied with character and plotted action). "Here we find lovers of realism." And another group of readers that prefers "patterns, parallels, symstems, symbols, myths, literature which proudly declared its 'literariness' ".

This will be old hat to most of my GR friends. But for me, who has struggled with Postmodernist (and even High Modernist) literature -- who stumbled halfway through Gravity's Rainbow and then had to bail - this is illuminating.

Add to this the notion that Modernism approaches its topic kaleidoscopically, seeks to observe it from multiple angles, without favoring any one of them -- a sort of Nietzschean Perspektivism -- which helps to explain the preference for pastiche, montage, leaps, and juxtapositions (parataxis)... which I have also never understood...

... and slowly I am making progress into (at least!) the 20th century...!!!

فقط ما نبوده‌ایم که در بچگی ما را از جهنم و عذاب‌هایش ترسانده‌اند. آویزان شدن از موها یکی از تصویرهای جدی من از جهنم بوده و هست. برای پیروان ادیان دیگر نوع عذاب‌ها فرق دارد اما ریشه‌اش یکی است. درگیری با دین مضمون قابل توجهی است و با ذهن استیون ددالوس این موضوع به کنکاش پیچیده‌ای تبدیل می‌شود. روایت جویس را می‌پسندم. صبوری‌اش در پیش بردن داستان او را به قصه‌گوی باحوصله‌ای تبدیل می‌کند که خواننده‌اش را به ذهن پر آشوب شخصیت‌اش می‌برد و سیر کردن در ذهن ددالوس مثل غرق شدن در دنیای خود جویس است.

“When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

Joyce, in this fictionalized autobiography, recounts his close brush with the pitfalls of piety.

After hearing a particularly graphic sermon on the wages of sin, an oration of hellfire and brimstone that would have made Pat Robertson proud, young Stephen Dedalus (Joyce’s alter ego) decides to amend his ways. He becomes so devout and pious that a vocation of Catholic priesthood is suggested. But, before Dedalus has a chance to diddle any alter boys, he has an epiphany of reason.

“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.”

When I read that this was Joyce’s first novel I was flabbergasted. This has the polish and panache of a much more experienced writer. Yes, there’s a fixation on flatulence, but there’s also a disarming honesty in Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness style. I personally found this much more palatable and accessible than Ulysses.