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:

n  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. n

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.

n  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.n

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 as a Young Man and completely relate with a childhood defined by shyness and subservient silence that, with time and guidance, is fashioned into an all-encompassing fear of divine punishment for being a lowly, flesh-bound mongrel unworthy of its own creator’s love, which, in turn, precipitates a young adulthood embittered with resentment and characterized by self-loathing and drastic, vain attempts at appearing creatively intelligent as you hobnob with your college peers, those equally fucked-in-the-head fakes that use their given academic setting as a way of feeling validated and important, which is a bafflingly absurd denial of the eventual doldrums of disappointment and depression that is living a long life paired with the ability to actually form coherent, analytical thoughts that have no real value since they can’t be expressed in any meaningful way since you’ve wisely given up your ivory-tower dreams of being the famous musician, the beloved artist, the acclaimed novelist, the sensational poet, one of those people whom more than a hundred people will ever know or actually care about and remember once he or she finally dies and discovers firsthand if their deepest, guilt-ridden fear of a snarling, reptilian DevilGod orbiting their every thought and action was always true.

☀️

بندگی نخواهم نمود.

به گمانم این مهم ترین حرف جویس در این کتاب بود.استیون قرار است که کشیش بشود در فرقه ی یسوعی ها.او سال ها آداب و مناسک کلیسا را انجام می دهد.بدون چرا و بدون آنکه دنبال علت بگردد.از خدایی می ترسد که خدای او نیست.خدای آن هاست.واژه هایی که در زبان آن ها [مدرسین او]می چرخد واژه های او نیست.
((زبانی که با آن سخن می گوییم قبل از آنکه زبان من باشد زبان اوست.واژه هایی مثل وطن،مسیح،آبجو،خداوند که بر لبان او می آید چقدر فرق می کند با وقتی که بر لبان من می آید!من نمی توانم این واژه ها را بگویم و بنویسم و قرار و آرام خود را از دست ندهم.زبان او،که تا این اندازه بیگانه است،همیشه برای من یک زبان عاریه خواهد ماند.من واژه های این زبان را نساخته و نپذیرفته ام.صدای من در برابر آن ها مقاومت می کند.روح من در سایه زبان او می فرساید.))
بعد از وعظ بلند مدرس ی درباره ی گناه ها و خطاهای انسان و جهنم و جاودان بودن در آن می هراسد و به توبه از گناهان خود روی می آورد. و پس از آن سعی می کند با وسواس کامل به حواس خود،بینایی،شنوایی،لامسه خود را پاک نگاه دارد.اما هربار در کلیسا باید به گناهان گذشته ی خود اعتراف کند،گذشته ای که پاک نمی شود.او که اکنون سست شده با درخواست کشیش که از او می پرسد واقعن می خواهد به فرقه ی کشیش های یسوعی بپیوندد،دو دل می شود و بعد به این قطعیت می رسد که او برای کشیش شدن آفریده نشده است.او برای هنرمند شدن آفریده شده،نگاه او به اشیا و انسان ها متفاوت است.او با فاصله به مردم نگاه می کند.کاری که هنرمندان انجام می دهند.جایی خود می گوید:باید از عقل به هنر رسید.و شاید برای این نمی خواسته کشیش شود که عقلانیتی در جملات آن ها ندیده است.
بعد از نقطه ی عطف کتاب یعنی از زمانی که استیون به کشیشان پشت می کند.بقیه ی کتاب روند تکامل و هنرمند شدن او و گفت وگوی او با دیگر دوستانش را بیان می کند.
کتاب جویس درخشان است.اگر پروست را خالق[مادلن].صحنه پردازی ها و توصیفات ظریف بدانیم و استاد به گذشته و آینده نقب زدن.جویس را باید استاد زمان حال بدانیم .جویس به طرز فوق العاده ای روایت را به پیش می برد.دیالوگ ها سیال،روان،عالی اند و شخصیت ها به خوبی ساخته و پرداخته شده اند و هریک صدایی منحصر به فرد دارند.استیون یک شاعر است و جویس هم شعر بسیار نوشته.به نظرم این کتاب کاملن از مردمک های یک شاعر نوشته شده.همه چیز در حالت ناپایداری و محو شدن است،چرا که چشم شاعر با جنونی ظریف[کتاب حقیقت و زیبایی،بابک احمدی]به گردش در می آید و شاید این همان تعریف سیالیت ذهن باشد.ازرا پاوند او را از همین رو نویسنده ای امپرسیونیست خوانده.آن هم در دوره ای که بسیاری شاعران سعی می کردند به سبک نقاشان امپرسیونیست بنویسند و اغلب ناموفق بوده اند.این کتاب نقد محکمی نیز به دین و حکومت ایرلند می زند.در واقع جویس بی پرده سخن می گوید و سیستم کلیسای آن دوران را به زیر سوال می برد.
دانش جویس هم البته ستودنی ست از عهد عتیق و عهد جدید،تاریخ ایرلند و افسانه های یونان و البته شاعران ی که شعرشان را در کتاب آورده.
کتاب جویس کتابی نیست که بتوان یک نفس خواند.چون جملات اغلب به صورت زنجیره ای به هم مرتبط اند.
و اگر خواستید این کتاب را بخوانید با ترجمه ی منوچهر بدیعی بخوانید که این اثر درخشان را به خوبی به فارسی برگردان کرده و علاوه بر آن بسیاری از ارجاعات جویس را به کتاب های دیگر در صفحات آخر خود آورده.
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خواندن جویس،تجربه ای بی نظیر برای من بود و امیدوارم شاهکار او یعنی اولیس نیز به زودی به فارسی برگردان و چاپ شود.

Роман, написанный самобытным джойсовским смутным, неясным и зыбким языком, на грани, но еще не достигший состояния потока сознания, по сути является программным документом ко всему творчеству писателя, ибо здесь описаны его молодые годы, период идейного блуждания, поисков и становления, как художника, творца, те зыбкие картины памяти, из которых неясно вырисовывается детство Стивена Дедала, чья фамилии является символичной и «говорящей». Для Джойса творчество – это лабиринт, который одновременно и строится творцом, и для нахождения пути из которого требуется путеводная нить. Первые главы – это взросление героя, описание той среды, в которой формировался характер, закалялись его личные качества, те метания юной души от блуда к религии и отречения от нее, от семьи к школе, от политики к любовной лирике и, наконец, разрыва ограничивающих его пут для воспарения к искусству. Но самое ценное в романе – это эстетическая концепция Стивена Дедала, базирующаяся на трудах Фомы Аквинского и существенно переработанная.
Анализируя понятия сострадания и страха, как «фазы» чувства трагического, он акцентирует на статичности этих чувств. Красота, выраженная художником, не может возбуждать кинетических эмоций, но порождает эстетический стасис – идеальное сострадание или идеальный страх – которые возникают и длятся и наконец разрешаются в том, что Дедал называет ритмом красоты. Согласно Фоме Аквинскому, «прекрасно то, восприятие чего нам приятно.». « Платон говорит, что прекрасное — сияние истины. Не думаю, что это имеет какой-нибудь иной смысл, кроме того, что истина и прекрасное тождественны. Истина познается разумом, приведенным в покой наиболее благоприятными отношениями в сфере умопостигаемого; прекрасное воспринимается воображением, приведенным в покой наиболее благоприятными отношениями в сфере чувственно постигаемого. Первый шаг на пути к истине — постичь пределы и возможности разума, понять самый акт познания. Вся философская система Аристотеля опирается на его сочинение о психологии, которое в свою очередь опирается на его утверждение, что один и тот же атрибут не может одновременно и в одной и той же связи принадлежать и не принадлежать одному и тому же субъекту. Первый шаг на пути к красоте — постичь пределы и возможности воображения, понять самый акт эстетического восприятия.» Фома Аквинский говорит: «Три условия требуются для красоты: целостность, гармония, сияние». Эстетический образ, воспринимаемый органами чувств в пространстве и времени, тем не менее воспринимается целостным, единым. Фома Аквинский считает, что высшее свойство красоты – «свет, исходящий из какого-то иного мира, в то время как реальность — всего лишь его тень, материя — всего лишь его символ.» Дедал считал, что под словом claritas тот подразумевал художественное раскрытие и воплощение божественного замысла, сила обобщения и целостности, заставляющая сиять изнутри вовне. Между тем, сияние, о котором говорит Аквинский, - «самость веща», эстетический образ, зарождающийся в воображении художника, его сияние в момент осознания сознанием, остановленным очарованием его гармонией, духовный момент, который Луиджи Гальвани назвал завороженностью сердца. У Джойса этого нет, но мне кажется, такое же состояние описывают слова Гёте «Остановись, мгновенье, ты прекрасно!».
По Джойсу/Дедалу: «искусство делится на три последовательно восходящих рода: лирику, где художник создает образ в непосредственном отношении к самому себе; эпос, где образ дается в опосредствованном отношении к себе или другим; и драму, где образ дается в непосредственном отношении к другим.»
«Личность художника — сначала вскрик, ритмический возглас или тональность, затем текучее, мерцающее повествование; в конце концов художник утончает себя до небытия, иначе говоря, обезличивает себя. Эстетический образ в драматической форме — это жизнь, очищенная и претворенная воображением. Таинство эстетического творения, которое можно уподобить творению материальному, завершено. Художник, как Бог-творец, остается внутри, или позади, или поверх, или вне своего создания, невидимый, утончившийся до небытия, равнодушно подпиливающий себе ногти.»
Ясность, как сила обобщения и целостности, является эстетическим манифестом Джойса и если приглянуться, то «поток сознания» - ни что иное, как совокупность фрагментов, единых в их обобщенности и целостности, когда из мути этого потока вырисовывается ясная картина.

3.5/5
I can’t say I fully understood every part of this books, but I can say I mostly enjoyed the parts I did understand. There is something about his writing that drew me in and I can’t put my finger on it. This is a book about a boy in Ireland growing up and going to school led by Christian’s and the boys faith and ambitions. Although I don’t like when sermons are in books I oddly enjoyed the ones Joyce gave us about hell and suffering. I also related to the final pages in which Stephen discusses his love for his mother and her faith in religion and how it clashes with his own beliefs.

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.
Those last two paragraphs?

26 April: Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. 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.
27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

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."

"-Usted es un artista, ¿no es verdad, Dédalus? -dijo el decano levantando la cara y guiñando los ojos descoloridos-. El fin del artista es la creación de lo bello. Qué sea bello, eso ya es otra cuestión."

Con el correr del tiempo y de las lecturas de sus libros, James Joyce se ha transformado en un escritor realmente interesante para mí. Su maestría literaria y su genialidad narrativa lo transforman en un artista todo terreno. Además de “Dublineses”, libro que pienso releer pronto, de “Ulises” que mi gran desafío literario cumplido el año pasado y del que leeré este año, me refiero al “Finnegan’s Wake” y este libro que pasa a formar parte de aquellas novelas que leo con tranquilidad, dejándome llevar por su forma tan poética y amena al relatar y que me dejan un recuerdo agradable cuando las termino. En ella relata la etapa inicial en la vida de Stephen Dedalus, desde sus tres años hasta sus años universitarios sin dejar inconcluso el paso por la niñez, la pubertad y la adolescencia. Es de destacar la forma en que acompaña transcurso de los años del personaje y este proceso es identificado claramente en los diálogos y en la forma de pensar de Dedalus.
Este es uno de los libros más “entendibles” del gran autor irlandés junto con “Dublineses” puesto que todavía no utiliza en forma desenfrenada su famosa invención del “stream of conciousness” o “monólogo interior” como tampoco esa parafernalia lingüística que enloquece o desorienta al lector en "Ulises", sino un tratamiento del “estilo indirecto libre”, diálogos perfectamente construidos, narración clásica en tercera persona y un final con unas cuantas fechas anotadas en un diario (primera persona) escrito por Dedalus.
Stephen, quien será uno de los protagonistas principales junto con Leopold Bloom en “Ulises” se nos presenta aquí como una persona sensible, de nobles sentimientos y genuinos ideales que son puestos a prueba a partir de su férrea educación religiosa en distintas escuelas jesuitas especialmente las de Clongowes y Belvedere. Y es en este aspecto en donde nos encontramos a Joyce tratando el tema de la religión en todos sus aspectos. Los personajes vuelcan sus ideas y definen sus pensamientos defendiendo la doctrina católica como condenándola desde distintos puntos de vista y todos son válidos.
Dedalus marca claramente la diferencia como el alumno distinto, altamente dotado de los mejores atributos intelectuales, una innata predisposición para la poesía y de una marcada sensibilidad artística que se complementa con su personalidad tan especial y noble.
Es que en un momento de su vida, Stephen se siente agobiado al auto inculparse por su vida promiscua, pecadora y desenfrenada. Se siente acorralado y piensa que Dios lo castigará sin compasión, se pierde en sufrimientos y elucubraciones que lo atormentan y todo ello eclosiona luego de asistir en la Iglesia al sermón que da el padre Arnall. Y aquí hago un párrafo aparte para destacar algo:
pocas veces en la literatura he leído una porción de texto que me absorbiera y me shockeara tanto como la descripción tan aterrorizante y detallada que utiliza Joyce para contarnos cómo es, según él, el infierno. La manera tan vívida, asfixiante y atormentadora con la describe los tormentos que sufren los condenados haría quedar realmente helado al mismísimo Dante Alighieri.
En muy pocas páginas, no sólo nos clarifica perfectamente cómo es el juicio final sino que estas pocas páginas alcanzan para equiparar la descripción del infierno que Dante le lleva todo el primer libro de la Divina Comedia. Realmente escalofriante.
Finalmente, rescato y reconozco nuevamente algo que ya había hecho luego de leer el "Ulises" y es ese dominio total que James Joyce tenía del mapa de Irlanda en su cabeza y creo que funciona como un complemento del recorrido que Dedalus y Bloom realizan en "Ulises". Si uno quiere visitar algún día Irlanda tan sólo necesita identificar cada una de las calles, pueblos y ciudades que marca Joyce en sus novelas para tener solucionado como debería ser un auténtico circuito turístico de Irlanda.
Excelente libro, recomendable, con dosis poéticas de alto calibre y con el sello inconfundible de este genio que se llamó James Joyce.

n  “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.”n

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.

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



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.

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There are writers I've never got around to reading. There are others I've spent decades avoiding. Joyce is in the second category. I picked up Ulysses once or twice when I was in my twenties, read a few lines and allowed myself to be completely intimidated. However, I've recently developed an interest in expatriate writers in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. A couple of months ago I read the very interesting Sylvia Beach's memoir of this period and I'm currently reading Noël Riley Fitch's biography of Beach, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. Beach was the first publisher of Ulysses in book form and her memoir and Fitch's biography have sparked my interest in Joyce.

I decided that becoming acquainted with Joyce by diving straight into Ulysses would be a bad idea. I also decided that listening to an audiobook narrated in an Irish accent would help me get into the rhythms of Joyce's language more easily than would reading the text. This has proved to be good thinking. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is interesting and accessible and John Lee's narration is excellent. I love Joyce's use of language: in particular the way it becomes more complex as he moves from the point of view of a child, to that of a teenager and then to that of a young man. I also love the way in which Joyce evokes life in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th century, as his literary alter-ego, Stephen Dedalus, comes to reject his religious faith and develop his artistic philosophy.

I wish that I'd had a classical education, because I didn't understand all of the Latin or the references to Greek mythology in the text. That's the downside of listening to an audiobook - no footnotes. Still, I can always catch up on the references I missed some other time and I doubt I would have tackled this had no audiobook been available. It feels good to no longer be intimidated by James Joyce. It feels so good that I've moved on to Dubliners.

The first novel by James Joyce is a Bildungs- and Künstlerroman revolving around the author's alter ego Stephen Dedalus (who also features in Ulysses), a young Irish man who learns about the sociopolitical struggles in Ireland in early childhood, gets introduced into the rough social customs of class and power in Catholic school, experiences his family losing money and status, later indulges in hedonist adventures before seeking redemption and salvation in religion - and who finally finds freedom after emancipating himself from school, church, politics, and his family by becoming an artist (please note that in the prototypical Bildungsroman, the text that defined the genre - Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - it's exactly the other way around: Young Wilhelm joins a traveling theater troupe and works as an artist before becoming what the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would have described as a respectable citizen).

While Ulysses works with The Odyssey, "A Portrait..." is more focused on Metamorphoses, namely the myth of Icarus who fell from the sky into the sea after he flew too close to the sun with his waxen wings - wings made by his father Daedalus (ha!). While the story Joyce tells is rather interesting, what turns this novel into a spectacle is the language that not only grows with Stephen, becoming more and more mature as the protagonist ages, but also floats between third-person narrative and free indirect speech, effectively conveying mental states and how they are affected by the events depicted. The language sounds stunningly beautiful, and even the philosophical, political, and religious musings are rendered in engrossing, riveting sentences, although the intensity can become a little daunting from time to time.

World literature for very obvious reasons - one day I'll tackle Ulysses, but before that: Dubliners.