The Aesthetics of James Joyce

189 Pages·1992·7.16 MB·English

by  Jacques Aubert

THE AESTHETICS OF JAMES JOYCE

THE AESTHETICS OF
Jamesjoyce
by
JACQUES AUBERT
THE
JOHNS HOPKINS
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Baltimore & London
FOR VONETTE AND LAURENT
with love
Originally published as
Introduction a UEsthetique de James Joyce
© Librairie Marcel Didier, Paris, 1973
This revised English-language edition © 1992
by The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
The Johns Hopkins University Press
701 West 40th Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21211-2190
The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aubert, Jacques.
[Introduction a I'esthetique de James Joyce. English]
The aesthetics of James Joyce / Jacques Aubert.
p. cm.
Translation of: Introduction a resthetique de James Joyce.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8018-4349-9
1. Joyce, James, 1882-1941—Aesthetics. 2. Aesthetics,
Modern—20th century. I. Tide.
PR6019.O9Z5256513 1992
823'.912—dc20 91-45690
CONTENTS
PREFACE Vll
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix
Prolegomena 1
ONE
Explorations 11
TWO
The Dramatic Idea and Beyond 24
THREE
Ibsen: Hail and Farewell 46
FOUR
"James Clarence Mangan" 62
FIVE
The Paris Notebook 83
six
The Pola Notebook and Aquinas 100
Conclusion 112
V
CONTENTS
APPENDIX A
Aristotle: The Paris Sources 127
APPENDIX B
Quotations from Aristotle in Joyce's
1903-1904 Notebooks 131
APPENDIX C
The Pola Notebook 138
NOTES 141
BIBLIOGRAPHY 161
INDEX 173
VI
PREFACE
JAMES JOYCE produced a body of creative masterpieces which
changed the course of literary history and, by the same token,
the relationship of both writer and reader to literary texts.
Remarkably enough, the general reader most often does not
know, and the pedagogue makes haste to forget, that Joyce had
been at pains to create a critical concept of the epiphany Not
that this fact did not have the widest circulation, but it has re­
mained isolated and has never been brought to bear on—or
become part of—more general critical systems or historical re­
views, partly because it has proved practically useless in assess­
ing Joyce's originality and achievement. Another reason may be
the uneasy conscience of critics, who feel guilty about looking
over Joyce's shoulder: for Joyce's only mention and definition
of the epiphany, by now well publicized, occurs in Stephen
Hero, the early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, which Joyce energetically refused to publish and which
saw the light of day only after his death.
The paradox, then, is that Joyce's only contribution to criti­
cal theory lies in a submerged part of his production and that
this disappearance is not accidental. His attitude suggests de­
liberate rejection, the final gesture perhaps in an individual
adventure. In other words, what requires attention is the
epiphany as manifestation of an absence in a theoretical inves­
tigation. The aim of this book, accordingly, is to take seriously
the available early material, with a view to discerning, among
the tangle of juvenile enthusiasms and tentative constructions,
the secret line of research which was specifically Joyce's own.
vu
PREFACE
The task is a difficult one. We suffer from an overabundance
of possible sources. For we may safely assume, from internal as
well as external evidence, that Joyce had read all that a brilliant
young student at the end of the nineteenth century was likely
to read of current critical literature, whether romantic (e.g.,
Coleridge and Shelley) or postromantic (e.g., Ruskin, Pater,
and Wilde). No doubt one must be wary of words such as crit
ical or criticism, which suggest topical—if not contingent—
journalistic activity, or a very specific philosophical position
that Joyce scarcely mentioned, a fortiori held. This does not
mean that we must follow him blindfolded when he poses as
an Aristotelian or a Thomist, or both. And yet the word aes
thetic, which he did use, raises the problem of his relation, as
a turn-of-the-century author, to Aestheticism and the so-called
Aesthetic school. Although the movement had already run its
course when he began to write, its impact and part of its legacy
certainly oudasted its demise—and that of Oscar Wilde.
In short, I try to steer between the rocks of literary tradition
and history and the fascinating maelstrom of philosophical
speculation, the aim ultimately being to discover the rationale
of what was for Joyce, at the outset of his career, a deeply en­
grossing line of personal investigation.
Vlll
xM&z
ABBREVIATIONS
cw The Critical Writings of James Joyce. Edited by Ells­
worth Mason and Richard Ellmann. New ^fork:
Viking Press, 1959.
Letters Joyce, James. Letters of James Joyce. Edited by
Stuart Gilbert (vol. 1, 1957) and Richard Ell­
mann (vols. 2 and 3, 1966). 3 vols. New York:
Viking Press, 1966.
PA Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man: The Definitive Text, Corrected from the Dub
lin Holograph. By Chester G. Anderson and edited
by Richard Ellmann. New "fork: Viking Press,
1964.
SH Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. Edited by John Slo-
cum and Herbert Cahoon. New Ifork: New Di­
rections, 1944; rev. ed., 1963.
U Joyce, James. Ulysses. New "fork: Random House,
1934; reset and corrected, 1961.
Workshop The Workshop of Daedalus: James Joyce and the Raw
Materials for (A Portrait of the Artist as a Toung
Man." Collected and edited by Robert Scholes
and Richard M. Kain. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1965.
MBK Joyce, Stanislaus. My Brother's Keeper. Edited, with
an Introduction, by Richard Ellmann, and with a
Preface by T. S. Eliot. London: Faber & Faber,
1958.
IX
ABBREVIATIONS
Bosanquet Bosanquet, Bernard. A History of Aesthetic. 1892.
Reprint. London: Macmillan, 1904.
Butcher Butcher, S. H. AristotWs Theory of Poetry and Fine
Art. London: Macmillan, 1895, 1897; rev. ed.,
1902.
Oeuvres Joyce, James. Oeuvres. Edited by Jacques Aubert.
Vol. 1. P&ris: Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade,
1982.
x