landess joyce aesthetic gnosticism

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J ames J oyce and Aesthetic GnosticismT H O M A S H. L A N D E S S

THE LI GHTof the artist in the modem world hasbeen the topic of too much fiction, poetry, andcommentary to require extensive definition. Iwould only point out what is already obvious tomembers of the academy: that the hauntingsense of alienation attributed to urban resi-dents of the sixties and seventies was preciselyanalyzed and rendered by a number of poetsand novelists even before the turn of the cen-tury; and between 1900 and 1950 virtuallyevery major literary figure addressed himself tothis question. Among the most important ofthese was J ames J oyce, one of the fewgenuinely influential figures in the develop-ment of twentieth-century fictional technique.His three nov el s4 Portrait oftheArtist as aY oung M an, U lysses, and F innegansWake-mirror, as well as render, the signifi-cant plunge into the pool of self that has beenapredominant subjectof the novel since the lateV ictorian period.Ulysses andF innegans Wake are undoubt-edly the most ambitious of Joyces works; for intheir radical departure from conventionalmodesof narration they suggest the triumphofindividual consciousness over the traditionalorderingof action-the subjugation of time andspace by the active imagination in league withthe will. Toa lesser degreeA Portrait o theA r t i s t suggests the same modernist tendencies,

though its meaning is rendered more often indiscourse than in the implications of formalcomplexity; and for this reason Portrait,Joyces first novel, provides us with one of thepurest examples in modern literature of thegnostic impulse as it manifests itself in theartistic imagination.On its most obvious level the central actionof the novel is concerned with the intellectualand spiritual growth of Stephen Dedalus, apattern of development that seems to somecri tics to include no more than an abnormallypainful childhood followed by adolescent re-bellion, maturity, andasatisfying sense of truevocation. To such commentators, Stephen issimply Everyboy, his sensibilities heightenedby an acute and instinctive awarenss of thecreated order that surrounds him. But he issomething more than a Wordsworthian poet,however Romantic his own conception of him-self. For Wordsworth conceived of the imagina-tion as responding to some great force fromwithout (call i t natureorcall it God); and whileJoyces artist has a keen eye for the naturalimage, he is more interected in the universeofwords, for him a realm of existence that tran-scends the merely given of the created order. Inone sense, then, the meaning of A Portrait ofhe Artist can be found in the progression ofStephen Dedalus soul from the mundane to the

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supra-mundane, a journey of the spirit thatfinally culminates in a tenuous flight from theconstitution of being itself, agnostic escapein which the author imperfectly believes andwhich the reader can finally accept only if he ishighly credulous or very young. I say finallyaccept because this novel is one of the mostcarefully wrought in all of English literature,and in the tightly woven texture of the narrativeJoyce is able to ensnare even the wariest andmost meticulous of readers.

PROFESSORMCVOECELI Nas told us that thecentral element in all gnostic experience is thatof the world as an alien place into which manhas strayed and from which he must find hisway back home to the other world of his ori-gin; and such an attitude is implicit in thefirst sentence of A Portrait o the Artist, for asseveral critics have noted, through the sugges-tive use of sounds J oyce has implied an exter-nal frame of reference with important meaning:. .-I n, , ..___.* .---- - *----V s x - b u y v l I a A t , aiiu a v c i y tjuud L I I I I C itwas therewasamoocow coming down alongthe road and this moocow that was comingdown along the road met anicens little boynamed baby tuckoo.His father told him that story: his fatherlooked at him through a glass: he had ahairyface.He was a baby tuckoo.2

Although this bit of childish nonsense seemsto have been taken from Joyces own experi -ence, it has additional significance in terms ofStephen Dedalus evolution; for in the jumbleof words one can discern an allusion to thecuckoo which lays its eggs in the nests of otherbirdsa3This reference suggests that Stephensstory may be read as a variant of The UglyDuckling in which the young boy, awkwardand strange, is raised among an alien broodand suffers painful abuse until he finally ma-tures and then flies away to join his own kind inthe community of afiner species. This ancientfolk tale in its various versions clearly em-bodies the potential for a gnostic sense ofalienation as defined by Voegelin and others.

The implied imageof the earth-bound cuckooor duckling, struggling among inferiors whotaunt him for his failure to conform to theircommunal norm, is a precise analogue toStephen Dedalus incipient sense of his ownsuperiority over family, nation, and church.The potential for rebellion against the prison ofhis world is realized both in the resolution ofthe ancient tale and in Joyces development ofhis central action. The bird flies away, tran-scending the earth to which he has been con-fined, and seeks his place in the sky where hesings or soars with agrace and beauty beyondthe capabilities of those whom he has left be-hind.

In A Portrait o the Artist as a Young ManStephen eventually rejects the communalworld into which he has been born, a worldfilled with creatures who are human and hencefallibly annoying to his sensibility. H is rejec-tion manifests itself in two ways analogous tothe movement of the folk tale. First, he makesafigurative flight into aesthetic gnosis, devisingatheology of his own which occupies his atten-tion in the latter portions of the novel. Second,he li terally abandons Ireland for the freedomeof Paris, which was just beginning to serve atthis time as the international gathering placefor expatriate artists.It is important to note that the nature ofStephen Dedalus early alienation is furtherreinforced by the abundant implications of hisname. As Stephen he i s the counterpart ofthe first martyr to the Christian faith, stoned todeath by Pharisees, the intractable adherentsof the old religious order. Stephen is thesufferer of corporate abuse, the visionary whopreaches a special truth to a world which re-sponds with vindictive hostility. J oyce doeslittle more with this first name than assign it tohis character, but Stephen himself recognizeshis identification with Daedalus, whom hecalls the old artif icer, creator of the labyrinthand escapee from the island prison of Crete.This myth, which, like the cuckoo story, hasmany potential meanings, may also embody theessentials of gnostic experience. For in JoyceIsversion the maze which his hero begins to buildis his own aesthetic, a private system whosemeaning he partially shares with fellow stu-dents, lesser intellects incapable of grasping

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its full significance. The flight of Daedalus,however, is obviously an analogue i n potent i aof the gnostic impulse, particularly when oneconsiders the fact that the mythical artist isaccompanied in his ingenious escape byIcarus, whose proud flight too near the sunresults in the melting of artificially constructedwings and a consequent fall to his death.In the initial stages of J oyces narrative, thefolk tale and the Greek myth coalesce into asingle action which prefigures the epiphanyof the hero, that moment when he comes to therealization that he has at last put behind him allof the communal concerns which have boundhim to the world:

Now at the name of the fabulous artificerhe seemed to hear the noise of dim wavesand to see a winged form flying above thewaves and slowly climbing the air. What didit mean? Was it a quaint device opening apage of some medieval book of propheciesand symbols, a hawklike man flying sun-ward above the sea, a prophecy of the endhe had been born to serve and had beenfollowing through mists of childhood andboyhood, asymbol of the artist forging anewin his workshop out of the sluggish matter ofthe earth a new soaring impalpable im-perishable being?His heart trembled; his breath camefaster and a wild spirit passed over his limbsas though he were soaring sunward. Hisheart trembled in an ecstasy of fear and hissoul was in flight. His soul was soaring in anair beyond the world and the body he knewwas purified in a breath and delivered ofincertitude and made radiant and commin--gled with the element of the ~pi r i t . ~This passage, which forms a portion of thenovels peripety, renders in unmistakeableterms the religious nature of this importantmoment in Stephen Dedalus life. In the firstplace, the figure of the flying man is not acreature of this world but is generated in the

imagination of the hero/artist asa result of thespoken word, the name Daedalus. The rela-tionship between the word and the image(word) is immediate, like the leap of an electricspark from pole to pole. The world of concrete

things does not seem to intervene, and in thehigher order into which his soul has ascendedhe is transfigured.The vision of the winged man, whose iden-tification with Horus as well as Daedalus hasbeen noted, is an absurdity that the reader mayaccept only with a willing suspension of disbe-lief, despite the equivocal word, seemed.Do Stephens eyes actually participate in adelusion or does the flying form exist onlywithin his imagination? In either case, themoment exemplifies Stephens rejection of theconstitution of being which, as Voegelin haswritten, is what it is, and cannot be affectedby human fancies. Hence, he continues,the metastatic denial of the order of mundaneexistence is neither a true proposition inphilosophy, nor aprogram of action that couldbe executed. The will to transform reality intosomething which by essence it i s not is therebellion against the nature of things as or-dained by God.5And indeed both Stephen and Joyce seem tounderstand this point precisely, when the herospeculates about the origins of his vision as aquaint device openingapageof some medievalbook of prophecies and symbols. He has, afterall, been reared by scholastics who recognizemagic for what it is-a tool of the devil. Theallusion to such sorcery as the alchemical,cabalistic, and hermetic traditions is unmis-takable and suggests the degree to which thereader is to understand this scene as the rendi-tion of a desire to transform the given world intosomething more pleasing to the will, and to doso on a higher level of being.On the next page the same idea is rein-troduced, in even more specific terms: Y es!Y es! Yes: he would create proudly out of thefreedom and power of his soul, as the greatartificer whose name he bore, a living thing,new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable,imperishable.6 Here there can be no mistakeabout what moves Stephen, if not Joyce. H enow believes he has transcended the givenworld and has become God the Father, able tocreate out o hi mel f a living thing which is tobe the beautiful, impalpable, imperishablel ogos. Having been affronted by the alien worldinto which he has been born, he has success-

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fully escaped into areality of his own creationwhere mythological figures can fly above theIrish Sea in response to the implacable urgewithin him that requires them to do so. Andalong with the image of Daedalus, his soulalso takes leave of its prison, as he sees it,soaring in an air beyond the world.But what can he do with the magical powershe has gained? Can he actually control being,reconstitute it? He believes he can, has alwayscoveted such powers. In the first few sentencesof the novel, for example, he sings a childishsong about a rose, altering its natural color togreen in order to suit his fancy. Later, whilestill a small boy, he acknowledges the impossi-bility of the green rose in the world as it isconstituted; yet he holds out the promise tohimself that perhaps somewhere such a thingmight exist. T he union of the rose with the colorgreen is a state of being which the poet, thefree soul, has the power to create, just as he isable to make the image of Daedalus fly in orderto symbolize his own aspirations.Having rejected the constitution of being,then, he is ready ta exercise the new potential.I.-. ..L ..uu uby bu 1 .h CVUlUC V I I U L Y I b I-ing his true vocation; and in one of the mostcelebrated passages of modem literature weseehim in the process of performing such mag-ical transformations. He is walking along thebeach, in the throes of his newly discoveredgnosis, feeling that he is about to be introducedto strange fields and hil ls and faces, when hesees a girl, in midstream, alone and still,gazing out to sea. During the course of thenovel Stephen has been defined in terms of hischanging relationships with women, and thusfar his attitudes toward his mother and towardthe girls he has known are recognizable asnormal developments in the life of a youngman. But at this point he looks at the beautifulstranger withanew precocity born of his rejec-tion of the world, and in his eyes she undergoesa miraculous transformation:

She seemed like one whom magic hadchanged into the likeness of a strange andbeautiful seabird. Her long slender barelegs were delicateasa cranes and pure savewhere an emerald trail of seaweed hadfashioned itself asasign upon the flesh. Her

thnt ha ha- nn-..;r-rl :.. - ......-.. ,C A:.- .._..,_

thighs, fuller and softhued as ivory, werebared almost to the hips where the whitefringes of her drawers were like featheringsof soft white down. Her slateblue ski rts wereki lted boldly about her waist and dovetailedbehind her. Her bosom was as a birds softand slight, slight and soft as the breast ofsome dark plumaged dove. But her long fairhair was girlish; and girlish and touchedwith the wonder of mortal beauty her face.8Again, aswith the image of the flying man,what s e e mto be is confused with what is; andan alteration of the order of mundane existencetakes place. It is possible, of course, to arguethat J oyce is merely making use of conven-

tional metaphor here in an effort to render theexcitement of Stephens active imagination.But what follows this extraordinary moment ofperception is too charged with abnormal mean-ing to support such a view, for Joyce makes itexplicit that the transformation that Stepheneffects is magic and that the girl indeed hasbeen changed (or half-changed) into a wingedcreature, something likeanEgyptian bird god,an analogue to the winged man of the youngartists earlier fancy.It is important to note that she is no longerherself at all but has becomeacreature made inthe image of her creator. Whatever integrityshe has as an object in the real world gives wayto the machinations of the artists will. There-fore the accidental properties she displays arealtered in Stephens perception of her and be-come a significant contribution to the transfor-mation of her substantial being.

Thus has the gnostic imagination, freed fromits prison, captured and subjugated thephenomenal other-than-self and then recreatedit on a higher level in the image of theego-Eve reverted to the status of rib, withStephen, the newest Adam, performing the roleof God. The girls whom he has known, desired,failed to win or else paid for in the marketplace:these have coalesced into one image and be-come the passive instrument of the artistsstricken pride. As he contemplates her stand-ing in quiet sufferance of his gaze, the pas-sive feminine spirit accepting the form im-posed by the active masculine impulse,Stephen is overcome with a fervor which can

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only be described as that of the religious pagan:Heavenly God! cried Stephens soul in anoutburst of profane joy. Her image haspassed into his soul forever and no wordhad broken the holy silence of his ec-stasy. Her eyes had called him and hissoul had leaped to the call. To live, toerr, to fall, to triumph, to recreate lifeout of life. A wild angel had appeared tohim, the angel of mortal youth andbeauty, an envoy from the fair courts oflife, to throw open before him in an in-stant of ecstasy the gates of all the waysof error andThe diction in this passage clearly and inten-tionally suggests the degree to which Stephensexperience is to be understood as the foundingof anErsatz religion in which he is both Creatorand aportion of the recreated order of exis-tence as well. In speaking of the urge torecreate life out of life and in designatingStephens joy as profane, J oyce gives hisreader (and himself) some hint of the mischief

that his character is up to. However, the youngconvert has yet to understand the full implica-tions of his religious zeal, though he is, at thispoint, thoroughly committed to its authentic-ity.Notice that even in the passages quotedabove, when Stephen is immersed in the trans-formations wrought by his own imagination, thereader never quite loses the sense of an oldorder still surviving and coexistent with thenew; for at this stage Stephen still submitspartially to the images of color, shape, andmotion which in some respects root his experi-ence in the events of a world of particularity.The awareness of things as they are, how-ever, is increasingly compromised asthe novelunfolds; and the latter pages are not dominatedby scenes in which Stephens experience of theconcrete is the avenue by which the meaning ofthe action is explored. Instead, J oyce gives thereader a series of Platonic dialoguespunctuated by occasional interior monologues,afew fully-rendered moments of dramatic con-frontation, and (at the very end) entries in theheros diary which somewhat ambiguously pre-sent his thoughts and feelings ashe is about to

fly from Ireland. And it is in these passages ofargumentation between Stephen and his philo-sophical adversaries that the author attempts tosuggest the final stage of his young rebelsdevelopment as an artist-a stage in which theyouth uses his scholastic training to forge anaesthetics which will servehim as a credo inlieu of the traditional pieties which he haschosen to reject.At first glance Joyces motives in creating adiscursive resolution to his action may seemobvious. Stephen wants to beawriter above allelse; he must reject other considerations assecondary; and of greatest importance, heneeds a well-formulated aesthetic theory inorder to undergird his attempts to recreate lifeout of life. But, as Walter Sullivan has ob-served, there are more basic reasons for Joycesdecision to end his narrative in a flurry ofdiscourse. Mr. Sullivan has suggested the useof the Faustian legend as an analogue to APortrait oftheArtist;O and though in his dis-cussion he is substantially right, I wouldmerely like to approach the same structuralproblems with a somewhat different compari-son in mind.In the first place, the desire to be a literaryartist is distinctly different fromapoets urge towrite poetry; and Stephens preoccupation withliterary theory as amodeof pure speculation isan important indication of what impulse reallylies behind his aspirations. In order to write,poets do not need to understand a well-developed literary theory any more than theyneed to master the discipline of formal gram-mar, though I suspect the latter would provemore useful than the former, since literarytheory of a purely apriori nature might tend tolead the would-be artist away from the genuineproblems he needs to confront in the act ofcomposition. I would suggest, then, thatStephen the artist does not necessarily benefitfrom the aesthetics he insists on devising. Cer-tainly the poetry he offers in evidence wouldtend to refute such a claim.

But Stephen the religious convert absolutelyrequires this system, because it becomes forhim a new theology to replace the old. In lectur-ing the dean and his friend Lynchon the natureof art and tragedy, Stephen is really satisfying

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a religious rather than an aesthetic need, andtherefore the full implications of this segmentof the novel might be better understood after anexamination of the faith he has rejected and themanner in which hi s new religion is defined.The old religion, of course, is not merelyRoman Catholicism but a more all-en-compassingpietas which includes a devotionto family, I reland, and the Church. Stephensalternative faith is one in which the artist isGod the Father, God the Son, and God the HolySpirit, his own family and communityaswell astranscendent being. This new vision is born outof the failure of the former orthodoxy, which, asJ oyce presents it, has become effete and cor-rupt, a religion of empty forms and endlesshypocrisies. I ts priesthood is composed ofliars, bullies, drunkards, dullwits, and falserhetoricians. Some of the spokesmen for thismoribund establishment speak for Church,some for I reland, and some for the family; butall arethe Pharisees of thestatus quo. Smug orshortsighted, they propagate the cant of afaithwhich, through J oyces meticulous rendition,the reader must reject as decadent whileapplauding the prophet who can proclaim agospel of regeneration. The moment of thatprophet is at hand when Stephensees(or seemsto see) the image of the winged Daedalus andundergoes his ecstatic conversion.The analogue between the development ofStephens New Testament and that of first-century Christianity i s striking and significant.Forgetting for a moment the idea that Stephenis both creator and incarnate word, let us con-sider him as aconvert become exegete, the St.Paul of his own divine revelation; for in thespiritual journey of Saul of Tarsus is embodiedthe fullest range of the religious founding thatJ oyce imitates in this novel, the movementfrom absolute commitment to the old order toacreative formulation of the theology of the new.As Stephen becomes in early maturity thechief pride of his J esuit instructors, sowas Paula brilliant and dedicated Pharisee who held thecoats of those who stoned the first Christianmartyr. Y et on the road to Damascus Paul wasstruck blind by the brilliance of Christs imageand immediately submitted without question toa truth he had previously denied with all his

considerable intellectual resources. At thatmoment, drained of theology, he gave himselfcompletely to the all-absorbing other-than-self. A s I have already suggested, preciselythe same thing happens to Stephen Dedalus.Y et for Paul and for Stephen, the moment ofecstasy cannot be indefinitely prolonged, butthe significance of the truth revealed is fol-lowed in both instances by exegesis, aprocessin which the reason analyzes and thensynthesizes the meaning of the irrational reve-lation. Paul, after regaining his sight, beginsto reflect on the li fe of J esus and His reportedwords; and in his Epistles (particularly in Ro-mans) he spends much of his time quarrelingwith the old religion, in order to define the new.Y et as a J ew, trained by the party ofcircumci-sion, his understanding of the new is articu-lated most often in the terms and rhetoric of theold.And the same is true of Stephen Dedalus,whose exegesis is grounded in the theology ofthe faith he has rejected. McAlister, hesays,would call my aesthetic theory appliedAquinas. Sofar as this side of aesthetic philos-ophy extends, Aquinas will carry me all alongthe line. When we come to the phenomena ofartistic conception, artistic gestation and artis-tic reproduction, I require a new terminologyand anew personal experience. And so heshould, for the two must, of necessity, gohandin hand. Y et the key word in this passage ispersonal. Pauls revelation could by nomeans be termed a pure illumination of self.Indeed his ego was largely submerged in theimageof Christ (though there are those who sayit surfaces from time to time in a kind of fastidi-ous priggery). But with Stephen the expressionof self is the ultimate devotional act. If there isany muse, it is hi s muse rather than themuse;and no one else may lay claim to her.Thus in his arguments with the Pharisees ofIreland he insists on the ultimate supremacy ofthe so-called creative act, which he believesmust take place outside the community of fam-ily, church, and nation. As he puts it in onedogmatic statement to his foi l Davin, T he soulis born first in the moments I told you of. It hasa slow and dark birth, more mysterious than thebirth of the body. When the soul of a man is

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born in this country therearenets flung at it tohold it back from flight. Y ou talk to me ofnationality, language, religion. I shall try t,oflyby those nets.Again the image of flight with its echoes ofthe cuckoo tale, the Daedalus myth, the legendof Horus. But here the mystical experience offlying becomes a trope in discourse, the occa-sion for aprogrammatic statement on the cre-ation asdefined by the new orthodoxy. A nd soit goes with Stephenashe contends with adver-sary after adversary, vanquishing them withanease that belies the complexity of the positionsthey advocate. (W e might all wish for philo-

sophical opponentssomuddle-headed and in-articulate!)Y et in his last encounter, he meetsa formi-dable peer in his friend Cranly, who is able toteach him the limitations of his own arrogantintellect. The occasion of this final dialogue isinitiated by Stephen himself, who, despite hisfrequent declarations of independence, i sdeeply troubled by a family quarrel.-With your people? Cranly asked.-With my mother.-About religion?-Y es, Stephen answered. A fter a pauseCranley asked:-What age is your mother?-Not old, Stephen said. She wishes me tomake my easter duty.-And will you?--I will not, Stephen said.-Why not? Cranly said.--I will not serve, answered Stephen.-That remark was made before, Cranly--It is made behind now, said Stephensaid calmly.hotly. l2Cranly immediately gains the upper hand inthis initial segment of the conversation; for not,only does he maintain his equanimity, but healso puts his finger precisely on the pressurepoint of Stephens rebellious nature: I will not

serve i s the devils line, and anyone who re-fuses to live within the constituted limitation ofGods autonomy i s by definition satanic.Cranly is calm in pointing out the truth becausefor him i t is no shocking discovery: he already

knows his friend well. But the interesting thingabout the brief exchange is the manner inwhich Stephen reacts to Cranlys remark. In-stead of being amusedorcoldly contemptuous,he is angered to the point of responding with asil ly and ineffectual play on words. Whyshould the charge of diabolismsodisturb him ifhe has rejected the Church and its dogma?Cranly pursues this question with J esuiticalskill, determining that Stephen neither be-lieves nor disbelieves in the Eucharist and isunwilling to attemptaresolution of this crucialdilemma, largely because in his intellectualpride he is pleased with the new man he hasbecome. The dishonesty of his position is ap-parent, particularly in light of the pain hecauses his mother in refusing to make hiscommunion. Cranly presses him on the issue,first testing him with a statement that J esusmay have been a charlatan, then notingStephens manifest shock and asking, Andwhy were you shocked if you feel sure that ourreligion i s false and that J esus was not the Sonof God? When Stephen equivocates, Cranlyraises essentially the same question in amoresharply focused formulation: And is that whyyou will not communicate, because youarenotsure of that too, because you feel that the hosttoo may be the body and blood of the son of Godand not awafer of bread? A nd because you fearthat it may be? Y es, replied Stephen, I feelthat and I also fear it. I see, says Cranly.13

And sodo we. T he rebellion, the rejection ofthe old faith, the mystical revelation, the care-fully devised theology-they areall part of afragile and tenuous system that might well fallto pieces under close and persistent scrutiny.But does it matter one is tempted to ask, ifStephen is skeptical in regard to the Churchand credulous in his dedication to the religionof art? The answer to this question should becl ear from Stephens attitude toward his easterduty and from his later replies to Cranly: hispeculiar commitment to art is born of extrava-gant pride, pride in his own intellectual integ-rity; yet it is obviously impossible for any hon-est thinker to enthrone an ideal and absolutefreedom in his heart without first disposing ofthe other question, the truth or falsity of Chris-tian revelation. For if the eucharist is thebody

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and blood of J esus Christ, then the artist cannotrecreate life out of life or refuse to serve.And an unwillingness to pursue this question isno more or less than a refusal to confront theultimate lie of his life.This attitude, of course, i s typical of thegnostic, as Voegelin has pointed out:

The gnostic thinker really does commitan intellectual swindle, and he knows it.One can distinguish three stages in the ac-tion of his spirit. On the surface lies thedeception itself. It could be self-deception;and very often it is when the speculation of acreative thinker has culturally degeneratedand become the dogma of a mass movement.But when the phenomenon i s apprehendedat its point of origin, deeper than the decep-.tion itself will be found the awareness of it.The thinker does not lose control of himself:the libido dominandi turns on its own workand wishes to master the deception aswell.This gnostic turning back on itself corre-sponds spiritually, as we have said, to thephilosophical conversion, theperiagoge inmovement of the spirit does not lead to theerotic opening of the soul, but rather to thedeepest reach of persistence in the decep-tion, whose revolt against God is revealed tobe its motive and purpose.14And, as if to prove Voegelins thesis somethirty-five years before its publication in Sci-ence, Politics and GnosticismStephen fleesfrom Cranly back into the narrow andcomfort-

able confines of his gnosis, betraying onceagain the deceitful nature of his flight: I willnot serve that in which I no longer believewhether it call itself my home, my fatherland,or my church: and I will try to express myself insome mode of life or art as freely asI can and aswholly as I can, using for my defense the onlyarms I allow myself to use-si lence, exile, andcunning.l 5No more perfect analogue to Satan couldexist in a work of realistic fiction, and thus heretreats from the only discursive encounter ofthe novel in which the question of the constitu-tion of being is placed squarely in the path ofhis perilous journey. Significantly, this combat

the P!n:cnic 6838C. Howeve r , the gnos t i c

is his last. Henceforth he will speak not toothers but to himself, in a diary whichepitomizes his struggle to sustain the self-illusion. And the last two entries signal hissuccess as a practicing gnostic, whatever hisoccasional horror at the vision of damnation, anold man with redrimmed horny eyes. In hisvaledictory he tells us that he will persist inworshipping the God of self and to recreate selfout of self in order to devise some object foradoration: Welcome, 0 ife, I goto encounterfor the millionth time the reality of experienceand to forge in the smithy of my soul the un-created conscience of my race . . .Old father,old artificer, stand me now and forever in goodstead.16Who is he at the end of this novel? I s heDaedalus or Icarus? Is this narrative the por-trait of the triumphant artist-as-hero or is it theportraitof a damned soul? The cri tics who havebest addressed themselves to this ultimatequestion, Walter Sullivan and Caroline Gor-don, disagreeon whether or not the author andthe hero are to be equated, though both under-stand Stephens story as rooted in impiety. Mr.Sullivan is firm and terse in his conclusion:Stephen is J oyce. Miss Gordon, on the otherhand, seems to say that Joyces obvious con-tempt for Stephen continues throughout thenarrative beginning with an ironic stance to-ward the child and ending with the final para-graphs in which the heros damnation is ren-dered as deplorable and even tragic. How,then, are we to resolve such an argument in thelight of the novels apparent gnostic implica-tions?In the first place, I would argue that if MissGordon is correct, then Joyce has misappliedhis considerable talents as a rhetorician; forthose passages which display the full range ofhis lyric prose are the ones which celebrateStephens aesthetic ecstasies, while, with theexception of the Cranly segment, he reserveshis keenest irony for scenes in which he ren-ders spokesmen for the old order.

But more importantly, Joyces structuring ofthe action makes clear the meaning of his nar-rative. He spends too many pages of his novelin denigration of the spokesmen for family,Ireland, and church to untie all his intricate

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knots with one scene featuring Cranlys well-executed attack. However M iss Gordon-all ofus-might wish J oyce to be Daedalus, grievingfor his fallen son but himself redeemed, wemust finally conclude that at this stage of hiscareer, like Stephen, he has mastered the finertechniques of gnostic self-deception and hasbeen trapped by the artifice of his own creativeimagination, the monumental achievementthat both tells his lifes story and intimates itsinherent tragedy.Free. Soul free and fancy free. Let the deadbury the dead.ls This is the new Christ speak-ing, StephedJoyce, the redeemer of self; andwe the readers who are allowed into thesanctum sanctorum of his inner soul must lis-ten to his voice in hushed adoration. For it is

*T his articleisbased on a paper given at the conferenceon Gnosticism and Reality, held at V anderbil t Universityin A pril of 1978under direction of Dr. Richard J . Bishir-jian and Dr. William Havard. Sponsors were the EarhartFoundation, the Vanderbilt Research Council, and theIntercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc. This article will sub-sequently appear as a chapter in a book tobepublished bythe L ouisiana State University Press.Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism(Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1968).p. 9. 2JamesJ oyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Yocurg Man (New Y ork:

hisspirit that has bridged the gap of years andinformed the time in which we live. Therhetoric of freedom soprevalent in our decadeisonly in part the result of the political revolu-tions of the eighteenth century. The kind offreedom people speak of today i s more likelythan not the freedom of Stephen Dedalus andJ ames Joyce, which is something more thanemancipation from political tyranny. I t is free-dom from social custom, freedom from family,freedom from tradition, freedom from church,freedom from the other-than-self, freedom fromthe created order, freedom from God. And ifweasa generation believe passionately and abso-lutely in this beautiful, impalpable, imperish-able illusion, we may in part thank J ames J oycefor our troubling faith.*The Viking Press, 1964),p. 7. 3See J ohn Kelleher, ThePerceptions of J ames Joyce, The Atlantic Monthly(March, 1958), 86. 4Joyce, p. 169. Woegelin, p. 169.6Joyce, p. 170. Vbid., p. 169. Ybid.,p. 171. 91bid., pp.171-172. Walter Sullivan, Death by Melancholy: E ssaysonModernSouthernF ictwn paton Rouge: Louisiana StateUniversity Press, 1972). pp. 97-113. J oyce, p. 209.%bid., pp. 238-239. Vbid., p. 243. qoegelin, pp.3233. 15Joyce, pp. 246247. qbid., p. 253. CarolineGordon, How to Read a Novel (New Y ork: The V ikingPress, 1957),pp. 210-214. J oyce, p. 248.

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