James Joyce is no fair. No, I don't mean that. I only would have liked a little more of a hint towards whether the scene we walk into in the library was being seen from a distance by Bloom, being described in the thrid person by a narrator, or if we are in Stephen's head. It took a long time finally realize that, much like the first chapter, we were being presented a combination of the last two narrative structures.
One reason I had a hard time figuring this out was because of the physical nature of many of description of the people surrounding Stephen. This felt unusaul for our abstract and self-absorbed protagonist. However, this idea of physicality functions throughout this section as more than just a confusing literary device. We see the idea of the physical presented in discussion on Plato. Plato felt that truth was only found in thought, in the abstract nature of things, the physical form of things being just crude representations for thought. This seems to go against Stephen's struggle with forms and his idea of himself and his art. Thinking of Aristotle often, we can assume that Stephen feels that forms are important.
Yet, in his disucssion on Hamlet, this may not be absolutely true. Stephen describes the physical connection between child and mother, that amor matris is the only love in the world. However he shows how there really is no connection between the father and child, that there is no true physical sharing between them. In this way, Stephen gives the physical an importance, and yet he shows that it is not really necessary for life. This gets confusing, as Stephen is himself, when thinking about Stephen's feelings towards his parents. We can assume a certain amount of disdain for his father based on the Proteus episode, and we also see his guilt towards his mother. These things all combine to show a particularly torn, insecure and pretentious Stephen in this episode of the book.
1 comment:
About Joyce's unfairness: point taken. About physicality - I think you've hit on a major issue in the chapter and novel. The physical world decays and falls into disorder, and people do nothing about it here on June 16 in Dublin. And why? They're busy. Bloom is occupied with his thoughts, which are often of the physical: body processes, pretty women, half-understood science, mechanics of things, and - not least - food. The literary men of Dublin are interested in the high ideas in Shakespeare, the spiritual, Platonic truths, seeing Hamlet (a figure for Stephen, n.t.s.), as a lost, innocent poet. Stephen's interpretations are all derived from the facts: Shakespeare's absence from his home, his appearance (on stage) as Hamlet's father, his own dead son, Hamlet's misdeeds throughout the play. And did Stephen kill his mother as Hamlet set out to kill Claudius? Maybe not. But Bloom and Stephen, focusing on the physical in a theoretical manner, miss the physical mayhem in front of them. Gertie MacDowell in Nausicaa dreams of a love affair but cannot think of the physical side of love. Bloom can think of little else; where is the spirit in his love of Gertie or Molly? Worst of all, Irish revivalists want to live in a grandiose, flowery, imaginary world.
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