James Joyce: Quotations (1) - Ectracts from Works [I]

Early Writings
“Et Tu, Healy” (1891): ‘His quaint-perched aerie on the crags of Time / Where the rude din of this […] century / Can trouble him no more.’ Further, ‘My cot alas that dear old shady home / Where oft in youthful sport I played / Upon thy verdant grassy fields all day / Or lingered for a moment in thy bosom shade.’ (Given by Joyce in letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 22 Nov. 1930, in Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, 1975, p.355, and quoted in Ellmann, James Joyce [1959] 1965 Edn., p.330 & ftn.; also in Slocum & Cahoon, Bibliography of James Joyce, 1953, p.3.)

“Ecce Homo” (1899) [on Mukacsy’s picture of that title at the RHA]: ‘[…] Perhaps what is striking about the picture under [31] consideration is the sense of life, the realistic illusion. One could well fancy that the men and women were of flesh and blood, struck into silence trance, by the warlock’s hand. Hence the picture is primarily dramatic, not an execution of faultess forms, or a canvas reproduction of psychology. By drama I understand the interplay of passions; drama is strife, evolution, movement, in whatever way unfolded. Drama exists as an independent thing, conditioned but not controlled by its scene. […] However subdued the tone of passions may be, however ordered the action or commonplace the diction, if a play, or work of music, or a picture concerns itself with the everlasting hopes, desires and hates of humanity, or deals with a symbolic presentment of our widely related nature, albeit a phase of that nature, then it is drama. [Speaks of Maeterlinck’s characters which ‘our civilisation dubs … uncanny’] But in whatever dwarfed and marionette-like a manner, their passions are human, and so the exposition of them is drama. This is fairly obvious when applied to a stage subject but when the word drama is in an identical way, applied to Munkacsy, it may need a word of explanation.’ (pp.32.) [Cont.]

“Ecce Homo” (1899) - cont. ‘In the statuary art the first step towards drama was the separation of the feet. Before that sculpture was a copy of the body, actuated by only a nascent impulse, and executed by routine. The infusion of life, or its semblance, at once brought soul into the work of the artist, vivified his forms and elucidated his theme. It follows narually form the fact that the sculptor aims at producign a bronze or stone model of man, that his impulse should lead him to the portrayal of an instantaneous passio. Consequently although he has the advantage of the painter, in at the first glance deceiving the eye, his capability to be a dramatist is less broad than the painter’s. His power of moulding can be equalised by the painter’s backgrounds and skilful disposition of shades, and while in such a manner naturalism is produced on an areal canvas, the colours, which add another life, help his theme to its expression [32] in a very much completer and clearer whole. […] It is a mistake to limit drama to the stage; a drama can be painted as well as sung or acted, and “Ecce Homo” is a drama.’ [There ensues a detailed examination of the painting, as follows - cont.:]

“Ecce Homo” (1899) - cont.: ‘The expressions conveyed in the varying faces, gestures, hands, and opened mouthes are marvellous […; 34] It will be cleare from all this that the whole forms a wonderful picture, intensely, silently dramatic, waiting but the touch of the wizard wand to break out into reality, life and conflict. As such too much tribute cannot be paid to it, for it is a frightfully real presentment of all the baser passions of humanity, in both sexes, in every gradation, raised and lashed into a demoniac carnival. […] To paint such a crowd one must probe humanity with no scrupulous knife. [35; …] It would have been easier to make Mary a Madonna and John an evangelist but the artist has chosen to make Mary a mother John a man. I believe this treatment to be the finer and the subtler. […] Van Ruith painted a picture some years ago of Christ and the traders in the temple. His intention was to produce elevated reprimand and divine chastisement, his hand failed him and the result was a weak flogger and a mixture of lovingkindness and repose, wholly incompatible with the incident. Munkacsy on the contrary would never be under the power of his brush, but his view of the event is humanistic. Consequently his work is drama. Had he chosen to paint Christ as the Incarnate Son of God, redeeming his creatures of his own admirable will, through insult and hate, it would not have been drama, it would have been Divine Law, for drama deals with man. As it is from the artist’s conception, it is powerful drama, the drama of the thrice told revolt of humanity against a great teacher.’ (pp.34-36 - cont.)

“Ecce Homo” (1899) - cont.: ‘The face of Christ is a superb study of endurance, passion, I use the word in its proper sense, and dauntless will. [… T]he eyes are of a pale blue colour, if of any, as the face is turned to the light, they are lifted half under the brows, the only true position for intense [36] agony. They are keen, but not large, and seem to pierce the air, half in inspiration, half in suffering. The whole face is of an ascetic, inspired, wholesouled, wonderfully passionate man. It is Christ, the Man of Sorrows, his raiment red as of them that tread in winepress. It is literally Behold the Man. / It is this treatment of the theme that has led me to appraise it a drama. It is grand, noble, tragic but it makes the founder of Christianity, no more than a great social and religious reformer, a personality, of mingled majesty and power, a protagonist of a world-drama. No objections will be lodged against it on that by the public, whose general attitude when they advert to subject at all, is that of the painter, only less grand and less interested. / Munkacsy’s conception is as much greater than theirs, as an average artist is greater than an average greengrocer, but it is of same kind, it is to pervert Wagner, the attitude of the town. Belief in the divinity of Christ is not a salient feature of secular Christendom. But occasional sympathy with the eternal conflict of truth and error, of right and wrong, as exemplified in the drama at Golgotha is not beyond its approval.’ [End] (‘Royal Hibernian Academy “Ecce Homo”, in Ellsworth Mason & Richard Ellmann, eds., Critical Writings of James Joyce, Viking Press 1966, pp.31-37.)

“Drama and Life” (1900): ‘Humanity society is the embodiment of changeless laws which the whimsicalities and circumstances of men and women involve and overwrap. The realm of literature is the realm of these accidental manners and humours - a spacious realm; and the true literary artist concerns himself mainly with them. Drama has to do with the underlying law first, in all their nakedness and severity, and only secondarily with the motley agents who hear them out.’ [40] ‘By drama I understand the interplay of passions to portray truth; drama is strife, evolution, movement in whatever way unfolded; it exists, before it takes form, independently; it is conditioned but not controlled by its scene.’ […] ‘However subdued the tone of passions may be, however ordered the action or commonpace th diction, if a play or a workd of music or a picture presents the ever-lasting hopes, desires and hates of us, or deals with a symbolic presentment of our widely related nature, albeit in a phase of that nature, then it is drama.’ ‘[L]iterature is a comparatively low form of art. Literature is kept alive by tonics, it flourishes through conventions in all human relations, in all actuality. Drama will be for the future at war with convention, if it is to realise itself truly.’ [41] ‘If you ask me what occasions drama or what is the necessity for it all, I answer Necessity. It is mere animal instinct applied to [42] the mind. […] Apart from his world-old desire toget beyond the flaming ramparts, man has a further longing to become a maker and a moulder. That is the necessity of all art. Drama is again the least dependent of all arts on its material. If the supply of mouldable earth or stones gives out, sculpture becomes a memory, if the yield of vegetable pigments ceases, the pictorial art ceases. But whether there be marble or paints, there is always the artstuff for drama. I believe further that drama arises spontaneously out of life and is coeval with it.’ […/] (pp.41-42 - cont.)

“Drama and Life” (1900) - cont.: ‘As men differ as to the rise, so do they as to the aims of drama. It is in most cases claimed by the votaries of the antique school that the drama should have special ethical claims, to use their stock phrase, that it should instruct, elevate, and amuse. Here is yet another gyve that the jailers have bestowed. I do not say that drama may not fulfil any or all of these functions, but I deny that it is essential that it should fulfil them. Art, elevated into the overhigh sphere of religion, generally loses its true soul in stagnant quietism. As to the lower form of this dogma it is surely funny. [… /] A yet more insidious claim is the claim for beauty. As conceived by the claimants beauty is as often anaemic spirituality as hard animalism. Then, chiefly because beauty is to men an arbitrary quality and often lies no deeper than form, to pin drama to dealing with it, would be hazardous. Beauty is the swerga of the aesthete, but truth has a more ascertainable and more real dominion. Art [43] is true to itself when it deals with truth. Should such an untoward event as a universal reformation take pace on earth, truth would be the very threshold of the house beautiful.’ […] ‘Art is marred by such mistaken insistence on its religious, its moral, its beautiful its idealising tendencies. A single Rembrandt is worth a gallery full of Van Dycks. And it is this doctrine of idealism in art which has in notable instances disfigured manful endeavour, and has also fostered a boyish instinct to dive under the blankets at the mention of the bogey of realism. […T]he stage literally battens on the mental offal of its patrons.’ [44; cont.]

“Drama and Life” (1900) - cont.: Life we must accept as we see it before our eyes, men and women as we meet them in the real world, not as we apprehend them in the world of faery. […; 45] Joyce speaks of ‘Igdrasil, whose roots are struck in earth, but through whose higher leafage the stars of heaven are glowing and astir.’ (p.45) and concludes by quoting Ibsen’s, Pillars of Society: ‘“I will let in fresh air, Pastor”, answered Lona”.’ [End.] Note that the paper is faithfully reproduced in Stephen Hero. [See full text version in RICORSO Library, “Irish Classics”, James Joyce, infra.]

“The Day of the Rabblement” (15 Oct. 1901): ‘No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crow, is very careful to isolate himself. […] The Irish Literary Theatre is the latest movement of protest against the sterility and falsehood of the [69] modern stage. […] The Irish Literary Theatre gave out that it was the champion of progress, and proclaimed war against commercialism and vulgarity. It had partly made good its word and was expelling the old devil, when after the first encounter it surrendered to the popular will. Now, your popular devil is more dangerous than your vulgar devil. Bulk and lungs count for something, and he can gild his speech aptly. He has prevailed once more and the Irish Literary Theatres must now be considered the property of the rabblement of the most belated race in Europe.’ Further: ‘A nation which never advanced so far as [the] miracle play affords no literary model to the artist, and he must look abroad.’ [70]

“The Day of the Rabblement” (1901) - cont.: ‘Meanwhile, what of the artists? It is equally unsafe at present to say of Mr. Yeats that he has or has not genius. In aim and form The Wind Among the Reeds is poetry of the highest order, and The Adoration of the Magi (a story which one of the great Russians might have written) shows what Mr. Yeats can do when he breaks with the half-gods. But an aesthete has a flating will, and Mr. Yeats’s treacherous instinct of adaptability must be blaimed for his recent association with a platform form which even self-respect should have urged him to refrain. mr. Martyn and Mr. Moore are not writers of much originality. Mr. Martyn, disabled as he is by an incorrigible style, has none of the fierce,, hysterical power of Strindberg, whom he suggests at times; and with him one is conscious of a lack of breadth and distinction which outweighs the nobility of certain passages. Mr. Moore, however, has wonderful mimetic ability, and some years ago his books might ahve entitled him to the place of honour among English novelists. But though Vain Fortune (perhaps one should add some of Esther Waters) is fine, original work, Mr. Moore is really struggling in the backwash of that tide which has advanced from Flaubert through Jakobsen to D’Annunzio: for two entire eras lie between Madame Bovary and Il Fuoco. It is plain from Celibrates and the later novels that Mr. Moore is beginning to drawn up his literary account, and the quest of a new impulse may explain his recent startling convernsion. Converts are in the movement now, and Mr. Moore and his island have been fitly admired. But however frankly Mr. Moore may misquote Pater and Turgenieff to defend himself, his new impulse has no kind of relation to the future of art.’ (p.71; …; cont.)

“The Day of the Rabblement” (1901) - cont.: ‘If an artist courts the favour of the multitude he cannot escape the contagion of its fetichism [sic] and deliberate self-deception, and if he joins in a popular movement he does so at his own risk. The Irish Literary Theatre by its surrender to the trolls has cut itself adrift from the line of advancement. Until he has freed himself from the mean influence about him - sodden enthusiasm and clever insinuation and every flattering influence of [71] vanity and low ambition - no man is an artist at all. But his true servitude is that he inherits a will broken by doubt and a soul that yields up all its hate to a caress; and the most seeming-independent are those who are the first to reassume their bonds. But Truth deals largely with us. Elsewhere there are men who are worthy to carry on the tradition of the old master who is dying in Christiana. He has already found a successor in the writer of Michael Kramer [Gerhardt Hauptmann]; and a third minister will not be wanting when his hour comes. Even now he may be standing at the door.’ (end; Critical Writings, ed. Mason & Ellmann, [1959] 1965, pp.68-72.)

“James Clarence Mangan” (1902) [on aesthetic theory]: ‘It is many a day since the dispute of the classical and romantic schools began in the quiet city of the arts, so that criticism, which [73] has wrongly decided that the classical temper is the romantic temper grown older, has been driven to recognise these as constant states of mind. […] The romantic school is often and grievously misinterpreted, not more by others than by its own, for that impatient temper which, as it could see no fit abode here for its ideals, chose to behold them under insensible figures, comes to disregard certain limitations, and, because these figures are blown high and low by the mind that conceived them, comes at times to regard them as feeble shadows moving aimlessly about the light, obscuring it; and the same temper, which assuredly, has not grown more patient, exclaims that the light is changed to worse than shadow, to darkness even, by any method which bends upon these present things and so, works upon them and fashions them that the quick intelligence may go beyond them to their meaning, which is still unuttered.’ (Critical Writings, 1965, pp.73-74.)

“James Clarence Mangan” (1902) [on aesthetic theory] - cont.: ‘Finally, it must be asked concerning every artist in relation to the highest knowledge and to those laws which do not take holiday because men forget them. This is not to look for a message but to approach the temper which has made the work, an old woman praying, or a young man fastening his shoe, and to see what is there well and how much it signifies.’ (The Critical Writings of James Joyce, NY Viking Press 1959; reps. 1964, 1966, p.75). Also, ‘The critic is he who is able, by means of the signs which the artist affords, to approach the temper which has made there work and to see what is well done therein and what it signifies.’ (1977 Edn. p.74.)

“James Clarence Mangan” (1902) [on the poet himself]: ‘Mangan, it must be remembered, wrote with no native literary tradition to guide him and for a public which cared for matters of the day, and for poetry only so far as it might illustrate these.’ […] ‘Though even in the best of Mangan the presence of alien emotions is sometimes felt the presence of an imaginative personality reflecting the delight of imaginative beauty is more vividly felt. East and West meet in that personality (we know how); images interweave there like soft, luminous scarves and words ring like brilliant mail, and whether the song is of Ireland or of Istambol it has the same refrain, a prayer that peace may come again to her who has lost peace, the moonwhite pearl of his soul, Ameen.’ [78; cont.]

“James Clarence Mangan” (1902) [on the poet himself - cont.]: ‘All his poetry remembers wrong and suffering and the aspiration of one who has suffered and who is moved to great cries and gestures when that sorrowful hour rushes upon the heart.’ [80]. […] ‘No doubt they are only men of letters who insist on the succession of ages, and history or the denial of reality, for they are two names for one thing, may be said to be that which deceives the whole world. In this, as in much else, Mangan is the type of his race. History encloses him so straitly that even his fiery moments do not set him free from it. He, too, cries out, in his life and in his mournful verses, against the injustice of the despoilers, but never laments a deeper loss than the loss of plaids and ornaments. He inherits the latest and worst part of a legend upon which the [81] line has never been drawn out and which divides against itself as much as it moves down the cycles. And because this tradition is so much with him he has accepted it with all its griefs and failures, and has not known how to change it, as the strong spirit knows, and so would bequeath it: the poet who hurls his anger against tyrants would establish upon the future an intimate and far more cruel tyranny. In the final view the figure which he worships is seen to be an abject queen upon whom, because of the bloody crimes that he had done and of those as bloody that were done to her, madness is come and death is coming, but who will not believe that she is near to die and remembers only the rumour of voices challenging her sacred gardens and her fair, tall flowers that have become the food of boars. […]’

“James Clarence Mangan” (1902) [on the poet himself - cont.]: ‘Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state. The philosophic mind always inclines to an elaborate life […] taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music. With Mangan a narrow and hysterical nationality receives its last justification, for when this feeble-bodied figure departs dusk begins to veil the train of the gods, and he who listens may hear their footsteps leaving the world.’ [82; …] ‘In those vast courses which enfold us and in that great memory which is greater and more genreous than our memory, no life, no moment of exultation is ever lost; and all those who have written nobly have not written in vain, though the desperate and weary have heard the silver laughter of wisdom […] such as these have part […] the continual affirmation of the spirit.’ (p.83; end.)

“James Clarence Mangan” (1907 version; Critical Writings, 1966, p.175-86): ‘There are certain poets who, in addition to the virtue of revealing to us some phase of the human conscience unknown until their time, have the more doubtful virtue of summing up in themselves the thousand contrasting tendencies of their era, of being, so to speak, the storage batteries of new forces.’ (p.175.) Cf., Stephen Hero (1944): ‘Thus the spirit of man makes continual affirmation’ (1977 Edn., p.75), and Ulysses: ‘Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen’s views on the eternal affirmation of man in literature’ (Ulysses, Random Hse Edn., p.650; Bodley Head, pp.777). Note that Joyce has approving things to say about Mangan’s use of the Homeric epithet ‘wine-dark sea’ in an unnamed poem which he compares favourably with William Rooney’s Poems and Ballads. (Mason & Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings, [1959] 1966, p.86).

“James Clarence Mangan” (1907 version; in Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, ed. Kevin Barry [trans. Conor Deane] (Oxford 2001): ‘Poetry takes little account of the many of the idols of the market-place - the succession of the ages, the spirit of the age, the mission of the race’. Further: ‘[T]he essential effort of the poet is to liberate himself from the unpropitious influences of such idols which corrupt him from the inside and out’. (p.135.)

Autobiographical Writings
“Portrait of the Artist” (aka “1904 Portrait Essay”) [Opening]: ‘The features of infancy are not commonly reproduced in the adolescent portrait for, so capricious are we, that we cannot or will not conceive the past in any other than its iron memorial aspect. Yet the past assuredly implies a fluid succession of presents, the development of an entity of which our actual present is a phase only. Our world, again, recognises its acquaintance chiefly by the characters of beard and inches and is, for the most part, estranged from those members who seek through some art, by some process of mind as yet untabulated, to liberate from the personalised lumps of matter that which is their individuating rhythm, the first or formal relation of their parts. But for such as these a portrait is not an identificative paper but rather the curve of an emotion.’ [...] Further: ‘Use of reason is by popular judgement antedated by some seven years and so it is not easy to set down the exact age at whch the natural sensibility of the subject of this portrait awoke to the ideas of eternal damnation, the necessity of penitence and the efficacy of prayer.’ (Quoted [in full] in Hélène Cixous, The Exile of James Joyce, pp.206-12, p.206.)

“Portrait of the Artist” (Essay of 1904) [Conclusion]: ‘Already the messages of the citizens were flashed along the wires of the world … To those multitudes, not as yet in the wombs of humanity but surely engenderable there, he would give the word: Man and woman, out of you comes the nation that is to come, the lightning [sic] of your masses in travail; the competitive order is employed against itself, the aristocracies are supplanted; and amid the general paralysis of an insane society, the confederate will issues in action.’ (1904 Portrait, in Cixous, op. cit., p.212; Shorter Writings, Ellmann, et al., eds., OUP 1991, p.211-18). See full text version in RICORSO Library, “Irish Classics > Major Authors > James Joyce” [infra]. See also remarks of Vincent Sherry under James Joyce, Commentary [supra].

Stephen Hero (1944; rev. edn. 1977) - I [on aesthetics]: ‘The romantic temper […] is an insecure, unsatisfied, impatient temper which sees no fit abode here for its ideals and chooses therefore to behold them under insensible figures. As a result of this [73] choice it comes to disregard certain limitations. Its figures are blown to wild adventures, lacking the gravity of solid bodies, and the mind that has conceived them ends by disowning them. The classical temper, on the other hand, ever mindful of its limitations, chooses rather to bend upon those present things ans so work upon them and fashion them that the quick intelligence may go beyond them to their meaning which is still unuttered. In this method the sane and joyful spirit issues forth and achieves an imperishible perfection, nature assisting with her goodwill and thanks. For so long as this place in nature is given us, it is right that art should do no violence to the gift.’ [74] [Cf., Stephen to UCD President:] ‘My entire esteem is for the classical temper in art .. By “classical” I mean the slow elaborate patience of the art of satisfaction. The heroic, the fabulous, I call romantic […’; 89]. ‘The poet is the intense centre of the life of his age to which he stands in a relation than which none can be more vital. He alone is capable of absorbing in himself the life that surrounds him and of flinging it abroad again amid planetary music. It is time for the critics to verify their calculations in accordance with [this phenomenon]. to acknowledge that here the imagination has contemplated intensely the truth of the being of the visible world and that beauty, the splendour of truth, has been born.’ [75].

Stephen Hero (1944; rev. edn. 1977) - II [on the Catholic Church]: ‘These wanderings filled him with a deep-seated anger and whenever he encountered a burly black-vested priest taking a stroll of pleasant inspection through these warrens full of swarming and cringing believers he cursed the farce of Irish Catholicism: an island [whereof] the inhabitants of which entrusted their wills and mind to other that they might ensure for themselves a life of spiritual paralysis, an island in which all the power and riches are in the keeping of those whose kingdom is not of this world, an island in which Caesar [professes] confesses Christ and Christ confesses Caesar that together they may wax fat upon a starveling rabblement which is bidden ironically to take to itself this consolation in hardship “The Kingdom of God is within you”.’ [132] ‘The idea that the power of an empire is weakest at its borders requires some modification. In many cases the government of an empire is strongest at its borders and is invariably so when its power at the centre is on the wane. it will perhaps be a considerable time before Ireland will be able to understand that the Papacy is no longer going through a period of anabolism. [133; …] the persistence of Catholic power in Ireland must intensify very greatly the loneliness of the Irish Catholic who voluntarily outlaws himself out of so strong and intricate a tyranny may often be sufficient to place him beyond the region of reattraction.’ [134]

Stephen Hero (1944; rev. edn. 1977) - III [on artists]: ‘There are certain poets who, in addition to the virtue of revealing to us some phase of the human conscience unknown until their time, have the more doubtful virtue of summing up in themselves the thousand contrasting tendencies of their era, of being, so to speak, the storage batteries of new forces.’ [175].

Stephen Hero (1944; rev. edn. 1977) - IV [on epiphanies - 1] - ‘A young lady was standing on the steps of one of those brown brick houses which seem the very incarnation of Irish paralysis. A young gentleman was leaning on the rusty railings of the area. Stephen as he passed on his quest heard the following fragment of colloquy out of which he received an impression keen enough to afflict his sensitiveness very severely.

This triviality made him think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments.’ [SH187-88.]

Stephen Hero (1944; rev. edn. 1977) - IV [on epiphanies - 2]: Stephen - ‘You know what Aquinas says: The three things requisite for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry, and radiance. Some day I will expend that sentence into a treatise. Consider the performance of your own mind when confronted with any object, hypothetically beautiful. You mind to apprehend the object divides the entire universe into two parts, the object, and the void which is not the object. To apprehend it, you must lift it away from everything else: and then you perceive it as one integral thing, that is a thing. You recognise its integrity.’ […/] ‘That is the first quality of beauty: it is declared in a simple sudden synthesis of the faculty which apprehends. What then. Analysis then. The mind considered the object in whole and in part, in relation to itself and to other objects, examines the balance of its parts, contemplates the form of the object, traverses every cranny of [189] the structure. So the mind receives the impression of the symmetry of the object. The mind recognises that the object is in the strict sense of the word, a thing, a definitely constituted entity.’ […] ‘Now for the third quality. For a long time I couldn’t make out what Aquinas meant. He uses a figurative word (a very unusual thing for him) but I have solved it. Claritas is quidditas. After the analysis which discovers the second quality the mind makes the only logically possible synthesis and discovers the third quality. This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. The soul of the commonest object seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.’ (Stephen Hero [draft novel], 1944, p.190; see longer extracts and comparable version in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916, infra.) [For further extracts from Stephen Hero, see infra.]

“Paris Notebook” (1903): ‘Desire is the feeling which urges us to go to something and loathing is the feeling which urges us to go from something: and that art is improper which aims at exciting these feelings in us whether by comedy or by tragedy. Of comedy later. But tragedy aims at exciting in us feelings of pity and terror. Now terror is the feeling which arrests us before whatever is grave in human fortunes and unites us with its secret cause and pity is the feeling which arrests us before whatever is grave in human fortunes and unites us with the human sufferer. Now loathing, which in an improper art aims at exciting in the way of tragedy, differs, it will be seen, from the feelings which are proper to tragic art, namely terror and pity. For loathing urges us from rest because it urges us to go from something, but terror and pity hold us in rest, as it were, by fascination. When tragic art makes my body to shrink terror is not my feeling because I am urged from rest, and moreover this art does not show me what is grave, I mean what is constant and [143] irremediable in human fortunes nor does it unite me with any secret cause for it shows me only what is unusual and remediable, and it unites me with a cause only too manifest. Nor is an art properly tragic which would move me to prevent human suffering any more than an art is properly tragic which would move me in anger against some manifest cause of human suffering. Terror and pity, finally, are aspects of sorrow comprehended in sorrow - the feeling which the privation of some good excites in us.’

“Paris Notebook” (1903): ‘e tekhne mimeitai ten physin - This phrase is falsely rendered as “Art is an imitation of Nature”. Aristotle does not here define art; he says only, “Art imitates Nature” and means that the artistic process is like the natural process … It is false to say that sculpture, for instance, is an art of repose if by that be meant that sculpture is unassociated with movement. Sculpture is associated with movement in as much as it is rhythmic; for a work of sculptural art must be surveyed according to its rhythm and this surveying is an imaginary movement in space. It is not false to say that sculpture is an art of repose in that a work of sculptural art cannot be presented as itself moving in space and remain a work of sculptural art.’ ([Signed,] ‘James A. Joyce, 27 March, 1903, Paris’; Mason & Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings, NY 1959, p.145.

“Paris Notebook” (1903): ‘Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.’ ([Signed,] ‘James A. Joyce, 28 March, 1903, Paris’; in Mason & Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings, NY 1959, p.145; ref. Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, NY: Farrar & Rhinehart 1939, pp.96-99.) [See also “Witty Aristotle”, in Notes, infra.]

“Paris Notebook” (1903) [1]: ‘The soul is the first entelechy of a naturally organic thing.’ (DA 1.2); ‘The intellectual soul is the form of forms.’ (De Anima, 3.8; Joyce’s translation from J. Barthelemy Sainte-Hilaire’s Psychologie d’Aristote: Traité de l’Ame, Paris: Ladrange 1840) - being the first French translation; quoted from the lost Paris Notebook in Jacques Aubert, l’Esthetique de James Joyce (Paris 1973), p.129 - as given in Herbert Gorman’s James Joyce (1939) [pp.95-96].

“Paris Notebook” (1903) [2] - quoting Aristotle: ‘The most natural act for living beings which are complete is to produce other beings like themselves and thereby to participate as far as they may in the eternal and divine.’ (Given in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, 1959, 1865 Edn., p.212n. [quoting Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, 1939, p.94 - though without acknowledgement). Also copied from Gorman in Jacques Aubert, l’Esthetique de James Joyce (Paris: Didier 1973); and Fran O’Rourke, Joyce’s Quotations from Aristotle: “Allwisest Stagyrite” [Joyce Studies, 21] (National Library of Ireland 2004), p.9.

Paris Notebook (1903): ‘[D]esire urges us from rest that we may possess something but joy holds us in rest so long as we possess something, Desire, therefore, can only be excited in us by a comedy (a work of comic art) which is not sufficient in itself inasmuch as it urges us to seek something beyond itself; but a comedy (a work of comic art) which does not urge us to seek anything beyond itself excites in us the feeling of joy. All art which excites in us the feeling of joy is so far comic and according as this feeling of joy is excited by whatever is substantial or accidental in human fortunes the art is to be judged more or less excellent: and even tragic art may be said to participate in the nature of comic art so far as the possession of a work of tragic art (a tragedy) excites in us the feeling of joy. From this it may be seen that tragedy is the imperfect manner and comedy the perfect manner in art. All art, again, is static for the feelings of terror and pity on the one hand and of joy on the other hand are feelings which arrest us. It will be seen afterwards how this rest is necessary for the apprehension of the beautiful - the end of all art, tragic or comic - for this rest is the only condition under which the images, which are to [144] excite in us terror or pity or joy, can be properly presented to us and properly seen by us. For beauty is a quality of something seen but teror and pity and joy are states of mind.’ (Dated ‘13 Feb. 1903’; “Paris Notebook”, in Mason & Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings, NY 1959, p.143-46; pp.144-45.)

Paris Notebook (1903) - on genres: ‘There are three conditions of art: the lyrical, the epical and the dramatic. That art is lyrical whereby the artist sets forth the image in immediate relation to himself; that art is epical whereby the artist sets forth the image in mediate relation to himself and to others; that art is dramatic whereby the artist sets forth the image in immediate relation to others.’ (Signed: ‘James A. Joyce, 6 March 1903, Paris’.)

Paris Notebook (1903): ‘Rhythm seems to be the first or formal relation of part to part in any whole or of a whole to its part or parts, or of any part to the whole of which it is a part … Parts constitute a whole as far as they have a common end.’ (Signed ‘James A. Joyce, 25 March 1903, Paris’; “Paris Notebook”, in Mason & Ellmann, ed., Critical Writings, NY 1959, p.143-46; p.145.) [For an account of the “Paris Notebook” in the NLI papers of James Joyce, see under Notes, infra.]

“Pola Notebook” (1904) - The Act of Apprehension: ‘It has been said that the act of apprehension involves at least two activities - the activity of cognition or simple perception and the activity of recognition. The act of apprehension, however, in its most complete form involves three activities - the third being the activity of satisfaction. By reason of the fact that these three activities are all pleasant themselves every sensible object that has been apprehended must be doubly and may be trebly beautiful. In practical aesthetic philosophy the epithets “beautiful” and “ugly” are applied with regard chiefly to the third activity, with regard, that is, to the nature, degree and duration of the satisfaction resultant from the apprehension of any sensible object and therefore any sensible object to which in practical aesthetic philosophy the epithet ‘beautiful’ is applied must be trebly beautiful, must have encountered, that is, the three activities which are involved in the act of apprehension in its most complete form. Practically then the quality of beauty in itself must involve three constituents to encounter each of these three activities ...’ (J.A.J. Pola. 16 XI 04; Critical Writings, 1966, p.48.)

Paris Notebook - The Aristotelian sentences [sententiae] that Joyce copied into his notebook in Paris were first quoted by Herbert Gorman in James Joyce (NY: Farrar & Rhinehart, 1939), 94-95ff., and afterwards in Scholes & Kain, The Workshop of Dedalus (1965) and Jacques Aubert, l'Aesthetique de James Joyce (1977). These proved to be a small selection of the 31 sentences that Joyce transcribed - the full series of which first appeared in print in Fran O’Rourke, Joyce’s Quotations from Aristotle: “Allwisest Stagyrite” [Joyce Studies, 21] (National Library of Ireland 2004) - with notes on the sources and some philosophical commentary upon them. O’Rourke numbers them 1-31.