Definition of Art: ‘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 .]

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Mimesis [i.e., Gk. for ‘imitation’]: ‘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.

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On artistic 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.)

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Structure & Entity: ‘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.)

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The soul (quoting Aristotle): ‘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]. Aubert takes Ellmann and Ellsworth Mason to task for not reprinting the contents of the Paris notebook in The Critical Writings (1957) - all the harder to understand since Ellmann quotes Joyce on sexual reproduction as a form of immortality from Gorman’s life [Gorman, 1939, pp.96-99]. See allusions to Aristotle’ formulae in the “Proteus” episode of Ulysses, Bodley Head edn., pp.31-1, 46, 55; 564, and “Circe”, 623.].

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Cf. Aristotelian sentences quoted by Herbert Gorman in James Joyce (NY: Farrar & Rhinehart, 1939), 94ff.:-

The soul is the first entelechy of any naturally organic body.
That which acts is superior to that which suffers.
Only when it is separate from all things is the intellect really itself and this intellect separate from all things is immortal and divine. [Gorman, p.95]
The principle that hates is not different from the principle that loves.
The intellectual soul is the form of forms.
Speculation is above practice.
Necessity is that by virtue of which it is impossible that a thing should be otherwise.
God is the eternal perfect animal.

[For Gorman’s remarks, see under RICORSO > Authors > Joyce > Commentary - supra.]

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Reproduction & divinity (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 in Jacques Aubert, l’Esthetique de James Joyce (Paris: Didier 1973), citing Gorman; also Fran O’Rourke, ’Allwisest Stagyrite’ [Joyce Studies, 21] (National Library of Ireland 2004), p.9.

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Desire and Loathing: ‘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.’

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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.)

Note: The contents of Joyce’s early notebooks were partly known to us from a transcription made by Herbert Gorman who was given access to them by the writer in the 1930s. During World War II the notebooks went missing and were presumed lost. In 2001 they were offered for sale in Paris by the son of Paul Léon, who had returned to Paris in 1941 to rescue Joyce’s papers and who had been arrested and murdered by the Gestapo. On inspection, it materialised that what had been regarded as two separate volumes, known respectively as the Paris and Pola notebooks, were in fact one. This was acquired with other papers by the National Library of Ireland - at the height of the Celtic Tiger years! - and have been made the subject of close study since then. (See, for instance, Fran O’Rourke, ‘Allwisest Stagyrite’ [Joyce Studies, 21] (National Library of Ireland 2004.)

[For an account of the “Paris Notebook” in the NLI papers of James Joyce, see RICORSO > “Authors” > James Joyce > Notes, attached .]