Lector dr. Arleen Ionescu, Universitatea Petrol-Gazedin Ploieti
The paper is an attempt to define epiphanies and to apply the term to Joyces Ulysses. In the early draft of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, entitled Stephen Hero, James Joyce adapted the term to secular experience. He meant a sudden revelation while observing a commonplace object. Stephens earlier ambition is to compose momentous epiphanies. In Joyces Ulysses, the most important revelations which are derived from phases of the mind are the dream epiphanies. In his work, Epiphany in the Modern Novel- Revelation as Art, Morris Beja divided Joyces epiphany into two major types: retrospective epiphanies and the past recaptured. My paper also deals with the irrelevance of epiphanies which is connected to a more general notion which might be called the criterion of incongruity.
Definitions on epiphanies vary according to different dictionaries of literary terms: the epiphany is a manifestation of Gods presence in the world. 1 . It is a symbol of a spiritual state. This aspect of aesthetic theory is left out of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but a knowledge of it is essential for an understanding of Joyce as an artist 2 . The epiphany commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles in the form of the Magi. It is celebrated on Twelfth Night, January 6, according to Hugh Holmans A Handbook to Literature. Initially the epiphany was not given a wide currency as a critical term. James Joyce took a theological word and applied it to a literary tradition; he used it to designate an event in which the essential nature of something a person, a situation, an object was suddenly perceived. 3 The first appearance of the term in criticism is recorded in Joyces Stephen Hero. Dubliners, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are in fact series of increasingly complex and revealing insights of grace as well as intuitions of immortality. In the early draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, entitled Stephen Hero, the Irish writer adapted the term to secular experience. By epiphanies, in Joyces words, Stephen 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 4 . Putting all these definitions together we may say that the epiphany is a revelation, a sudden insight while observing a commonplace object. Stephens earlier ambition is to compose momentous epiphanies. Stephen also calls epiphanies spiritual ones, so we can easily interpret the concept of epiphany religiously. In fact until the past few centuries moments of revelation were almost invariably regarded as just what the phrase implies: moments in which an external divine force reveals the truth 5 . In Joyces Ulysses, the most important revelations which are derived from phases of the mind are the dream epiphanies. Richard Ellman shows that Joyce was indeed fascinated by Sigmund Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams, even if the main difference between the two great twentieth century personalities consists in the fact that while Joyce was looking for revelation, Freud was in search of scientific explanation. In his work, Epiphany in the Modern Novel- Revelation as Art, Morris Beja divided Joyces epiphanies which arise from memory into two major types: retrospective epiphanies and the past
Revenire Cuprins 216 recaptured 6 . The main difference between the two consists in the fact that former are the ones in which an event arouses no special impression when it occurs, but produces a sudden sensation of new awareness when it is recalled at some future time 7 ; the latter reminds us of Proust and his la recherch du temps perdu. Sometimes an epiphany may originate in a direct statement, yet the revelation produced is somehow irrelevant to that statement. Such epiphanies are connected to a more general notion which might be called the criterion of incongruity or the criterion of insignificance. After all, it is a trivial incident, a triviality that makes Stephen think of collecting epiphanies. An epiphany may also arise, as Stephen tells Cranly from the apprehension of a concrete object, such as the clock of the Ballast Office which they were passing by at that moment: -Yes, said Stephen. I will pass it time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it. It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublins street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany. -What? -Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised 8 . The exposition of aesthetics in Stephen Hero begins as Stephen tells Cranly: it is just in epiphany that I find the third, the supreme quality of beauty 9 . That is what he calls claritas, the moment in which after perceiving an object (integritas) and apprehending it (consonantia), we recognize the thing in itself its soul, its whatness: This is the moment which I call epiphany 10 . Stephen states the matter explicitly the thing the Ballast office Clock is out there; the perceiver needs to adjust his focus carefully under ideal conditions, an epiphany occurs: object and observer coincide to produce a pellucid reality. Similarly, in A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, Stephen Dedalus explains to Lynch how, confronted by a basket, the mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not a basket in order to apprehend it as one thing. This phase of perception is called by Stephen the discovery of the objects integritas. Two successive phases, the discovery of consonantia and of claritas yield a radiant manifestation of the whatness of a thing. Epiphany is central not only in Joyces concept of the function of the artist. It plays a very important role in his theories of aesthetics. Many writers, especially religious poets and mystics have conveyed experience of epiphanies: George Herbert, Henry Vaugham, Gerard Manley Hopkins are to be mentioned for striking instances of epiphanies. A special place should be given to Wordsworth, as the most influential Romantic statement on inspiration probably belongs to him. In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth suggested that we should be aware of the poetic value of moments if illumination: a state of vivid sensation, to choose incidents and situations from common life and to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings 11 . Wordsworths stress was on the artist, not on a divine source, therefore on the subject, not on the object, as in the case of Joyce. The Prelude almost amounts to a theory of epiphany: There are in our existence spots of time That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among those passages of life that give Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, 217 The mind is lord and master outward sense The obedient servant of her will. Such moments Are scattered everywhere, taking their date From our first childhood. (12.208-20) The pleasure which lies in the spots of time for Wordsworth is called the bread of everyday life in Joyces terms, as his brother remembers: -Dont you think, said he reflectively, choosing his words without haste, there is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do? I mean that I am trying in my poems to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own for their mental, moral, and spiritual uplift, he concluded glibly 12 . Wordsworths view of experience foreshadows not only Joyce, but Proust as well. Proust was to put an emphasis on the past and memory. What Wordsworth did was to emphasize that the poets emotion is not so much recollected as recaptured. In his poem, when the daffodils flash upon his inward eye 13 , he is happy not because he remembers an image that had once been pleasant but because he regains his past feelings. His constant meditation on his memories also leads him to give to many of his childhood experiences meanings they did not originally have 14 , to make them what Morris Beja calls retrospective epiphanies. Wordsworth is not the only Romantic poet who made a great deal out of spots of time. Shelley recorded in a number of poems occasions when he became a dedicated spirit (in Wordsworths terms). It seems that it is from Shelleys remarks in the Defence of Poetry on the transitoriness of poetic inspiration that Joyce drew the image of the fading coal, a term which he employed when referring to the state of mind during the mysterious instant of claritas, in other words in the moment of epiphany. We may mention Blake as well for his Auguries of Innocence holding Infinity in the Palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an hour. Therefore we may consider Romantic poets took up the interest in the relativity of time. As George Poulet shows, Romanticism desired to give the moment all the profundity, all the infinity of duration of which man feels capable 15 . Romantic poets had thus long anticipated Prousts realisation in The Past Recaptured that the subjective chronometers allotted to men are not all regulated to keep the same time 16
The appearance of epiphanies makes the readers task difficult in the sense that he has to see beyond the lines. For instance the reader should understand that in Proteus Stephen has just connected the Hellenistic past (Alexandria) with theosophy (mahamanvantara), and both with epiphanies. Erlene Stetson discusses the third chapter of Ulysses as being less dependent on the outside world than the first two and takes into account the first paragraph as being dominated by ideas from Aristotle, Berkeley and Jakob Boehme, even if none of them are named: Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no- one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once (James Joyce, Ulysses, with an introduction by Declan Kiberd, Penguin Books, 1992, p. 50) Weldon Thorntons lead, that probably Stephen was introduced to Pico della Mirancola through Paters The Renaissance, is useful. Reference books on Ulysses state or imply that Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), an Italian humanist, attempted to bring together earlier religions, or mysticism, with Christianity and became a natural forerunner of Joyce. This is what Stephen tries to 218 do in Proteus. We shouldnt forget that Stephens name reminds us of the Greek myth. An invocation to the archetypal architect Daedalus would perhaps serve as a fitting prelude to our demonstration. To hide the bull born Minotaur and save king Minos and Pasiphae from disgrace, the cunning craftsman Daedalus built a fabulous labyrinth in Crete. This masterpiece of creativity later served as a prison-tower to the creator, and flight from the maze turned out to be his sole means of escape. With newly designed waxen wings, Daedalus strove to overcome the menace of his own creation. Daedalus maze is in fact a small act of creation included in Gods Creation; it is also an alternative to the perfection of Nature: Art is the perfection of Nature: were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a Chaos: Nature hath made one world and Art another. Now Nature is not at variance with Art, nor Art with Nature, they being both servants of Providence. In briefe, all things are artificiall; for Nature is the Art of God 17 . As Mulligan says, the mockery of it is the absurd name of Stephen, an ancient Greek. (James Joyce, Ulysses, p. 2) who tries to find a way to mix mythology and religion. Pater describes the frame of mind of Pico della Mirandola, the modern scholar who would bring about a reconciliation between Christianity and the religion of ancient Greece, which is very close to Stephens frame of mind in both A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses: A modern scholar occupied by this problem observe that all religions may be regarded as natural products, that, at least in their origin, their growth, and decay, they have common ways, and are not to be isolated from the other movements of the human mind in the periods in which they respectively prevailed; that they arise spontaneously out of the human mind, as expressions of the varying phases of its sentiments concerning the unseen world; that every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced 18 . Joyces Stephen might have noticed that each has contributed something to the development of the religious sense, and ranging them as so many stages in the general education of the human mind, justify the existence of each. This places him again very close to Pico della Mirandola for whom the basis of the reconciliation of the religions of the world lays in the inexhaustible activity and creativeness of the human mind itself, in which all religions alike have their root, and in which all are reconciled; just as the fancies of childhood and the thoughts of old age meet and are laid to rest, in the experience of the individual 19 . In fact what else is his interior monologue if not a commentary on The Genesis? He sees beyond appearances and he uses his eyes for that: Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eye. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. (p. 45) The world seen by Stephen leads to a series of images referring to the way colours create the world and the human beings: Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. (p. 45) This hierarchical image originates in the first sublime moment in Genesis, where God said, let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness. As the quotation from the Bible suggests that light was preceded in fact by sounds, as God said that there should be light. Stephen is thus aware of that: Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles oer his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinader. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. (p. 45) Yet what makes Stephen think of the genesis is the sound of his boots: Crush, crack, crick, crick. (p. 45). That gives him the impression that he is walking into eternity along Sandymount strand. (p. 45) Therefore, the reader of Ulysses must take into account the fact that Joyces epiphanies mean that the opposites mix: sacred-profane, saint-like- trivial, etc. In fact Stephen believed that the manifestation essential to epiphany may result from a variety of causes: the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or . a memorable phase of the mind itself 20 . 219 From this first act of division, images- sounds, Julia Kristeva demonstrates all the other divisions, including that between the sexes: Yahweh Elohim created the world and concluded alliances by dividing (Karath) light from darkness, the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth, the earth from the seas, the creatures of the water from the creatures of the air, the animals each according to their kind and man (in His own image) from himself. Its also by division that he places them opposite each other: man and woman divided from man, made of that very thing which is lacking in him, the biblical woman will be wife, daughter or sister or all of them at once, but she will rarely have a name. 21
An act of division creates an epiphany in the case of Leopold who performs a Druidic act of divination in June, before the summer solstice; Stonehenge sits in his hand, making him control the sun and become king. With this tiny, detached, highly ironic gesture, Bloom extinguishes the universe and then, playing the game of Genesis, brings it back. It is obvious that again Joyce had some Renaissance engraving in mind. Yet we should also take into account the light emanating from the eyes of Bloom: For Joyce these light rays knowledge, sexuality, identity, creativity originate not in the physical world but rather within the darkening eyes of the artist in the act of divination. To see: to perceive; to understand: to believe 22 . Time means life as well as death and it is human beings omnipotent adversary, that they slice into discrete linear segments (days, hours, minutes, seconds, even lifetimes) which become a shield against our fear of unlinearity which has a climax in eternity, and an anticlimax in obliteration and death. The reconciliation of Christianity and the religion of old Greece is also felt in terms of the reconciliation of past and future: I am Stephen thinks a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. (p. 45). The character understands that God is present in the world, what he has to do is just to realise that, to open his inner eyes and see: Open your eyes. (p. 45) becoming aware means becoming responsible, understanding that life is followed by death: No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff [] (p. 45) As Shiv K. Kumar noticed, the present moment in Ulysses has the same fluid tendency of continuously fading into the past and future in complete defiance of any arbitrary divisions of time. The minds of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus remain in a perpetual flux and cannot be said to coincide with any particular mathematical instant. 23 Even if characters live in the present, the past is commanded by the present experience. Experiences from the past are distilled by elaborately intellectual metaphors. There is as Kumar suggested- a significant resemblance between Joyces conception of the continuous present tense, Gertrude Steins prolonged present, William Jamess specious present, and Bergsons real, concrete live present. As Richard Ellmann suggested, Stephens apostasy is accordingly presented as a choice for himself, and not necessarily one for others. On the other hand, he is an exemplum, not only in his capacity as artist, but in his character of emancipated man. His initial submission, in fear and remorse, to the terrifying sermons about death, judgement, and punishment, changes to revulsion at their cruelty 24 .
Bibliographical notes:
1 M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, fourth edition, Saunders International Editions, 1984, p. 54 2 J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Revised Edition, Penguin Books Ltd., Harmindsworth, Middlesex, 1985, pp. 237-238 3 C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, fourth edition, based on the original edition by William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard, Bobbs-Merril Educational Publishing, Indianapolis, 1980, p. 164 4 James Joyce, Stephen Hero, edited by Theodore Spencer, revised by John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, Norfolk, Conn: New Directions, 1963, p. 7 5 Morris Beja, Epiphany in the Modern Novel Revelation as Art, Peter Owen Lmt., 1971, p. 14 6 Ibid., p. 15 220
7 Ibid., p. 15 8 James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. cit., p. 211 9 James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. cit., p. 211 10 Ibid., p. 213 11 Apud. Morris Beja, 1971, p. 24 12 Stanilaus Joyce, My Brothers Keeper: James Joyces Early Years, ed. By Richard Ellmann, New York, 1958, pp. 103-104 13 And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. (I wandered lonely as a cloud). 14 Morris Beja, 1971, p. 25 15 George Poulet, Studies in Human Time, translated by Elliot Coleman, Baltimore, Md. John Hopkins Press, 1956 16 Apud Morris Beja, 1971, p. 35 17 Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Ed. Norman Endicott, New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1967, p. 23 18 W. Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, Pico della Mirandola, London: Macmillan, 1990, pp. 33-34 19 Ibid., p. 34 20 James Joyce, Stephen Hero, p. 211 21 Julia Kristeva, 'About Chinese Women ', The Kristeva Reader, 1986, Toril Moi, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 139-140 22 Richard Ellmann, James Joyce: Light Rays, prologue to ***, Light Rays: James Joyce and Modernism, , New Horizon Press Publishers, New York, 1984, p. 13 23 Shiv K. Kumar, Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel, Blackie and Son Limited, London and Glasgow, 1962. p. 105 24 Richard Ellmann, 1984, p. 2