The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves, the grey-fringed fleece of clouds. No, it was not their colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language many-coloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?"
What did he mean by this?
Cameron Reed
>"—A day of dappled seaborne clouds Damnit. That's nearly my own
>What did he mean by this? He's describing a myopic introvert's revelry in the days ambience, I believe. Perhaps I'm taking it out of context.
Evan Bell
Fuck. I know Joyce is a fucking institution, but the modernists have not aged well. Very flowery and pretentious. I cringed when I re-read a portrait of the artist as a young man. Even the title makes me laugh now.
Bentley Ross
lol
Liam Ross
>Joyce le pretenshush Shutup, faggot.
Jeremiah Ramirez
kys my good man
Kayden Ramirez
So you don't like reading.
Angel Kelly
...
Isaac Perez
I agree. People try too much in general.
Kevin Myers
Portrait wasn't that good by his standards. His only works worth reading are Ulysses and Dubliners.
Asher Myers
>he didn't start with the Greeks, resume with the Romans and detour to Dante
Liam Brown
Yeah, why can't we all just be casual aloof too cool for school writers who live to be noticed for our nonchalance?
Jaxson Martin
Finnegan was the greatest achievement in 20th century art whether you like it or not.
Parker Lee
He has DEFINITE great verbal talent, and it's even evident in Portrait, but I agree it was overdone and pretentious. An author can be good but still overdo it. Ulysses is the best because he wasn't taking himself seriously while writing it, and in fact may have been going somewhat insane as he was writing it in a very controlled artistic way... Dubliners I like too because it's far more "serious" and sad and poignant than Ulysses but manages to not be stuck up like Portrait is. Portrait is really pretentious, not gloomy or sad or poignant, but cornily Nietzschean.
The OP's passage shows verbal talent as I said but is kinda pretentious. Portrait still strikes me wrong, and Nabokov didn't like it either IIRC.
Alexander Johnson
It was so much better when you were gone
William Kelly
>Portrait is really pretentious, not gloomy or sad or poignant, but cornily Nietzschean.
but that was before "he knew" he would write Ulysses right? It was the scary struggle of being a young artist. Unsure if you will make it as an artist, or have to work in the factory and daily watch your artistry flutter by your mind unable to capture it all. He didnt "know" at that point that he would write what is considered one of the best novels ever written... at least I dont think. So in one sense he was psyching himself up, and at the same time, trying to 'make success' right then and there. Like try to go from a struggling artist to a successful artist, by making your artwork the expression of you struggling as an artist, in hopes to prove you can transcend that struggle, at least what I quickly perceive of this.
Adrian Reed
k
Hunter Parker
>than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?
I still dont really know what he meant by this:
Either he may gain more pleasure from the inner world, and how words come to him from inside? more than describing things outside... pretty much foreshadowing ulysses and FW style?
And/or he was relating how the emotions came to him inside, as if they were sentences themselves, with their periods, and own 'feeling' language?
It is a confusing sentence, what exactly he meant there. But the first half and everything I do dig the word choices, the describing things about with the colors and nature things.
Dominic Davis
Wrong. Portrait is way more self-aware than you think. Remember that he wrote it *after failing as a poet.* The whole "forge in the smithy of my soul" thing is metatextually ironic. Joyce knows that S.D. won't succeed.
Nolan Mitchell
That's even worse iMO, to write a whole book that ironically.
In fact, I think you're wrong.
Mason Williams
>Joyce knows that S.D. won't succeed. Portrait, is Joyce, as SD (and Joyce)(as SD was still around in Ulysses) attempting to succeed, while expressing the difficulties, struggles, uncertainties, of attempting and struggling to succeed. (which I guess is what you meant by metatextually)(but, SD does succeed... as he was present in Ulysses, and who do you think wrote FW?)
Nicholas Price
Holy shit... Portrait Published: 29 December 1916 Ulysses Published: in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's 40th birthday.
He was right on his own heels. But yeah, SD is his as maybe the quote of OP alludes, the eternal, idealistic, childish aesthete, spiritual, pure, poet in him, and well, it was him at that point reflecting on his past?
