Stephen, the Artist

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916 is James Joyce’s first novel. It is about a
boy names Stephen Dedalus since childhood into adulthood and how his artistic taste and
tendency towards beauty are growing. When reading the novel, one can determine that
aesthetic appreciation (as APA dictionary defines as the extent to which a stimulus is
enjoyed because of its beauty (26) is one of the main concerns in the life of the character.
To an aesthete, art exists for the sake of its beauty itself, and that it has nothing to do with
anything else (“Aestheticism”). Thus, a reader can identify many clues for Stephen of
becoming such an artist in the future through his vision towards beauties: colors and music.

Normal people with their eyes recognize most colors and they have favorite colors,
but to Stephen every color is beautiful and some colors are more beautiful than others. If
one imagines Stephen is painting a picture, white and red colors are expected to be used
and for painting roses as well, “those [are] beautiful colors to think of.” Furthermore, he
splashes “pink and cream and lavender,” or adds yellow and green. What about the maroon
and dark purple like the color of “wine''? What the art would be like? Presently, one can say
that he has a taste that could find beauty even in the darkest one. “[His] coffin shall be black
… how sad and beautiful” the color is (Joyce 1-38). The color and the object are sad, yet
they are beautiful. The character always concerns with the beauty of the things and what
pleases and fills up his eyes.

Stephen also concerns with what pleases his ears. Music, sound, and voice are his
domain of interests. “Click, click: click, click,” the keys in the train “[make] a quick music”.
Also, when he is transcending the physical world and living in his funeral he thinks of the
sounds in the song, “dingdong! The castle bell” and two of the six angels “sing” for him.
Besides, when the situation is dangerous, he goes to the higher artistic values which are the
only thing that can relief him. Some sounds are not just sounds, rather they can produce
feelings, “pock” the sound of cricket, but if you are hit “then you feel a pain”. Like Dobrain
states his belief is that “all music has an expressive power, some more and some less.” And
Stephen loves to sit near those whose “[voices] [are] good to listen to”. Honestly speaking,
his word choices are beautiful; some words are beautiful, like “wine” because it has
musicality, while some words are “queer” (Joyce 5-38).

Correspondingly, one can assist that in the problematic situations, when he cannot
find value in his life; he goes in deep to his subjective reality and thinks about those
aesthetic values instead as a way of giving himself the only thing to live for. It is clearly
enough to expect him to be a great artist in his upcoming years.

References:

James Joyce, “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” 1916

“APA Dictionary of Psychology” .US, American Psychological Association, 2015.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Aestheticism”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Oct. 2018,
https://www.britannica.com/art/Aestheticism. Accessed 8 March 2022.

Dobrain, Chris. “Music and Language.” Claire Trevor School of the Arts, 1992,
content://com.sec.android.app.sbrowser/readinglist/0309213059.mhtml

By Zhewar Hussein Ali, 4th year student in English linguistic and literature at
UOS, 2021-2022

For Dr.Kawan Arif, Modern Novel class