Final Paper: Pagan Conversion of Stephen

Matt Savino ENG 232

5/1/12

"Araby" is widely regarded as the story of a boy who most believe to be a young Stephen Dedalus in which young love becomes mystical and religious. It is partly a story of his initiation into love, but partly a story of conversion from orthodox religion as a result of that initiation as well. Apart from being a principal theme in Joyce's writing this dialogue of the world and of the spirit is a main fact in his life and one that he spent a long time mulling over. A resemblance between the devices and themes of "Araby" and chapter four of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man suggests a process of resolution of this dialogue and conflict, both in Joyce's fiction and in his personal conversion to aesthetic worldliness in his own life, as he recollects this artistically (Turaj 1970). Therefore, the resemblance between both characters and their narratives shows two stages in the conversion from Catholicism to "Paganism" of Dedalus and Joyce's own transmigration. The boy in "Araby" is in the process of a highly metaphorical and analogous transformation towards self-discovery. Much like Stephen he carries a way of thinking similar to that of a psychological indoctrination into a psychologically related plot context. The religious motif is woven into the story from the very first line : "North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two stories [Old and New Testaments] stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square of ground.... The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room (Joyce Araby) All of the italicized words embody themes of mortality and materiality. Their inclusion in the text during the descriptions of the boy's environment and current setting is deliberate. The suggestions

are of things old, decaying and dead. These descriptions of futility and obsolescence are of the boy's own musings or of a shared consensus among the characters that make up his world. Either way, it is impossible to read these passages and view the constructed institutions of the church in vital and vibrant light. In the next few lines of "Araby" the boy - or implied narrator - brings himself into the story. He mentions immediately the books he finds in the room where the priest had died, "The Abbot by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq." He likes the last best, a worldly memoir thus invoking the realm of the material and of naturalism. He favors this one over the other two those being a romantic novel of religion and a religious manual. Shortly after this scene the reader is then told, "The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree. . . ." In light of developments over the boy's reading tastes, the seduction of his emotions, the meaning of the garden is worth contemplating. A wild garden is one that is generally thought to be untouched or undeveloped by man, a pure 'holy' environment in the state of nature so to speak. However, chances are that the central apple-tree was planted by an outside benefactor, a god-like figure. If the garden, and the apple tree with its tempting fruit, was in close proximity to the boy's living space then a clear allegory to the tree of life form the creation myth begins to form. A moment of illumination comes when the boy re-turns to the "drawing room in which the priest had died." He sees "some distant lamp or lighted window..." like a beckoning light in a church. Then like Stephen Dedalus the boy experiences a conversion, a pagan conversion (Turaj 1970): "All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: 'O love! O love!' many times."

He is not as developed as Stephen and is less intellectually and emotionally aware so he does not realize what his senses are responding to. He has retained the proper attitude for prayer, but his god has changed (Turaj 1970). The boy plans to go to the bazaar, "Araby" from which the episode takes its name after. He plans to purchase a gift for his newly met female interest of whom he has been admiring for the past few weeks. His aunt hopes the bazaar will not be a Freemason affair" of unorthodox activity. But his purpose for going is worldly, in fact him going acts as a sort of pagan quest to obtain an object or tribute (Turaj 1970). His aunt also imbibes, "I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of our lord." It is, ironically, a "night of our lord" for the boy considering his objective of worshipful pilgrimage that he plans to embark on. When the boy arrives at Araby Joyce describes the inner workings of the bazaar as one would a church or monastery. "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." He gazes up as if in prayer and finds "darkness" surrounding him. He is gazing up into the "darkness" of "vanity." He has not yet shed his Jesuit training from the Christian Brothers however and this shapes his experience. The boy is not old enough to interpret his experience or articulate it like Stephen will later do in Portrait but what essentially has happened is as follows: Indoctrinated and imbued with the true spirit of Irish Catholicism, he reacts toward romanticism. He could have gone in three more-or-less romantic directions, monastic as exemplified by Walter Scott, devout pietism as illustrated in the handbook, or worldly romance. His favorite of the three books indicates his particular bent. (Turaj 1970). Chapter IV of Portrait focuses on Stephen Dedalus' visit to his own Christian Brother, the director priest who attempts to recruit him for the Catholic priesthood. Afterwards there is a change of focus to reveal an opposite drive in Stephen as he watches the bathers outside. The scene with the director unfolds as such: The director stood in the embrasure of the window, his back to the light, leaning an elbow on the brown crossblind, and as he spoke and smiled, slowly dangling and looping the cord

of the other blind....The priest's face was in total shadow, but the waning daylight from behind him touched the deeply grooved temples... of the skull (Joyce Portrait) The significance of the scene is revealed in the language and the imagery that Joyce conjures up. The priest's back was to the light as he leaned on a "cross- blind." He dangles a cord that resembles a noose and his "face was in total shadow" furthering the vision of "waning daylight." The reference to "deeply grooved temples" may involve a pun on the word "temples" either as a means for irony or perhaps as a way to subliminally invoke an ancient aura around the church. The priest's head is referred to as a skull similar to themes of death or the occult. When one compares this passage to the one quoted from Araby where the boy's street and priest are described in a context of blindness and death then a unequivocal resemblance begins to surface. Directly after leaving the priest's rectory Stephen sees boys swimming. Contrasted with themes of stagnation only moments ago now the living world engulfs him: "This was the call of life to his soul, not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar." He sees a girl standing in the water: She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slate blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder mortal beauty her face. She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him.... - Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy. The italicized words indicate the religious-like response to a thing of simple mortal existence that imbue the conventions from which Stephen derives meaning. These include religious words and

images with pagan overtones deriving from symbols such as the "strange and beautiful sea-bird," the "emerald trail of seaweed," "ivory," "featherings of soft white down," and "long fair hair." Stephen's fervor is transferring from things perceived by religious perception to things perceived by sense perception (Turaj 1970). Thus, he is undergoing a transformation of experience.

The climax of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man occurs at the end of chapter four when Stephen, drawn by an urge, "could wait no longer" and heads for 'the Bull.' Stephen, moved by that urge goes to the sea where 'the Bull,' a stretch of land is located. He is greeted by heads bobbing in the water calling strange Greek names out to him. At one point in this experience Stephen takes off his socks a means to purify himself and leave himself open - and lets water drift by his feet. The water he had feared and resented previously is less threatening and possibly even cleansing. With this scene that alludes to an initiation rite Joyce unites the myth of The Artist Stephen - to sacramental religion. From then on Stephen is free to go the way of his choosing, that is, the way of those in whose feet he is walking. The monster is dead, or even better, transformed (Grayson 1996). In the ancient Mysteries, uniting initiate, priest, and sacrificial element in one essence constituted the step essential to the first act of Creation; therefore Stephen, priest officiating at the altar, has completed the rite, has offered himself (Grayson 1996). We are told he "started up nervously from the stone block," bursting with song, throwing off the cerements, "the linens of the grave," ready to set out for the ends of the earth: "Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch?" (Joyce Portrait). For Stephen, creation begins anew with this consecration or transfiguration of artifice. Joyce enables Stephen's final identity as poet-priest of the imagination to emerge out of him so clearly and well-defined that Stephen cannot mistake it for anything else but what it is. For Dedalus,

every imagined construction of himself has led up to this moment by which through sight of the Woman, the consecration is completed (Grayson 1996). In that moment of revelation the envelope of his body slides off in an act of shedding worldly manifestation and the artist, poet, and god of the imagination is left bare. In other words, the old Stephen has neatly disposed of himself. Like Christ, the artist, by a rather extravagant analogy, gives his own body, the imagination, to nourish and change those who "communicate" and enter into a covenant with him (Grayson 1996). The artist's body is mortal and the human body must inevitably fall prey to temptation as sin becomes the fountain of all holiness. This subversion is diabolical and tantamount to the tempting of Christ. Joyce's aim is to present gospel truths in blasphemous framing as parables of art. To bring the intangible to the tangible and to shine light at it for all to see. In Stephen's view the mind is its own country, which parallels Satan's own stance in Paradise Lost, "The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, and a Hell of Heaven. Unlike Blake's Milton, however, Stephen knows he is of the devil's party (Grayson 1996). Stephen's adolescent fantasy of hearing the secret sins of girls whispered in the confessional of his art reveals a morbid desire and an irrational envy of the priest's role. Joyce translates Stephen's awakening to sexuality in his late puberty into a form of metempsychosis, leaving behind the body of boyhood for that of adolescence; "What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of deaththe fear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round, the shame that had abased him within and withoutcerements, the linens of the grave? His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes. Sexual experience "transfigures" Stephen into a radiant, glorified body as he assumes precariously Christlike qualities. To speak of the next world is for Joyce to speak of mere ethereality, as if to deny the life of the body. It might have been more appropriate for him to note that traditional

Christianity, however, in professing the resurrection of all flesh. opposes "disincarnation," or the disembodiment of the soul, but no matter. Female creative energy, represented by the wading girl or Stephen's muse on the strand, is more seductive, and Joyce, like Blake, prefers to clothe Beatrice with diaphanous garments (Mangeiello 1983). Stephen believes, as Oscar Wilde did, that Christ was "the most supreme of Individualists and flaunts disobedience as man's original virtue. The moral life of Jesus affording no model for his own, Stephen seeks to discover the mode of life or of art whereby his spirit can express itself in unfettered freedom (Mangeiello 1983). His beliefs align with that of another one of Wilde's when he states that the true artist is he who believes "absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself." For Stephen, then, Satan represents the romantic youth of Jesus as the artist who combined the roles of material and spiritual messiah. The demand to realize artistic aims unbound entails mere freedom from external coercion for Stephen who, Prometheus-like, refuses to serve home, fatherland, or church. This leaves only one alternative to the young artist, that is, to believe in the artist who intimates his own "Come, follow me" like the devil quoting scripture. The "luciferous" artist whose affirmation is "Evil, be thou my good," poses as the way, the truth, and the life (Mangeiello 1983). But redemption being a thing of virtue presupposes the existence of sin, that "ache of conscience so idealistically repulsive to Stephen since he must reject it entirely in order to justify his way of life. The freedom to "create" the truth ultimately implies freedom from any extrinsic moral norm established by divine or lawful human authority, as if the individual is a law unto himself. The poet as prophet, priest, and king is the unacknowledged, yet self-styled, legislator of mankind and for himself presupposes the same jurisdiction that he adamantly denies to Church or Pope (Mangeiello 1983). A fundamental opposition arises between the Catholic and Dedalean meanings of "conscience." The Catholic conscience acts as the voice of truth against an external and objective authority, the revelation made by God to man through Christ's teaching in Scripture and proclaimed

in the holy order of the Church. Stephen's positivistic skeptic approach spurns the existence of objective truth treating it as the subjective creation of his own mind with the result being that faith in oneself replaces faith in God. Man becomes his own god in effect. Joyce's own Dedalean declaration in a letter to a friend in the same vein states: "I shall try myself against the powers of this world ... I have found no man yet with a faith like mine." What Joyce failed to mention was that his faith was founded on deep-seated notions of himself. Stephen appears to participate in the theories suggested above on his own terms. His remarks on the making of literature as "the phenomena of artistic conception, artistic gestation and artistic reproduction" imply that "the artistic process is a natural process." As Stephen ponders the magical incantations of his last name, "Dedalus," he concludes that artifice and naturalness coexist on the same plane. He has rejected the "secret knowledge and secret power" of the Catholic priesthood to imbue perhaps an even greater mantle of the hieratic alchemist. His mission as "artificer" empowers him to "transmut[e] the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life." Stephen's dual role as alchemist and priest permits Stephen to superimpose pagan upon Christian belief, Ovidian "metamorphosis" being the profane equivalent of "transubstantiation" The priest as confessor who through his holy position comes to "know obscure things, hidden from others parallels Daedalus' own applying of his mind to unknown arts." Joyce therefore conflates the two to show that one comes from the other and that the power derived from one couldn't exist without the power from the other. That is, the power from the spiritual realm and the power from the natural realm. Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr serves as analogue for Stephen, the first Irish martyr" for art, and furnishes a key to Joyce's method of converting Christian doctrine to his own curious system of metaphors. But it should be clear that in Joyce the yoking together of Christian and pagan elements is not the traditional western synthesis it might at first appear to be. There is

no mediation between the rational/aesthetic and the theological/spiritual as is found, for example, in the Divine Comedy, where the Christian imagination reconciles itself to the classical world while still preserving its distinctness from that world (Manageiello 1983). Stephen's transmutation theory holds many the same sort of values. The artist extracts from his life the essence of an experience and transforms it into a work of art with its attendant eternal verity. Joyce critics have been attempting to see precisely the same thing in moments epiphany in the text. At the moment of revelation, experience is supposed to become transformed into truth. But in Dubliners, for instance, most of the characters to whom it is given to have insights into their own follies and ludicrousness are certainly not artists. It follows on a more mundane level that all self-perceptions are like this. That is to say, everyone has moments when he reevaluates past events and then arrives at certain truths which he feels are milestones of insight into his own existence (Bowen 1981). One may change ideas, but it is difficult to alter a way of thinking . The boy from Araby approaches love religiously. It replaces or characterizes the aura of the street, Christian, dead, and blind. Since the change the boy undergoes is gradual - we read the story only when the boy is already familiar with the books and has already known the girl through the window for awhile - we witness it at a critical time (Turaj 1970). If we take into consideration the different contexts explored and stages of maturity then this experience foreshadows and anticipates what is to happen to Stephen Dedalus. The change in the adolescent and later in Stephen predicts a more conscious, deliberate, intellectual change in Joyce's writing. In effect, "Araby" shows Joyce's recollection of the time when his own vision began to change and Portrait shows him as finally grasped that change and accepted it. Shows it, albeit, within the license of art.

Works Cited

Turaj, Frank. "Araby" And Portrait Stages Of Pagan Conversion." English Language Notes 7.3 (1970): 209-213. Humanities International Complete. Web. 4 May 2012. Monganiello, Dominic. "Joyce's "Third Gospel": The Earthbound Vision Of A Portrait Of The Artist." Renascence 35.4 (1983): 218-234. Humanities International Complete. Web. 4 May 2012.

Bowen, Zack. "Joyce And The Epiphany Concept: A New Approach." Journal Of Modern Literature 9.1 (1981): 103. Humanities International Complete. Web. 4 May 2012.

Grayson, Janet. "The Consecration Of Stephen Dedalus." English Language Notes 34.1 (1996): 55. Humanities International Complete. Web. 4 May 2012.

Joyce, James, John P. Riquelme, Hans W. Gabler, and Walter Hettche. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. Print

Joyce, James, and Robert E. Scholes. Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. New York, NY [u.a.:

Penguin Books, 1996. Print.