ABSTRACT
But he who strives to understand Ulysses find himself enriched by fantastic mental experiences. One can understand Ulysses, or at least learn to understand it. Because the work is not, like certain products of Dadaism, an intended orgy of the irrational, an explosion of meaningless automatics, but rather a complicated construction of the highest consciousness, it is therefore accessible to intellectual analysis. But a concentration of attention is necessary which one normally is not accustomed to giving when reading a novel. One has to work through the 1600 pages of the German text…with the same mental attention with which one reads a difficult philosophical text. And even that is not enough. Ulysses cannot be understood within itself, but only through the complete works of its creator. [here follows a lengthy biographical account and a literary history of Joyce’s works]
He used the lyrical, the epical, and the dramatic forms, and in each he proved to be a master. But he started-and this seems to me very significant-as a critic…. In this essay [‘On Ibsen’, Fortnightly Review (April 1900)] we find a sentence which we today can literally apply to Joyce himself: ‘This work is ruled by the highest order, by a clocklike routine, which one seldom finds in a genius.’ Joyce’s production, too, shows a strictly necessary concatenation, a conformity with the inner coherence, which in itself is an aesthetic enjoyment. [here follows a brief summary of the solitary artist figures in the earlier works]
The Portrait gives us the self-description and self-analysis of the artist whose name is James Joyce. It shows the forces which influenced him: the Irish fate, i.e., political, cultural, religious opposition as life-atmosphere; education in the Jesuit boarding-school; his home, poisoned by the economical ruin with all its degrading results. In this milieu the spiritual drama of the young Stephen Dedalus happens. [A lengthy summary of the plot follows here.]
But the way to Ulysses passes over Dubliners and Exiles; it is the
way from the lyrical to the epic and dramatic expression. In the Portrait, this gradual progress of the artistic means of expression is represented as a necessary progress of a psychological nature…. It is the way from the completely personal emotion to a description which is nourished from the personality, and from there to an autonomous, depersonalized creation….
