James Joyce POTA Flashcards
‘Was it rihgt to kiss his mother or wrong?….what dd that mean, to kiss….why did people do that with their two faces?’
Tradition questioned - questioning the conventionality of tradition in relation to bodies. Demystifies the idea of culture as innate
Even questions the division of bodies - ‘people’ divided into ‘two faces’
Freudian questions - morality
‘if she knew to what his mind has subjected her…his brute-like lust…was that boyish love? was that chivalry> Was that poetry? God and the Blessed Virgin were too far from him….but he imagined that he stood near Emma’
Questions art’s relation to religion, relationships, and inspiration
shows that culture (‘chivalry’) and its relation to relationships/people (‘Emma’), and ‘God/Blessed V’) cannot inspire art/ or ‘poetry’
the significance of including god AND the ‘Blessed Virign’ is not just to emphasise catholicism, but also to emphasise the personal relationship which catholic religion insists on with god (as a mother figure, a literal personage)
[of the schoolchildren] ‘The senate and the ROman people declared that Dedalus had been wrongly punished’
‘and the Rector would declare that he had been wrongly punished because the senate and the Roman people always [did]…history was all about those men’
Tradition, historical belief
‘the great men in histoiyr had names like that and no-one made fun of them’
Hisotyr, naming, tradition, regard of others
‘he could scarcely recognise his own thoughts, and repeated to himself: “I am Steven Dedalus. I am walking beside my father….names”
Naming, binding to society, identity
[Steven[ “there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws”
“by the light of one or two ideas of Aristtotle and Aquinas….I need them only….until have some something for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells, I shall try to trim it.”
‘The priest’s face wich seemed like an unlit lamp or reflector hung in a false focus’
Ability to reject and reinterpret tradition, yet still dependent upon precedent
‘nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book. THey were like poetry, but they were only sentences to learn the spelling from’
Aesthetic response even in childhood - but questions the use of words for practical uses vs for aesthetic pleasure
‘he read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry#
aesthetic intentionality
[as child] ‘he did not want to play. he wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld….a premonition…told him that this image would, without any overt act of his own….’
‘their tryst…alone…he would be trasnfigured. Weakness and timidity would fall from him’
Clearly questions whether the child himself or the narrator is thinking this - question again of aesthetic intentionality
‘the esthetic moment is static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing’
‘an esthetic stasis, an ideal puty or an ideal terror’
Art as NOT correlative to reality
‘the artist, like the God fo creation…[is] refined out of existence, indifferent’
Role of the artist as paradoxical - he is in, yet effaced from, his art
[the Priest] “there is an art in lighting a fire. We ahve the liberal arts, and we have the useful arts…”
“The object of the artsits is the creation of the beautiful. .[is the fire[ beautiful?”
Steven - “To the sight…it will be beautiful…..in Hell , however, it is an evil….”
The ambivalence of imagery
“ther personality of the artist…finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself”
paradoxical aesthetic goal
‘elusive of social orders….desined to learn his own wisdom’
self-creation and self-effacement, role of artist, nationality
‘I go to encounter…the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscioence of my race’
nationalistic art; deeply paradoixcial impersoanlity
