Portrait appreciation of a young artist

Many details of A Portrait of a Young Artist are based on Joyce's early life, and the protagonist Stephen Dedalus has many similarities with Joyce. This autobiographical novel depicts a young artist who has gone from a naive childhood to maturity and expresses a theme of "flying away". Joyce described Stephen's experiences in different stages of his life in children's style, teenager's style and adult's style, and showed Stephen's inner feelings and ideology by means of internal focus narrative, external focus narrative, combination of internal and external focus narrative, spiritual epiphany and stream of consciousness.

As a bildungsroman describing the inner course of young people, Joyce's Portrait of a Young Artist profoundly describes the psychological growth process of young artist Stephen from childhood to youth maturity. Among the bildungsroman in the 20th century, The Portrait of a Young Artist can be said to be the most profound in tracing the inner course of young people. He believes that "all the stories in the novel revolve around the major events in Stephen's growth process, and all the parts are interlocking." Following the occurrence and development of these events step by step, readers can clearly see Stephen's growth trajectory from childhood to young artists, and truly feel his pain and joy. " Some scholars have suggested that Stephen's spiritual growth is full of pain, and his long and painful psychological course can be divided into five stages: ignorance → depravity → repentance → resurrection → exile. These scholars try to explore the conflict between the hero's mind and the external reality, and pursue the linear development track of his personality in stages.

The key to the fame of Joyce's early works lies in what kind of Stephen the works created. This is a young artist's ideological struggle, that is, uncertainty in consciousness and questioning things, which is the essence of post-modern thinking.

The narrative of childhood is mainly in the first chapter, which is about Stephen's life from six to nine years old. The profound influence on him mainly comes from his family and school. The first chapter begins with a children's song: "Oh, the green roses are in bloom", which is a hopeful scene. Feel the happiness of childhood, and then happiness becomes fear. Dante used Shan Ying to peck off the child's eyes to scare Stephen, "peck off his eyes, peck off his eyes, apologize quickly". Psychological experience always feels warm at first, and then it feels a little cold. This feeling of changing from cold to hot shows that the outside world and even the family are strange, elusive and uncertain to Stephen.

So is the kronos School. Stephen's self-awareness means that he is rejected by the school. The air in the school, the anal priest and the boys are all strange and inexplicable behaviors in his eyes. Everything he knows has turned into fear and anxiety, and a sense of loneliness arises spontaneously. He recalled and dreamed that his inner anxiety was released in the joy of the past and the vision of the future, and the tension in reality was decomposed into multiple meanings, which added a halo of freedom to us. Joyce wrote a child's psychological deconstruction by static and dynamic methods;

"He thought his face must be very pale, because he felt his face was very cold. He can't find the correct answer to that question ... lavender, cream, pink roses, all beautiful when you think about it. Maybe wild roses will have that color, too. He remembered a song about wild roses in a small green garden. But you can't find green roses. But maybe you can find one somewhere in the world. "

This passage should be regarded as a picture. In reality, he is very cold and melancholy. Pale and still, Joyce showed us all kinds of colors and a small green garden through Stephen's ideology. Green is a symbol of youth and hope. Wild roses are in full bloom in this small garden, which suddenly adds dynamic vitality to the static picture. People have been wondering where the green roses are. Although it is impossible to find a green rose at this time, Joyce still leaves this uncertain question to readers to think about the future. From Derrida's theory, the ultimate interpretation of meaning is always absent, so what is presented to readers can only be an absent presence, and it is this absent presence that leads to the continuous delay of meaning.

Stephen began to feel the trauma of family and school education to children's hearts from an early age. "From the first step of the socialization of Joyce and his characters in childhood, they formed a kind of political unconsciousness under the subtle influence of their families." Joyce's life experience is reflected in Stephen. At the family Christmas dinner, all the family members are discussing the political problems in Ireland. At that time, Ireland was under British colonial rule, and three-quarters of Irish people believed in Catholicism. British colonial policy and resistance to Catholicism became the pain and paralysis of Irish people. For example, the book Dubliners describes the same theme: "That kind of death is heavy, insensitive and idle." The political background in Ireland makes Stephen feel physically and mentally exhausted and uneasy, which can be seen from Stephen's scattered fragments of consciousness: "semester, holiday, cave, come out;" Screaming, stop. "At school, Stephen was exempted from handing in his homework because he broke his glasses, but he was punished by the dean in public. The church school that opens people's hearts has become a cage that destroys students' hearts in the hearts of children. He fell into pain and sorrow and treated the world in a silent and submissive way. Joyce ended the first chapter in a harmonious way: "He can hear the sound of table tennis, and he can also hear the sound of clapper balls coming from here or there through the quiet air: pick, pack, pock, puck, just like water drops slowly flowing from a spring into a full puddle." The author uses alliteration rhetoric, and through the rhyme of P letters, turns the rich voice into calm and flows into a full puddle like water drops. In peace, Stephen can better think about his position in the coordinates, that is, personal differences and his own life value, paving the way for conflicts between individuals and families, schools and countries.

Stephen's autobiography as a teenager is mainly concentrated in the second to fourth chapters, which is his growth history from 1 1 to 16. During this period, his ideological maturity mainly came from his re-understanding of family, school and, most importantly, the essence of religion. Joyce narrated a young man's psychological changes with the main clues of loss, repentance, reflection and rebellion. In the second chapter, Joyce shows the ideological degeneration of a teenager through psychological description:

"He doesn't know what is the happiness of interacting with people, and he never knows what is the health and vitality of a rough man, and he doesn't know what is a father and son. In his mind, nothing can excite him except cold, cruel and expressionless lust. His childhood has passed away or disappeared. With it, his innocent and happy heart disappeared. He is like a barren moon, drifting on the ocean of life. "

Although the author narrates in the third person, it is also a teenager's inner monologue. Stephen is tired of the school education system that stifles students' minds and the hypocritical atmosphere that students can't understand each other. Therefore, he has little contact with people and his spirit is in a state of alienation. Coupled with his father's alcoholism and poor management of family property, he also felt the inferiority of his family. Suddenly, political enthusiasm and national consciousness were deconstructed without a trace. For a time, Stephen wandered aimlessly in the street like a tramp. With the growth of age, the hazy sexual consciousness gradually awakens. Driven by strong desire, he threw himself into the arms of prostitutes and enjoyed happiness and satisfaction. He achieved the goal of reducing the anxiety and pain of desire with the silent numbness of his soul. At this time, he acquiesced in the existing social order and defeated himself in crazy self-digestion.

Stephen's temporary satisfaction made him feel lost, which was a moral sin. He gradually began to question religious authority and wanted to find something he was interested in outside religion. The road of literature and art is his goal in life. In the third chapter of the novel, Stephen's personality is gradually formed. But at this time, his artistic goal is only a way to lament his inner pain in the increasingly serious alienation dilemma in the West, and he has not reached a break with religious authority. Therefore, when a terrible verdict appeared in the preacher's sermon: "Burn forever for the devil and his followers", he thought of the horror and eternal destruction of hell. Stephen trembled with fear and had to confess his crime to the priest. With forgiveness, his life was restored to beauty and peace.

The fourth chapter is the climax of the full text, full of Stephen's ideological struggle between religious road and artistic road. Joyce used a lot of stream-of-consciousness techniques to explore the inner life of human beings. Stephen's voice calling for the spiritual home of mankind is full of strength and a voice against fate. Only by returning to nature can human beings find the lost nature and gain freedom. It is such a modern pursuit in the post-modern context that drives him to become a rebellious youth, reflect on himself and subvert himself and the world. The characters in the novel become symbolic figures in the post-modern context, which not only has rich connotations and extensive symbolic meanings, but also carries a series of text riddles and cultural codes: the little girl in front of Stephen becomes like a mysterious seabird and becomes a symbol of life, and Stephen has a stronger instinct than pious thoughts to create life from life.

Youth is mainly concentrated in the last chapter of the novel, which is the autobiography of Stephen 17 to 20 years old. As a mature young man, he is thinking about the value and goal of life and is determined to pursue spiritual truth, goodness and beauty. In this part, Joyce mainly shows Stephen's artistic view in the form of dialogue and diary, and quotes Aquinas' words: integrity, harmony and brilliance. Stephen has been pursuing the highest feature of this beauty, and finally embarked on the artistic road of exile. From the perspective of autobiographical creative thinking, this chapter also reflects Joyce's postmodern thinking characteristics: pluralism and constant negation.

Joyce suddenly realized the central meaning of life through the life experience of Stephen, the protagonist, and sought the original beauty from it, which is bound to transcend single thinking and move towards multiple ways of thinking. Take Stephen's thinking about language as an example. All thoughts and feelings from England were rejected by him without exception, and he opposed the British cultural colonization of the Irish nation. At the same time, he reflected on the decline of Ireland itself. A feeling of talking to himself came to his mind. He appeared as an unsociable, rebellious and young marginal figure, thinking about his existence in secret.

Joyce is also in the contradiction between fantasy and reality, constantly denying the real world, so that the noble quality of an artist naturally appears. The fifth chapter of the novel brings this contradiction to the extreme. "A fear of the unknown disturbed his tired mind, that is, the fear of symbols and omens, the fear that the name and his wicker wings flew out of the cage like eagles, and the fear of the god of writing, Dorsey." This is a monologue of a man who resists secular power, and this is the image of an artist who pursues freedom and spiritual rebellion. Here, we can see two opposing scenes: one is the world imagined by the artist, his own road and his own life; On the other hand, it is the real secular world. Stephen questioned any verbal words of fighting for the country and the nation. In the hypocritical reality, he realized that religious fanaticism can only enhance his emotional destruction, and made a decision not to blindly follow religious fanaticism. Standing between imagination and reality, Stephen took an evasive attitude. He denied that Ireland had given people the strength of life, and he wanted to create a new life and rebuild the conscience of the Irish nation. Later, Stephen expressed his determination to make a complete break with his family, religion and country: "Listen, Cranley, I don't want to work hard for what I no longer believe in ... I will try to express myself as freely as possible in a certain way of life and an art form, that is, silence, exile and wit." After graduating from college, Stephen left Ireland to live abroad and look for a future career.

"Shakespeare's artistic image reflects nature like a high-hanging mirror. After Stendhal's revision, this novel reflects various scenes galloping along the road like a mirror. It can be said that the basic image of Joyce's art is a polygonal prism, which captures the magnified and distorted image reflected by dim light. " In this autobiographical novel, this polygonal prism captures a young man's ideological change towards maturity. Faced with the power of school, family and religion, Stephen's ego was split and he lost his existence in the dark. Joyce's artistic charm, of course, lies not only in letting readers see a young man who has lost the meaning of existence, but also in exposing Stephen's beauty through a lot of debris consciousness. This kind of beauty is a way of thinking that constantly denies the living state at this time, and it is a philosophy of life that deconstructs secular power and reconstructs its own value. This autobiographical work exudes the postmodern thinking of a modern novel master, which makes its text open, allowing readers to feel with the protagonist and rethink the meaning of Irish history and life. stream of consciousness

Inner monologue is the most important expression of stream-of-consciousness novels. It is the direct expression of the characters' active hearts, and expresses the thoughts, feelings, feelings and thoughts of the characters in a specific situation with silent language. It can involve the whole range of consciousness, including the subconscious. The consciousness expressed in this way is very natural and frank, which often makes the consciousness of the characters have a rich sense of hierarchy and three-dimensionality. In the fifth chapter of A Portrait of a Young Artist, during the dialogue between Stephen and the Dean, Stephen produced an inner monologue because the Dean was British and didn't know what "whole" was:

"-the language we used just now turned out to be his language, and later it became my language. How different words like home, Christ, ale and master are from his mouth to mine! I may not feel nervous when I say and write these words. His language is so familiar and strange to me. For me, it can only be an acquired language. I didn't create those words, and I can't accept them. My voice refused to say these words. My soul is uneasy about the pessimistic meaning of his language. "

Joyce uses inner monologue here in order to let readers unconsciously go deep into the inner world of the characters, directly participate in the inner activities of the characters and experience their sensory experience without the author's intervention. This inner monologue shows Stephen's complicated inner world from different levels. First of all, seeing that the dean didn't know the whole story, Stephen was driven by strong patriotism to sympathize with the Irish people because the language they used was borrowed from their ruler, the British. Then his consciousness entered the second level. He felt that foreign words such as "home" and "A Le" suddenly made him unfamiliar with these familiar things, and at the same time he thought of the words "Christ" and "master". Because for Stephen, "Christ" implies that Ireland's religion has changed because of British rule, and "master" means that Ireland is a dependency of Britain. Finally, Stephen has a new understanding of the language he borrowed. Because he understands that language is an important tool for him to accomplish his artistic mission, at the end of the novel, he is determined to use his knowledge to turn English into a tool to express the voice of the imprisoned Irish nation.

According to Freud, the writer's creative activity is subconscious activity, that is, free association. Stream of consciousness novels discuss people's conscious activities, especially subconscious activities, so free association is regarded as one of the basic methods of creation by stream of consciousness novelists. Among all kinds of stream-of-consciousness techniques used by Joyce, free association is equally amazing. In the first chapter of A Portrait of a Young Artist, Joyce used this technique to reflect the chaotic thoughts of the protagonist when Stephen was ill and living in the school ward:

"How far are they from him! It is cold sunshine outside the window. He doubted whether he would die. Even if the weather is fine, a person will die. He may die before his mother comes. Then she will hold mass for him in the church. His classmates once told him that this is what the little thing did when he died. All the students will wear black clothes and go there for mass with sad expressions. Wells will go there too, but none of his classmates will look at him. The headmaster will also go there wearing a black cassock with gold thread, and long candles will be lit on the altar and around the coffin rack. They will slowly carry the coffin out, and he will be buried in a small cemetery near the limestone road not far from the church. Then Wells will regret what he did, and the church clock will ring slowly. "

There is no objective description of the author in this passage, only a sudden and random association of the characters, which seems abrupt on the surface, but it is reasonable to read it carefully. Stephen, who left home for the first time, felt even more lonely and depressed when he was ill, so he thought of "death" from the "cold sunshine outside the window", then thought of "mass", and then thought of "classmates and principals" who went to mass and "Wells and other confessions" who were unfriendly to him. Therefore, free association is not fantasy, it embodies the naturalness and authenticity of reality and plays an important role in revealing the inner spiritual world of characters.

Dream description is also a common expression in stream-of-consciousness novels. There are a lot of dream descriptions in stream-of-consciousness novels. Dreams have great leaps, both tangible and intangible, and everything can appear in dreams. Dreams can best reflect people's subconscious and reveal the truth in their hearts. With the help of this technique, the distant memories, frustrated desires, hidden fears and lifelong ideals hidden in the deep heart are all displayed on the stage of dreams. In the third chapter of A Portrait of a Young Artist, Stephen had a nightmare when he heard the preacher's sermon after having sex with a prostitute.

"There are some people in the field: one, three, six: those people are moving in groups in the field. They are people who look like goats with human faces, eyebrows like horns and thin beards like rubber. When they walked back and forth in the fields, their cold eyes shone with evil ferocity and they dragged their long tails behind them. A cruel and vicious mouth seems to emit a gray light, illuminating their bony and aging faces ... The long wagging tails are covered with moldy feces, and they tilt their terrible faces upward. ...

"He threw the blanket away from his face and neck like crazy. That's his hell. God has let him see the scene of the hell reserved for his sins ... This is the hell of the lascivious goat devil ... "

This nightmare reveals the guilt and fear of the hero after stealing the forbidden fruit, which makes his consciousness in extreme confusion. Even the hell in his nightmare vividly illustrates his suffering, because the man who looks like a goat (Greek mythology, the image of a lecherous god and a pervert) is the product of Stephen's spiritual world. Although the nightmare of the goat devil is terrible, it is a kind of release and comfort to Stephen to some extent, because after waking up from the nightmare, it is described that he ran to the window to breathe fresh air for comfort, which shows that he decided to repent his sins.

Language style

In The Portrait of a Young Artist, Joyce vividly shows the evolution of a young artist from childhood, adolescence to youth by adopting different language styles to match the gradual awakening of the protagonist's self-consciousness. The novel traces Stephen's growing experience from childhood, adolescence to youth, and reveals his arduous and tortuous pursuit of self and identity. On the whole, it is not difficult to find that the language of the novel tends to be complex, and the writing tends to be gorgeous from simple. This change process is consistent with Stephen's emotional change curve from childish to mature. The use of different styles of language and style adds a lot of bright colors to the novel, which makes it more real and cordial to read and further deepens the theme. In order to fully describe the development of characters' thoughts, especially to dig deep into the inner world of characters, the narrator in the novel not only keeps a certain distance from Stephen, the protagonist of the story, but also the distance between them is constantly changing: the inner monologue has a zero distance, and the obviously ironic paragraphs have a large span.

Suddenly realized

In the novel, Joyce carefully planned and used a lot of epiphany techniques. One of the outstanding points is that when Stephen was wandering on the beach, he suddenly saw "a little girl standing in the river in front of her, looking at the distant ocean alone and quietly." The image has completely become like a strange and beautiful seabird ... Her face is also a girl's, but it is dotted with amazing human beauty. " When he saw such amazing human beauty, Stephen was shocked by what he saw, and even his soul felt uncontrollable. "Her eyes have issued a call to him, and his soul can't stop ecstatic when it hears this call. Live, make mistakes, fall, cheer for victory, and rebuild life from life! " In this way, he suddenly had an epiphany, and realized that he should live as he pleases, get rid of the shackles of family and religion, not be burdened by the secular, and strive for his ideal artistic career and realize his life value. "Epiphany" is the only way to realize the "brilliance" of novels. The pursuit of epiphany is to build a bridge between the reader and the author through the mental activity state of the characters. Joyce successfully realized the purpose of conveying aesthetic interest through form through the application of epiphany, and the "brilliance" of A Portrait of a Young Artist was highlighted.

Myth element

Harmony between reality and myth. Joyce was deeply influenced by ancient Greek culture all his life, and the ancient Greek elements can be clearly seen in his works. In the portrait of a young artist, Stephen's surname is DeDeleuze, which happens to be the same name as the craftsman DeDeleuze in ancient Greek mythology. According to legend, DeDeleuze was a craftsman who once built a maze for the king of Crete. Later, he offended the king and was imprisoned in his own maze. DeDeleuze made wax wings and escaped from the maze. Stephen lived in an era of paralysis in Irish society, which was reflected in various fields of Irish society such as politics, economy and ideology. Politically, the Irish national autonomy movement fell into a trough; Economically, Irish people live in extreme poverty; Ideologically, the Catholic forces made Irish society lifeless and the people did nothing. Compared with ancient times and modern times, the maze has become a symbol of Irish society. It is the cage for the protagonist Stephen to grow up, which seriously hinders his free growth. Later, Stephen suddenly realized that he should fly out of the cage and embark on a foreign country like DeDeleuze in ancient Greece. In this way, Joyce skillfully combined the ancient Greek mythology with the reality of a young artist's portrait, which not only described the current situation of Irish society and Stephen's embarrassing situation at that time, but also expressed Stephen's determination after an epiphany. The combination of reality and myth realizes unity and harmony.

picture

Harmony of images. In order to show the protagonist's mental journey in different growth stages, Joyce used a lot of images in The Portrait of a Young Artist. One is dynamic images, such as oceans and birds. One is static images, such as streets and sounds. However, the meaning of these images is not fixed. They usually have different connotations at different stages of the protagonist's growth, and most of them have positive and negative connotations, both positive symbolic and negative. For example, the bird at the beginning of the article is just a symbol of punishment and cruelty "Oh, otherwise those Shan Ying will fly over and peck off its eyes." But in the fourth chapter, birds become a symbol of freedom and a yearning for a new life. "His throat ached from the desire to shout loudly. He will shout like a flying eagle, and shout out the joy of his blowing in the wind. "The imagination of birds inspired Stephen's fighting spirit, awakened his self-awareness, and made him firm in his goal and decided to create a new life. Generally speaking, through the negative meaning of images, the main idea that the author wants to convey is the resistance from all sides in the process of the protagonist's growth; Through the positive symbol of the image, it detonated the hero's next choice-escape. In this way, the setting of these images is skillfully combined with the theme of the full text-"resistance" and "escape". Therefore, the article presents a harmonious image beauty through the combination of dynamic and static images.