But in the present text it is expounded kinetically. Stephen is personally interested in the success of his paper, his intellectual fortunes seem to depend on it, and we are moved, not necessarily to do something, but to sympathy and concern for the outcome. The later text is, as usual, more mature, and shows Joyce, as the earlier version does not, illustrating his theory by his practice.*

-III-

There is one aspect of Stephen’s aesthetic theory which appears in the manuscript alone, and is left out of the Portrait entirely. In my opinion the passage describing it is the most interesting and revealing in the entire text. It is the passage on pp. 210 ff. beginning with the words, “He was passing through Eccles Street,” which explains Joyce’s theory of epiphanies.†

I ask the reader to turn to this passage, and read it.

This theory seems to me central to an understanding of Joyce as an artist, and we might describe his successive works as illustrations, intensifications and enlargements of it. Dubliners, we may say, is a series of epiphanies describing apparently trivial but actually crucial and revealing moments in the lives of different characters. The Portrait may be seen as a kind of epiphany — a showing forth — of Joyce himself as a young man; Ulysses, by taking one day in the life of the average man, describes that man, according to Joyce’s intention, more fully than any human being had ever been described before; it is the epiphany of Leopold Bloom, just as, years earlier, the trivial conversation overheard on a misty evening in Eccles Street (where, incidentally, Mr. Bloom lived) was the epiphany of those two people’s lives, shown forth in a moment. And Finnegans Wake may be seen as a vast enlargement, of course unconceived by Joyce as a young man, of the same view. Here it is not any one individual that is “epiphanized”; it is all of human history, symbolized in certain types the representatives of which combine with one another as the words describing them combine various meanings, so that H. C. Earwicker and his family, his acquaintances, the city of Dublin where he lives, his morality and religion, become symbols of an epiphanic view of human life as a whole, and the final end of the artist is achieved.

And if we keep this theory in mind, as a further aspect of the static theory of art developed throughout the present text, it helps us to understand what kind of writer Joyce is. A theory like this is not of much use to a dramatist, as Joyce seems to have realized when he first conceived it. It is a theory which implies a lyrical rather than a dramatic view of life. It emphasizes the radiance, the effulgence, of the thing itself revealed in a special moment, an unmoving moment, of time. The moment, as in the macrocosmic lyric of Finnegans Wake, may involve all other moments, but it still remains essentially static, and though it may have all time for its subject matter it is essentially timeless.

-IV-

But this fragment of Stephen Hero does not have to be considered in relation to Joyce’s later writing to be thought worth preserving. It can stand on its own merits as a remarkable piece of work. Though it is not as carefully planned and concentrated as the Portrait, it has a freshness and directness, an accuracy of observation and an economy and sharpness of style that make it, in spite of its occasional immaturities, something to be enjoyed and admired for its own sake. It is one of the best descriptions of a growing mind that has ever been written.

Theodore Spencer

EDITORIAL NOTE

 

There are two kinds of correction in the manuscript as Joyce left it. One kind consists of revisions made in copying it from the rough draft: certain words are deleted, others have been changed. These corrections have been indicated in the text by placing the original version in brackets with the amended version following. There are also some obvious errors — repetitions of words, omitted words and faults of punctuation. These are of no interest and I have silently set them right.

The second kind of correction has been more difficult to handle. Joyce evidently went through the manuscript with a red or blue crayon in his hand and slashed strokes beside, under or across certain phrases, sentences and paragraphs. Presumably he did not like them and intended to change them or get rid of them. Some indication of where these slashes occur is obviously necessary if an accurate presentation is to be given of the manuscript and of Joyce’s feelings about it. Consequently I have indicated these slashed passages by enclosing them between the marks « ». The slashes are made very broadly, as if in haste or impatience, so that it is not always easy to decide where, in Joyce’s mind, the unsatisfactoriness began and stopped. But the general indications are clear enough, and the slashes were evidently made by Joyce himself since he used the same crayon to make an occasional verbal correction, and the handwriting in such cases is his.

I am greatly indebted to Mr. John Kelleher, of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, for putting his knowledge of all things Irish at my disposal. The reader who cares to identify the characters mentioned in the present text with their prototypes in real life should consult Mr.