Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
( JAMES JOYCE)
,.
Sin and Redemption in James Joyces
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by Neil Murphy, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore
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evil accompanies Stephens sinful actions. When he sins with prostitutes, for example, he feels some dark presence moving irresistibly
upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a
ood lling him wholly with itself (106). Traditional images of hell
are not far from his imagining consciousness: Stephen is painfully
aware of the wasting res of lust, the dark presence, and the wail
of despair from a hell of suerers (106). He positively oozes sin and
advances into another realm of existence, another world . . . awakened from a slumber of centuries (107). his other world suggests
another deep linkage between Stephen and the devil and oers crucial
foreshadowing of the sermon in the retreat. he sense of dislocation
from the xed Catholic narratives of his former life is profound, even
though the language of those narratives remains the central dening
aspect of his new experiences.
he focal point for Stephens salvation from his sins of the esh is
the retreat, during which the process of redemption is characterized by
fear, a deep awareness, punishment, reverence, regret, and sorrow. More
signicant in the context of the overall arc of Stephens development,
however, is the recurring concentration on the oppositional claims
of esh and spirit: Citing Matthew, What does it prot a man to
gain the whole world if he suer the loss of his immortal soul? (118;
Matthew 16:26), the priest registers the claims of material reality over
those of the eternal spirit, repeatedly drawing attention to lower and
higher forms of existence, to the beast-like, and to the pure and the
holy, respectively. After the initial impact of the sermons, Stephen felt
that [forms] passed this way and that through the dull light. And that
was life (119). Material existence has become spectral, inconsequential;
when he later embraces art it coincides with a necessary rapprochement
with the stu of material existence, the wild heart of life (185). But
for now the esh becomes an emblem of sin and dullness.
Stephen twice seeks redemption. First via confession, repentance
and prayer, after the searing experiences of the retreat, and then via
the liberation of art, when he ultimately takes metaphorical ight. he
representation of Stephens religious experiences is not always accompanied by the hellish imagery of sin and its consequences. A profound
sense of reverence also accompanies his childhood responses to the
trappings of Catholicism, as is clear from his respect for the sacristy,
that strange and holy place (41), and his enthusiastic embracing of
the spiritual path after his redemption from sin. Of course, Stephens
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