When last I left you I had boldly claimed James Joyce’s Ulysses to be the greatest English language novel ever written, and so I am
now left to the task of making a case to justify that claim. Art is a very
subjective topic so one can never truly provide an indisputable proof of the
quality of a work in the same way as we might prove, for example that Mount
Everest is a more demanding climb than Mount Fuji. Still there are elements in
any particular genre of art that attest to quality that can be intuited as well
as proscribed by a list of agreed upon ‘objective’ characteristics. Put more succinctly and less didactically, we possess an
innate sense of artistic quality and also have the ability to name the elements
that differentiate great art from good art, and good art from crap.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with Joyce, and the word was
Joyce. The greatness of Ulysses begins with the efficacy of Joyce’s prose – with the word. James Joyce was an indisputable linguistic virtuoso and his
mastery of words is put to greatest effect in Ulysses. From the opening “Introibo” to the concluding “Yes” Joyce creates life and constructs a universe through the word. His characters
are so fully formed through dialogue, monologue, and narration that the reader
cannot help but experience them as flesh and blood beings. Joyce touches his
pen to the page and infuses it with life, and the word is indeed made flesh. ‘That’s all well and good’, you may be thinking, ‘but all great writers have shown this ability’. Too true. Name a great author – Dostoyevsky, Morrison, Baldwin, Bronte (which ever one you like), Soseki,
Orwell – and you will invariably find characters so realistically fashioned as to have
taken on lives beyond the text and into the imagination of the reader. So while
Joyce’s prose work in
Ulysses is masterful, he is certainly not peerless in this regard, thus by this measure
Ulysses finds itself as just another classic among classics having brought into the
world memorable characters.
But Joyce was not merely a wordsmith; he was a painter and musician with words. Ulysses posses a visual texture and lyrical quality absent in many of the greatest
works of literature. Much of Ulysses truly reads like poetry waiting for a musical accompaniment, and the scenes he
constructs with words play out almost cinematographically before the eye. To
illustrate the point let’s look at how Joyce closes the second episode with the following gem:
Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.
-- I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the
only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you
know why?
He frowned sternly on the bright air.
-- Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
-- Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling
chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms
waving to the air.
-- She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on
gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.
On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles,
dancing coins.
As with his character development Joyce’s prose skills transcend mere story to create true beauty. This is attributable
not only to Joyce’s innate gifts as a writer, but also to his willingness to experiment and push
the boundaries of conventional literary rules and practices. We need simply
peruse the famous, and nearly universally acclaimed final episode of Ulysses (Penelope) to experience the extent to which Joyce was willing to challenge
custom, and his effectiveness in doing so.
Here again, however, though we may have narrowed the field, we have not yet
distinguished Ulysses from the pack of great literature, which make up the canon. We could, once
again, create a roll call of great books possessing beautiful prose and true to
life characters, any of which might be legitimately called the greatest novel
ever. Cervantes’ Don Quixote comes to mind, or maybe Wuthering Heights. But Joyce’s command of the language is only the surface beauty of the book, providing the
point of entry for the reader into a rabbit hole of remarkable depth and
discovery. Joyce’s prose serve merely as the siren song that draws the reader ineluctably into
the story, however it is his method that constructs the labyrinth in which the
reader loses him/herself, and out of which must ultimately find his/her way. It
must be remembered that Stephen Dedalus, our creative hero in
Ulysses and James Joyce’s literary incarnation, takes his name from the Greek mythic master labyrinth
builder Deadalus, and it is no coincidence that the author chose this name for
his fictional avatar, as Ulysses is an intentional maze to be navigated by the
reader.
It is through this fact that we get a hint of the complexity and ingenuity of
Joyce as a creative artist, and the depth of art and meaning to be gained
through Ulysses. By casting himself as a fictional hero in the story (and thereby allying
himself with the Greek artificer Deadalus) Joyce deftly bridges the divide
between fiction and reality while simultaneously linking himself with the gods
of creation, and implicating the text as a convoluted portal of discovery.
(SPOILER ALERT!!!).The fictional Stephen Dedalus (through the pen of his
factual counterpart) authors his own story, literally conceiving and recording
the events of his day as he lives it. Strictly speaking Stephen’s authorship of
Ulysses is only implied in the narrative and technically does not begin until sometime
after the story has ended, but therein lay the genius. Joyce plants a plethora
of clues to pointing to Stephen as author but it is never explicitly stated,
thus it is only through the detective work of the reader that this fact is
discovered, and once the reader comes to this realization the effect is
intellectually devastating.
Joyce’s method in this respect is to drop subtle hints to the reader, barely
detectable but hugely revelatory when discovered by the reader. Take for
example the seemingly simple throw away line in episode 9 (Scylla and
Charibdis) “See this. Remember” thought by Stephen Dedalus as he listens to the other Dublin literati speak of
a social gathering of the “most promising young writing talents” in Dublin of which he has not been counted. Once we understand this fleeting
thought for what it is, Stephen’s reminder to himself to remember to include this conversation in his future
masterpiece of Irish literature, we have uncovered a significant piece of the
puzzle of
Ulysses; Stephen as author of Ulysses. Joyce supports this vague hint just a few lines later as Stephen picks up in
the midst of this same conversation the following statement; “Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for
it.”
The reference is to the Irish writer George Moore, and here Joyce, through
Stephen, is able to take a little jab at all of those who dismissed, doubted,
or simply overlooked his talent and promise.
Multiply this method of ingenuity by 100 and you begin to understand the true
greatness of Ulysses and why it stands apart from other great novels. Ulysses manages (extraordinarily) to be the story of itself. Like the universe it is
self-generated and its story is told from the center outward by characters of
its own creation, who in turn are its creator. The hand, which pens the story
of Ulysses, is itself a creation of Ulysses and it is through this convoluted yet simple art that Ulysses is the story of humankind, the godhead, and the cosmos. Sound pretty confusing?
It is. But it is only through diving in and swimming through the muck that we
discover its greatest treasures. To truly appreciate the complexity of Ulysses (and test the veracity of my claims) requires a conscientious read of the text.
Much is made of Joyce’s use of “stream of consciousness” and his “interior monologue” and while these innovative literary tools were essential to his creation of
depth in his characters, it is his style, or more accurately his multiplicity
of literary styles which opens up his creative palette allowing him to match
mood to subject. Each episode is both a story in its own right and an essential
part to the whole of the book. In fact what is most amazing in Ulysses is how Joyce fuses these multiple styles into a harmonic whole that radiates
with a true life force. The end result of Ulysses’ ‘universality’ is no accident, but the careful and painstakingly crafted plan of the author.
"It is an epic of two races (Israelite - Irish) and at the same time the cycle
of the human body as well as a little story (storiella) of a day (life). ...It
is also a sort of encyclopedia. My intention is to transpose the myth sub
specie temporis nostri. Each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every
art being interconnected and interrelated in the structural scheme of the
whole) should not only condition but even create its own technique. Each
adventure is so to say one person although it is composed of persons-- as
Aquinas relates of the angelic hosts." 20 September 1920 (original in Italian,
for Linati) (http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/)
Joyce had grand ambitions and wanted to accomplish a number of tasks through Ulysses; he sought to both elevate and critique the Ireland that he both adored and
despised, he wanted to pay homage to the history of English language writing
and simultaneously banish it to history’s Hades in favor of a new method, and he wanted to raise the dead heroes of the
past and cut them down at the knees. Not only was he successful in these
pursuits, but he also managed to challenge the twin powers of Imperial England
and the Papal Church, confront the ridiculous perversity of the overly and
overtly macho gender politics of turn of the century western values, and expose
the rich (perhaps pornographic) sexual nature of the human psyche which lay
thinly veiled by the propriety of polite bourgeoisie values. To achieve this
required a great deal of knowledge on subjects spanning literature, theology,
geography, history, psychoanalysis, and physics to name but a few. Through the
literally hundreds of references which construct the text Joyce proves to be
more than equal to the task creating an iconographic narrative which begs
interpretation for the sake of understanding, and it is through the
investigations into these endless references that we learn both the meaning of
the text and about the world which shaped it.
Through adept literary sleight of hand Joyce manages to transform
turn-of-the-century Dublin into a time machine at the center of the universe
taking the reader to the Garden of Eden, Rocky Ithaca, late medieval Denmark,
and the far East (amongst other places) without ever leaving the confines of
Dublin. Joyce condenses the cosmos into a single day in a single place, and
through the layering of realities he melds past, present, and future. And just
as Dublin serves as a prism through which historical place is filtered, so too
does Joyce’s art cast his characters in the roll of conduit through which historical
personages are reincarnated. In the end we can say that it is through Joyce’s masterly character development, virtuoso prose work, bold experimentation, and
above all his meticulous planning and staggering intellect that
Ulysses ranks among the greatest literary works of all time, but it is his ability to
successfully pull all of these elements together into a harmonic whole, whose
parts, great as they are, are transcended by the complete package, that make Ulysses the greatest English language novel ever written.
