I know this might be going a bit far back in the class, but I want to write about the scene where Stehpen writes his first poem. He is trying to write about this encounter he had at a birthday party and later on a train with a girl named Emma. Nothing much happens in the encounter itself, but Stephen builds it up in his mind to be more significant than it really is. He thinks that during the party "amid the music and laughter her glance traveled to his corner" (72). Later on the tram, they are just talking, but Stephen thinks "She too wants me to catch hold of her...That's why she came with me to the tram" (73). In the poem itself he is building it up even more, and as we noted in class the encounter in the poem is completely different from the actual encounter.
But before I talk about him writing the poem about Emma, I first want to talk about his earlier, failed attempt to write a poem. It is after the Christmas dinner scene and he is trying to write a poem about Parnell, but "his brain his brain had then refused to grapple with the theme" (73). It is clear from this passage that Stephen is not trying to just write a few rhyming couplets about who Parnell. Stephen is clever enough to do that easily. No, Stephen here is trying to write a poem here with a theme, he is trying to convey the emotion from the dinner table discussion, but he just can't figure out how to do it. I remember the first time I tried to write a piece of literature. It was during National Novel Writing Month when I was a subbie and I decided I would write a 5,000 word short story instead of a 50,000 word novel. At that point in time I was really into Ray Bradbury and admired deeply the way Bradbury wrote emotions into his stories, so I decided my story should give the reader the sense of fear I would get when I read scary Bradbury stories. (My story was about a man's dog who slowly gains control over him and then murders him.) In my mind I was sure it would work, like Stephen was sure he could write about Parnell, but then when I sat down and tried to write I found myself incapable of expressing the sense of fear I wanted to. I dutifully kept writing and finished the story, but my heart wasn't in it and to this day I am too embarrassed to go back and read it. Stephen grew so frustrated with his poem that "desisting, he had covered the page with the names and addresses of certain of his classmates" (73).
Years later Stephen attempts again to write a poem. This poem seems more manageable to him because instead of trying to capture somebody else's emotion (like his father's emotions of Parnell) he is trying to convey emotions he himself felt. Even so, he is again on the brink of failing "but, by dint of brooding on the incident, he thought himself into confidence" (74). Then comes his epiphany: "During this process all these elements which he deemed common and significant fell out of the scene. There remained no trace of the tram itself nor of the tram men nor of the horses: nor did he and she appear vividly. The verses told only of the night and the balmy breeze and the maiden lustre of the moon" (74). Stephen realizes that he can convey his emotions on that night, but only if he is unconcerned with the facts of the encounter itself. That is why the encounters in real life and the poem are so different--Stephen is writing about the emotions he felt during the encounter, not the encounter itself. Years after I attempted my first story, I found myself wanting to write a story about my experiences hanging out with this one foster kid and our strange relationship. I found myself struggling to convey the emotion I wanted to because I was trying to stay within factual events, but then I had my epiphany and imagined as scene which was plausible and conveyed my emotions in a better way than any factual story could have. The story wasn't true in the sense that it actually took place, but it was true in terms of the feelings I was trying to convey.
I'm not claiming to be a literary genius like Stephen/Joyce and I hope I am much more likable than Stephen, but I know exactly what Stephen is feeling as he is going through this creative process. I think everyone who tries to create poems or stories experiences this.
This is a cool post because it provides a frame of reference for Stephen’s creative process. As someone lacking much experience with creative writing or poetry, it was difficult to tell how typical or atypical Stephen’s experiences are. I initially read the great alterations to reality in Stephen’s poem as indicative of his naïve views and as an example of his tendency to think of events in an idealized way. While this may still be true to some extent, reading your post made me realize that Stephen’s poem, as well as the way that he views other events (such as his first encounter with a prostitute) may actually just be his way of expressing emotions. This view makes Stephen seem like a more likeable character.
ReplyDeleteA good follow-up might be to consider the later poem-writing scene in chap. 5 (which I really really wish we'd actually gotten to in class!). Because it seems like something similar is happening here--it's both "about" Emma and totally metaphorical (i.e. it appears to be "about" fallen seraphim and incense) at the same time. But it turns his (actually pretty ordinary and mundane) emotions about the Emma situation into something new, something with form, with "themes," with ideas embedded in it, and the reader has to work to get at these themes (and the reader might take something altogether different from the poem). It's doubtful that Emma would even guess the poem is "about" her.
ReplyDeleteIn both composition scenes, it is important to note the real successes Stephen experiences, even as we ALSO note how writing the poem causes him to rewrite reality as much as he "represents" it.