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The Epiphanies of Joyce Author(s): Robert Scholes and Florence L. Walzl Source: PMLA, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar., 1967), pp. 152-154Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461060Accessed: 05-03-2015 21:43 UTC

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NOTES, DOCUMENTS, AND CRITICAL COMMENT THE EPIPHANIES OF JOYCE

I A COMMENT on Florence L. Walzl's essay, "The Liturgy of the Epiphany Season and the Epiphanies of Joyce," PMLA, LXXX (Sept. 1965), 436-450. The author of this essay has overlooked some pertinent factual material on Joyce's Epiphanies. Rather than take up some of her specific points for correction or refutation, I should like to present here as much as I have been able to discover about the Epiphanies in several years of investigation, and invite others to refute or correct me where my facts are inadequate or my inferences illogical. For convenience I shall number each item and provide general documentation.

1. For Joyce the word "Epiphany" designated a prose genre in which he worked.

2. From 1900 to 1904 he wrote over seventy Epiphanies and put them together in a fixed sequence beginning with the famous "Pull out his eyes" Epiphany which appears early in A Portrait.

3. Of these seventy-some Epiphanies, forty have survived: twenty-two of these are in the Lockwood Collection at the University of Buffalo. Eighteen addi- tional Epiphanies are in the Cornell University Joyce Collection. All forty were published by the North- western University Press in the spring of 1965 in The Workshop of Daedalus, to which the reader is referred for elaboration and documentation of the present comments.

4. Joyce used his Epiphanies as a skeletal outline for Stephen Hero, copying them in where appropriate, with some changes to suit the context.

5. He later used some in A Portrait, and a few in Ulysses.

6. No known Epiphany has been found in Dubliners. 7. Joyce never used the word Epiphany in connec-

tion with Dubliners, or as a term for a structural device in longer fiction. His own Epiphanies were all record- ings of actual experiences or moods. None were in- vented. In fact, by his own definition, they could not be invented but had to be recorded.

8. Thus the term "Epiphany" as all too commonly used in discussion of Dubliners and Joyce's otherfic- tion has nothing to do with the term "Epiphany" as Joyce himself used it.

9. Since Joyce himself pre-empted the term to ap- ply to one of the genres in which he worked, it would seem appropriate for critics to follow his lead. To use his word to refer to an aspect of his work other than the one he intended by it is to gain a spurious author- ity for many a tenuous aperCu, which might seem much less impressive if not cloaked in the borrowed raiment of Joyce's phraseology.

10. May I suggest that for critics as well as poets, "there's more enterprise in walking naked."

ROBERT SCHOLES University of Iowa

II At the present time the term epiphany, in addition

to its religious significations, has at least two distinct meanings in Joyce criticism. It may refer specifically to a certain type of brief prose work that Joyce com- posed between 1900 and 1904. It may mean revelation or illumination in certain literary and technical senses. In this latter meaning it is widely used in reference to all of Joyce's works.

As to the first signification: Joyce himself applied the religious term epiphany to the brief narratives and vignettes, which he described in Stephen Hero as re- cordings of "the most delicate and evanescent of moments"' and in Ulysses as "epiphanies on green oval leaves."2 At the time of composition of my study (sent to PMLA on 27 August 1964), twenty-two of these epiphanies had been published.3 Subsequently Pro- fessors Robert Scholes and Richard M. Kain published their book, The Workshop of Daedalus, which gives the text of forty epiphanies.4 Regrettably I could not con- sult their work. I have referred to these early epipha- nies of Joyce in the introduction of my article. My main concern was not, however, with these short works, but with the influence of the sequence of liturgical epiphanies in the Epiphany season rites (January 1 to Candlemas) both upon Joyce's chang- ing concept of epiphany at the time he was writing the Dubliners stories and on the narratives themselves. In my discussion of Dubliners I emphasized that Joyce never called these stories epiphanies, but rather epicleti, a word derived from another ecclesiastical term. I speculated as to the meaning of epicleti to Joyce, its relationship to epiphany, and the reasons Joyce may have preferred it. I also suggested that Joyce's omission of the term epiphany in the esthetic discussion of the Portrait probably indicated a chang- ing view and might relate to his experiences in compos- ing the Dubliners stories. It is possible that Joyce might have preferred that the term epiphany be re- stricted to the early prose paragraphs, but his own use of the term does not seem so limited.

As to the more general signification of epiphany: Joyce himself set the pattern for the use of the term epiphany as a spiritual or intellectual apprehension which represented an enlightenment. In the esthetic discussion of Stephen Hero, where the qualities of beauty are defined as integritas (wholeness), consonan- tia (symmetry), and claritas (radiance), he defines epiphany as an apprehension that radiance is quiddity.

I James Joyce, Stephen Hero (New York, 1944), p. 211. 2 James Joyce, Ulysses (New York, 1946), p. 41. 3 James Joyce, Epiphanies, ed. 0. A. Silverman (Buffalo,

N. Y., 1956). 4 The Workshop of Daedalus: James Joyce and the Raw

Materials for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Evanston, In., 1965).

152

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Robert Scholes and Florence L. Walzl 153

"Claritas is quidditas. . . This is the moment which I call epiphany.... we recognize that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance."5 Later in the Portrait in the corresponding discussion of esthetics Joyce again defined claritas as being an apprehension of quidditas; however, he then described it differently; it is "the clear radiance of the esthetic image . . . apprehended luminously by the mind" of the artist.6 Joyce did not call this realization epiphany, a fact many observers overlook. Yet the similarity between the two discus- sions has led to association of the term epiphany with the more technical type of revelation described in the Portrait. Thus following Joyce's lead either directly or indirectly, critics have used the term epiphany to refer to an illumination of the essential nature of a thing, and by extension also, to an apprehension of the nar- rative or imagistic means which effect such a revela- tion. Epiphany in these senses has been applied fre- quently to all of Joyce's works. For example, in one of the first important discussions of the epiphany, Irene Hendry [Chayes]'s "Joyce's Epiphanies," the epiphany is discussed as an "esthetic revelation" and Joyce's work described as "a tissue of epiphanies, great and small, from fleeting images to whole books, from the briefest revelation in his lyrics to the epiphany that occupies one gigantic, enduring 'moment' in Finnegans Wake."7 Others who have used the term epiphany in reference to Joyce's esthetic theories and fictional techniques include Maurice Beebe, who analyzes the epiphany as part of Joyce's esthetic and refers to the "epiphanies" which "appear in the Portrait and Ulysses"; Haskell Block, who examines Joyce's "theory of epiphanies" as part of a general "critical theory"; Hugh Kenner, who in a discussion on the relationship between "epiphany and the intuition of being" draws examples from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake; Geddes MacGregor, who equates "epiphany" with the "Crocean 'moment of expression' "and illus- trates with epiphanies from Ulysses; and William T. Noon, who traces the development from the "largely parenthetical transcriptions" of the "earliest Epiph- anies" to the "highly compressed . . . verbal formu- lations of the Wake" and illustrates "epiphanic strategy" in Dubliners stories.8 In a recent study, S. L. Goldberg, discussing Joyce's esthetic, has "concen- trated" on Joyce's "conception of 'epiphany' or symbol," noted the differences in the concept of epiphany in Stephen Hero, the Portrait, and Ulysses, and cited typical epiphanies from Ulysses.9 Among others who discuss the claritas-quidditas apprehension in terms of an esthetic theory generally applicable to Joyce's writing are A. D. Hope, Thomas E. Connolly, and William York Tindall."0

It should be pointed out that the term epiphany has also been applied frequently to the Dubliners narra- tives. Three well-known examples will suffice: Theo- dore Spencer in the introduction to Stephen Hero calls Dubliners a "series of epiphanies"; Harry Levin in James Joyce interprets the book as a "collection" of epiphanies; and William York Tindall in A Reader's

Guide to James Joyce describes it as "a great epiphany and the container of little epiphanies, an epiphany of epiphanies.""

It is evident that the term epiphany has several meanings in current Joyce criticism. It may refer to an early prose type, to a spiritual and intellectual illumi- nation of the nature of a thing, and also, by extension, to the artistic insights and means by which such a revelation is achieved.

As to the religious signification of epiphany: the epiphany is universally defined as a visible manifesta- tion of deity, and the liturgical epiphany is such a manifestation in the life of Christ, the account of which is incorporated in the liturgy of the Mass or Divine Office. The purpose of my study was to examine the influence of a group of these epiphanies upon the il- luminations of Dubliners, whether Joyce labelled them "epiphanies" or not. The liturgical epiphanies, in gen- eral, employ a narrative method in which a sequence of details in a simply told story effects a sudden revela- tion of spiritual or moral meaning, usually as to the essential being of a person or thing. There is inherent symbolism: as a result of a long tradition of Biblical exegesis the characters are regarded as figurae and the action interpreted at various levels of meaning. Such a narrative approach seems relevant to Dubliners, where each story leads to a moral manifestation and where each character is a social type also. In addition, the arrangement of epiphanies in the gospels of the Epiphany-season Mass liturgy seems to have influ- enced Joyce also. A series of chronological epiphanies in Christ's life is followed by a series illustrating typical aspects of His messiahship. This two-part arrangement has certain likenesses to the order of stories in Dubliners where a chronological series of stories about individuals is followed by a set of stories

6 Stephen Hero, p. 213. 6 James Joyce, A Porfrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

Compass Edition (New York, 1956), p. 213. 7Irene Hendry [Chayes], "Joyce's Epiphanies," in James

Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism, ed. Seon Givens (New York, 1948), pp. 27-46.

8 See Maurice Beebe, "Joyce and Aquinas: The Theory of Aesthetics," PQ, xxxvi (January 1957), 30-34; Haskell Block, "The Critical Theory of James Joyce," JAAC, vm (March 1950), 181-184; Hugh Kenner, Dublin's Joyce (Bloomington, Ind., 1956), pp. 144-154; Geddes Mac- Gregor, "Artistic Theory in Joyce," Life and Letters, LIV (July 1947), 21-22; and William T. Noon, Joyce and Aquinas (New Haven, 1957), pp. 60-85.

9 S. L. Goldberg, The Classical Temper: A Study of James Joyce's Ulysses (London, 1961), p. 312. See pp. 41-65, 78, 214-215, and 269-270.

10 A. D. Hope, "The Esthetic Theory of James Joyce," Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, xxi (December 1943), 93-114; Thomas E. Connolly, "Joyce's Aesthetic Theory," UKCR, xxiII (October 1956), 47-50; and William York Tindall, James Joyce: His Way of Interpreting thle Modern World (New York, 1950), pp. 120-121; and A Reader's Guide to James Joyce (New York, 1959), pp. 10-12.

11 Theodore Spencer, "Introduction" to Stephen Hero, pp. 16-17; Harry Levin, James Joyce: A Critical Introduction (Norfolk, Conn., 1941), p. 29; and Tindall, Guide, p. 11.

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154 The Epiphanies of Joyce

about public types and public morality. Therefore, in appropriating the term epiphany from religious liturgy, Joyce seems to have borrowed more than a name. The word implied a manifestation of being, a view of characters as types, and moral and spiritual levels of symbolism. My study suggests that the term epiphany in connection with Joyce's narratives should include some of these religious significations.

FLORENCE L. WALZL University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

III All forty of the extant Epiphanies have been avail-

able for some years. No scholar needed to wait for their publication. But that is not the issue here. The issue is a confusion of terminology fostered, no doubt accidentally, by many of the critics listed in Mrs. Walzl's reply, who take the term Epiphany to refer to an artistic device which can be traced throughout Joyce's work. Now lots of devices can be traced throughout Joyce's work but we are not obliged to give them fancy Greek names with liturgical over- tones. Mrs. Walzl's list of quotations shows as well as can be shown just how much of a cliche the term Epiphany has become in Joyce criticism. Far from aiding us in our reading, it has become an obstacle to understanding, an arid formula for cranking out un- necessary interpretations. I suggest that we put this particular formula aside, for the sake of the work which it tends to obscure, and, if we must write on

Dubliners, let's try to write like Harry Stone in his essay on "Araby" (Antioch Review, Fall 1965), where the term Epiphany, if it appears at all, does not get in the way of a learned and sensitive reading of one of Joyce's stories.

ROBERT SCHOLES University of Iowa

IV Two points might be made. First, it was Joyce, not

his critics, who, in a passage in Stephen Hero where he specifically cites St. Thomas Aquinas, applied the term epiphany to certain intellectual apprehensions. It seems to me a definition in such a context cannot be divorced from its philosophical and religious over- tones.

Second, the term epiphany is a commonplace in the liturgy, referring to manifestations of divinity in the life of Christ. It was a familiar term to Joyce, and the liturgists' view that in these epiphanies the narration of events leads to a revelation of their essential spiri- tual significance seems reflected in Joyce's view of the epiphany as an illumination of the spiritual essence of an object or experience. Since Joyce used scholastic and liturgical terms in various contexts, it is my view that a study of their original meaning tends to illumi- nate, rather than obscure, his definitions and to clarify his own later practices in fiction.

FLORENCE L. WALZL Univtersity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Article Contentsp. 152p. 153p. 154

Issue Table of ContentsPublications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar., 1967) pp. i-vi+1-154Volume Information [pp. i-vi]Front Matter [pp. 1-2]The Poet's Dilemma: An Interpretation of Rilke's Second Duino Elegy [pp. 3-13]Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man [pp. 14-27]Allegory and Literary Form [pp. 28-32]The Allegorical Interpretation of Medieval Literature [pp. 33-38]The Allegorical Interpretation of Renaissance Literature [pp. 39-43]The Dialectic of Transcendence in Shakespeare's Coriolanus [pp. 44-53]Swift's Project: A Religious and Political Satire [pp. 54-63]Richardson's Repetitions [pp. 64-67]Tom Jones and "His Egyptian Majesty": Fielding's Parable of Government [pp. 68-77]Tennyson and "The Lover's Tale" [pp. 78-84]The Vendible Values of Housman's Soldiery [pp. 85-90]L. Boom as Dreamer in Finnegans Wake [pp. 91-97]'Line' and 'Round' in Emerson's "Uriel" [pp. 98-103]Howells' English Travel Books: Problems in Technique [pp. 104-116]Court and Country: The Fusion of Two Images of Love in Juan Rodrguez's El siervo libre de amor[pp. 117-120]Algunos aspectos de la elaboracin literaria de La familia de Len Roch[pp. 121-127]The Circular Structure of Valle-Incln's Ruedo ibrico[pp. 128-135]Montaigne and Gide's La Porte troite[pp. 136-141]Grundbegriffe im dramatischen Schaffen Gerhart Hauptmanns [pp. 142-151]Notes, Documents, and Critical CommentThe Epiphanies of Joyce [pp. 152-154]