the poetics of james joyce: dubliners
by Ray Greenblatt
Throughout his books one observes that James Joyce was a master word-smith. A fine linguist he spoke Greek, Gaelic, Italian, French; and he was an expert in the mother tongue he was taught, English. He wrote three collections of poetry, traditional in form and rhyme. However, I see significant poetic prose in his first book, the collection of stories entitled Dubliners (1914). Let us consider five stories: “Two Gallants,” ”A Little Cloud,” “A Painful Case,” “The Dead,” and “Araby.” Joyce’s poetics show strongly in description of setting, objects, people, and in emotional moments.
TWO GALLANTS
Two men are walking the streets of Dublin at night: “Like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their tall poles upon the living texture below, which, changing shape and hue unceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging, unceasing murmur.” (54) Let us take note of how Joyce repeats forms of the same word.
One object becomes distinct, acting as a symbol of a man’s mood: “Lenehan’s gaze was fixed on the large faint moon circled with a double halo. He watched earnestly the passing of a grey web of twilight across its face.” (57)
Joyce is able to catch the character of a person in a few telling strokes as skillfully as a painter: “He walked with his hands by his sides, holding himself erect and swaying his head from side to side. His head was large, globular and oily; it sweated in all weathers; and his large round hat, set upon it sideways, looked like a bulb which had grown out of another.” (56)
Later, one man is nervously waiting for the other to conclude a shady deal: “The air which the harpist had played began to control his movements. His softly padded feet played the melody while his fingers swept a scale of variations idly along the railings after each group of notes.” (60) As he glances the man coming towards him, emotions grow stronger: “An intimation of the result pricked him like the point of a sharp instrument. He knew Corley would fail; he knew it was no go.” (63)
A LITTLE CLOUD
Early in this story Joyce personifies the houses of the city of Dublin: “They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the river-banks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night to bid them arise, shake themselves and begone.” (74)
He seems to feel tender toward the denizens of the city: “The glow of a late autumn sunset covered the grass plots and walks. It cast a shower of kindly golden dust on the untidy nurses and decrepit old men who drowsed on the benches; it flickered upon all the moving figures.” (72)”A horde of grimy children populated the street. They stood or ran in the roadway, or crawled up the steps before the gaping doors, or squatted like mice upon the thresholds.” (73) A strong simile.
A photograph of a woman is peered at in a certain light: “He looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered coldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But he found something mean in it. Why was it so unconscious and ladylike? The composure of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him and defied him: there was no passion in them, no rapture.” (82)
Emotions are very muted in this story. Men and women hide from each other and themselves behind a cardboard morality: “’I’ll tell you my opinion,’ said Ignatius Gallaher, emerging after some time from the cloud of smoke in which he had taken refuge, ‘it’s a rum world. Talk of immorality! I’ve heard of cases—what am I saying—I’ve known them: cases of . . . immorality . . .’” (78) That smoke cloud becomes very symbolic.
A PAINFUL CASE
The protagonist sees a train which suggests how he is feeling: “Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name.” (111)
He remembers their first significant looks at each other: “Their gaze began with a defiant note, but was confused by what seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris, revealing for an instant a temperament of great sensibility. The pupil reasserted itself quickly, this half-disclosed nature fell again under the reign of prudence, and her astrakhan jacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fullness, struck the note of defiance more definitely.” (104)
There are many observations about this woman. From her husband: “He had dismissed his wife so sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone else would take an interest in her.” (104). In context that phrase ‘gallery of pleasures’ is devastating. But the new man in her life sees her very differently: “Her companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic.” (105) Another strong simile!
Joyce penetrates the personality of this new man: “His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheek-bones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed.” (102)
Joyce does not waste words in description for it own sake; as the passage continues, he delves more deeply into the man’s character: “He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.” (102) The person is not without emotion, and Joyce is not without humor in his depiction.
THE DEAD
Here is a man in a landscape: “A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toe-caps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.” (162)
Here is a description of a cluster of objects: “Three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.” (179) A humorous rendering of alcohol which can confront and perhaps conquer a person like an army.
The following is another word painting this time of an older woman: “Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going.” (164) Although this was Joyce’s longest story in the collection, forty-two pages, he still employs his poetics sparingly yet tellingly.
The following passage ties to the opening image of snow and capsulizes the entire story. It is, however, not just a view of nature but a view of the nature of man: “It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” (202) This passage contains the poetic rhythms and scope of an Epic.
ARABY
Joyce again anthropomorphizes buildings: “The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.” (38) Then the action runs behind the houses: “To the back doors of the dark dripping gardens were odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.” (39) Not only is repetition again strong but also alliteration.
He is equally as strong describing a woman as a man: “I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible, as she stood at ease.” (40)
That previous paragraph suggests an emotion, a strong passion rising in a teenage boy that dominates the story. “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom.” (40) Where in some stories emotions are smothered, here the boy gives full vent to his feelings.
“All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled; murmuring: ‘O love! O love!’ many times.” (40) All this feeling and yet he fails in his goal: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (44)
All of James Joyce’s work has been analyzed from many angles. As an American I am sure I have missed nuances referring to Irish language and culture in Dubliners, especially as pivotal a time as 1914 when the Revolution was in motion. However, a plethora of poetic techniques is on view for any reader who encounters the writings of James Joyce.
About the Author: Ray Greenblatt’s most recent book of poetry is Nocturnes & Aubades (Parnilis Pub, 2018). His experimental novel, Twenty Years on Graysheep Bay, is published by Sunstone Press, 2017. He has written book reviews for Joseph Conrad Today, Graham Greene Newsletter, Dylan Thomas Society, and John Updike Society.