To what extent does Joyce privilege the visual over other narrative
means in Dubliners?
The correlation between the art of the painter and that of the novelist exists in the fact
that both attempt to represent reality with an “uncompromising visual focus” (Doherty
49), as life is, after all, experienced through the eyes. Paying particular attention to
Araby, The Dead, and Two Gallants, this paper will explore this focus on the “visual”
by arguing that Joyce’s attention to descriptive detail (especially of the body) is not
for the sake of realist embellishment but as a means of visual focalization and
communication, to get across an image that will give the reader an accurate depiction
of the picture Joyce aims to represent, an image that is as fixed and unmovable as
that of a painting. As such, I maintain that Joyce privileges sight and the visual over
other, more subjective, narrative means that “magnify an awareness of the self”
(Olson 3) (such as epiphany etc., any technique to do with thought rather than the
senses) because it represents reality and the ordinary in such a way that allows the
reader to experience the novel through the eyes rather than through the mind of the
narrator (as per a stream of consciousness). Whereas other modernist narrative
techniques obscure a text’s “commitment to the ordinary” (Olson 3) and therefore
blind the reader to ‘the way things are’ in front of us, Joyce functions as the visual
catalyst through which we see his Dublin and gives us a “painterly, discursive order
of visual representation” (Knowlson n.p.). My argument will focus on two main points
by addressing Joyce’s deviations between realism and imagism and the limits these
impose and then, leading on from ideas of “images” of people, by addressing his role
as “portrait” artist, in connection with Baudelaire’s idea of “the Painter of Modern
Life”.
I contend that Joyce, by choosing to objectively represent the ‘real’ through vivid images and
movements such as “the swing of his burly body” (45) or “frank rude health glowed in her
face” (49), is on the cusp of both realism and imagism, which, I argue, serves to emphasise
his allegiance to writing a visual experience of life, rather than favouring a growing tendency
to reflect subjectively upon thoughts. It is argued that Joyce is a realist because he
represents real life with all its “sordid and harsh aspects of human existence” (Norris 3), but I
argue that Dubliners also embraces, to some extent, imagism because he selectively
privileges images of the city over dwelling on one’s place in the city, and moreover, he
privileges some images over others. Pound writes that “good writing is writing that is perfectly
controlled, the writer… uses the smallest possible number of words” (The Serious Artist n.p.)
realism is inclined to describe ALL of reality, ins and outs, those we can see and those we
can’t, but Joyce focuses on harnessing the essence of life in a single precise, image (like
imagism) but while staying true to the detailed nature of reality. Norris defines realism as the
“belief that human beings can accurately reproduce, by means of verbal and visual
representations… the objective world that is exterior to them” (9) whereas imagism “is not
simply a brutal reduction to the real but an act of artifice and workmanship” (Brooker 12)
“All art is realism of one sort or another” - Represents the visual in an obvjective manner,
like realist art. Art/writing gives shape to chaos of modernity by focusing on the visual image,
limits chaos of Dublin by only letting reader/viewer observe some details. Lists. This is a
detachment from subject matter and “direct treatment of things” which realists rarely allow
themselves but more all-encompassing and descriptive than imagism → “don’t be
descriptive, remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can” –
this is what Joyce strives for. Modernism “can inject a sense of strangeness and surprise into
its portrayal of the most commonplace phenomena” (Felski, qtd in Olson 4)
Leading on from this, I argue that the matter of description is where Joyce diverges from
Pound’s ideas on the “direct treatment of things”, and I aim to draw parallels between
description in the written word and its likeness to detail in the painted picture, a comparison
which draws evidence from Joyce’s privileging of visual detail, and between both painter and
writer as what Baudelaire calls the “passionate observer”. I argue that both mediums embody
the “freedom from sloppiness” that Pound praises Joyce for: the visual image, in any form, is
a sharp, defined depiction of life as it is and how we see it. This theory is supported by the
statement “if there are exact sciences there are also exact arts, and the grammar of painting
is much more definite” (James 746); Joyce strives to privilege the grammar of the visual
because it is a much more exact form of expression. The following passage, taken from The
Dead, harks back to realist still life paintings of banquets (see Cornelis De Heem, Abraham
van Beyeren, George Lance to name a few):
“A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and a the other end, on a bed of
creased paper strewn with parsley, lay a great ham […] between these rival ends
ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow […]a
large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle […] and behind it were
three squads of bottles of stout and ale” (197)
Joyce’s portrayal of the dinner table is situated only in the visual sphere, presented
as descriptive fact; we do not receive any of Gabriel’s opinions upon the nature of
the food, despite the fact that The Dead is read through his eyes, nor are we given
any other of the five senses. Therefore we see Joyce’s Dubliners privileges the
visual through evidence of his objective, opinion-free presentation of what
characters see, in the same way that what an artist paints can in no way portray
anything other than the visual, and certainly not their opinion. In his essay The Art of
Fiction, James presents this similarity as being a “community of method of the artist
who paints a picture and the artist who writes a novel” (746); it is implied that the
novel fits more under the “community” of visual arts than it does written. It also
implies a reciprocity between the acts of reading and viewing. To see a painting
allows one to read into the story it paints; to read a book allows a picturing of the
visual images it describes in language.
1) Baudelaire talks about Constantin Guy’s sketches of the Crimean War: “I
have seen a considerable quantity of these drawings… and thus I have been
able to read, so to speak, a detailed account of the Crimean campaign” –
This is due o the exactness + detail of the image, can’ get that in realism
without to-the-point detail, and don’t get it in Imagism because they don’t
describe –. (Baudelaire) - Display life how it is, without bias or motive “the
artist moves little or even not at all in intellectual and political circles”
(Baudelaire) – if joyce didn’t focus as much on visual then objective
depiction of life would become subject to his political inclinations. Draw on
catalyst – Pound said “ the artist is the catalyst, which it is important to point
out, has no intention”. Gretta and portrait. Gabriel as portrait painter/writer,
example in text too. “The only reason for the existence of the novel is that it
does attempt to represent life… the same attempt that we see on the canvas
of the painter” (James 745). One would presume that a writer would turn to
facts to comment on the reality of things but “Joyce recognised that facts can
neither adequately reconstitute the world nor totally ‘sum up’ experience”
(Olson 34). In order to construct a true representation of life as we see it
before our eyes, facts have to be visually transformed into an image, so the
reader can easily picture the reality of the life in Dubliners’ by grafting their
own visual experiences and memories onto the written image that Joyce
creates.
2) Portraits. Descriptive penning of characters as writing their portrait. Evryone
defined by physical appearance. Doherty calls this “pure pictorial pastiche –
a journalistic report on an artwork – not the real thing, but a verbal copy”
(51). Barthes argues that a “dubious fate overwhelms the visual: it too takes
shape as the ‘anatomical cataloguing’ of body parts, which, blended
together, go to make up the conve Characters “without ‘face’ support create
a disembodied disassociated affect” – reader can’t see image, obscured
from them. Routine for Joyce. Argue against “dwell on the detail not as some
synecdoche for some larger ideal, but as a souce of realism” (Olson 24) –
other “ideals” don’t have to be grand but simply reveal something else about
character → Tool for painting interior as well as exterior (Fred Manley) so
shows real life even more. Araby and light in portrait – sister is “conventional
art-image” (Doherty 52). Static nature of faces – bound images, don’t
change. Emphasises “freeze frame” effect (paralysis in Dubliners), doesn’t
represent duality in time, “an ‘image’ is that which presents an intellectual
and emotional complex in an instant of time” → the reader “can no more
catch every texual detail than he or she can be cognisant of every element
of everyday life” (Olson 35) and narrator is in on this game, as in araby “the
boy freely manipulates the portrait … highlighting some elements while
blocking out others” (Doherty 52) However CAN’T represent everything
simulatenously because narrative is linear so joyce is selective – don’t notice
everything about a painting, nor can you paint everything unless it’s a
panorama. Pound: “I think he excels most of the impressionist writers
because of his more rigorous selection, because of his exclusion of all
unnecessary detail” Therefore joyce has to use lists – closest Joyce can get
to the all inclusive, present, visual reality of a painting. However this is not to
say that Joyce does not invite interpretation of Dubliners. “gaping holes or
gaps in the text – semantic abysses – incite readers to fill in the details”.
3) Focus on eyes as most important part of body. I argue that although these
familiar set features occur within almost every character - to the extent,
Doherty argues, that they “form an automatized part of character delineation”
(121) – we must recognise the importance, in Joyce’s portraits, paid to the
eyes. I contend that the attention Joyce pays to facial expression is
significant because the face is the foundation of the eyes, without which
vision from the characters’ perspective would not be possible. Araby’s
“paradoxical fusion of vision and blindess” (Doherty 48) Lenehan in Two
Gallants. Eyes as judge of body/reality like they are judge of artwork. Pound
said Joyce “gives us things how they are” and had “a sharp eye for seeing
life as it is” – he transfers that observation of life into straightforward images
ready for the reader’s consumption. Even though few are in first person we
see things through narrators eyes , privileges vision, we follow their gaze as
we only see in the painting what the painter has painted for us. Image
“strikes on the imaginative eye” (pound) – privileges visual.
4) Conclusion. Pound: “perfectly controlled… complete clarity and simplicity”