Death, Literature, and Its Consolations

Abstract

An early scene in James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, shows the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, as a child attending a boarding school outside of Dublin. One day he opens up his geography textbook and notes how he has written his name on the title page:

• Stephen Dedalus

• Class of Elements

• Clongowes Wood College

• Sallins

• County Kildare

• Ireland

• Europe

• The World

• The Universe

The little boy, as Joyce says, tries reading the page from bottom to top until he comes to his own name:

That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? … He could think only of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. … It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his head very big.

The artist carries death within him like a good priest his breviary.

Jakov Lind