Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man经典读后感有感

《Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man》是一本由James Joyce著作，Wordsworth Editions Ltd出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：GBP 1.99，页数：238，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man》读后感(一)：Stepen vs. Joyce

"JOYCE AND HIS TIME"：

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/kershner/bioa.html

这个网页足以解答小说中各种与爱尔兰命运、爱尔兰的青年的命运纠缠不休的细节，以及扰攘不宁的大学时代，陪他左右的那些朋友，都曾是谁，后来因何而死。

《Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man》读后感(二)：Follow your own faith

If you want to create something, you should escape from the boundary. But is there anything called "freedom"？ Once Stephan said that everything is bounded and restricted, including the free art, i.e. there is no such a concept named 'freedom'. Even if the art is emotional and sensational, it is still constrained under the sphere of the artist's knowledge and skills. There is no doubt that it is a typical modernism novel, so, Joyce forces on the characters' inner thoughts and struggles. It is a novel of 'emotional' religion and politics. Stephan, from the right beginning to the very end, is thinking about whether he is doing the right thing. Is it sensible to follow the god's guidance as other Irish Catholics do？i.e. under the god's lead, people will live happily and walk on the right life path. Or, is it more sensible to listen to its one's heart？--an individual's will is his try faith. Stephan knows that he should treat his heart as his true faith, however, he has to exile himself from his family, friend and homeland. Finally, he follows his emotion and artistic ambitions to achieve the dread of being a poet like his idol Bryan.

In this novel, women are also a noticeable subject (or rather, an object). Women is the emblem of sexual concept and inferior. This corresponds to the Ireland situation--England tried to colonise Ireland and 'seduce' it.

The language of the novel sounds like lyrics. Joyce used many repetitions to reflect our hero's struggle.

《Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man》读后感(三)：Joyce Drew A Portrait of Me

It is a pity that I was not introduced to Stephen Dedalus earlier in my life. If I were able to converse with this sensitive yet insightful man at a younger age, I may have been able to examine my own spiritual adventure from a dramatically different perspective. Nonetheless, I feel fortunate to have finally found the motivations to bravely step forward into the world of James Joyce, and take my first of many journeys in this amazing world. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a book worth spending a whole life to reflect on.

I still remember the first time I attempted to flip through the first few pages of Ulysses while lying on my bed after a long day in high school. It was a version translated to Chinese – I thought I would be able to grasp the flows of consciousness if they were written in a language that I was more familiar with. Unfortunately, I never figured out what Joyce was trying to express. Maybe I was just too young to approach his ideas. Maybe consciousness cannot flow in the mind of sleepy boy. Maybe the translator didn’t even quite understand all the messages hidden in Ulysses, so it may not have been my fault after all.

Now I somehow realized that jumping directly into the world of Ulysses was too ambitious a task to accomplish. James Joyce did not even create his landmark work directly – he transcended his styles gradually by working through what is now commonly considered as the alpha version of Ulysses: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It seems that Joyce was able to let his modernist writing technique mature along with his alter ego, and therefore Portrait basically serves as a stairway to the temples of Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake.

Since the narrator avoided weaving connections between each scene, I was given the freedom to slowly reflect on what I’ve read and eventually figure out the relation between the subtle details. Difficult as the comprehension process was, it actually turned the story alive. I was forced to read Stephen Dedalus’ life in the same way I read my own life. Our life is supposed to be a stream of consciousness. We do not have narrators to explain the meanings of our daily events and help us construct connections between everything. Joyce pulled me into the portraits, and I become Stephen Dedalus. I saw things. I heard things. I felt things. I was living a life.

Stephen was destined to be an artist, not a priest. After all, the book is called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen Dedalus’s fate was actually written from the beginning – the book did not begin with a series of religious verse, but instead with a poetic tone sang by Stephen’s father. Long before Stephen interacted with the Catholic religion, he was surrounded by fabulous artistic elements. “Once upon a time and a very good time it was, there was a moocow coming down along the road, and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo …” “O, the wild rose blossoms. On the little green place.” What I found amusing was how Stephen even transformed Dante’s words to songs: “Pull out his eyes. Apologize. Apologize. Pull out his eyes.” In a way, art offers Stephen a place to retrieve from the crude life filled with conflicts named religion, family, school, and nationality. It seems that he was always able to naturally accept art as an integral part of his identity, without feeling any sort of struggles or constraints. Although Stephen imposed various forms of restraints on himself while examining the role of religion and nationality in his identity, never had he doubt that the importance of art. Deep inside his heart, Stephen realized that he was an artist, so he enjoyed using art to hide himself from the painful reality.

The additional elements in life somehow contradicted with Stephen’s inner identity as artist. He eventually had no choice but to abandon the constraints, and courageously fly away. “When the soul of man is born in this country, there are nets flung at it to hold I back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”

After interacting with a series of extremely patriotic figures in the works of Yeats, Lady Gregory, and O'Casey, I was intrigued by Stephen's conflicted relationship with his nationality. In a way, the states of his family members contributed to the development of his perception towards Irish nationality. At his first Christmas dinner, young Stephen witnessed an argument between his father and uncle. Dante’s tumultuous departure from the table somehow resembled an action that Stephen later imitated. Dante broke away from others to declare his ideological independence. Similarly, Stephen broke away from others to declare his spiritual independence. At a very young age, Stephen was taught not to accept anything as infallible law. Political stance can be disposed for the sake of art. Religious commitment can be disposed for the sake of art. Family and nation can also be disposed for the sake of art.

“The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid, and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak. The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within, or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.” I’m not sure if Stephen eventually considered himself as a figure equivalent to God, but James Joyce is definitely a God-like artist who is brave enough to withdraw himself from the complexity of life and purify his pursuit of art. Maybe God is also an artist, and Joyce is just worshipping him in a more appropriate way. After spending decades exploring the true definition of art, Joyce finally presents his answer in the form of a young man called Stephen Dedalus.

Without doubt, Stephen is a very ordinary character. He is not Sherlock Holmes, Jay Gatsby, nor even Humbert Humbert. Except for the fact that he is the alter ego of one of the greatest writers in the history of literature, Stephen is as ordinary as a person can be. Even though Dedalus showed potentials of developing into a great artist, Joyce decided to end the story at a point where the readers can still completely relate themselves to this young man. Just like every one of us, Stephen is still confused even though he has already found deeper meanings in his life.

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.... Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.” Although the character has clearly matured through painful processes of self-reflection, he still was not able to form a conclusive system of philosophy on aesthetics, religion, love, and identity. It seems that James Joyce decided to leave Stephen undeveloped and let the readers imagine where this young man ends up in the future. Maybe he evolved into James Joyce. Maybe he did not. Maybe he became me. Maybe he became you. Because of all the different options offered, A Portrait is a masterpiece that contains much more contents than what we think it does.