Radiance

Radiance is the summation of the process of esthetic apprehension. To Joyce radiance is quidditas, the "whatness" of the esthetic object. This final luminosity is the demonstration that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Radiance is closely bound up with epiphany and stasis. Joyce’s doctrine of epiphany has been carefully studied by Irene Hendry, who considers his works to be a "tissue of epiphanies, great and small."Miss Hendry points to Joyce’s use of epiphany as demonstration of the relation of principle and practice in his works, and traces three different epiphany techniques that build cumulatively to the manifestation of radiance.

Since destillation characterizes the process by which the later version was produced from the earlier, the indication here might be that Joyce considered epiphany to be included in stasis and radiance. The relationship might be that epiphany is a technique that produces stasis. Stasis consists of the arrested condition of the object or image, and serves to arrest the spectator. Thus stasis both invokes and prolongs radiance. In other words, stasis is the necessary condition-first of the work of art, second of the mind of the beholder-for the perception of radiance. Stasis arrests the mind and invites contemplation.

In Dubliners radiance deserves special attention. As in the portrait, it is dependent upon stasis, and stasis is clearly apparent in the endings of the stores. Joyce accomplishes this by the invariable use of a final, arresting, and persisting image or complex of thought and feeling.

The final arrested and arresting image in "The Sisters" is that of the demented priest. alone in his confession box, laughing to himself in the dark. This vision of horror gathers up the essential material of the story and presents it for prolonged contemplation at the end.

In "The Encounter" final stasis is achieved by a shift of focus in the last sentence. Terrified by the stranger, the boy summons his companion: "How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me. He ran as if to bring me aid. " This is a kinetic image, but Joyce immediately changes perspective to the boy: " And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little." This final presentation of the complex of the boy’s feelings and attitudes constitutes a genuine pause. And in the presentation the meaning of the story radiates. The pattern is one of exposure to, and retreat from, and unfamiliar pattern. With retreat comes an "appreciation" of the old order-and penitence.

In "Araby" we also find a complex final presentation: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and angry." The entire meaning of the story-frustrated quest, defeated attempt at escape to the world of imagination- is summed up in this final image of the boy alone in the encompassing dark. Here, motionless boy and luminous eyes produce stasis and luminosity.

In "Eveline" the final image is also one of eyes as Joyce shifts focus from the kinetic image of the young man, pleading with Eveline to accompany him, to Eveline herself: "She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eye gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition."

In "A Little Cloud" Little Chandler’s eyes, filled with tears of remorse, constitute the final image.

In "Clay" the tears that fill Joe’s eyes at the end are those of sentimentality.

In all these instances the final meaning of the story rests in these eyes, and the images are uniformly static.

In "Two Gallants" the final image is inanimate, inert: "Corley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly before him. Then with a grave gesture he extended a hand towards the light and, smiling, opened it slowly to the gaze of his disciple. A small gold coin shone in the palm." The glow of the coin becomes the glow of the tale as this final static image, suggesting simony, parasitism, and prostitution, gathers up and radiates the meanings of the story.

The ending of "A Painful Case" offers a startling display of Joyce’s virtuosity. The final paragraphs are a success of possible endings as the story moves through repeated intermittent arrests toward the final condition of complete stasis. The first phase of the ending is Mr. Duffy’s initial reaction to the news of Mr. Sinico’s alcoholic degeneration and death. The reaction is one of self-justification:

What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he held sacred. . . . His soul’s companion! . . . Just God, what an end! . . . He had no difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.

This initial mood yields to one of uneasy self-questioning, doubt, and apprehension:

He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. . . . How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been., sitting night after night alone in that room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist,

became a memory-if anyone remembered him.

Doubt now changes to self-recrimination:

Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.

Self-recrimination yields to despair:

He gnawed the rectitude of his life, he felt that he had been outcast from life’s feast.

Finally, preliminary moods subside into the ultimate one. The emergent feeling is one of supreme loneliness, of final isolation. And the stasis is absolute:

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.

In "The Dead" Joyce presents the concept of motion within stasis. Gabriel Conroy rises to speak at the dinner table:

Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. the air was pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white fields of Fifteen Acres.

By this shift in perspective from the festive and kinetic scene within the house to be silent, static, snow-covered scene without, Joyce creates a structure in which the larger static dimension engulfs and incorporates the smaller kinetic one. Again in the departure scene, the chatter of the guests is contained within the larger frame of Gabriel’s silence and contemplation of the shadowy figure of his wife on the stairway. At the end of the story, a similar effect is achieved by a shift of perspective in the final moment: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling, falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Here the transition from falling snow (kinetic) to the dead (static) achieves the final arrest. The ultimate and pervading stasis that results from this final story of Dubliners extends backward and broadens to include all the other stories of the collection. Because of the relationship of part to part, we see that all the Dubliners presented to us fit into the category of the living dead. The final epiphany of "The Dead" is also the epiphanizing vision of Dubliners.

*Ellmann, Richard: James Joyce, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959.