“He could scarcely recognize as his his own thoughts, and repeated slowly to himself: - I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork, in Ireland. Cork is a city. Our room is in the Victoria Hotel. Victoria and Stephen and Simon. Simon and Stephen and Victoria. Names.” 81

“He asked himself, what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of.”

“One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, then fade and wither dismally with age.”

I’m more than glad that this was my first foray into James Joyce. I think anyone who grew up around institutionalised religious structures will see many parallels with Stephen Dedalus and reflect on their own journey with faith alongside Stephen. The shift in narration as Stephen gets older was a great way to keep me engaged with story and the imagery that Joyce invokes is stunning and is both complex and simple.

I do appreciate that this particular edition has a comprehensive notes section that does outline a lot of the historical context of Ireland in the late 19th Century that situates the plot better.

i really liked this! the dialogues are one of the best i have seen, and some of the descriptions will definitely stay with me for a while! the ending made me really sad. it was so bittersweet, in my opinion. i should definitely read the whole of "dubliners," as i like the short story "eveline" as well. "Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"

En mi speedrun del Ulises.

I wish I read this 5+ years ago

loved most of these stories a lot but there were few that didn’t resonate, likely because they are so immersed in allusion to irish culture at the time. that’s not really a mark against the stories, but did hinder my enjoyment. araby, a little cloud, and a painful case are all insanely wonderful.

i don’t think i’ve related to a character as much as this since watching truffaut’s antoine doinel movies. my experience reading this was littered with many “ah fuck..... i felt that so much during (x stage in my life).” crazy. at times this was a bit of an annoying read, especially the religious guilt of stephen during the middle of the book, but i think every time joyce writes these weirdly long tangent-seeming passages, they pay off completely in the experience they set up for stephen to feel. instantly one of my all time favorites, because of how much i can relate to it and how much i feel myself in stephen. also, reading this before going off to school far away and breaking the expectations of my family/prescribed life path feels very important. the last two paragraphs of the book will stay with me for a very long time. wonderful.

Feeling worried because I liked this. I cannot start to have an itch to read JAMES JOYCE. I JUST CANT.

3.5

I drifted out of the pages and a few sentences later straight back in. They came at me from every side, how was I supposed to concentrate on one?

Me encantan las descripciones, la escritura en general preciosa, me encanta cómo capta tu atención y te hace entrar tan profundamente en la historia con un solo párrafo. Y me da rabia acabar el capítulo y saber que ya no queda más de esa historia. Salir de forma tan abrupta para meterme de nuevo en otra me cuesta.

dry, slice-of-life miserablism set in ireland?? nothing seemed to happen and it wasn’t the slow meditative writing i’m usually into. basically, kinda boring oops. time for some FANTASY

My first Joyce! I think this is definitely a less intimidating place to start than let's say Ulysses. I liked the prose: its soft turns of phrase, bright imagery, rich vocabulary. I also liked the overall feeling of helplessness that ties all of the characters together. It's not a happy set of stories, but it's a pleasing kind of melancholy, where the audience can pause and think about all the hidden meanings. I had a hard time connecting to the themes, however, not being Irish or a contemporary of the author, so I believe I missed out on the subtle messages. I picked up a lot of resentment towards England, the desire to stand independent of the mighty neighbour, and the plight of working class, but I cannot say I understood it all or felt deeply moved at any point. There is a lot to think about in here, so writing a review so soon after reading the book might not be the best idea. Only time will tell if I would keep coming back to the Dubliners I briefly got to know.

To use yourself for art you need a really interesting life, or sheer expressive skill - the ability to force anything to be interesting. Neither is easy: someone like Montaigne manages easily, but e.g. Rousseau doesn't (he just got there first, to the I Am Art game, so we have to talk about him). Joyce's life is only mildly interesting from the outside, so it falls to his evocation. I read this to find out whether to care about him, and I actually didn't until Part III, the rightly famous spiritual arc from apatheistic teenage kicks, to the ecstatic shame of submitting to the vast closed Catholic system, and through it to passionate agnosticism, anticlerical naturalism. Joyce's is the best portrait of the Church's infinite terrorism: remember, my dear boys, that we have been sent into this world for one thing and for one thing alone: to do God’s holy will and to save our immortal souls. All else is worthless. As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light laughter of a girl reached his burning ear. The frail, gay sound smote his heart more strongly than a trumpet blast, and, not daring to lift his eyes, he turned aside and gazed, as he walked, into the shadow of the tangled shrubs. Shame rose from his smitten heart and flooded his whole being. The image of Emma appeared before him and under her eyes the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his brute-like lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry? The sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils. As a teen Stephen tries to mortify himself, to not look at women, to not eat well, to just look at the mud. But he's too bright, too worldly and too proud. I cheered at the end of Part IV, when he throws off the yoke. The prose is port wine: lovely if sipped. It is mostly monologue but the dialogue is the best bit. He is passionate about anything, e.g. algebra - The equation on the page of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock's; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again. The indices appearing and disappearing were eyes opening and closing; the eyes opening and closing were stars being born and being quenched. The vast cycle of starry life bore his weary mind outward to its verge and inward to its centre, a distant music accompanying him outward and inward. What music? The music came nearer and he recalled the words, the words of Shelley's fragment upon the moon wandering companionless, pale for weariness. The stars began to crumble and a cloud of fine stardust fell through space. The dull light fell more faintly upon the page whereon another equation began to unfold itself slowly and to spread abroad its widening tail. It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the bale-fire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires. They were quenched: and the cold darkness filled chaos. The painful process of moving past family, nation, church, scholastic philosophy, to become yourself. Doing this in a country as maniacal about nation and church as eC20th Ireland was so much harder, and indeed he had to leave. He doesn't move past Art, and acquires a similarly monomanaical view of it - [To be an artist], a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life but if my prose was as good as Joyce's maybe I couldn't have moved past it either. Like Nietzsche if he wasn't an edgelord. That printers and governments treated Joyce and Lawrence the same is a laugh: Joyce has all of Lawrence's passion and none of the flat feet. Self-parody, odd humility, laughter at his own past dogmatism. His memory - or his notetaking? - is amazing: scholars have spent lifetimes checking and relating everything in this to recorded history, and he's usually spot on about details (though he changes names). I don't think I could write anything as accurate, even in my surveillance society. Fully half of my edition was taken up in footnotes and bibliophilia. (It also left Joyce's typos in, which is a bit much. In fact half the footnotes were as trivial as typos, e.g. pointing out where lines are reused from his draft Stephen Hero.) Portrait stops before the end of uni, before his odyssey, before his wife even. And much of the last section is a surprisingly flat, academic statement of Thomist aesthetics. But by then you've heard enough to love him anyway.

— The Dead "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." Begitulah kalimat terakhir dari novela The Dead, yang ditulis oleh James Joyce dengan amat memukau. Barangkali, ini adalah salah satu titik terakhir (end-point) yang paling baik dari sebuah karya fiksi, setelah yang dilakukan Chales Dickens pada setengah abad sebelumnya lewat roman A Tale of Two Cities. The Dead—yang menjadi salah satu bagian dari kumpulan cerpen The Dubliners—menceritakan tentang acara perkumpulan para sanak keluarga di malam natal. Narasi dimulai dengan Gabriel sebagai tokoh utama, dan berlangsung dengan wajar selama 3/4 cerita: tidak banyak riak di permukaan, namun menyimpan rahasia yang begitu dalam yang kelak di bagian akhir akan diungkap oleh istri Gabril. Sekuens akhir tersebut sukses menjungkirbalikkan cerita yang telah dibangun dengan rapi menjadi akhir yang begitu emosional. Joyce banyak menyisipkan potret-potret masyarakat Dublin melalui dialog-dialog para tokoh yang bergumul tentang kebudayaan, seni, dan sejarah lokal. Kejeliaan mata Joyce dan kelihaian imajinasinya tersebut sukses membesarkan namanya sebagai salah satu sastrawan paling berpengaruh di Britania dengan mahakaryanya yang berjudul The Ulysses (1920) yang menjadi salah satu avant-garde sastra di masa itu.

2.5 not horrible, just not for me. I'm very picky with short story collections & this was not my preferred style. I prefer longer short stories, and I enjoyed Joyce's longer prose a lot more than this collection.

It had some good lines here and there but overall the stories were unsatisfying.

Amazing stories

Novel with a strong dose of autobiography. It recounts different episodes of the life of Stephen Dedalus, a life crossed by religion, sin, poetry.
It is written in the form of thoughts or memories which makes the narrative a bit fragmented. It is a very entertaining book. The way it is written allows you to easily generate an intimate relationship with the protagonist. The philosophical and religious debates of the character continue to be very relevant in modern times.

Not a fan of Joyce's pacing but I do like the way he describes things

This is my first exposure to Joyce and wow--his use of language is stunning and beautiful. I thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in his diction and coming to understand the mind of young Stephen Dedalus. Made me miss Dublin. On to Ulysses soon, I suppose.

the intellectual journey portrayed here took me a while but i loved it - did not realize the nietzschean art appreciation until it was pointed out

I hate to even break the spell. The language. The things he says. And more importantly. The things he does not say. Here's a quote from The Sisters that sums it up: "I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences". The stink of Catholic guilt is present in each story. But so is the grace. I am flushed like a girl with a secret crush.