James Farrell / Revaluing James Joyce's Exiles

Revaluing James Joyce's 'Exiles'

By JAMES T. FARRELL
July 21, 1946

The 100 best novels / No 46 / Ulysses by James Joyce (1922) 

EXILES By James Joyce. Introduction by Francis Ferguson.

he reprinting of James Joyce's play "Exiles" seems to me to be a good occasion for offering a brief comment on the literary relationship between Ibsen and Joyce. For Ibsen's dramas were among the most significant of the earlier literary influences which went into the forging of the disposition of James Joyce as an artist.

In an essay, "Ibsen's New Drama," contributed to the Fortnightly Review of April, 1900, Joyce paid tribute to Ibsen on the publication of the latter's play "When We Dead Awaken." Speaking not only of this play, but of the entire body of Ibsen's work, the young Joyce referred to "the naked drama" in Ibsen and said that in his plays "either the perception of a great truth, or the opening up of a great question, or a great conflict which is almost independent of the conflicting actors, and has been and is of far-reaching importance- this is what primarily rivets our attention."

When he came to write "Exiles," Joyce sought to achieve this same kind of effect: he sought to open up what he considered to be a great question. The play deals with personal relationships between an Irish writer, Richard Rowan, just returned to Dublin; his wife; his cousin Beatrice, who was the woman of inspiration in his life and who now teaches the Rowan child music, and an old friend of Rowan's, the journalist, Robert Hand. The great question which Joyce sought to use as the basis for a drama was that of human freedom and human dignity. It is exposed and focused in terms of love and sexual relationships.

In "Exiles," one can see various technical similarities between Joyce and Ibsen. Because of limited space, I am excluding any reference to these in this note. Rather, I shall remark on a dialectical and conceptual connection between these two writers . The basic Ibsen theme is that of guilt and conscience. This guilt is the consequence of some action in the past which torments the guilty person, and which has, in addition, usually had the effect of causing injury to other people, especially to those of a new generation. The yearning for freedom, for the sun for the high mountains in an Ibsen play is a desire to become free of guilt, to escape from the ghost of one's own conscience. Ibsen's theme, and especially as this is treated in "When We Dead Awaken" (where the hero is a middle-aged artist), serves as a conceptual background for "Exiles."

But Joyce, who first read Ibsen in his youth, begins in "Exiles" where Ibsen leaves off. His hero-artist Richard is determined, in this play, to commit no actions which will cause him to have any Ibsenian ghosts of conscience in the future. The play revolves around the danger of a liaison between Rowan's wife and his friend, Robert Hand. Rowan believes that he cannot interfere to prevent this relationship being effected, but he insists that it must be done openly, honestly, with no secrets.

The dialogue reveals that in Richard's consciousness there exists a contrast between the dead body of his mother and the live and lovely body of his wife. In act one he speaks to his wife of his mother: "Do you think I do not pity her cold blighted love for me? I fought against her spirit while she lived to the bitter end. It fights against me still." His mother is a ghost of conscience, suggestive of the Ibsenian ghost. This guilt, Rowan feels in relationship to his wife; and in discussion with Robert Hand, in the second act, he says of his attitude toward his wife and his determination to try and avoid future guilt: "She is dead. She lies on her bed. I look on her body which I betrayed- grossly and many times. And loved, too, and wept over." And then his fear: "...That I will reproach myself for having taken all for myself because I will not suffer her to give to another what was hers... to give, because I accepted from her her loyalty and made her life the poorer in love." Because of these feelings he dare not stand between his wife and anyone.

In this situation there are parallels with "When We Dead Awaken." The hero-sculptor of that play has used the woman he loved only for inspiration in his art. The cold statue, a famous work of art, is what he made of her love, but Rowan has made a character of his wife, as though she were his artistic creation. In her there is focused the duality of the wife and Beatrice, and the shadow of Rowan's dead mother which hovers over the play.

Critics of Joyce have usually paid less attention to this play than to his other work. In the literary career of Joyce, it is both important and highly revealing. It casts light on Joyce's conception of escape, for it reveals something of what he meant when he had Stephen (in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man") speak of nets calculated to catch his soul. It also intimately reveals his relationship with Ibsen. It might be hoped that with this reprint edition of "Exiles" more critical attention may now be paid not only to this work of Joyce but to the works of Ibsen, which stand so clearly behind it.

I should add that these remarks suggest an interpretation different from that offered by Mr. Ferguson in his introductory essay. He argues that in the chief character here, Joyce creates an image which is a "timeless artifact," and in this image, Richard Rowan: "The tragic flaw is not in him, but in his metaphysical situation." This takes the conceptions of freedom and dignity embodied in Richard Rowan out of their time and place. However, at the same time that one expresses one's difference with Mr. Ferguson, it is also necessary to point out that his comments are seriously presented and carefully thought out. In temper, spirit of approach and intention, this introduction is far above the level of many similar pieces which are now to be found in reprint editions.

 The New York Times