I read it originally as a teenager, and because I'm finally going to take up Ulysses â it's waiting there on my shelf! â I decided to read the works written by Joyce before Ulysses chronologically in order to tune myself in. Actually I started this process already a few years ago with Stephen Hero, but I'm finally getting close! And well, Exiles I actually read very un-chronologically a year or two back, and I probably won't be able to get my hands on Giacomo Joyce before Ulysses, but whatever, I still consider myself being approximately close enough to the original intention.
This is a finely constructed piece of writing, with impressive attention given to the stylistic changes during the course of the narrative. The differences to Stephen Hero are also interesting to notice, i.e. how the earlier book was still relatively conservative in it's style, but when reading the Portrait you kind of get the feeling that during these years in between the two books, Joyce, or Dedalus, has grown, or perhaps rather constructed, a pair of wings, and is trying them out to see how they work and will they fly.
When reading the Portrait, I also, once again, thought about the philosophical dimensions in the core of Catholicism, or rather, the lack of, if we define philosophy as love of wisdom. Because that particular religion is meant for controlling masses of people by scaring them shitless and to the verge of a heart-attack with imagery of Hell, of eternal damnation and pain and doom, and then when the people, who have no alternative source of information because all the persons who try to offer other viewpoints and worldviews have been silenced by, for example, burning them alive, are offered the only solution out of this all-encompassing misery, which is to do exactly what the Church says. And at the same time, it doesn't really matter a flying fuck if you kill people, rape babies or so on, as long as you believe the doctrine of the Church, and show remorse for what you have done... which technically means that you can still do all those things again, as long as you believe in the Church, and perhaps say a few Ave Marias every now and then or so. Generally and theoretically speaking, of course.
Additionally, Church also has no fucking clue of the two essential dimensions of the universe that make up the whole â the uni-verse â which, of course, are light and darkness, day and night, earth and sky, male and feminine etc. Most, or at least a very considerable part of the religions of the world outside the Abrahamic tradition understand this, but the three major religions from the Middle East are doing all they can to focus only on the other side, and completely suppress the other.
Although I would like to point out, that confession is potentially an excellent tradition which could be used for the benefit of people, but unfortunately the stuff that Church is interested in that context is mostly the kind of things that nobody should feel a divine repentance of, such as having sex for pleasure and/or outside marriage, or thinking of such things. And, unfortunately, if a person goes to confess something that is worth confessing, he or she is basically told to just mumble some of the Church's favorite pieces of lyric and that's about it, instead of actually discussing about the issue and thinking of the best practical way to solve it. But generally, a place where you can go and tell anything to a living human person and be one hundred percent certain that what you say never leaves that small wooden box, is an excellent thing, if it would just be utilized to its full potential.
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