Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950–1955. Kenneth Burke
will be rather like a definition that begins with too broad a category, and gradually imposes strictures until the subject is “pinpointed” (as with the game of Twenty Questions).
In the case of the Portrait, whatever difficulties we might have in deciding how we would specifically treat any of the details in Part I, we could “idealize” the problem in general terms thus: we note that this work leads up to the explicit propounding of an Esthetic (a doctrine, catechism, or “philosophy” of art). Then we ask how each of the parts might look, as seen from this point of view. The first part deals with rudimentary sensory perception, primary sensations of smell, touch, sight, sound, taste (basic bodily feelings that, at a later stage in the story, will be methodically “mortified”). And there is our answer. Lo! the Esthetic begins in simple aisthesis. So, in this sense, the entire first chapter could be entitled “Childhood Sensibility.” It will “render” the basic requirement for the artist, as defined by the terms (and their transformations) in this particular work. It depicts the kind of personality, or temperament, required of one who would take this course that leads to the Joycean diploma (to a chair spiritually endowed by Joycean Foundations). Family relations, religion, and even politics are thus “esthetically” experienced in this opening part—experienced not as mature “ideas,” or even as adolescent “passions,” but as “sensations,” or “images.”
But whereas we would thus entitle the first section of the Portrait, we do not want our whole argument to depend upon this one particular choice. We are here interested mainly in the attempt to illustrate the principle we are discussing. We might further note that, though “Childhood Sensibility” as a title fits developmentally into the story as a whole, it does not suggest a logic of development within the single chapter it is intended to sum up. It merely provides a term for describing self-consistency among the details of the chapter. It names them solely in terms of “repetitive” form, so far as their relation to one another is concerned. And only when treating them en bloc, with relation to the entire five chapters, do we suggest a measure of “progressive” form here. Ideally, therefore, we should also ask ourselves into what substages (with appropriate titles) this chapter on “Childhood Sensibility” should in turn be divided. At least, when indexing, we keep thus resurveying, in quest of developments. (The thought also suggests why an index arranged alphabetically would conceal too much for our purposes.)
The very rigors of our stress upon “terminal factuality” as the ideal beginning quickly force us to become aware of this step from particulars to generalizings (a step the exact nature of which is often concealed beneath terms like “symbol” and “analogy”). Hypothetically, even in a long work there might be no significant literal repeating of key terms. (We have heard tell of some ancient Chinese tour de force in which, though it is a work of considerable length, no single character is repeated. And one would usually be hard-pressed for a wide range of literal repetitions in individual lyrics, though the quest of “factually” joined contexts usually yields good results where we have an opportunity to study a poet’s terminology as maintained through several poems.) And even with the Joyce Portrait, which abounds in factually related contexts, we confront a notable place where we would obviously accept suicidal restrictions if we refused to take the generalizing or idealizing step from particulars to principles (or, in this case, from particular words to the more general themes or topics that these words signify).
We have in mind Stephen’s formula for his artistic jesuitry, “silence, exile, and cunning.” “Silence” yields good results, even factually. It is a word that appears at all notable moments along the road of Stephen’s development up to the pronouncing of his esthetic creed. There are a few references to cunning, the most pointed being this passage on p. 144 (all italics ours, to indicate terms we consider focal here):
Stephen saw the silent soul of a jesuit look out at him from the pale loveless eyes. Like Ignatius he was lame lout in his eyes burned no spark of Ignatius’s enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of the company, a craft; subtler and more secret than its fabled books of secret subtle wisdom, had not fired his soul with the energy of apostleship. It seemed as if he used the shifts and lore and cunning of the world, as bidden to do, for the greater glory of God, without joy in their handling or hatred of that in them which was evil but turning them, with a firm gesture of obedience, back upon themselves; and for all this silent service it seemed as if he loved not at all the master and little if at all, the ends he served.
The references to “service” touch upon the non serviam theme that emerged so startlingly in the sermon. And the silence-exile-cunning formula (p. 194) had been immediately preceded by Stephen’s challenge, “I will not serve,” etc. We here see “cunning” and “silence” interwoven quite “factually.” Also, we see the references to “craft” that could lead us into the final theme (patronymically punning) of the labyrinthine “artificer.”
Yet “artificer” is not literally (thus not “factually”) identical with “craft.” And as for “exile”: unless we missed some entries (and we may have!) the particular word does not appear elsewhere in this text. However, even assuming that we are correct, a punctiliousness bordering on “methodological suicide” would be required to keep us from including, under the principle of “exile,” Stephen’s question, “Symbol of departure or loneliness?” (p. 176), when he is considering the augury of the birds that stand for his new vocation. And once we can equate “exile” with aloneness (and its kinds of secrecy, either guilty or gestatory) we open our inquiry almost to a frenzy of entries: For “alone,” in this story of a renegade Catholic boy who “forges” 13 a vocation somehow also under the aegis of a Protestant girl’s hands, is as typical as any adjective in the book. Whereupon we find reasons to question whether the apparent disjunction (departure or loneliness) is really a disjunction at all. Far from their being antitheses in this work, the difference between them is hardly that between a bursting bud and a newly opened blossom.
In sum, once you go from “factual” word to a theme or topic that would include synonyms of this word, you are on the way to including also what we might call “operational synonyms,” words which are synonyms in this particular text though they would not be so listed in a dictionary. That is, not only would a word like “stillness” be included under the same head as “silence,” but you might also include here a silent gesture that was called “the vehicle of a vague speech,” particularly as it is a scene in which we are explicitly told that he “stood silent” (pp. 76–77). Or, otherwise put: similarly, variants of “loneliness” and “departure” (hence even the theme of the flying bird) might be classed with “exile.” And “cunning” in being extended to cover the artistic “craft,” might thus expand not only into Daedalian, labyrinthine artifice, “maze,” etc., but also into that doctrinal circle the center of which is the term, “imagination.” We would then need some summarizing term, such as “the Joycean artist,” or “the hawkman motive,” to include under one head the “fact” that “silence,” “exile,” and “cunning” are trinitarian terms, which in turn are themselves linked sometimes dictionarywise (as synonyms), and sometimes “operationally” (in terms of contexts interconnected roundabout).14
Clearly, in the analysis of short lyrics where terms cannot be repeated in many contexts, one spontaneously looks for what the old rhetoric called “amplification,” some theme or topic that is restated in many ways, no single one of which could be taken as a sufficient summing up. (Here again, ideally, we might try to find working subtitles for each stanza, as a way of aggressively asking ourselves whether we can honestly say that the lyric really does get ahead, even while pausing to summarize attitudinally.)
In essentializing by entitlement, one again confronts the usual range of choices between some particular of plot or situation and some wide generalization. Specifically, for instance, we might have chosen to call the first chapter “The Pandybat,” since the artist’s sensitivity is built plotwise about this as its crowning incident. The second stage (marking the turn from childhood sensibility to youthful passion) is built about the logic of “The Fall,” the incident in which the chapter terminates. With this title, it so happens, there is no need to decide whether we are being particular or general, or even whether we are discussing content or form. (Ideally, working titles are best when they simultaneously suggest both