As I finished chapter four and delved into the fifth chapter of The Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man, I stopped so bitterly disliking Stephen Dedalus. Having seen him swing from the two extremes of absolute piety and reckless abandon, I was losing patience with him. The end of chapter four offered a glimpse of hope, as we saw him mature a bit more. He decided to to go to university, and to make art with his life. Of course, he's still self-absorbed, but his desire to create something of worth is admirable. At least in this way, he can contribute something meaningful to the world, whereas if he had gone into the priesthood, his virtue would have been insincere and worth little.
We also see him growing in other ways. When he visits home, he feels pity for his siblings who are already weary of the world due to the family's financial standing. Although it's clear that he is rather detached from them, this empathy is surprising coming from him, since up until this point, it is the first example of him expressing any concern for the emotions of others.
In chapter four, the focus on Stephen's mind rather than his surroundings continues, but we see him taking more interest in the people around him. For instance, he is enthralled by a girl he sees at the beach. Still, a glance is enough, and he immediately transfigures her in his mind so that she can become a part of his psychic reality rather than someone to interact with in the real world.
In chapter five, we see Stephen has developed many friendships at the university, further shifting the focus of his consciousness to the the external world. His conversations certainly seem focused on his own interests, however, as he lectures his friends on the aesthetics of beauty and art. Nonetheless, I can't help having new respect for him. Perhaps it is just the fact that he is openly being himself with the world. He is no longer thrusting himself at the mercy of either sin or God. He just exists and converses and contemplates, more like a normal human being.
Even as we see Stephen developing more substantive relationships, he still seems to have a certain level of detachment that draws him toward the philosophy of aesthetics. It allows him to look at the world through a lens as we have seen him so prone to doing throughout his life. But, perhaps this dedication to studying his world in such an impartial manner is what allows his artistic sensibilities to thrive.
You nail down an important aspect of Joyce's aesthetics in the final paragraph here. In a sense, Stephen's "discovery" of his vocation as an artist is a matter of finding a meaningful role for his general, preexisting tendency toward detachment. (It's no accident that he imagines himself initially as a priest in a "church without worshipers.") He turns a (potential) social awkwardness into a virtue--the artist *should* be detached, "paring his fingernails" as the world of his creation winds itself down. He's not "lonely," or "shy," or a freak of nature; he's an artist. Stephen, for most of the novel, doesn't speak all that much (until chap. 5, at least); but the fruit of his "silent watchful manner" is evident in Joyce's remarkable ear for dialogue and the rhythms of speech--Stephen *listens* and *observes*.
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