Volume 24, Number 10 · June 9, 1977
The Politics of Joyce
By Richard Ellmann
'Consciousness' denotes the movement of the mind both in recognizing its own shape and in maintaining that shape in the face of attack or change. James Joyce's consciousness declared itself in certain initial choices. The first came when, encountering pomp and pretense, he elected nakedness. At a point in early adolescence, he saw surrounding him an array of spiritual and secular satraps, whom he called 'Intensities' and 'Bullockships.' Rather than accept the patterns of behavior they endorsed, he sought a primal accuracy of response, the 'utter nakedness' of which Richard speaks in Exiles. To keep a kind of stripped-down innocence when worldly wisdom, sanctioned by a time-worn creed and crown, was the fashion, required faith in himself and his intention. This was the faith of which he wrote at the age of twenty to Lady Gregory, 'I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.'
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