SOURCE: Brown, Carole, and Leo Knuth. “James Joyce's Exiles: The Ordeal of Richard Rowan.” James Joyce Quarterly 17, no. 1 (fall 1979): 7–20.

[In the following essay, Brown and Knuth attempt to take a fresh view of Exiles as a literary piece.]

EXILES AND THE CRITICS

This essay is born out of dissatisfaction with what the critics have said about Exiles heretofore. Many evaluators would seem to be in the position of Bertha at the end of the play—barely having a clue as to what Richard Rowan has been trying to say—and, with very few exceptions,¹ the critiques on this drama strike us as singularly unenlightening. Critics on the whole have regarded Exiles as a failure for a variety of reasons great enough to suggest that it is a very intriguing play which has caused different readers to react in different ways.² A fairly large group of negative critics has commented on the autobiographical aspects of the drama³ and the logic appears to proceed along the following lines: (1) Richard Rowan is a projection of James Joyce; (2) author-identification necessitates a hero who is sympathetic; (3) Richard does not strike readers as such; and (4) therefore the author has not succeeded. This sort of reasoning would render Exiles completely un-Joycean, for Joyce, though certainly one to incorporate many autobiographical events and features into his works, is not in the habit of creating sympathetic, endearing, “nice” characters.⁴ He is continually experimenting with aesthetic distance, with stark realism, and with various kinds and degrees of irony. His heroes—Richard Rowan, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom—are less than charismatic, and the same holds true for his heroines. Even critics who admit that Joyce's heroes are not charismatic, however, have been known to grow lyrical about his heroines (Gretta, Bertha, Molly), apparently oblivious to the fact that all of Joyce's major figures are realistically drawn portraits in the tradition of Rembrandt rather than Reynolds. In this context, then, the character portrayal of Exiles is realistic in the Joycean sense. And realism is the hallmark of Joyce's art. We have singled out critics who commit the type of autobiographical fallacy mentioned above as only one instance—perhaps the most important one—of the kind of thinking which impedes appreciation of Exiles as a product of Joyce the realist. While the play might be viewed as a sort of halfway house between Joyce's “easy” pieces, Dubliners and A Portrait, and his “difficult” works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, it is our contention that in character portrayal and thematic emphasis Exiles is consonant with the realistic features which characterize the entire Joyce canon.⁵

THE WIDER CONTEXT

We by no means wish to claim that Exiles is a work of art comparable to Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, but we do feel that it has more body to it than for instance A. Walton Litz seems to believe when he says that the play is “a series of unfocused debates, and [that] we are left with no sense that the characters' problems have been placed in some wider context.”⁶ The play is concerned with one of the most widespread of Western man's behavioral responses: sexual jealousy. It treats of an individual's attempt to free himself from collectivism, from his paradigmatic self, from his hankering after security; it deals with a man's discovery of Doubt, with his entelechial growth and the fulfillment of his destiny; it interprets a person's attempt to actualize what Stephen Dedalus would call one's “structural rhythm” (U 432). It shows a man in intense crisis: a magus becoming a mystic.

Joyce's works, besides being autobiographical, are also, if not “didactic” in the crude meaning of the term, at least “allegorical” in the sense that there is something more intended than meets the ear. Joyce's Dublin and his characters are indeed unique and particular, but they are also archetypal and universal. The theme of sexual jealousy is not just Richard Rowan's problem; it is a fact of life. Richard is trying to cope with possessive thinking, trying to slough off the universal human urge to strive for optimal security, trying to live with Doubt; and in his often quoted remark about Exiles, Joyce notes that it is life itself which is “suspended in doubt like the world in the void” (JJ 567-68).

Keeping in mind that Joyce was Irish and Catholic, we will have to admit that even the play's very title suggests dimensions of a context wider than Litz would allow. There is first the typically Irish flavor of the word “exile”: Irishmen have always gone into or been driven into exile; their songs still harp on this theme. Then there are associations of a religious nature: Adam and Eve, banished from Paradise; the Israelites; the Holy Family's flight to Egypt; and perhaps most important, the common Catholic sentiment that Man, a pilgrim on earth, lives in an exile-like state. In a private sense, of course, Joyce was himself an exile and projected much of his experience onto his drama. But the point is that what seems like a highly subjective treatment of a highly subjective theme (or event or experience) is also the human dilemma. “Exile as Joyce sees it, is necessarily our lot.”⁷ On the other hand, the choice of the title seems to have been the result of some inner prompting. The concept had a personal significance for Joyce and the word “exile” functioned as a trigger-mechanism long before the play was written. In the Notes he makes several attempts to justify the choice of the title, to disentangle it, so to speak, from its personal association—in other words, to objectify the meaning of the word.⁸

As an artist who conceived of himself as a realist, Joyce made a most significant comment to Arthur Power: “In realism you are down to facts on which the world is based.”⁹ The thematic bases of Exiles—sexual jealousy, Doubt, the exilic quality of the human condition—are precisely such facts, and they are applicable both individually and collectively. Exiles may be the projection of Joyce's private domestic drama, but it is also the projection of something universal. The play gives us both the specific context of its characters and the wider context of the human dilemma.

TOWARDS ENTELECHY: FROM MAGUS TO MYSTIC

The focus of Exiles is Richard Rowan's character development,¹⁰ and since this entails the growth of a truly self-actualizing person, we have difficulty accepting—especially where Richard is concerned—Bernard Benstock's verdict that “the play ends with the characters hardly altered in character or situation from what they were when it began.”¹¹ The crisis with Bertha and Robert, complicated by a jealousy he cannot admit, is the “problem” facing Rowan, and his own character growth takes place against the backdrop of this problem. Grappling with the Bertha-Robert situation and his own set of inner conflicts precipitates a transformation from “luminous certitude” (E 63) to “restless living wounding doubt” (E 112). Richard moves from a magus stage to the phase of a mystic,¹² and this movement effects the recognition of the innate idiosyncrasy of his personality, of what Stephen Dedalus, using Roman Catholic jargon, calls the birth of “the soul” (P 203), and what in Aristotelian terminology may be called a growth towards his “entelechy.”

Throughout portions of the drama Richard shows himself to be something of a control addict: he wants to be in command of the situation, he tends to manipulate people, he is constantly asking questions, he seeks to “know” things, and his watchword appears to be “I want to find out” (E 48). He is a perfect magus. Interestingly, his habit of catechizing people and his insistence on being in the know are of almost compulsive proportions. In Act I Richard plays the role of catechist first to Beatrice, then to Bertha, and this latter interrogation is particularly intense. On the topic of Bertha and Robert he must be thoroughly informed; moreover, he even wants them to know that he knows. Richard tells Bertha, “But he must know that I know” (E 53), while later, in conversation with Robert, he says, “I know everything” (E 59), and then, “Even if Bertha had not told me I should have known” (E 60). He would seem to be very sure of himself and would have others think he speaks from a position of security. But if this is the case, why must he go to such extremes to prove it? The behavior of Richard the Catechist, with his desire for control and his tendency to lord it over others, is indicative not of security, but of insecurity.¹³ His donning of the magus mask was part of his search for security, but in the philosophy of Exiles that is not the answer. Rowan is an individual in crisis, already being uprooted from the certitude he tells Robert he “once had,” a certitude which he describes as having been as luminous as that of his own existence—“or an illusion as luminous” (E 63, italics ours). He may still hanker after security, but as the drama progresses and he moves toward a relinquishment of the magus phase, the discovery of Doubt as a positive force will necessitate a shedding of the urge to be secure.

Richard Rowan is a man full of inner conflicts, inconsistencies, contraries, and contradictions of various kinds, some of which are further manifestations of his insecurity, but all of which provide insight into his character. Early in the first act he reveals to Beatrice that he is desperately in need of his “dead mother's hardness of heart” (E 22), because for all his cynical revolt against societal convention, he has a rather soft, albeit stingy, sentimental core.¹⁴ Further, he could do with some of her hard-heartedness in a few of his conversations with Bertha and Robert, for in different ways he shows himself to be insecure with both of them.¹⁵ It is noteworthy, for instance, that the level of conversation between Richard and Bertha drops markedly whenever they disagree; they frequently talk at cross-purposes and when Richard loses his composure in such dialogues, he becomes indignant, childishly reverts to Bertha's level of arguing, and resorts to cheap irony (E 54, 74). The fact that we repeatedly view an indignant Richard calls to mind a remark that Robert makes to the effect that Rowan has “that fierce indignation which lacerated the heart of Swift” (E 43),¹⁶ a comment which gains added significance when we consider that the major thrust of this indignation is aimed less at Bertha and more at Robert himself. Given this, Richard's behavior in the major scene with Hand in Act II is most revealing.

Rowan appears at first to have girded himself for this encounter with his mother's hardness of heart, for he begins coldly, antagonistically, and with a desire for control typical of his magus urge (“I know everything”—E 59); then, suddenly, he softens up and becomes friendly, laying his hand on Robert's arm and confessing all sorts of things. The very impulse to confess may well be symptomatic of insecurity in Richard's case, but the content of this confession, viewed against some of his earlier assertions, is even more telling. Probably the greatest source of tension in Richard resides in the opposition between his principles (imposing no conditions on Bertha in her relationship with Robert) and his instincts (sexual jealousy, the urge to be in control, to know and question and catechize). Inconsistency and contradiction seem to be the natural offspring of this tension. For example, in Act I Richard categorically denies that he is jealous (E 53); then in the confession with Robert he discloses a fear that is tantamount to an admission of being just that: “that I will reproach myself … because I would not suffer her to give to another what was hers and not mine to give” (E 69).¹⁷ Again, Rowan confesses to Hand that he “longed to be betrayed” (E 70), a desire which in no way jibes with what he had said earlier: “No, no, not in such a way—… No, Robert, that is not for people like us” (E 61). Such inconsistencies and contradictions are hardly conducive to the security Richard hankers for; they serve as emotional barometers to indicate an intensification of his crisis.

Once the deepening of his crisis has been recognized, we shouldn't expect consistency from Richard. About the only thing he will be consistent in is his inconsistency. He had yearned for security and all he accomplished was the exposure of his insecurities; he sought to be in control, he catechized people, he even confessed things to Robert, all the while contradicting himself right, left and center. We might at this point recall the quote from Walt Whitman in “Telemachus”: “Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself” (U 17). If we strip these lines of the flippant tone they possess in Ulysses, a useful insight emerges regarding Richard: it doesn't matter how much he contradicts himself, for his contradictions and inconsistencies are functional. They show him to be in intense crisis, and the lesson he must learn necessitates change, a readiness to relinquish the magus role, so that he may progress on to his mystic phase. It now seems reasonable to assume that Richard's control addiction and his confession mania are contrasting aspects of the same insecurity; the latter, however, would seem to be the part adumbrating that side of his Self which is eventually manifested as the mystic quality. In order to move towards his entelechy, he must grow, he must develop; he must cast off his urge to be secure. He is ripe for metamorphosis.

Allusions to change occur throughout the drama in reference to Richard. Both Beatrice and Bertha note that something has altered him since his return to Ireland (E 25, 96-97); Rowan himself recognizes mutability as the essence of life when he speaks to Hand of “that other law of nature, … change” (E 68). To Robert, however, things will “never” change (E 68): he still speaks the language of his and Richard's youth, and when he asks his friend, “Have you changed?,” the answer is an unqualified “Yes” (E 71). The two men have come, as it were, from opposite poles of the universe (E 43-44), and in the Notes Joyce marks their opposition with the rarely commented upon identification of Richard as an “automystic” and Robert as an “automobile” (E 113). Joyce calls Rowan an automystic because the wound of Doubt in his soul mentioned in Act III is a self-inflicted one; it is his attempt to undergo radical transformation, to relinquish forever his magus instincts, to (in terms of Christian philosophy) pluck out and cast from him the eye that offends: his hankering for security. As an “automystic,” Richard, unlike Robert, is capable of metamorphosis, he is a kind of “organism,” able to adjust to the ever-varying kaleidoscope of life and thus grow towards his entelechy. By contrast, Robert, as an “automobile,” is a kind of “machine”: he moves and functions, but remains unaltered; his mechanical quality is perhaps best suggested by his own admission that he is “a welltrained animal” (E 105). Joyce's “automystic”/“automobile” contrast ties in neatly with the meaning of entelechy: a person who is not an “automobile”—a “machine” as opposed to an “organism” adaptable to change—is bound to become something else, develop into a different being. In terms of Richard's psychological make-up, Exiles deals with a crisis of identity and generates crucial questions about how to be oneself and how to fulfill one's destiny. This necessitates change. And as for entelechy, a Blakean dictum applies: without contraries there is no progression. Throughout Exiles we are witnessing a process of transformation in Richard, but we do not see the most profound change—the one that moves him from magus to mystic, the one that affects his soul and is most intimately associated with his growth towards entelechy—until the end of the drama.¹⁸

By the time the curtain falls in Act III, a complete reversal of values has been accomplished: Richard has moved from “luminous certitude” (E 63) to a stage of “restless living wounding doubt” (E 112), where the luminous certitude has become “the darkness of belief” (E 112, italics ours). The former catechist no longer has the urge to question and know; he has completely discarded the security of belief: “I can never know, never in this world. I do not wish to know or to believe” (E 112). Rowan's embracing of Doubt, as the self-inflicted wound reveals (“I have wounded my soul for you”—E 112), is volitional. At the same time, it is also a growth towards his entelechy. Entelechy, Aristotle's “soul,” is that end towards which all living matter moves; it is that oak tree every acorn is trying to become.¹⁹ This motion, this dynamic process of becoming, involves a drift towards some consummation, either to be or not to be wishes.²⁰ In Richard's case it was obviously desired. But an important point is that this becoming is literally ineluctable, it implies struggle: it cannot be escaped by struggle; that is, one cannot struggle out of it, but one can struggle as Richard Rowan does—painfully—towards it. There may be varying stages of growth, of change, and though it may not be immediately observable, the eventual consummation is contained in every stage, as is perhaps best exemplified by the acorn that cannot help being an acorn, but which is also an oak tree in status nascendi.

A concomitant feature which must be commented on is the paradox of entelechy. Using the acorn/oak example once more, this paradox can be stated most succinctly by saying that the acorn makes an oak, yet the oak makes the acorn. How typical of an automystic, then, is Richard's “I did not make myself. I am what I am” (E 103)? A major insight resides in the fact that it was the recognition of the innate idiosyncrasy of his personality (his entelechy, his “soul”) that made Rowan an automystic; it was this realization that liberated him from a society that commits us to its values—one of the most central of which is “faith,” security. In this sense Richard did make himself, did “build up [his] soul” (E 70), yet this action cannot be isolated from ineluctable preconditioning: even an automystic is programmed. Rowan's entelechy lies in the direction of Doubt, and just what that Doubt entails is defined in his last speech (E 112). It is “restless,” implying a struggle, fight, ordeal, and also something kinetic as opposed to the stasis of security; it is “living,” pointing to that which, though possibly painful, is nonetheless vital; it is “wounding,” suggesting the price to be paid for the relinquishing of security.

THE PROPHET OF FREEDOM

We cannot here elaborate on the problems pertaining to determinism versus indeterminism that have exercised the pens of many generations of philosophers and theologians. Suffice it to say that, although he realizes that he is programmed (“I did not make myself. I am what I am”—E 103), all through Exiles Richard insists on freedom. For him this involves both a process and a principle: the process is one of liberating himself from various emotional fetters and the principle stresses the applicability of free will, not only to himself, but to others as well. As far as his personal process of emancipation goes, the most strenuous and significant portion is documented by what we witness on stage. But the process had begun long before the drama proper in his departure from Ireland with Bertha, an action which was clearly an attempt to escape from the atmosphere of Dublin which threatened to choke him. The ongoing process of self-liberation is best summed up in Richard's term, “my struggle” (E 19), one of the most tormenting aspects of which is his endeavor to free himself from the influence of his disapproving mother:

I fought against her spirit while she lived to the bitter end. He presses his hand to his forehead. It fights against me still—in here.

(E 23)

Given that Richard's mother was one of the faithful who died “fortified by the rites of holy church” (E 23), she becomes a powerful symbol for that all-embracing Institution which claims to be able to gratify the human desire for security which Rowan in the course of the drama ultimately sheds. Her spirit was full of faith, of the security of belief, but her attitudes and actions towards her son and others showed him that faith—the “True Faith” of the Church—was cruel: it had no sympathy for, or patience with, those who turned from it. He had waited “not for her death but for some understanding … of her own son … that never came” (E 24). And now, as he seeks to further unbind himself, as he suffers and struggles towards his entelechy, he finds that he is still not understood by those close to him (E 54). The intensely private nature of the soul's struggle to emancipate itself is not understood, as is illustrated when Robert suggests to Richard “a battle of both our souls … Freely? Together?” (E 70-71). This is why Rowan speaks to him like a priest refusing an absolvo te: “Together no. Fight your part alone. I will not free you. Leave me to fight mine. … Free yourself” (E 71). For Richard, the freeing of his soul, the detachment from ties that bind, is precisely his growth towards Doubt. In Catholic rhetoric this may involve mortification, which quite probably explains Rowan's use of the word “wound” (E 112). In Buddhist terms he is in search of nirvana, that ultimate emancipation of the soul in which all ties are dissolved: “no bonds” (E 112).

Exiles challenges the whole moral tradition of fidelity through Richard's insistence upon freedom of will. He repeatedly tells Bertha that she is free (E 52, 53, 55, 56, 104), and in the course of his development from magus to mystic he moves from what is in actuality, though he would deny it, a position of qualified freedom (“You have complete liberty to do as you wish—you and he. But …”—E 53) to an absolutist stance (“To hold you by no bonds”—E 112). His decision to let Bertha make her own choice about Robert is a moral decision, and moral decisions may cause pain, as Richard's struggle reveals. Here the difficulty resides in how to accommodate an intellectually generated moral decision when it is emotionally abhorrent, how to grant total freedom to Bertha despite his sexual jealousy. But Richard does grant Bertha a free choice, obviously not wholeheartedly or without contradiction at first, because his innate sexual jealousy does not allow him to do that; he does, however, want her to make up her own mind and take full responsibility. He demands no less for himself, so he cannot grant her less. Bertha vaguely senses this, but completely misses the mark when she accuses him of ulterior motives (E 53, 74). The point is that in Rowan's view freedom of will, even to the extent of possibly making a wrong choice, is a necessary prerequisite to the survival of the soul, the focus of identity, and it is this survival that makes future growth of the soul at least a possibility.

A final factor which must be considered apropos of Richard's constant espousal of freedom is the fact that Joyce created him an artist. All of Joyce's portraits of artists—Rowan, Stephen Dedalus, Shem the Penman—contain some element of self-portraiture, and hence some projection of their creator's own artistic tenets. Joyce was the sort of writer for whom art was a religion, and to this kind of artist freedom is an absolute essential, a supreme good, an indispensable condition of life. And it is in this context that Richard's advocacy of freedom may also be placed. But the prophet of freedom is in no way glamorized; he is presented with absolute realism in all his unlovable, insufferable unmannerliness. The portrait of Richard is detached, often ironic, with Joyce selecting moments that show the man and the artist as the prig he can be, incapable of finding a way to communicate convincingly his idea of freedom.

BERTHA AND ROBERT

Since Richard's connections with Bertha and Robert figure significantly in the changes he undergoes in the course of the drama, a brief look at these two characters vis à vis Rowan provides a different and useful angle of observation. The relationship between Bertha and Richard in Exiles is a deprived one; they are unable to find a mutual fundamental tone. She has no idea of his priorities, any more than he does of hers. By her own admission, she does “not understand anything he writes” or “half of what he says” to her (E 98); he, in turn, cannot fathom her lack of desire for, or inability to cope with, the freedom he grants her, and he certainly cannot see why she keeps suspecting his motives for giving her liberty. The two are mental incompatibles: she is characterized by mental paralysis resulting from “lack of spiritual energy” (E 113), while he possesses “restless curious energy” of mind (E 124). Granted that Richard is the realistic Joycean non-charismatic hero, it is nonetheless curious that so many critics grow sentimental over Bertha. She draws tremendous critical sympathy,²¹ a fact which deserves scrutiny in light of what we said earlier about Joyce's heroines being drawn, warts and all, with the same Rembrandtesque realism as his heroes. Bertha is a marvellously realistic portrait of a woman in Joyce's Ireland, but in point of fact, where Richard is concerned, she is neither empathic nor discerning; she is annoyingly imperceptive. Robert Hand calls her the moon (E 31) and Brigid says Richard “thinks the sun shines out” of her face (E 90), yet for all that, she doesn't seem to be too bright. And her defiant “I do things” (E 75) notwithstanding, she is little more than a psychological satellite. Perhaps the greatest irony directed against Bertha is the fact that despite her genuine desire at the end of the drama to understand the man who has undergone such significant change (E 112), she cannot meet his pattern of growth in any way; all she can do is to stay put and wait in hopes that her “strange wild lover” (E 112) will come back to her again.

Richard's friendship with Robert has been given several psychological interpretations, among which is the theory of the latent (or not so latent) homosexuality.²² Various things are offered in support of this theory: a comment Joyce makes in the Notes (E 123), Richard's slip about “our cottage” (E 50), his mysterious allusion to “a motive deeper still” (E 70). We suggest the possibility that the nature of the closeness between the two men in their younger years may have been generated out of a particular age-old tradition. In primitive societies, including those of the white races, woman was not considered man's equal and a male's need for spiritual comradeship (as distinct from his need for an erotic relationship) was always masculinely oriented. If, mindful of Haeckel's biogenetic law (ontogeny somehow recapitulates phylogeny), we place the early friendship between Richard and Robert in the context of such a tradition, then some of Rowan's present behavior toward his friend may be explained as regret that their former fraternity is broken. The Richard-Robert dialogues are always more mature than those between Richard and Bertha, but, as was pointed out earlier, Rowan is in a period of intense change and growth, while Hand, unchanged in any significant way, continues to speak the language of their youth. The sudden shifts in emotional temperature are most telling; for example, immediately after the confession scene we notice Richard becoming more distant and cool (E 71): he has disappointedly discovered that Robert is no longer a soul-mate. Exiles finds Rowan in a double bind of frustration: not only must he face the issue of Bertha not wanting the freedom so precious to his value system, he must also accept the fact that he has grown beyond Robert, for the spell of their former camaraderie is shattered.

DOUBT IS THE THING

“All Celtic philosophers,” says Joyce in the Notes to Exiles, “seemed to have inclined towards incertitude or scepticism” (E 125). What Richard Rowan discovers in the philosophy of the play is that the latter end of belief is always Doubt, that the world—macro- and microcosm—is ineluctably suspended in the incertitude of the void. By the end of the drama Richard has the feel of this void, for he is beyond “belief.” And if his motivation is ambiguous, it is because he is caught in an ambiguous world. This is what his discovery is about; it is the function of his life, of his ordeal in Exiles: he has been living towards it. That is why he has asked so many questions. Only, he thought at first that he was looking for answers, and what he discovers is that Doubt is the Thing. It is the most difficult of all discoveries and it can only be discovered by the individual, for as members of society, we—the collective, the paradigmatic “I”—are conditioned to reject it: we have been taught to strive frantically for faith, belief, security.²³

Joyce once maintained that “naked drama” includes “the perception of a great truth” (CW 63), a point which Theo Q. Dombrowski feels “seems less important in his own play than the other aspects of ‘naked drama’ he outlines.”²⁴ Yet for Richard, the perception of a great truth is precisely his recognition that Doubt is the Thing; further, this recognition is probably meant to filter down to the audience as they witness Rowan's ordeal.²⁵ For Joyce, too, “naked drama” includes “the opening up of a great question” (CW 63). Not only does Exiles open up the question of Doubt, it never closes it. As we witness the ambiguous final tableau vivant, we realize that we are left with that peculiarly Joycean brand of cliff-hanger—the open ending.

Notes

1. One of the most cogent assessments of Joyce's play to surface in our survey of Exiles criticism is John MacNicholas, “Joyce's Exiles: The Argument for Doubt,” JJQ, 11 (Fall 1973), 33-40. See this article, too, for a good summary of major critical reactions to Exiles. Another particularly perceptive reading can be found in Theo Q. Dombrowski, “Joyce's Exiles: The Problem of Love,” JJQ, 15 (Winter 1978), 118-27.

2. Though the reasons adduced for Exiles' lack of success are many, the critical concurrence that the play does fail can perhaps best be summarized by such statements as Edward Brandabur's that “Critics see Joyce's play Exiles as his single failure” (A Scrupulous Meanness: A Study of Joyce's Early Works [Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1971], p. 127) or William York Tindall's contention that “Critics have found it of little or no value and so have most producers” (A Reader's Guide to James Joyce [New York: Noonday Press, 1959], p. 104). This was written before Harold Pinter's 1970 Mermaid Theatre production and his 1971-72 Aldwych Theatre production in which John Wood et al. belatedly vindicated Joyce's optimistic expectations.

3. The following critiques are eminently useful to illustrate the diversity of the contexts in which the autobiographical elements have been explicitly or implicitly presented: Bernard Benstock, “Exiles: ‘Paradox Lust’ and ‘Lost Paladays,’” ELH, 36 (Dec. 1969), 739-56; Sheldon R. Brivic, “Structure and Meaning in Joyce's Exiles,” JJQ, 6 (Fall 1968), 29-52; Earl John Clark, “James Joyce's Exiles,” JJQ, 6 (Fall 1968), 69-78; B.J. Tysdahl, Joyce and Ibsen: A Study in Literary Influence (New York: Humanities Press, 1968), pp. 87-102; Vivienne Koch Macleod, “Influence of Ibsen on Joyce,” PMLA, 60 (Sept. 1945), 879-98, and “Influence of Ibsen on Joyce: Addendum,” PMLA, 62 (1947), 573-80; James T. Farrell, “Exiles and Ibsen,” in James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism, ed. Seon Givens (New York: Vanguard Press, 1963), pp. 95-131; William York Tindall, A Reader's Guide to James Joyce (New York: Noonday Press, 1959), pp. 104-22; S.L. Goldberg, The Classical Temper: A Study of James Joyce's Ulysses (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), pp. 111-13, and James Joyce (New York: Grove Press, 1962), pp. 63-67; Harry Levin, James Joyce: A Critical Introduction (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1960), pp. 37-40; and John Gross, Joyce (New York: Viking Press, 1970), pp. 41-42.

4. Of course, the oeuvre is always an extension of the author (his “cybernetic ego”). The point at issue, however, is the conscious and deliberate introduction of autobiographical material. In this connection it is worth noting Joyce's early aversion to “heroism”: “I am sure … that the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned lie …” (Letter to Stanislaus Joyce, 7 February 1905, in Letters II 81).

5. Even the language of FW is acceptable in terms of psychological realism: there is no reason to suppose that the dreams of a polyglot who has lived in a multilingual society and has heard English comically manhandled most of his life cannot accommodate Wakese.

6. A. Walton Litz, James Joyce (New York: Twayne, 1966), p. 75.

7. Bernard Bandler, “Joyce's Exiles,” in James Joyce: The Critical Heritage, ed. Robert H. Deming (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), I, 160. For a similar assessment, see also Francis Fergusson, “Exiles and Ibsen's Work,” also in Deming, I, 155-59.

8. Joyce was the psychological type that is obsessed by idiosyncratic associations, graphic or phonetic or etymological (FW would never have been written if he had not been), and we find this curiously reflected in the parallelism between the words EXILES and ULIXES (the oldest form of the Latin name for Odysseus). It is the kind of kinkiness that made him decide upon the transparent names Richard Rowan and Robert Hand: “rich” vs “rob”; Thor's tree of life versus the robbing hand; not to mention Bertha (“brightness”—identical with the second part of Robert's name), Beatrice (Dante's inspiration), Brigid (Ireland's patron saint, Shan Van Vogt), and Archibald (with its graphic resemblance to Italian arcobaleno, the symbol of hope). The suggesting of connections without making them explicit is an essential feature of Joyce's art.

9. Arthur Power, Conversations With James Joyce (London: Millington, 1974), p. 98.

10. Contrast B.J. Tysdahl's view that “Exiles has no focus” (Joyce and Ibsen, p. 99).

11. Bernard Benstock, “Exiles: ‘Paradox Lust’ and ‘Lost Paladays,’” ELH, 36 (Dec. 1969), 740.

12. The magus/mystic split involves the Self/Other dichotomy so often observed in Joyce. The magus attempts to absorb the “other” (the universe) into self, while the mystic seeks to lose self in the “other” (the universe).

13. Another instance of Richard's insecurity as the reason for his tendency to lord it over others can be seen in something Brigid tells Bertha (E 90-91). Note, too, that this occurs in conjunction with Brigid first saying she played the role of confidante.

14. We have borrowed the term “stingy” from Joyce's description of Swift (see note 16, below). Richard's idea of love is serious, altruistic, and idealistic; he says he would “go away” if he knew that not he but Robert Hand were “necessary” to Bertha (E 64). He also retains curiously romantic notions, as evidenced by his remark that he was feeding the flame of Bertha's innocence with his guilt (E 67) and his talk of having killed “the virginity of her soul” (E 67). For a thorough analysis of Rowan's conflicts and inconsistencies regarding love, see Theo Q. Dombrowski, “Joyce's Exiles: The Problem of Love,” JJQ, 15 (Winter 1978), 118-27.

15. For a view which stresses Richard's wish to acquire his mother's hardness of heart and which explores the further implications, see Edward Brandabur, A Scrupulous Meanness, pp. 127-58.

16. Robert's remark is a translation of Swift's epitaph, Ubi saeva indignatio/ Cor ulterius lacerare nequit. We are grateful to Adaline Glasheen for pointing out that the Richard-Swift connection is strengthened by two comments made by Joyce himself. Joyce wrote Carlo Linati on 10 December 1919 that Swift is remembered in Exiles, “a distant reminiscence of the strange Stella-Vanessa story” (Letters II 456-57). He also said to Frank Budgen of Swift: “the man was a strong and stingy sentimentalist. He meddled with and muddled up two women's lives” (James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972], p. 185). Using the allusive method, Joyce seems to employ Swift as a transformation model of sorts; Richard becomes a kind of “strong and stingy sentimentalist,” and this ties in with our contention regarding Joyce's predilection for non-charismatic heroes. The transformation model is so Joycean because it is conducive to multi-faceted interpretation: it shifts the angle of observation to give an ironic twist to the play not seen before (e.g., the dramatic irony in Rowan's remark to Beatrice about not being able to give oneself freely and wholly—E 22). As regards the sentimentalist, consider Stephen Dedalus' borrowing from Meredith: “The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done” (U 199). As for the transformational technique, Joyce was to perfect it in U (see especially Robert Scholes, “Ulysses: A Structuralist Perspective,” JJQ, 10 [Fall 1972], 161-71) and later in FW (see especially, although he does not use the term, Roland McHugh, The Sigla of Finnegans Wake [Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1976]).

17. In the Notes Joyce himself labels Richard as jealous (E 114), which is an indication that the ambiguity is intentional.

18. There is at least one indication of the imminent change; it is recounted in a conversation between Bertha and Robert: “… He quoted the Our Father about our daily bread. He said that to take care for the future is to destroy hope and love in the world” (E 34). Significantly, Richard is concerned with hope and love; in retrospect it is clear that he is ready to relinquish security.

19. In vitalist philosophy entelechy is defined as that non-mechanical force urging an organism toward self-fulfillment. Richard himself, in the scene with Robert in Act II, uses the image of the Masterbuilder: “… to build up my soul again out of the ruins of its shame” (E 70). This image, however, is not incompatible with that of organic growth: organisms are said to possess power of “building up” living from non-living matter.

20. Joyce was to express this notion later in Wakese: “In the becoming was the weared” (FW 487.20). Here, “weared”=weird=OE wyrd, cognate with Ge werden (auxiliary of the future tense and of the passive voice) and with Du worden (to become). Wyrd is the power that causes things to become, it is Time and Change, as well as the becoming itself. Joyce's hapax legomenon encapsules “We are,” which sounds like Yahweh's “I am” pluralized. The transformation model of the phrase is John I:1.

21. Compare, for example, Benstock's conclusion regarding “Bertha's quiet and delicate victory over the masculine ego” (“Exiles: ‘Paradox Lust’ and ‘Lost Paladays,’” 755-56), Tindall's excessively sentimental attitude (Reader's Guide, pp. 104-22), and Clive Hart's assertion that “Bertha is, in fact, the only person in the play who is at all sympathetic; it is with her, if with anyone, that the author tends to identify himself” (James Joyce's “Ulysses” [Sydney: Sydney Univ. Press, 1968], p. 26).

22. See, for instance, the section by Samuel A. Tannenbaum in the Little Review symposium on Exiles, in James Joyce: The Critical Heritage, ed. Robert H. Deming (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), I, 150-52.

23. When Joyce says that it is doubt rather than faith that has “the greater power in holding people together,” (JJ 567-68), we take his use of “people” to mean individuals (e.g., Richard and Bertha) rather than society as a whole.

24. See Theo Q. Dombrowski, p. 126, note 1.

25. See the discussion by John MacNicholas mentioned in note 1 above.