Reflecting the Beauty of Humanity
What does it mean to be human according to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?
What
essentially separates a human from an animal?
Is it our ability to reason, as scholars suggest? Our ability to feel emotion, as some would
argue? Our ability to show compassion,
or love? Or, is it perhaps an
understanding and appreciation for something that can encapsulate all of these:
an appreciation for beauty, an appreciation for art?
In James
Joyce's modernist novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's
protagonist Stephen Dedalus explores himself though various experiences and
comes to decide what he defines as beauty and art. However, Stephen does not give us a standard
definition. He explains that art is
about perspective, as is beauty, and what may appear beautiful to one person
may be simple and plain to another.
Stephen does give us one crucial distinction however. He notes that there is an essential
difference between "art" that is simply to produce a reaction (such
as pornographic arts) and art that is designed for the purpose of beauty and
observation. The first type simply
produces an animalistic response, while the second type can produce
appreciation, empathy, concern, compassion, etc. Joyce's novel seems to suggest that to be human,
an individual must be able to show some type of appreciation for the arts,
whether they are written, visual or experiential.
Stephen,
unlike many scholars, also refuses to make a distinction between high and low
art. Stephen sees art as subjective, as
merely art. However, does Stephen’s
refusal to make a distinction between what would be considered high art and
what would be considered low art make him less human because it suggests an absence
of reason? I would propose that Stephen’s
refusal to differentiate between the two shows not a lack of reason, but
actually a presence of reason. Stephen
is able to reason that art, as well as beauty, cannot be given a single definition. Art becomes beautiful when an individual sees
it as beautiful, often because they can associate themselves or a specific
memory to that art.
Stephen’s
idea that art and beauty are subjective makes up an essential component of
humanity: the ability to be an individual and the ability to have free
will. If beauty and art were able to be defined
singularly, it seems possible that all of humanity would be able to be clumped
together as well, without uniqueness and without the perspective that makes
someone different from their neighbor.
There’s a
reason that you love that song that your brother hates: maybe it makes you
think of a good memory from high school or it reminds you of something about
yourself. There’s a reason that someone
in your class loves the book you’ve been assigned and you can’t stand it:
perhaps an element of it relates an idea that is particularly poignant to you,
due to your own perspective and experience.
The ability to appreciate art means the ability to understand and value
our own experiences; it means to be a conscious and self-aware creature.
Art is
perhaps one of the most powerful ways for humans to communicate their own
experiences as well as one of the greatest ways for humans to connect with
others. Art does not only function as a
way to manifest beauty, but also a way to manifest the “terrible beauty” of our
experiences and the uglier sides to humanity.
Art is one powerful way that allows us to cope with and understand the
darkness of the human condition, sometimes in an attempt to reshape the human
condition. If there is beauty in art, it
seems, according to Joyce’s novel, that this beauty exists only because it reflects
the beauty of the humanity already within each of us.