Joyce's Exiles and the Prodigal Son

JOYCE'S EXILES AND THE PRODIGAL SON Long considered one of the knottiest problems in his works, Joyce's Exiles was clarified to some extent in the author's notes published in 1951 by the Viking Press and edited by Padraic Colum. Answering his own question, "Why the title Exiles?" Joyce replies: A nation exacts a penance from those who dared to leave her payable on their return. The elder brother in the fable of the Prodigal Son is Robert Hand. The father took the side of the prodigal. This is probably not the way of the world-especially not in Ireland: but Jesus' Kingdom was not of this world nor was or is his wisdom (p. 114).1 That a Biblical parable is the fundamental analogy of Exiles seems, in the first place, an important clue to the relation of Joyce's only attempt at drama to his other works; for the parables, used to illustrate rather than to establish doctrine, were only parts of a whole. Joyce's explanation suggests that his only play illustrates a vision of life which, like Jesus', was not "of this world," then, as well as that he considered this work a necessary "penance." According to other notes, Richard Rowan, the "prodigal son" of Exiles, must "persuade," and although all the characters should remain convincingly natural, they must work out theories. As Colum points out in his introduction, the "exiles" have all been taken "beyond the accepted moralities and to where they have to make choices for themselves" (p. 8). It is probable, therefore, that Joyce's dramatic parable was intended to be much more than an experiment in technique. Through this medium Joyce may have been seeking not only to achieve a better understanding of his whole way of life but also a better means of externalizing his vision. Exiles may well represent an important development in Joyce's career as an artist and thinker. Supporting this inference is the fact that Joyce preferred, especially in this instance, to publish in order of composition. According to his own calendar of his works, which he sent to Harriet Shaw Weaver on November 8, 1916, he had finished A Portrait in 1914 and had written Exiles during 1914 and 1915.2 On April 5, 1915, he said in a letter to Grant Richards concerning the publication of A Portrait, "I have written a comedy in three acts Exiles ... but for many reasons 1 prefer the novel to be published first."3 Certainly one of his reasons 1. Page numbers in parentheses throughout refer to the following editions of Joyce's works: Padraic Colum (ed.) Exiles (New York: Viking Press, 1951); Theodore Spencer (ed.). Stephen Hero (Norfollc, Conn.: New Directionsl .1955); Harry Levin (ed.), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in The Portable Joyce (~ew York: Viking Press, 1947); Ulysses (New York: Random House. 1940); Finnegans Wake (New York: Viking Press, 1939). 2. Stuart Gilbert (ed.). Letters of James Joyce (New York: Viking Press, 1951), p. 44. 3. Ibid., p. 98. 218 1959 JOYCE'S Exiles 219 may have been that he believed chronology should be considered in any approach to his works, for the contents of those preceding Exiles display, as Brewster Ghiselin has observed, a continuity. Joyce fully defines in A Portrait, he says, the "spiritual way of escape and attainment only intimated in Dubliners."4 And since at the conclusion of A Portrait Stephen Dedalus flies from the binding nets of home, church, and country into voluntary exile, seeking spiritual attainment through physical alienation; and at the beginning of Exiles Richard, an artist from a "higher world," has just returned from a self-imposed exile, Joyce probably intended Exiles as a sequel to A Portrait and felt that a knowledge of the tensions there was indispensable to the interpretation of his play. Affirms Colum, "If James Joyce had gone from Por- . trait of the Artist to Ulysses (and according to the way most commentators discount Exiles he might as well have done this), we should not have known the drama that was implicit in Stephen Dedalus's resolve to forge the uncreated conscience of his race" (p. 9). Hugh...