EXILES, A PLAY BY JAMES JOYCE (BOOK REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATION)

Today I'll share my review of Exiles, a play by James Joyce with you. I read and reviewed this play about a decade or so ago. I read it when I was a student of English literature. We had an Irish professor at the University, so obviously Joyce was often on the reading menu. Not that I minded, for I have grown quite fond of this writer.  I've decided to share this review with you because I think it is still relevant. Exiles might not be James' best known work, but in my opinion this play merits a recommendation. It is a play that I have been meaning to reread and I'm pretty sure I have a copy somewhere in my home, I just need to find it.  Exiles might not be the best or the more original Joyce's work but it is worth a read. 

MY REVIEW FOR THE EXILES, A PLAY BY JAMES JOYCE

 Exiles is a wonderful play, it really is. The Ibsen influences are obvious and for the most part welcome. Refreshingly liberal and open in its ideas, Exiles is a play that is well worth the reading. With some changes, Exiles could have had been a masterpiece, but it is pretty impressive as it is. What changes you might ask? It is hard for me to put a finger of it, but this play did feel a bit unfinished. Perhaps it just needed more work and thought. Exiles has the potential without doubt, it has some wonderful dialogues but I feel something is missing. It may be that Joyce's talent was principally that of a novelist. Drama needs tragedy, confrontation and you know 'drama'. Even in its more modern forms, drama needs a conflict, a moment of intensive feeling.

The Ibsen influence in drama is obvious and as I said, for most part it is handled well. However, it is not natural in sense that it completely fits the story. By that I mean that the feminist issues are a bit unfinished. Ibsen did a better job with female characterization that Joyce. I do not mind Joyce looking up to Ibsen but he should have worked on his dramatist skills a bit more or offered a more complete view of his principal female character in this play. Joyce is autobiographical in this one, not something that can be completely merged with Ibsen influences, taken they were not a single individual.

Moreover, Exiles is a play about a great many things. There are many themes in Exiles, perhaps too many: liberation, feminism, Ireland, religion, autobiographical things, morality. The list goes on. in my opinion, Joyce is too analytic to be a really great dramatist. He is a wonderful writer, but he didn't realized his true potential in this play. Perhaps he just needed more writing practice, for this play is quite strong, even with its flaws. Joyce did a great job writing this one, he infused it with a great many interesting ideas and thoughts, but something is still missing. A dramatist should not explain, he should show. That being said, I believe that anyone who is a fan of Joyce will look besides things like that and be attracted to the subtle meaning behind Joyce words.

I cannot picture it on stage, but that does not bother me, I've loved many "only to read" plays. Perhaps with some editing and rewriting Exiles could have been really great. ( Here I go with the maybes: If it had been a great success would it have been edited and improved? Ah, questions, questions). I cannot help wondering what it was that the critics of the time resented to this play. Could it have been the liberal ideas? Although there is nothing shocking about Exiles for today’s standards, there are lines that will make moralist dislike it, such as:

ROBERT: I am sure that no law made by man is sacred before the impulse of passion. Who made us for one only? It is a crime against our won being if we are so. There is no law before impulses. Laws are for slaves…


To me, Exiles was quite an enchanting read, even if I did not understand the characters all the time, even if I had to read it more than once to sort of understand what was going on, even if there are some faults in it. There are lines in the play that are so good that the reading of the play can be justified even if the rest was utter rubbish- and it is not. Joyce is not afraid to criticize himself in Richard. The character of Richard is so clearly biographical (and in that sense similar to Stephen and other semi-autobiographical characters Joyce created) that I have to wonder has he reproached himself with words he put in Bertha’s mouth:

BERTHA : “ All is to be for you. I am to appear false and cruel to everyone except to you. Because you take advantage of my simplicity as you did- the first time.”

There are parts in the dialogue between Richard and Stephen where the influence of Ibsen is obvious such as:

ROBERT: There are moment of sheer madness when we feel an intense passion for women.

We see nothing. We thing of nothing. Only to posses her. Call it brutal, bestial, what you will.

RICHARD: I am afraid that longing to posses a women is not love.

However, there are dialogues that are more true to Joyce, that in other words raise difficult questions, cruel truths and make you think. Ah, those thoughts that make his writing wonderful, I don't even mind the fact that I'm feeling sad when and after I read them.  Exiles is not without pathos, it is not a play that should have not been a play but rather a play that could have been better. Nevertheless, it is well worth a read. I'm sure any lover of literature would appreciate it, for it is a fine piece of writing.

FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO KNOW MORE:

A BIT MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS FINE PLAY AND WRITER CITED FROM WIKIPEDIA AND BRITANNICA:

CITED FROM WIKIPEDIA: "Exiles is James Joyce's only extant play and draws on the story of "The Dead", the final short story in Joyce's story collection Dubliners. The play was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production by the Abbey Theatre. Its first major London performance was in 1970, when Harold Pinter directed it at the Mermaid Theatre. In terms of both its critical and popular reception, Exiles has proven the least successful of all of Joyce's published works. In making his case for the defence of the play, Padraic Colum conceded: "...critics have recorded their feeling that [Exiles] has not the enchantment of Portrait of the Artist nor the richness of [Ulysses]... They have noted that Exiles has the shape of an Ibsen play and have discounted it as being the derivative work of a young admirer of the great Scandinavian dramatist."   Joyce himself described the structure of the play as "three cat and mouse acts". The play follows four players and two couples, Richard Rowan, a writer and his "common-law wife" Bertha, and Robert Hand with his cousin and previous lover Beatrice, both old friends of the previous couple. “The plot is deceptively simple: Richard, a writer, returns to Ireland from Rome with Bertha, the mother of his illegitimate son, Archie. While there, he meets his former lover and correspondent Beatrice Justice and former drinking partner and now successful journalist Robert Hand. Robert was also Beatrice’s lover, and here the complications begin."^[2]There are obvious parallels to be drawn with Joyce's own life – Joyce and Nora Barnacle lived, unmarried, in Trieste, during the years the fictional Rowans were living in Rome. During this time, Joyce and his lover considered themselves to be living in Exile, directly mirroring the setting of Exiles. Robert Hand too, draws a connection to Joyce's personal life as he resembles two friends of Joyce's, Oliver St. John Gogarty and Vincent Cosgrave, and even shares a few defining characteristics with them both. Similarly, the character of Beatrice Justice has been said to reflect a cousin of Joyce's, Elizabeth Justice, who died in 1912. " END OF CITATION 5.1. 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exiles_(play)

CITED FROM BRITANNICA: "James Joyce, in full James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, (born February 2, 1882, Dublin, Ireland—died January 13, 1941, Zürich, Switzerland), Irish novelist noted for his experimental use of language and exploration of new literary methods in such large works of fiction as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Joyce, the eldest of 10 children in his family to survive infancy, was sent at age six to Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school that has been described as “the Eton of Ireland.” But his father was not the man to stay affluent for long; he drank, neglected his affairs, and borrowed money from his office, and his family sank deeper and deeper into poverty, the children becoming accustomed to conditions of increasing sordidness. Joyce did not return to Clongowes in 1891; instead he stayed at home for the next two years and tried to educate himself, asking his mother to check his work. In April 1893 he and his brother Stanislaus were admitted, without fees, to Belvedere College, a Jesuit grammar school in Dublin. Joyce did well there academically and was twice elected president of the Marian Society, a position virtually that of head boy. He left, however, under a cloud, as it was thought (correctly) that he had lost his Roman Catholic faith.

He entered University College, Dublin, which was then staffed by Jesuit priests. There he studied languages and reserved his energies for extracurricular activities, reading widely—particularly in books not recommended by the Jesuits—and taking an active part in the college’s Literary and Historical Society. Greatly admiring Henrik Ibsen, he learned Dano-Norwegian to read the original and had an article, “Ibsen’s New Drama”—a review of the play When We Dead Awaken—published in the London Fortnightly Review in 1900 just after his 18th birthday. This early success confirmed Joyce in his resolution to become a writer and persuaded his family, friends, and teachers that the resolution was justified. In October 1901 he published an essay, “The Day of the Rabblement,” attacking the Irish Literary Theatre (later the Abbey Theatre, in Dublin) for catering to popular taste.

Joyce was leading a dissolute life at this time but worked sufficiently hard to pass his final examinations, matriculating with “second-class honours in Latin” and obtaining the degree of B.A. on October 31, 1902. Never did he relax his efforts to master the art of writing. He wrote verses and experimented with short prose passages that he called “epiphanies,” a word that Joyce used to describe his accounts of moments when the real truth about some person or object was revealed. To support himself while writing, he decided to become a doctor, but, after attending a few lectures in Dublin, he borrowed what money he could and went to Paris, where he abandoned the idea of medical studies, wrote some book reviews, and studied in the Sainte-Geneviève Library.Recalled home in April 1903 because his mother was dying, he tried various occupations, including teaching, and lived at various addresses, including the Martello Tower at Sandycove, which later became a museum. He had begun writing a lengthy naturalistic novel, Stephen Hero, based on the events of his own life, when in 1904 George Russell offered £1 each for some simple short stories with an Irish background to appear in a farmers’ magazine, The Irish Homestead. In response Joyce began writing the stories published as Dubliners (1914). Three stories—“The Sisters,” “Eveline,” and “After the Race”—had appeared under the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus before the editor decided that Joyce’s work was not suitable for his readers. Meanwhile, Joyce had met Nora Barnacle in June 1904; they probably had their first date, and first sexual encounter, on June 16, the day that he chose as what is known as “Bloomsday” (the day of his novel Ulysses). Eventually he persuaded her to leave Ireland with him, although he refused, on principle, to go through a ceremony of marriage. They left Dublin together in October 1904.

Early travels and works

Joyce obtained a position in the Berlitz School at Pola in Austria-Hungary (now Pula, Croatia), working in his spare time at his novel and short stories. In 1905 they moved to Trieste, where James’s brother Stanislaus joined them and where their children, Giorgio and Lucia, were born. In 1906–07, for eight months, he worked at a bank in Rome, disliking almost everything he saw. Ireland seemed pleasant by contrast; he wrote to Stanislaus that he had not given credit in his stories to the Irish virtue of hospitality and began to plan a new story, “The Dead.” The early stories were meant, he said, to show the stultifying inertia and social conformity from which Dublin suffered, but they are written with a vividness that arises from his success in making every word and every detail significant. His studies in European literature had interested him in both the Symbolists and the realists of the second half of the 19th century; his work began to show a synthesis of these two rival movements. He decided that Stephen Hero lacked artistic control and form and rewrote it as “a work in five chapters” under a title—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—intended to direct attention to its focus upon the central figure.In 1909 he visited Ireland twice to try to publish Dubliners and set up a chain of Irish cinemas. Neither effort succeeded, and he was distressed when a former friend told him that he had shared Nora’s affections in the summer of 1904. Another old friend proved this to be a lie. Joyce always felt that he had been betrayed, however, and the theme of betrayal runs through much of his later writings.

When Italy declared war in 1915 Stanislaus was interned, but James and his family were allowed to go to Zürich. At first, while he gave private lessons in English and worked on the early chapters of Ulysses—which he had first thought of as another short story about a “Mr. Hunter”—his financial difficulties were great. He was helped by a large grant from Edith Rockefeller McCormick and finally by a series of grants from Harriet Shaw Weaver, editor of the Egoist magazine, which by 1930 had amounted to more than £23,000. Her generosity resulted partly from her admiration for his work and partly from her sympathy with his difficulties, for, as well as poverty, he had to contend with eye diseases that never really left him. From February 1917 until 1930 he endured a series of 25 operations for iritis, glaucoma, and cataracts, sometimes being for short intervals totally blind. Despite this he kept up his spirits and continued working, some of his most joyful passages being composed when his health was at its worst. Unable to find an English printer willing to set up A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for book publication, Weaver published it herself, having the sheets printed in the United States, where it was also published, on December 29, 1916, by B.W. Huebsch, in advance of the English Egoist Press edition. Encouraged by the acclaim given to this, in March 1918, the American Little Review began to publish episodes from Ulysses, continuing until the work was banned in December 1920. An autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist traces the intellectual and emotional development of a young man named Stephen Dedalus and ends with his decision to leave Dublin for Paris to devote his life to art. The last words of Stephen prior to his departure are thought to express the author’s feelings upon the same occasion in his own life:Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

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Legacy of James Joyce

James Joyce’s subtle yet frank portrayal of human nature, coupled with his mastery of language and brilliant development of new literary forms, made him one of the major figures of literary Modernism and among the most commanding influences on novelists of the 20th century. Ulysses has come to be accepted as a masterpiece, two of its characters, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly, being portrayed with a fullness and warmth of humanity that is arguably unsurpassed in fiction. Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is also remarkable for the intimacy of the reader’s contact with the central figure and contains some astonishingly vivid passages. The 15 short stories collected in Dubliners mainly focused upon Dublin life’s sordidness, but “The Dead” is one of the world’s great short stories. Critical opinion remains divided over Joyce’s last work, Finnegans Wake, a universal dream about an Irish family, composed in a multilingual style on many levels and aiming at a multiplicity of meanings, but, although seemingly unintelligible at first reading, the book is full of poetry and wit, containing passages of great beauty. Joyce’s other works—some verse (Chamber Music, 1907; Pomes Penyeach, 1927; Collected Poems, 1936) and a play, Exiles (1918)—though competently written, added little to his international stature. " END OF CITATION 5.1. 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Joyce/Finnegans-Wake

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