Soaring

Stephen Dedalus, throughout Portrait, is always self-conscious, and is especially obsessed with his name.  He is constantly naming and renaming himself, suggesting his search for his identity must lead him through an exploration of his uncommon, Greek-sounding name.  His name stands out as different from typical Irish surnames, like Hickey, Quaid, MacArdle or Keogh (180).  In Part IV, Stephen sounds out his name against the sound of the names of the Brothers who teach him, and encourage him to become a priest:  the “Reverend Stephen Dedalus, S.J.” (174)  Stephen does not identify with that name.  He realizes that “[h]is soul was not there,” and that “[h]e would never swing the thurible before the tabernacle as priest.” (175)  At the conclusion of Part IV, Stephen thinks about what his name really does mean.  As he wanders to the sea while waiting for his father, he “raise[s] his eyes towards the slowdrifting clouds,” and he “hear[s] a confused music within him of memories and names.”  (181)  Friends he meets greet him in banter as “Stephanos,” “Dedalos,” and “Bous Stephanoumenos” and Bous Stephaneforos.”  (182)  But Stephen takes their identification of him seriously.  To him, “[n]ow, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy.”  (183)  As Stephen looks to the sky – the heavens – his focus suggests that we explore the meaning of his name by looking back to the ancient Greek myth – of Icarus and Daedalus.  Stephen identifies with Daedalus’ son.  He “seemed … to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air.”  (183)  He notes that “to fly sunward above the sea” (183), and to “forge anew” (183), as an artist is his destiny, and his vision a prophecy.  With this vision, he is inspired and energized: “[a]n ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes” (183), and at this point, Stephen feels “[h]is soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood” (184), or, in other words, he has grown up. 

            Part IV highlights the motif of flight which has been seen throughout the novel, but here flight from the darkness of his boyhood to the light that leads him away from religious vocation is a moment of epiphany for Stephen.  Stephen has gained some self-discipline and maturity in Part IV, beginning with his spiritual awakening, or epiphany, through his confession of sins and religious conversion.  But he grows beyond his state of religious devotion, when he rejects the idea of being a Dedalus, S.J.  In this moment of epiphany, however, as the motifs of flight and Stephen’s identity come to a head, Stephen realizes that “now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy” (183), and he identifies himself as a son of another Daedalus, who defied the gods. 

What Stephen must remember, is that flying too close to the sun, the source of light, can have dangerous repercussions.  Stephen’s name, after the “artificer” Daedalus, is auspicious, as he now identifies himself as an artist soaring to enlightenment.  

Stephen the Artists Soaring to Enlightenment