Time

What an interesting lens to view the novel through! While reading this article my mind kept flashing to the concept of time. Time is everywhere. Time is consistent. Time is always present. Time is continuous. Time is relative. Etc etc…I am studying to become a teacher and this semester I’m taking a social studies course aimed at, “how to teach social studies.” We are learning that one of the main aims of teaching history is to help students develop a concept of time. Historical evidence itself obtains its meaning from the time-frame in which it is set. Without a concept of time there can be no real understanding of change, development, continuity, progression and regression. As an educator I have to aim to teach my students to learn how to take on the attitudes and understanding of a past age. In the novel, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man what does Time really mean? What is the relevance of time within the novel? How are time and the concept of epiphany linked? There are many instances in the novel and from the article that dwell on this concept of time. I’m going to try to stay on topic here (which is often hard for me to do) and bring forth some instances that correlate with this concept.

The first instance is from the article, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the Individuating Rhythm of Modernit. Tobias Boes describes the novel as “leaping and bounding” through time. Boes brings forth many terms pertaining to the concept of time; linear and cyclical temporalities, individuating rhythms, polyrhythmic, etc. The terms are subjective and therefore open to interpretation. Linear time is sequential. Cyclical time is relative, pertaining to its surroundings. Individuating rhythms is the time spent in relation to a backboard of time as a whole. Perhaps polyrhythmic is the whole. I’m not entirely sure what these terms mean. I can break apart these terms and analyze but that might take too much time for right now. Boes says,
“Like his Russian contemporary, Lefebvre regarded time and space as inextricable from one another; he was well aware, for example, that the temporal rhythms pulsing through the boulevards of a colonial city can be very different from those that hover in its back alleys. In his most extensive project of “rhythmanalysis,” a study of the patterns of everyday life in Mediterranean cities, Lefebvre concluded that, “the large Mediterranean towns appear to have always lived and still to live in a regime of compromise between all the political powers. such a ‘metastable’ state is the fact of the polyrhythmic.”16 “Polyrhythmicality” in this context should be understood as the simultaneous existence in close spatial proximity of life-worlds that place differing emphases on the linear and cyclical elements that constitute historical experience” (770).

From this passage about time and all of it’s terms and how they affect one another I have concluded that much of the novel is about how time, time affected change, time metabolized Stephen’s current state, present time is affected by past time..etc.

“Stephen is constantly struggling to synchronize his internal beat with an ever-changing environment” (772).

We are always fighting time! I found it interesting in the above quote where is says that, “Lefebrve regarded time and space as inextricable from one another” Throughout the novel we see Stephen bounce back and forth between memories, at Clongowes, university, home, etc..each time his mind is changed. New times bring forth new identities, past times and experiences constitute identity. This is where the concept of epiphany comes into play. Epiphany can be described as something becoming clear. This occurs when you look at the concept of time. The article describes when Stephen is on the Dublin-Cork night train. It describes how as the train leaves the station, the boy overcome by a curious feeling of detachment that enforces a definite rupture between his present self and his personal recollections. (Reflecting back in time)

“As the landscape that he has known for all his life fades into darkness, his primary markers of experience become the passing “telegraphpoles,” which no longer frame recognizable vistas, but instead measure out the relentless advance of empty time at the rate of one bar every four seconds” (775).

In this passage his experience is measured in time. He begins to measure the time between the passing telegraph poles, and as he is doing something, something new becomes clear to him. At night he watches is father sleep and he remembers how at one time he regarded he greatly respected his father, and at this exact moment in time on the train as he watches his father sleep he looks small and weak. But as the evening moves to day, The Irish landscape becomes visible as something more than a mere abstraction, something more than a dark mass of shades broken up every four seconds by a pole. Suddenly, the previous feeling of detachment and disjunction gives way to a definite sense of place; the experience of locality that is steeped in custom, organic social experience, and instransgent historical continuity. Stephen’s sense of his own position in the world changes in accordance with the landscape that he glimpses outside of his window.

“Suddenly, his father’s presence—so easily dismissed just a few hours ago—takes on an almost claustrophobic heaviness, and the dim outlines of the fellow passengers in his compartment inspire in him a strange dread. His experience of time changes as well. His attention is no longer held by the passing telegraph poles, which measure out the advance of historical time in a relentlessly repetitive mechanical continuity, but by his father’s heavy breathing and occasional sleepy movement. The mechanical thus yields to the biological, and mere repetition is replaced by the organic cycle of pulmonary activity. Time no longer progresses, but appears almost at a standstill” (775)

It’s almost as suddenly in this moment, Stephen has an epiphany that time and space are linked. And that with each passing moment, visions can be blurred or they can be made clear yielding to some new realization. With a new realization it is almost as if time is put on pause and for that moment, even if it’s just an instant, by putting time on pause the mind becomes clearer. Your thoughts belong in that moment and nothing else. Time affects everything.