Reviewed by:

• James Joyce and the Matter of Paris by Catherine Flynn
• Garry Leonard (bio)

The date is 3 December 1902, and a twenty-year-old James Joyce sees Paris for the first time. The question is not “did the City of Light leave an impression on him?”—how could it not?—but what was that impression? Or, more likely, series of impressions? The stories Joyce began in 1904, which would eventually constitute his collection Dubliners, offer almost nothing in the way of explicit clues. Nowhere does Paris appear as itself, unless we wish to countenance the boastful Gallaher, who riffs off Little Chandler’s timid question— “is it true that Paris is so . . . immoral as they say?”¹—but does so only to declare it most certainly is and he, Gallaher, has fully partaken of every variety of this immorality.

What Catherine Flynn has done, with admirable thoroughness and subtlety, is suggest how much the commercial bustle and transaction-based spectacle of Paris both challenged and inspired Joyce’s [End Page 205] nascent sense of what sort of new aesthetic he would need to design to represent “the intersection of the innumerable interrelations,” as Charles Baudelaire put it in 1869 (1).² The individual within the fully commercialized cityscape of Paris was, as Flynn suggests “an impossibly mobile subject” (1). This mobility was doubled by the fact that it was both physical and mental; Paris became for him a “locus of vivid sensory and sensual experiences” (4).

The event of Joyce’s sojourn in Paris, in practical terms, resulted in very little in the way of subject matter for his fiction; but, as Flynn demonstrates convincingly, “Joyce’s achievement was . . . to generate, in response, increasingly innovative forms. In these forms, Joyce both mimes and produces new versions of sensuality that include and open up imaginative possibilities for recasting experience” (4). Flynn means “sensuality” in a way that includes the full spectrum of the word, well beyond the merely sexual, including treatment of the senses of smell and taste, for example. The “Haussmannization” of Paris, along with the flourishing of department stores and endless varieties of commodities, combined to turn Paris into a “desire-producing machine” (5). But the particular configuration of desire produced was very much in the service of the production and consumption of commodities. The result, according to Paul Verlaine, was a chronically hyperbolic yearning for the ineffable as a foundational aspect of the construction of the modern self: “excessive civilization . . anguished, vibrating senses . . . [a] painfully subtle mind . . . [a] brain saturated with tobacco, blood burned by alcohol” (10).³ A “harnessed” sensuality seems to be the hallmark of the modern neurotic.

As Flynn argues, Joyce tasked himself with inventing “innovative literary forms for new relations to the senses” (11). The problem in navigating the urban cityscape is not a lack of stimulation to the senses, but an over-stimulation and, even worse, an over-stimulation with a sustained, relentless and singular purpose: to create a discontent that can be channeled, first by spectacle, then by displays of abundance, and finally by advertising. The net result is to generate more and more mass-consumption, such that it keeps pace with faster and faster modes of mass production, and, through the increasing sophistication of mass media, more and more pervasive forms of advertising. In a letter to Stanislaus Joyce written from Paris, Joyce offers himself up as an example of the effect this has had on him: “O, I have reveled in ties, coats, boots, hats since I am here—all imaginary! (31).⁴ Joyce’s singular accomplishment, used with great skill in Dubliners, is to design innovations spurred on by his experience in Paris, which he then retrofitted to tease out the nascent signs of a burgeoning modernity just below the surface of Dublin. In other words, he is able to step back in time, a decade or so, to “dear dirty Dublin” (D 62) which is, for sure, a metropolis, but not nearly on the scale of Paris. Viewed through this lens...

审核人：

• 詹姆斯·乔伊斯（James Joyce）和《巴黎问题》（Catterine of Paris），凯瑟琳·弗林（Catherine Flynn）
• 加里·伦纳德（生物）

Ť他的日期是3 1902年12月，和一个二十多岁的詹姆斯·乔伊斯看到巴黎的第一次。问题不是“光之城是否给他留下了印象？”（怎么可能不？）但是那印象是什么？或者，更可能是一系列印象？乔伊斯（Joyce）的故事始于1904年，最终构成了他的收藏《都柏林人》（Dubliners），几乎没有提供任何线索。除非我们希望对夸口的夸拉赫轻描淡写，否则他不会出现任何形式的巴黎，加拉赫轻描淡写了小钱德勒的胆小问题：“巴黎真的是这样吗？。。正如他们所说的不道德？” ^1-但这样做只是为了最肯定地宣布这一点，而他，加拉赫（Gallaher）完全赞同这种不道德行为的各种形式。

凯瑟琳·弗林（Catherine Flynn）所做的工作具有令人钦佩的彻底性和微妙性，这表明巴黎的商业热潮和基于交易的景象既挑战和启发了乔伊斯[End Page 205]对他需要设计什么样的新美学的初感。代表查尔斯·鲍德莱尔（Charles Baudelaire）在1869年提出的“无数相互关系的交集”（1）。²正如弗林（Flynn）所建议的那样，巴黎完全商业化的城市景观中的个人是“不可能移动的主题”（1）。这种流动性在身体和精神上都增加了一倍。巴黎对他来说是“生动的感官和感性体验的场所”（4）。

从实际意义上讲，乔伊斯（Joyce）在巴黎的旅居事件对他的小说创作的影响很小。但是，正如弗林令人信服地表明的那样，“乔伊斯的成就是…… 。。作为回应，产生越来越多的创新形式。在这些形式中，乔伊斯模仿并产生了新的感性版本，其中包括并为重塑体验开辟了想象的可能性”（4）。弗林（Flynn）的意思是“淫荡”，包括单词的全部范围，远远超出了仅涉及性的范畴，例如，包括嗅觉和味觉的处理。巴黎的“豪斯曼化”，再加上百货商店的兴旺和商品种类繁多，共同将巴黎变成了“欲望产生机器”（5）。但是，产生的欲望的特殊结构在很大程度上是为商品的生产和消费服务的。根据保罗·韦尔兰（Paul Verlaine）的观点，这是一种长期的双曲线向往，因为它无法解释现代自我建构的基本方面：“过度的文明。。痛苦，振奋的感官。。。[a]痛苦微妙的头脑。。。[a]大脑充满了烟草，血液被酒精燃烧”（10）。³ “利用”淫荡似乎是现代神经质的标志。

正如弗林所说，乔伊斯的任务是发明“创新的文学形式，以建立与感官的新关系”（11）。在城市景观中穿行的问题不是缺乏对感官的刺激，而是过度刺激，甚至更糟的是，过度刺激具有持续，不懈和奇异的目的：首先制造可以表达的不满情绪。通过眼镜，然后通过丰富的展示，最后通过广告。最终结果是产生越来越多的大众消费，从而使其与越来越快的大规模生产模式保持同步，并且随着大众媒体的日益成熟，广告形式也越来越普及。在乔伊斯写给巴黎的斯坦尼斯劳斯·乔伊斯（Stanislaus Joyce）的一封信中，乔伊斯举了个例子，说明这对他产生了影响：“哦，我陶醉于领带，外套，靴子，因为我在这里戴了帽子-都是虚构的！（31）。⁴乔伊斯在都柏林人中运用过的精湛技艺，是他在巴黎的经历所激发的创新设计，然后他进行了翻新，以挖掘都柏林表层以下新兴的新兴现代标志。换句话说，他可以退后十年左右的时间，“亲爱的肮脏的都柏林”（D 62），这肯定是一个大都市，但几乎没有巴黎的规模。通过这个镜头观看...