Joyce's Waves of Emotion in Hatterr

Amongst the various writers which Desani alludes to in his elusive text, there can be found a couple of Joycian elements as well—as was pointed out in class with the example of the “moo cow.” Another passage of the novel which I actually found to be fairly similar to one from Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist can be found in chapter 3 of Desani’s text, in which he writes:

“I saw, I saw waves and whirls, on her calm expanse. Those movements and commotions seemed to me so much like human emotions, aspirations, feelings, impulses: similarly unstable, ever-changing, perishable, momentary; perhaps not real; perhaps, just a play on the surface; perhaps, just appearance and disappearance on the plane of awareness: but, in reality, perhaps, non-existent, all of no substance; and, though themselves non-existent, yet, perhaps, proof, symptom, shadow, revelation, of a reality, of a truth, of a god or a creator, I thought, He, the one and the only source of all things, of my emotions, aspirations, feelings, and impulses: as well as of the waves and whirls!”

Stephen also experiences his share of “waves” of emotions throughout Portrait of the Artist with his various religious encounters, attempts at finding truth, and revelations of God or the Creator. Joyce pays a great deal of attention to the emotions with Stephen’s fluctuation in them:

“A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his first violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and had feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the excess. Instead the vital wave had carried him on its bosom out of himself and back again when it receded…”