All or not at all
All or not at all
In Brief
As Stephen thinks back, in Proteus, on his insistence that Buck not demean him, he affirms his need to be wholly accepted: "As I am. As I am. All or not at all." The second declaration returns in Circe. Stephen's romantic self-affirmation probably owes its inspiration to Henrik Ibsen, the truth-telling Norwegian playwright whom the young Joyce admired extravagantly. It may also owe something to Oscar Wilde.
Read More
Gifford hears "All or not at all" as a
reference to Ibsen's first major play, Brand (1865).
The eponymous protagonist, whose name means "fire," is a
messianic Lutheran priest who believes that God requires a
total commitment of the human will. His motto is "Give
nothing or give all," or "Be what you are with all
your heart, / And not by pieces and in part" (trans. C.
H. Herford). This uncompromising message proves difficult not
only for Brand but for everyone around him. He leaves his
mother alone while she is dying, because she will not give
away the money that she wrongly took from her husband. (If he
has read the play Stephen surely hears in this action an echo
of his own refusal to pray at his dying
mother's bedside, which he justifies by comparing himself to Columbanus.)
He decides not to move from the unhealthy climate that is
killing his young son, because the surrounding farmers need
him, pointing out that God did not make compromises to save
his son. He urges his wife to give away their son's clothes to
another woman whose child is freezing, and in doing so, she
gives up her hold on life.
Thornton hears in "As I am" an echo of Oscar Wilde, of whom Stephen has just been thinking in connection with his emotional involvement with Mulligan. Thornton cites John Z. Bennett's observation that, in chapter 9 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian says to Basil Hallward, "Don't leave me, Basil, and don't quarrel with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said."
