He labored for ten years on Portrait of the Artist, the fictionalized account of his youth. With cunning (skillfulness) and hard work, Joyce developed his own literary voice. The artistic climate of continental Europe encouraged experiment. (Asked later how long he had been away from Dublin, he answered: “Have I ever left it?”) But Joyce did achieve his literary goal in exile. He still admired the intellectual and artistic aspects of the Roman Catholic tradition that had nurtured him. In spite of his need to break away from constrictions on his development as a writer, Joyce had always been close to his family. With brief exceptions, he was to remain away from Ireland for the rest of his life. In 1904, when he was twenty-two, he left his family, the Roman Catholic Church, and the “dull torpor” of Dublin for the European continent to become a writer.
Like his fictional hero, Stephen, the young Joyce felt stifled by the narrow interests, religious pressures, and political squabbles of turn-of-the-century Ireland.
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