The portrait of the Artist.... the ultimate culmination of art and identity.

I truly have never met a more lost or confused soul than the soul of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Portrait.

This boy is a mess

from sleeping with whores, to commiting a slew of other sins he is the ultimate example of the Byronic hero. a dandy. a man lacking the stength to be moral, do the right thing or even ACT at all.

The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!Our dried voices,
whenWe whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellarShape without form,
shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but onlyAs the hollow men
The stuffed men.
IIEyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the ShadowLife
is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is theThis is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Stephen is a hollow man his sinfull lips are prayers that fall to broken stone.
he is between the existance and the essence.

OH how my heart reaches out.
For I to am a hollow man, a dead man.
Lacking the courage to be strong I live in a catus land by the supplication of the dead mans hand
Like Stephen I stuggle to have an identity at all.

Im a nobody
who are you?
are you a nobody too?

Identity is a question that will continue to plauge not only my concious but that of poets, authors, musicanians etc.

It is a question that can never be truly answered.