How depressing is Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? Could it be an act of transformation from €˜pain into €˜art?

The ideas
about art that emerge from  are not depressing.  They affirm the power of
creation in a world that desperately needs it.

Through Stephen, Joyce makes clear that the artistic identity is one of transformation.
 Stephen must experience pain as he comes to understand that he does not "fit" into
the socially designed classifications of the world around him.  He experiences alienation from
this world. He communicates this to Cranly:  

I will tell
you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe,
whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself
in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the
only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.

It is evident that Stephen has experienced challenge in trying to "fit" into
worlds that are not for him.  Socially carved out notions like "Fatherland" or
"church" don't work.  He recognizes this as a process of transformation, or change.
 When he further tells Cranly that he no longer possesses the fear "to be alone" or
"to make a mistake," Stephen speaks as an artist.  This is not depressing.  Rather, it
is liberating.  

There is significant difficulty in arriving at such a point.
 Stephen experiences pain and frustration in establishing his "non serviam credo" and
defining his place in the world as an artist.  However, I don't think that Joyce sees this as
depressing.  There is little sadness in Stephen's welcoming affirmation of "O life! I go to
encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul
the uncreated conscience of my race.  Joyce shows that the process of transforming into an
artist might involve pain. However, it is not a depressing one because it creates something new
and meaningful in the world.