8. How would you describe your experience of reading FW? Why are a growing number of scholars and students interested in FW?

Fritz Senn said ----- I started out full of enthusiasm at the age of about 25 and invested a great deal of time, at one time really trying to resolve its minute obscurities into tentative meaning, and often this brought good returns, and experiences. But more often not. After many years -as a scholar- I simply gave up Finnegans Wake, in semantic despair; my ignorance it so overwhelming that I cannot, in all honesty, pose as an expert (and the experts don’t help). This does not exclude occasional probes and references in what I have written, All Joycean ways lead to FW. But I cannot imagine writing a book about something that I so fundamentally and in many details fail to grasp. So often in our weekly reading, I find that after 40 years or so of endeavour, I have no clue what a passage or a sentence does. Disheartening. Fortunately most others do not have such qualms. (I articulated my defeat in “Linguistic Dissatisfaction at the Wake” -- which I vaguely remember the Abiko Quarterly may have reprinted long ago.) One actual, “real life” effect of Finnegans Wake is to bring people together and closer, literally so. Reading groups take on social functions, and I believe beneficial ones. Some do become therapy groups (not as much irony involved as it may seem). --- From my experience, the reading groups become something that helps various member to go on, may be it is the exercise of grappling with a text, maybe to engage in a common pursuit, a kind of community feeling arises (also animosities, naturally), maybe the sort of processes for which in real therapy sessions one would have to spend a lot of money. Not to forget, no one sees the reading groups as therapy, they may just keep some people out of even more harm. What I can tell it that many friendships do arise, locally and beyond. --- A lot remains to be explained, related, perhaps even clarified. It offers multiple openings for research, a rich field for academic and amateur research, reinvigorated by novel theories and trends. Also it is often hard to falsify claims made about it. One strange characteristic about the book: without real familiarity, intimate knowledge, one can say valid, brilliant, perceptive things about FW - and also very vapid ones. Finnegans Wake has become part of literary and verbal culture, by a process of osmosis.
Katarzyna Bazarnik said ----- Reading FW does require a lot of effort, intellectual work. One must read actively, i.e., read and interpret, connect and check connections all the time. It's a different kind of reading, not sliding over the surface, like reading for plot and not paying much attention to every word. Here everything may be meaningful to the highest degree, so one must be very attentive all the time. In this respect it resembles reading poetry, especially modern, in which one has to dig for meaning, extract it from the words and from between the words. But when you come to think of it, it is also true for poetry of other ages, too. This, of course, is only a part of the answer. Different people find different aspects of it difficult. --- I believe because it is such a challenge. And such a change from what most people usually read. Because it leaves room for your creativity in interpretation, or what's called "reader response". Because it has remained "terra incognita" of literature, so, potentially, everybody can still make a great discovery. --- At the moment genetic studies are developing quite rapidly, but I am not sure if it's of great importance to the readers. I suppose the readers look for some kind of guidance and a method to read FW. What I find really fascinating is different close readings, which actually goes back to your point about reading about FW being more interesting than reading FW itself. I liked the sentence (don't remember who said that) saying that "literary criticism has grown to be another literary genre." If it's so, its development is virtually unpredictable because some undiscovered genius may be waiting at the doorstep. I could also imagine "hyper-criticism", a kind of glossing of electronic texts of FW and Ulysses, with links to corresponding places/words/paragraphs, perhaps forking at some points so it would be up to the reader to decide which track to follow. I suppose it could actually comment much better on the nature of FW and the way it could be read than 'linear' critical works.
Michael S. Begnal said ----- FW describes everything from the simplest details of everyday existence to the whole cosmos. i.e. "life". --- Joyce did not restrict himself to everyday/common prose, he made his language reflect the context of the subconscious mind. --- Since the language used is often portrayed as "nonsensical" it is easy to impose one's own theories on the book without paying serious attention to what Joyce was actually trying to do. --- It is possible that the chaotic appearance of FW's prose might encourage an opportunist to twist Joyce's words to benefit his or her own theory.
Ryan G. Van Cleave said ----- In general, I look to figures such as Lorca, Neruda, and Mark Strand for poetic inspiration. All three (and many others) have the ability to transform language into a medium of exchange that benefits both writer and reader. Finnegans Wake does this for me, too. I read it not as a text, per se, but as a word-poem. Perhaps that's not right, either. I think what I'm trying to explain is that when I tackle FW (which I endeavor to do every other year), I let the energy and the power of the words accumulate and expand into a state of inertia, pure controlled confusion (something akin to Keat’s negative capability). I think that when my own poems are working at their best, they operate on subconscious levels that sometimes border on abstraction, yet always they strive for clarity of voice, structure, shape, image. --- In one sense, FW is too difficult for general readers. But if you buy into Keat’s negative capability idea, then a person can relish in it, without quite knowing why. --- I'm not sure that there are too many books about FW coming out right now. It's a rich text and I'm perfectly happy with many people plunging whole-heartedly into it. I don't have a favorite yet among those that exist, but perhaps that's the siren-call asking me to try my hand at it down the road.
Alfred P. Crumlish said ----- It depends on the day. Sometimes I get annoyed, frustrated. Other times I laugh. Sometimes it sends shivers down my spine and I experience great joy, the "pop" I look for for example when listening to music, the feeling that all is right with the world and so what if it isn't because the world is just an amazing place in which to pass the time. --- [Another question: To some people FW looks like a sutra. Buddhist monks learn to read the sutra like a song without knowing its meaning at first. It is beautiful for ears. Did you see the monks reciting the sutra?] I have never seen monks reciting a sutra. I like the image presented in your question. While I am not a Buddhist, it does sound like good advice to readers of FW. It is music to the ears and, like the sutra, as you say, much more. --- FW is of interest because it constitutes a literary culmination and turning point, consolidating the innovations of modernism and western art up to that time and opening doors to future works and of course a counterrevolution. That makes it of interest, perhaps, to scholars, but I think too that people respond to FW in a manner more similar to the way they respond to great music or poetry and not so much as they do to novels. It touches something at a deep level, and this keeps them coming back. We might all dig for specific meaning, read and write criticism, and develop as a result deeper insights that increase our pleasure, but as with all great art there will always be mystery.
Finn Fordham said ----- To be honest, sometimes it is frustrating. But generally it's intense. --- It is the most satisfying form of the pleasurable game known as close reading, and yet, however close you get to the text every so often it seems to take you to the edge of the human universe and give you a glimpse of things from up/down/over there. It feels like a cosmological vision of the universe of language. --- [Another question: Would you let us know about your thought on the critical approaches like Derrida, Lacan, etc? ] Blimey - in a paragraph? I'd like to know more about what influence Lacan's reading of FW had on his ideas: I think his theory of the mirror-stage could be traced back to Issy. Derrida's "Grammatology" claims to cover the science of writing but it doesn't examine the processes of revision in writing and rewriting. Finnegans Wake and its archive is an incredible place to take this early strand of Deconstruction on into a new science of writing. --- [Another question: Do you expect a new theory coming out in the future? If so, what type do you expect and why?] Let me look into my crystal ball.... I see... wild predictions coming soon . . . Cultural materialism looks to be emerging as the dominant new practice, that could well run and run. Its methods are simple and conclusions satisfying (they're quantifiable, to some extent, which is important for Research Assessments for funding). But it's wedded to historicism which could come under attack. Aesthetics might then be a reaction against the ideological commitments in the above (and a return to the text). It wouldn't be very new though. Religion will replace race and gender to be the new topic studied ideologically in literature and culture because of the perceived dualism between the West and Islam since September 11. I hope there'll be more genetic scholarship - comparative genetic scholarship, but it will always be a specialized and marginal scholarly activity.
Michael Patrick Gillespie said ----- I agree with you that a nonlinear, post-Newtonian way of thinking is the most useful form for discerning meaning in Finnegans Wake. At the same time, I have had moments of great pleasure reading portions of Finnegans Wake, particularly when I do so with a group. When people around me begin to read passages aloud, I hear things in Joyce's words that had previously escaped me. I find delight in connections that I did not know existed. I take pleasure in hearing others explain puns, allusions, or multiple references that did not occur to me. It is moments like this that make me feel that it is not Finnegans Wake but me that has limitations that inhibit my enjoyment of the work. Deconstruction theory falls short of this because it cannot get beyond Cartesian cause and effect thinking. When Derrida sees language as imprecise and arbitrary, he presents this condition with regret and a nostalgia for the certitude that others had in the efficacy of language. A more useful way of thinking is Joyce's own which embraces the ambiguities in language and takes pleasure in them.
John S. Gordon said ----- Joyce's insistence that reality was difficult, and that literature should reflect that fact. That humanity has been arguing about how to interpret it and how to act in accordance with that interpretation forever. If understanding the fundamental nature of things were a simple matter, we'd have settled on it by now. When it goes well, one of the high points of my life. I've done some articles and e-mail commentary since my book came out. If I live long enough, I may do a second book. --- [Another question: Do you think today's critical approaches on FW have been much progressed than when you wrote A Plot Summary?] The main thing is to keep piling up information - and that process has continued. I think the high theorists who dominated the field at the time are now in decline, and that that is all to the good.
David Hayman said ----- I am still working on the evolution of the Wake. My most recent Joyce essay is a longish treatment of chapter II.3 for Crispi and Slote. In progress are essays on aspects of the notebooks including an essay on the Wake-era epiphanies or ‘epiphanoids.’ --- [Another question: Some critics deny the existence of narrative structure in FW and dig only the language. What do you think of this trend?] The emphasis is fine, but it does not rule out plot or narrative.
Tim Horner said ----- Early mornings spent on the back porch, hours before the kids come downstairs for breakfast. Evenings spent sprawled on one end of the couch, my partner stretched out reading magazines on the other end. Late nights under the reading lamp, long after the kids have been tucked into bed. Massive bouts of frustration and self-doubt. Slivers of elation. Hiding in my den, out of earshot, mouthing the words aloud. Strange dreams; voices telling me that Shem is what was, and Shaun what is soon to be. Reading a little further to find a passage similar to the comments of my dream, only concerning Anna Livia, not Shem nor Shaun. When all is said and done, an obsessive, life absorbing experience.
Geert Lernout said ----- My first reading was the result of undergraduate hubris and it is only when I began to work with the notebooks and the drafts that I understood that it was possible to understand more of FW if you could understand the way it was written. I agree with Fritz that that fact in itself is an "aesthetic argument against the Wake". --- I was quoting from Fritz's answer: he believes that if it is necessary to study the notebooks and drafts in order to understand FW, then the book does not stand on its own and that would be an aesthetic argument against it. --- Its reputation as "the most difficult book" certainly has something to do with it: people like a challenge. In my more cynical days, I think that scholars like to refer to this book because only very few people will challenge what they say about the book. --- [Another question: Why did Joyce make the book so difficult? Is it done intentionally?] Of course it was intentional. The second half of Ulysses was pretty difficult already, and Joyce cannot have failed to notice that the new work was even more complex. Why he was doing it is another matter. His comments are far from clear about this, although he does seem to have thought that the complexity of his style reflected the complexity of the book's subject matter.
Patrick A. McCarthy said ----- Over the years I have derived more pleasure from reading FW than from any other book with the possible exception of Ulysses. There are passages that I have read dozens of times and still find so funny that l laugh every time I read them. I think scholars or students are attracted to the book's richness and complexity, and above all to its humor. But this is a guess; I haven't conducted a survey. I don't know what will come next, but to some extent Derrida and Lacan have already been displaced by postcolonial theory, in keeping with the tendency to politicize all literary works. This too shall pass. --- [Another question: How do you evaluate your book The Riddles of Finnegans Wake now?] The book appeared in 1980. That is a long time ago, and it has been so long since I looked at the book that I don't know what I would think of it now. I remember that people whose opinions I especially respected--including Mike Begnal, Tom Staley, Bob Boyle, Berni Benstock, and Zack Bowen--liked it, and that gave me a great deal of reassurance.
Roland McHugh said ----- As a biologist I hardly ever come into contact with literary people or prospective FW readers. I'm a specialist in myxomycetes (acellular slime molds). See my book The FW Experience (1961). I work as a lecturer in Biology. My other books are The Sigla of FW (1976) - which might say deals with 'plot' - and Annotations to FW (1980, 2nd ed. 1991). --- The prime necessity is repetition. Problems arise from insufficient repetition plus failure to understand words and see overtones. My Annotations should help. ---(About the increased interest in FW) I suppose it'd a consequence of increased exposure to U. The gratitude to the author one feels after U produces the energy to attempt to cope with FW.
Joan Peternel said ----- Before my first reading of the Wake, I had studied Ulysses in such depth that I could write about it. The characters in Ulysses are symbolic, but they are also "real." We "see" the hero of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, walking along a street, we "hear" him conversing with others. But Bloom is also all fathers. His wife, Molly, is all mothers; his son(s), the living Stephen and the dead Rudy, all sons; his daughter Millie, all maidens and brides. In the Wake, however, the characters are only symbolic. They are enacting the plot of the Fall on the unconscious level at which dreams are made, where--according to Freud's three dream principles-the "dream-work" is formed through condensation, displacement, and symbolization. With condensation, composite figures are formed--in myth, as well as dreams, as in the centaur, half man, half horse. Through displacement, the dreamer allots disproportionate values to certain elements of the dream; in one of Freud's own dreams, botany plays a major part, whereas botany was of little interest to the waking Freud. And symbolization is simply that, as when a galloping horse is taken to suggest passion. In the Wake, we do not see HCE pausing in the park or conversing with the customers in his pub. We can know him only through the bits and pieces of information drifting in his subconscious, including the inaccuracies of his memories of the day--bits and pieces interpreted by readers over many years and shared with Wake readers who come afterward. --- When people ask me why they should trouble themselves to read this difficult book, I might reply that the Wake can teach us something about the structure and functions of consciousness (including the subconscious and the unconscious)--how dreams and fiction are made, how dreamers and narrators proceed. At the deepest level of the collective unconscious, according to Jung, we are one. We are Carbon. Or we are Water. (Jung suggested that the Ocean is the unconscious.) But we came out of water. We stood up. We dreamed. We experienced thunder which, like Joyce's tremendous thunder word, bewildered us, mystified us. We invented words, we told stories. At the highest level of consciousness, an individual is unique. When HCE wakes up, he will find that he is living at a certain time, in a certain place, owns and works in a certain pub, and is married to a certain woman who has brought forth certain children. --- I would imagine that psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and others in the field of psychology would be interested because this is the only novel that expresses the subconscious activity of an individual who is sleeping, from page 1 to the end. There is also material in the Wake which seems to be contents of the collective unconscious, the level of consciousness below the individual subconscious.
C. George Sandulescu said ----- As a small child, during the War (1941-1944), my favourite hobby was to identify foreign languages on short-wave radio. Having had a smattering of Greek from earliest days (my paternal grandmother came from the island of Rhodos), and speaking English with my father most of the time (he had received an American education at Constantinople), I could identify up to twenty languages on the radio without ever having seen them written, or without having met any people who were native speakers of them. In secondary school, I was the best pupil at languages: first German, during the occupation, then Rumanian, Latin, some Russian, a lot of private lessons of French at home, and finally, massive English at the end of the war. Throughout my schooling days, & University, l was the acknowledged multiLanguage expert. I then learnt Swedish in six months (after my father died), and thus easily understood both Danish & Norwegian. I tried Finnish without any success. It is against this language background that I came to FW as a teenager: I took it to be the universal language book. For I am one of the rare persons who reads FW for multiLanguage rather than for the Story: and I have remained like that all my life, I'm afraid. The fundamental attraction of my first reading of FW, fragmentary of course, was the rather childish research Question "How can so many Languages & so many difficult words be in one single head ? That of Author Joyce ?" And I have stayed with this Question. To put it bluntly, I think I am at the opposite pole of scholars like Adaline Glasheen & Bernie Benstock who concentrated on WHO'S WHO in the book and were almost exclusively digging for the Story, which was then so elegantly displayed by Anthony Burgess, my neighbour here in Monaco, in his book A Shorter FW. The Story is vastly important of course, but there are also other structural elements, like Clive Hart's motifs, which give the book both Shape & Symmetry. Then I discovered that it is not the Story that is so important but rather the characters, headed by the protean HCE. But I usually do not adopt other people's ready-made conclusions: l prefer to read & reread FW until I reach conclusions of my own. That is why I always have a copy of it at hand. --- I met Jacques Lacan first in 1974 at the First World Congress of Semiotics in Milan, a congress organized by Umberto Eco (both his lecture, & my FW paper are printed in the Congress Proceedings). Then l met him again at the 1975 Joyce Symposium in Paris. His lecture there l have in front of me, edited by J. Aubert, entitled "Joyce le Symptome". On both these occasions I discussed FW with him, sometimes in the presence of Roman Jakobson of Harvard. I basically agree with Lacan (esp pp.16-17 of vol.1 of Paris Proceedings) where he compares Joyce with Verdi & calls pages 162 & 509 'un tour de farce', a comment full of praise. I studied Derrida in the early 1970's in Stockholm, in a Danish translation of De la Grammatologie, which I still must have somewhere. l was asked to do presentations of that particular book to the Swedish Society of Psychoanalysis whose members had no French. The discussions went on in Swedish about a text in Danish, originally written in French by Derrida. Then, I met the Man himself at the 1984 Joyce Symposium in Frankfurt, organised by Gabler: as I shared the same hotel with Derrida, we had breakfast together and, inevitably, discussed FW. I feel I have very little in common with him, as his fundamental views on Language are so very divergent from mine. We never found common points worth the notice. There is a lot of preliminary FW work to do before we get to Derrida's brand of philosophy. I never even quote him in my book on FW. --- [Another question: How do you evaluate your book The Language of the Devil (1987) now? Why did you use the word devil?] You ask how do I evaluate my book Language of the Devil now: I think it is as topical as ever, and as correct as ever. I am slowly putting together a follow-up along identical principles: that was mentioned here and there in the text, if you remember. I am using DEVIL in the sense of Blake, esp. his Marriage of Heaven & Hell. It is the sense of Joyce too, in his letter to his grandson Stephen J who visited me in Monaco several times, and who published that letter in bookform, in English, and then separately in French. Actually, Joyce was fond of the devil: he even looked like one. Remember also his slogan "Silence, Exile, & Cunning", very devilish indeed. Then the Dante-Inferno associations & affinities which bring in Beckett and the whole of Italian literature.
Joe Schork said ----- In my judgment, very few people read FW during the last half of the 20th Century. Many people pretend they have read the WAKE, but they have usually merely read about it. Others read into FW their own political/social concerns. That will continue; but I suspect that the current century will see a drop in WAKE readers, as its linguistic and cultural foundations seem more remote and require years of study. The WAKE is now a book for a small international group of intellectually elite who like looking things up in reference books (and that has nothing to do with academic credentials or positions); it will remain even more so in the future. Please note, my answer is undoubtedly conditioned by my primary interests in the "genetic" background of FW, its sources, their traces in the NOTEBOOKS, and the development of the text. --- Given the exotic nature of the development of FW there are certainly many typographical error in the final text. Also, Joyce's handwriting is often extremely difficult to decipher. One of the reasons why I like genetic scholarship is that the finding of Joyce's source is sometimes the only clue to what one of his notes says. --- Why are quite a number of students and scholars interested in FW? I guess that Joyce felt that FW was the next step in his writing career, one to which he was willing to devote seventeen years of intensive work, even though many of his friends told him that very few people would or could read it. Despite its technical innovations ULYSSES is a relatively conventional novel; the WAKE is unique in matter and form. FINNEGANS WAKE stands all by itself as the ultimate linguistic/cultural puzzle. The two works cannot be compared, even though some Wakean elements are present in ULYSSES.
Catrin Siedenbiedel said ----- There is obviously a number of reasons why scholars and students are interested in FW as you can see from the various approaches they choose in dealing with the work. Among them is certainly the point that FW marks a summit of the use of literary form in that its language differs as much (or even more) from Basic English as is possible to be still understandable. Another aspect is also that the text reflects itself as an artwork, as a text, as a piece of literature and therefore is concerned with exactly those topics that scholars of English literature are interested in. --- [Another question: Do you think that other theories than famous poststructuralism will appear in the future critical approaches on FW?] Certainly. Fortunately, as long as Anna Livia will flow through FW as the river Liffey, criticism will never stop finding new approaches to this enigmatic work.
Sam Slote said ----- At first: ambitious. I read FW before reading anything else by Joyce and thought that I could "get it" with enough work. The first time I went cover to cover in about a month and pretty much deluded myself into thinking I had attained some slim level of understanding. Still haven't cracked it, not expecting that I will anytime soon, or ever. In some ways I could say that at each new reading I understand it less overall but enjoy it more. There is something almost magical when a passage starts to gel, not all the pieces resolve, but something unexpected emerges. I think that there's very little that's accidental in FW; I think Joyce rarely (if ever) puns for the sake of punning, there is some kind of cohesion within passages, but it's a lateral cohesion (and there would be many different modes in which this kind of cohesion could happen). As I said earlier I think people rely on plot too much, this may be because plot is a privileged mode of cohesion. I'd say that FW works otherwise. --- I simply mean an interpretation where everything fits together. Cohesion is when you can close a book, lay it on your table, and smoke a pipe (or another suitable activity for moments like this), smug in the knowledge that you have mastered the object you have just consumed. I don't think that one can ever approach FW with an expectation of eventual mastery, it's not in the dice.
Donald Theall said ----- It has been a wonderful, life long encounter and interaction with a great poet, visionary and thinker of the twentieth century. Obviously with such a rich text there is increased pleasure and understanding which occurs over time through continuous study. --- Like all great, complex works it has a prospect for being read long into the future as long as there is a future, which may not be, if we cannot sense the critique of war and violence in books such as the Wake. --- Joyce was writing the Wake between two wars, the first of which it is known affected him and his writing of Ulysses (see, for example, Fairhill's James Joyce and the Question of History). The Wake was launched as a period of military action and violence in Ireland was coming to a conclusion. As he was finishing the work, Hitler was rising to power and the threats of impending war permeated Europe. Joyce well understood Hitler's power as Ruth von Phul's note in the Wake Newslitters ( New Series v. I, #5 (1964)) suggests. The Wake opens with the "museyroom" and its remembrance of Napoleon and Wellington ("Willingdone") and closes with the debate between Muta and Juva, which von Phul suggests referred to the Munich pact of 1938 among other things. Puns such as those present in "Ghazi power" link Irish violence to later Nazi violence. But it is permeated with remembrances and echoes of wars, some of which focuses around Buckley and the Russian general. The wars are often linked with religion which seems to be an aspect of the conclusion to the debate between Patrick and the Archdruid following the Muta and Juva interchange. But the point is that Joyce satirizes war and violence as part of his overall satiric vision. This association also often involves religious elements as well, since wars are so frequently permeated by religious elements as they were in Ireland. This fits with Joyce's satirization of organized religion and his celebration of the secularization of the sacred. I'd like to go on at greater length, but the complexity and importance of this subject makes it impossible to encompass in an interview. --- [Another question: Do you expect a new theoretical approach on the critical study of FW?] The nature of literary theory is such that there will always be a new theoretical approach to the critical study of texts and the complexity of Joyce's text particularly invites this. In some ways the approach through virtuality and cyberspace that has arisen in works such as those of Darren Tofts and my own writings suggest this. In the light of such recent work as Kathleen Hayles, HOW We Became Posthuman, this approach should take on new significance for reasons which I mention below. --- [Another question: You think the reading difficult, what are the causes?] An unfamiliarity with the complex play with language and languages coupled with a global culture that seems to favour the unintellectual and what is easily grasped and sensational. Reading the Wake becomes easier the more one plays with it while reading it. There are other attendant difficulties. It, like Ovid one of Joyce's most cited classical poets, invites a certain amount of research on the part of its readers into history, myth and religion because it is of genuinely satiric epic proportions. --- [Another question: Can FW be included in the poetical work too?] The Wake can only be described as a post-Menippean (or Varronian) satire and like the Varronian or Menippean satire a poetic mixture of poetry and prose.
Laurel Willis said ----- Maybe it will be comparable to what English will become by then, a salad of foreign languages as the internet or other new avenues of communication develop. --- It is experimental and we're not yet wired to its meaning. --- [Another question: Why did Joyce mix with other languages in FW? Do you like it?] It points to the Tower of Babel Story. --- Most people move on from Ulysses. Few people can understand Ulysses or stick it out reading it, maybe five percent who open up U, can get through it.
Aida Yared said ----- When I tried to read it initially, I was totally baffled; two books helped me get in the mood of sorts: The Finnegans Wake Experience a small volume by Roland McHugh, and the cartoon version of the first chapter by Ahearn. I then read it in its entirety, trying to understand spontaneously as much as possible. I then got the Annotations to Finnegans Wake by Roland McHugh, mostly to check if my findings were correct and also to try and get enlightened on the majority of words or sentences or passages that I did not understand. I still keep the Annotations handy when I read the Wake. At the Joyce Conference of 1992 in Dublin, I learned of the existence of the James Joyce Archive and the Finnegans Wake Notebooks, and that became a central starting point of my readings related to the Wake. --- [Another question: Would you explain what you wanted to describe in your article of the Abiko Quarterly #18] It attracted my attention that the central female figure ALP had component figures that had sinister connotations (Baudelaire's mistress Jeanne Duval whom he called the "vampire," the Biblical queen Judith who gruesomely beheaded Holophrenes, and Islamic deities), and therefore I wanted to report on this dimension. I also was fascinated by how a change in a couple of letters in a word brought in a whole story as a sub-plot in FW; ALP carries a "mealiebag" and this can be read as a "mailbag" since one of ALP's children is a mailcarrier, but also "meal" refers to the "foodbag" where Judith put Holophrenes' head. This is an example of what I was mentioning earlier: the precision of Joyce's language, as well as the "subplots" brought in by a word or sometimes just the substitution of a few letters. We try as readers to "correct" the words back, and McHugh's Annotations very often do that, but I wish we could rather unravel (possibly by the study of sources) what every letter that seems "wrong" in FW actually means. --- I think the text is so rich that everyone find something of their own interest in it. For example I am from the Middle East and I found a lot to do with the Arabic language or Middle Eastern religion which made reading much more interesting to me. People from very different backgrounds or varying interests can undig or discover something literary much like a "goldmine". If someone knows about heraldry or chemistry or hermeneutics or astrology... they are likely to stumble upon something that will be very much from their area of interest. ---The main reason of difficulty I think is the amount of information that forms part of the text. It is so much packed in that the words become unintelligible and this is very frustrating. Another reason is that people are accustomed to a plot and a story line, or the description of something very visual, and these are rarely readily obvious in Finnegans Wake. --- [Another question: We have nostalgia for a hidden plot in FW even if its presence is denied. Why are there words without a plot?] I think there are too many plots rather than the absence of one. The plots relate to the "storyline" of FW (the possible crime of HCE and the events happening in his household) but there are also innumerable embedded plots that come from fiction books, historical events, newspaper clipping, the lives of saints, myths and legends...

[All these discussions were reproduced from the Abiko Annual #22.]

6. Can FW be translatable?

C. George Sandulescu said ----- Most faithfully & absolutely accurately, NEVER! (Nor can Shakespeare, within the same narrow Range of Rigour, with Pentameters, (non)Rhyme, Alliteration, Pun, etc. met on an ABSOLUTE parity basis.) (No! No genuinely great literary text ever is: except perhaps by Beckett his own work only.) But very, very approximatively, MAYBE! If we define journalistic subediting of press agency fax & teleprint pulp as intraLanguage paraphrase, then Translation becomes almost automatically what we should call interLanguage paraphrase, the prerequisite of which is to define the Language first. Let us state the following: There is genuine consensus that Dickens wrote in English. Balzac wrote in French. Equally clearly. Which means that the Languages of Dickens & Balzac are Constants. In the 20th Century however, the language picture changes drastically, as Sam. Beckett would be Dickens & Balzac in one, sending his English manuscripts to Publisher John Calder in London & his French manuscripts to Publisher Jérôme Lindon in Paris, equally famous. (There is then here the subsidiary question －Was Beckett translating himself? If so, from what Language into what Language?) Bearing all this well in mind, we must then ask the question: How about Joyce in FW ? Where is the Language Constant? It is not at all by mere chance that he clearly appended his List of 40 Languages right at the end of his (BritishMuseumLibrary) FW Manuscript. Why did he do that? To ram the point home with the finesse of a dull sledge hammer that it was these 40 Languages (and perhaps a little more) that was his Constant. Quite idiosyncratically so. If we are to adopt a consistent Fragestellung Approach in dealing with Translation, we must then also ask －Is the Honuphrius Episode (fw572.21 to 573.33 down to "Translate a lax") written in crystal-clear English? My answer to that question is most categorically YES! One only needs to take into account the following types of "rewrite transformations" in point of ubiquity of personal reference, or ubiquity of identity, for short: Another theoretical aside is necessary here: Roman Jakobson's fundamental definition of the Sign in 1972 at the Milan Congress of Semiotics is more than essential for a rigorous outline of the FW Story. Jakobson says in untranslatable French: "Le signe est un renvoi." If we represent it by an arrow, thus P→π. We obtain a remarkable placement of the 48-line long Honuphrius microtext against the overall macrotext of 628 pages (of, roughly, 36 lines each) which is the whole of FW: (in order of appearance in the Episode:)
Honuphrius→ Humphrey →HCE →{Father... }
Felicia → Issy→Izzy →Isabel→Isolde →{Daughter...}
Eugenius → Coemghen→Finn→Kevin→Shaun →{Son 2...}
Jeremias → erry→ Shem →{Son 1 ...}
Anita → Ana Livia →ALP →{Mother...}
It must be said in passing that the Honuphrius Episode carries exactly thirty different Names of Persons in 48 lines: the rest is written in very "pure" and unadulterated English. One of the relatively few writers of good literature who resorts to ubiquity of identity in his fiction is William Faulkner in his The Sound and the Fury (1929). Did he ever get it from Joyce? They seem to have caught a glimpse of each other in a Paris restaurant... The hypothetical answer is that most Americans have always been fascinated by the ubiquitous Man in the Macintosh... (6.895 "I don't know who he is. Is that his name?") Then, the most important question in Paraphrase & Translation is that of Equivalence. Complex informational-cum-linguistic equivalence. (Most acutely aware of it was of course ... Beckett.) It constantly asks the question whether A is equivalent to B, and on what grounds: the range of grounds is indefinite, too often fringing infinity. We should never forget that there is Cultural Equivalence and Linguistic Equivalence: a word is sure to always and invariably have a corresponding equivalent; not so much a Proverb or a Cliché. Or rather: not quite as easily. Then come the more complex StylisticRhetoric Equivalence, and last but not least national(?) Discourse Equivalence. One last thing on the issue of Translation: by the side of the most outstanding Linguistic Genius of James Joyce, the Linguistic Competences of a Dickens, of a Balzac, and even of a Beckett look minuscule: Shakespeare himself pales somewhat. The only pity is that the glitterati have so little foreignAlien Language to go by in their value judgments... --- [Another question: There are FW translations into French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, etc. However, Yanase's FW translation into Japanese looks like to make a different FW. On the other hand a paraphrase of the end of FW entitled "Soft Morning, City!" by John Hinsdale Thompson (in The Analyst XII) conveys the original meaning and beauty. Do you think the paraphrase of FW into the modern English is still useful?] I have right in front of me the Italian Translation of Luigi Schenoni as well as the French Translation of Philippe Lavergne. I know Schenoni personally--1 met him often at Joyce Congresses, and he visited me several times in Monaco. Between 1977 and 1987, I used to co-ordinate panels called "Linguistic Analysis of FW" and both Schenoni & Liana Burgess (Anthony Burgess's wife) were my panellists in Dublin, Zurich, Frankfurt, etc. I have the Japanese translation, boxed, somewhere too, though I cannot lay my hands on it right now. The Spanish & Korean translations I have never seen. I rate Schenoni's Italian translation the best of all the ones I know and I can judge: he is far more courageous, & dares to twist Italian most energetically; Joyce himself is sure to have looked benignly upon it. Schenoni is so cocksure of himself that he puts the original FW text a fronte, that is, by the side of his own work. Also, his critical apparatus is formidable. Lavergne's is quite tame by comparison: it is more than clear that he does not dare to mangle the delicate French language as he should in order to pack in all that Joyce wanted carried by the FW texture. The text is complete it is true, but the translator's flimsy Avant-propos (pp. 3-6) does in no way reveal the translator's motivations or procedures. Whenever I look at it, I wish I could do some research into the specific constraints societally imposed on French non-casual discourse... As to paraphrase, it is better than nothing, but I don't think much of it.
Mikio Fuse said ----- I have learned the best way to read Finnegans Wake is to take everything literally. So far as you are after Joyce's art, I don't think it's essential to read the Wake in translation, because the "reading" of the Wake itself is always translation in a critical sense. It cannot be "understood" unless the seemingly "abnormal" letters of the original text are translated into "normal" English and other relevant languages. And the point is NOT who is the best translator of the original but how we all (as verbal beings) inevitably translate (or betray) ANYTHING written in language, and furthermore how the use of language itself is our original translation/betrayal. --- [Another question: Would you comment on Yanase's translation of FW into Japanese? Is it enough valuable in order to understand FW for Japanese readers? Or must we read the original FW instead of its translation?] You are the eleventh person to ask me that question, Dr Hamada! Let me quote from my posting to the FWAKE-L mailing list (25 Aug., 1997):
The trouble with Japanese translations of Finnegans Wake (for
there are other partial translations as well) is that the Japanese
language & the literary tradition that has fertilized it is fairly
competent in the skills of word-play [. . .]. Although there have
been a lot of puffs about the genius of Yanase's word-playing, to
me it is the very ease of punning that makes Yanase's translation
un-Wakean. It lacks the sense of impediment, and that ironically
constrains his language within the limit of cosy historicity
(acceptable to the Japanese reading public). I've never seen him
personally, but had I a chance, I would ask him how he would
answer the question "When is a Pun not a Pun?" (307.2-3).
Aida Yared said ----- [Can FW be translatable to Arabic language?] It would be beautiful in Arabic, because Arabic is a very rich language with an enormous vocabulary, and therefore the possibility of very nuanced renderings. Sometimes when talking to friends I realize we use different words for very common items such as "room" or "cloud." FW would be very rich material for someone with the time and erudition to translate it.

7. Which parts or chapters or pages of FW are the most interesting or favorable for you?

Fritz Senn said: Chapters 1, 5 and 6; parts of II, 1 and II, 2; book IV, certainly fables.
Kataryzyna Bazarnik said ----- Very many. Initially, they were those including Slavonic words. It was interesting to look for the context of these words, try to see why they are there, what purpose they serve, and first of all, whether they are really Polish, Czech, Russian or not. Then, those which I find crucial for a structural skeleton, that is, 003, 628, 314-315, 156-8, 470-2 (I wrote about them in the essay on polar perspective you published in Abiko Quarterly #19). Definitely 196, 501, 281, 293, the final monologue of the book, . . . , very many indeed.
Michael S. Begnal said ----- 3, 52, 109, 150, 349, 395, 597, 611, 627-628
Sheldon Brivic said ----- The end of Book I and the end of Book IV are among the most beautiful things ever written. Book I, chapter 7, about Shem, and chapter 8, about ALP are good chapters to start with.
Finn Fordham said ----- It varies for me, but, at the moment 119-124, 292-300, 526-532, and 619-627 (The Book of Kells, The Triangle, the run up to Here Comes Everybody and Liffey's monologue) but there are many that have interested me more in the past and others still waiting to reveal themselves as more interesting than these.
John S. Gordon said ----- It depends. II.2 and II.3 may be the most challenging. --- In general, I think that Joyce is following a theory of dream psychology according to which the mid-points of any given dream are the deepest, thickest, and most complicated. II.2 and II.3 constitute the mid-point of the whole book, and are therefore especially challenging. There is, I think, a corollary pattern in Books I and III, both of which become especially dense at their respective mid-points. Which makes them, in a way, especially interesting - in a way, say, that I.8 is not.
David Hayman said ----- The pages that challenge me at any given moment. If you mean which are my favorites, the answer is many and the reasons are multiple. If you mean which are most accessible, perhaps I'd have to say the concluding monologue, the 'Soft morning city' of ALP or I.8. On the other hand I enjoy Shaun wherever he appears. I love 'Butt and Taff,' one of the most demanding sections and that most demanding of chapters: II.3. But the question is unhelpful. It is too much like asking me for my favorite book or symphony or art work.
Tim Horner said ----- My personal favorite would be the "Radio Quiz and 12 Questions Concerning Various Figures and Places." Question one, for all it's excess, provides a fairly digestible insight into FW as a whole. The framework of this passage, the plurality that is attached to Finn, speaks out about the plurality throughout the work. There is a real sense of joy and exuberance to this passage. This passage is in the beginning of Part One, Chapter Six. In my recent Penguin Classics edition, it falls on pages 126-139.
Richard Kostelanetz said ----- Probably the opening of Anna Livia Plurabelle, if only because of my love of the historic recording of Joyce's declamation of this passage.
Geert Lernout said ----- This is impossible to answer: as soon as you begin to read it even the most boring page yields something of interest. Although I should say that I consider some parts of book II (with the exception of chapter 2) belong to the category of "not very interesting."
Patrick A. McCarthy said ----- Different chapters attract me for different reasons. The book's first and last chapters are obviously interesting because, like "The Sisters" and "The Dead," they are in a position to initiate or to recapitulate major themes, images, verbal patterns, and situations. Book I, chapters 5 and 7, are very interesting for what they have to say about art and the artist. In Book II, I especially like the marginal writings of chapter 2 and the overlapping narratives of chapter 3. There are innumerable attractions in Book III: for example, the Yawn inquest/séance in the third chapter and the Honuphrius law case in the fourth. But I suppose I would say that Book l, chapter 8--"Anna Livia Plurabelle"--is the one that most attracts me right now, since I recently wrote a long article on its genesis, and that experience renewed my pleasure in reading that chapter and FW in general.
Roland McHugh said ----- Mostly Book II, chapters 1-3. Say pp. 219-355. But they're also the hardest parts until you're used to them.
Margot Norris said ----- I love the passages dealing with women and children: the ALP chapter and the gossip of the washerwomen, the children’s games and the homework lesson. But my favorite chapter is the last chapter, in which dying is representing as going backward into one's life, reliving middle age, and one's prime, and one's youth and one's infancy again, and returning to one's origin in the fluids of one's parents. An astonishing concept retold in magical prose.
Joe Schork said ----- My personal favorites are: I.6 The Questions (pages 126-168); II.1 The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies (pages 219-259); II.2 Night Lessons (pages 260-308); III.2 Shaun's Sermon (pages 429-473); IV(.2) Kevin's Isolation (pages 604.27-607.22). I must immediately add that I like these sections because I know the most about them, their sources, and the NOTEBOOK material from which they evolved.
Catrin Siedenbiedel said ----- My favourite passages are the opening, whose language and structure recall an ancient epos, the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" chapter with its poetical language, and the ending, the monologue of Anna Livia Plurabelle, which is also very poetic.
Sam Slote said ----- For me, I like I.5 and pretty much all of book III (especially III.3), but I would not claim that these are the most interesting pages.
Aida Yared said ----- I particularly like Chapters I.5, I.7 and the last chapter. Chapter II.2 is probably the most interesting in its complexity.
Laurel Willis said ----- They all are. The ALP chapters are the most beautiful.

4. Do you think that Lucia's madness affected Joyce's writing? Do you think Joyce had writer’s block at any time?

Fritz Senn said ----- It most likely did. --- I can’t tell about writer’s block. Obviously there were long periods when Joyce did not work on the Wake, because of problems, eyes, Lucia, lack of inspiration, maybe writer’s block. (This is not my area). --- [Another question: Do you suppose Lucia could read FW? If so, do you think she could understand it better than others?] No idea. If she had read it, or ever could, she might well have picked out meanings that are hidden from us.
David Hayman said ----- Of course it did, but not in any simple or straight forward fashion. Joyce's relationship to his daughter, his wife, his son and himself figures in the book on many levels and defies analysis. It is prime matter if not primal matter. On the other hand, he wrote the book with Lucia firmly in mind. She figures in some of his earliest conceptual notes as a model of young femininity. If her madness predated the composition, then it may have infected that part of the book, but madness is a theme in Joyce at least from Portrait. It frightened him as it does most of us. His daughter's madness left him helpless and in denial, but the Wake is bigger than that. --- See "Her Father's Voice" (much reprinted but available in the James Joyce: the Centennial Symposium). That essay treats Lucia's [auto]biographical papers and her dreams. See also "I Think Her Pretty" [James Joyce Annual 1990] in which I treat the responses to her behavior that I have found in one of Joyce’s notebooks. They may give you some ammunition.
Roland McHugh said ----Yes, he could obtain inspiration from seemingly unlikely sources. --- Lucia probably understood next to nothing of what Joyce was doing. When I met her shortly before her death, she asked me whether FW was a play. But probably odd little expressions of hers interested Joyce enough for them to find their way into FW.
Patrick A. McCarthy said ----- Yes, I think Lucia's mental problems affected the book in some ways, both good and bad. Their effect was negative when Joyce was so worried about Lucia that he had trouble concentrating on FW. On the other hand, those problems helped to shape Joyce's portrait of Issy, the daughter. Joyce tried to put everything he knew into the book, and many of its sources are personal: Joyce's bad eyesight is passed along to Shem, for example. It was inevitable that he would try to make use of a family tragedy. ---You asked Fritz Senn whether Joyce had writer's block at any time. I think not, at least as I understand writer's block, which is a psychological condition. Other writers have been afflicted with writer's block in one form or another: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Malcolm Lowry, and Dashiell Hammett are examples. One factor in some cases of writer's block is an obsession with originality, but I think Joyce avoided that by seeing all previous writings as something he could appropriate. In any event, apart from times when problems of health or other personal problems kept him from writing, he never had trouble writing--and he did bring his projects to completion. As to whether or not Lucia could read FW, I don't know. --- [Another question: Didn't Joyce think that splitting seen in Issy might be a normal psychological phenomenon rather than a mental disorder?] I think Joyce regarded mental disorders as extreme manifestations of tendencies in the "normal" mind. So in that sense you're probably right.
C. George Sandulescu said ----- Not at all. Neither the direction of his work, nor its very essence: He was far too single-minded for that. He was set on his course like a space rocket is set on its course: Linguistic acrobatics was, beyond doubt, Joyce's forte, and he was sure to go the whole hog. Give me six months, and I'll have any language. Volubly. Joyce was the same. Not even his wife ("Jim, how about writing a best-seller?") the War, the European mess, the Irish mess could set him off his course. He finished FW, published it, as usual, on his Birthday, had it reviewed in the TLS in the very same issue with Hitler's Mein Kampf, and then, not having much else by way of plans, chose to pass away (13 January) his work completed. With a little effort he could even have managed to die on his Holy Birthday (2 February): Like Shakespeare (23 April & St George, Patron Saint of England). Joyce was no ordinary man at all: he went for a Massiveness & Meticulousness in both Ulysses (10 years) & FW (17 years), precisely because of Lucia's mental illness, (b) his own blindness (please try and dictate to somebody a difficult passage from FW!) and (c) his own wife's inability to understand what he was after ("Jim should write a bestseller!").
Thomas E. Kennedy said ----- I suppose it would have had to, but I have no actual knowledge about this. --- Clearly he was a very extraordinary man of great determination and ambition. When I think of him nearly blind, laboring over his texts with a magnifying glass, I am filled with admiration, awe. Because what he created has great value for the world. And of course his daughter's illness must have been a terrible sadness for them all. All artists have dealt with adversity, but the greatest thing I admire about Joyce was the sheer unyielding determination of his vision, his will to achieve that which he was able to bring forth from within his mind, his soul, his heart.
Joan Paternel said ----- That was his tragedy, of course, but I don't think it affected his writing. Going to visit Lucia in an institution saddened him as a father, but he was able to return home and continue with the great comedy of the Wake. Many artists have transcended grief and pain in their work. Sublimation. I believe Henry Fielding's beloved wife was dying during the period in which he was writing Tom Jones.
Alfred P. Crumlish said ----- Undoubtedly Lucia's madness had some impact on Joyce. Joyce as a human being must have been influenced by all manner of things. l have not however looked specifically in to the question of Lucia madness. --- [Another question: Lucia was the largest concern for Joyce. Why do you say she had 'some impact'? The main figures in FW are splitting. As Joyce was writing FW her influence must become larger and larger. However, I guess Joyce could be enough cunning to hide his feeling or opinions behind the literary fogbow.] I agree that Joyce was greatly concerned with Lucia, and that this found its way either directly or indirectly into his work. It would be out of keeping with Joyce's practice if it were otherwise, since aspects of his personal experience find their way into all his books. In my response I did not intend to express an opinion on exactly how much impact since I have not studied the issue. Nor did I intend to downplay Lucia's significance in FW. That said, I do not believe one needs to be aware of Lucia's situation or any details of Joyce's life to respond to FW as a work of art. However, studying the issue can provide insight into Joyce's practice in writing FW in showing how he incorporates autobiographical elements. That has merit from the perspective of literary criticism and explorations of how artworks are made.
Geert Lernout said ----- In the strict sense of having an influence on the practice of writing, of course; just read Joyce's letters of the thirties. But I don't know if her illness is an integral part of the book. --- If you look at the history of FW you would have to assume that Joyce was being prophetic about his daughter's mental problems because most of the writing of the Wake precedes their first appearance. For that reason alone it is difficult to argue that in any useful sense FW is "about" Lucia's problems.
Mikio Fuse said ----- I thought her father didn't choose to call her mad? --- [Another question: Probably Joyce might not have believed the diagnosis of his daughter as schizophrenia even when she was institutionalized to the mental hospital. However, her sickness and eye problems occurred during the writing period of FW. Do you recognize such Lucia's influence on FW?] I guess her "case" confirmed and affirmed what he had to logically deduce in himself and in every human being as a "type." In Wildean paradox, it's Finnegans Wake that influenced Lucia--and everyone, whether one likes it or not.
Sam Slote said ----- I prefer not to answer questions like this (Lucia’s madness). --- Definitely (writer’s block). For the first four years of writing FW (1922-1926), Joyce worked without the benefit of a clear template for what he was writing (unlike Ulysses where he had the basic scheme in mind from day one; Ulysses did evolve over its seven years of writing but the basic template had been set from the beginning). In October 1923 he wrote Weaver: "The construction is quite different from Ulysses where at least the ports of call were known beforehand. ... I work as much as I can because these are not fragments but active elements and when they are more and a little older they will begin to fuse themselves." For those first few years, each new piece would lead to something else which in turn would lead to something else and so on. By 1926 he had enough written that the basic structure was finally apparent to him (the fourfold Vichian scheme, etc.). It only "fused together" in 1926. But, by 1927 Joyce's productivity declined sharply. One could say that Joyce had difficulty writing once he had a clear idea of what he was doing; from that point on he only could work in fits and starts with several lengthy periods of virtual inactivity. It was only in the mid-late 30s, with the final revisions and the writing of II.2, II.3, II.4 and IV that he built up sustained momentum again.
John S. Gordon said ----- It interrupted his work on it; he made it into one of the themes of the book. --- [Another question: Do you suppose Joyce had had a plan to write the duality or splitting personality like Lucia from the start of his writing? ] I think Lucia brought out a theme always latent in his writing.
Donald Theall said ----- No, not in the obvious way, but it did lead him into an intense interest in psychiatric literature which has a major role in the Wake. In other works, I think it opened him to influences he otherwise might not have pursued (e.g. Jung, whose analysis of Ulysses upset Joyce, but who, as a later contact through Lucia's problems intellectually involved Joyce). --- Joyce never "trusted" any theories. While he was intrigued and used the work of Freud, Jung and other writers on psychology, he contained it within an ambivalent satiric context, which he foreshadows in such quips as the one about Alice, who is "jung and easily freudened."
Catrin Siedenbiedel said ----- I am not really interested in a biographical explanation of the particularity of FW. I would argue, that Joyce himself had a difficult relationship to reality, which he - like many of his contemporaries - has experienced as fragmented and mediated by language and cultural heritage. FW could then be read as an attempt to transform this experience into a piece of literature that shows a fictional world that is diversified and fragmented to the utmost in a language that is highly ambiguous and in its artificiality is highly individual. --- [Another question: Isn't it an important task even for scholars to know the secrets of Joyce's life and his writing? Biographical explanation might be indispensable to explore such riddles. Don't you think so?] Well some of the allusions in FW are referring to anecdotes from Joyce's life. To understand them, it might be helpful to know some biographical background, but the question remains as to whether one should read FW to learn something about Joyce's private life or whether you should read the biography to understand some of the allusions. I would refrain from getting too deep into Joyce's private matters, because I am less interested in his erotic phantasies than in his writing fiction (and metafiction).
Finn Fordham said ----- Definitely - but in the latter stages more than the former. --- Just that Joyce turned his attention more to Lucia as she approached, and then began to go through her crisis in 1932. Details are in my thesis (unpublishable because the Joyce estate would not give me permissions to quote Manuscripts) which you can order from London University. Chapter II.1, the footnotes in II.2, Issy in II.3 and the revisions to the whole book, are frequently marked with references to Lucia's fate, her condition and prognosis. --- [Another question: It appears to me that Ulysses more reflected Nora's image whereas FW more reflected Lucia's image.] Interesting but I wouldn't agree. Molly's monologue is the "clou" or "star-turn" of Ulysses. I don't think Issy/Lucia features in the same way. She's just a component - large, but not dominating, especially when ALP is given such a prominent position at the end of Books I and IV. You could equally say FW reflects the image of the relation between Joyce and his brother, or Joyce and his family, rather than just Lucia. Lucia couldn't stick to anything, according to Joyce - but Finnegans Wake does: to itself, to its characters, structure, themes. Finnegans Wake was finished and was distributed out into the world. Lucia, sadly, ended in a home, protected from the world and barely engaging with it. (And, I'd argue that parallels between Academic Institutions and Mental Institutions don't wash).

5. Can you learn something by reading FW? Can you find literary techniques to use from reading FW?

Fritz Senn said ----- I suppose it reinforces a sort of skepticism. Its basis seems (to me) instant contradiction, or a choice of alternatives. Antidote to dogmatism. It may also teach that all is vanity, the same anew, but somehow must go on. --- Well, the polysemantic procedure is something (technique) writers could learn from. Even advertisers have taken over some techniques. --- “The polysemantic procedure”is making use of several meanings, ambiguities, what is commonly labeled (with utter lack of discrimination) “pun”.
Michael H. Begnal said ----- I don't think we read novels to learn things, like morality. --- [Another question: People may read novels for pleasure. However, don't people want to learn something useful by reading novels?] Yes, but what do we learn? I don't read Madame Bovary to learn that adultery is not a good idea, or Crime and Punishment to find out that one shouldn't bludgeon little old ladies with an axe. I knew that already. We know basic morality--we want to learn about the possible complexities of the human condition--what could be more useful? --- (Technique) Multiplicity of perspective, point of view, steps beyond Ulysses. --- [Another question: In order to use the Wakean techniques in voice, in language and in dream extensions, what structure or what means to express structure did Joyce search for in FW?] I am very interested in the model of the shortwave radio, with many voices listening in at once and answering or commenting at will. --- [Another question: Why are quite a number of scholars or students interested in FW?] I don't know. The geneticists seem to like the notebooks and manuscripts, and theorists like to say it doesn't mean anything. I still like to try to figure out little parts of the text, but, since no one seems interested any more, I keep these to myself. --- [Another question: How do you evaluate your wonderful book "Dreamscheme" now?] Probably very old fashioned, but it might still help a beginner.
Michael S. Begnal said ----- It prompted me to more fully investigate certain ideas/subjects contained in the book. --- Television kept jumping out at me - thus my article (shown in Abiko Annual #21). I am also intrigued by the various different languages Joyce incorporated into FW, especially Irish. --- In my own writing - the use of different voices, and the possibility of freedom from conventional form/syntax. --- (As techniques,) more or less sets the standard for 20th century experimentalism. --- Aside from the aforementioned Modernists, the Surrealists spring to mind (Breton, etc.). In America, William Carlos Williams was very influential, then later the Beats (Kerouac, for example). All tended to use a style that dispensed with traditional form/language, in order that it reflect new situations, states of mind, etc. --- Reading FW can be a trying experience. You need to be persistent to keep coming at it.
Leslie Hedley said ----- Joyce's technique is structural, brick by brick, word by word, nail by nail, humanity by humanity, ripple by ripple, a river constantly flowing. --- Joyce has had enormous influence, along with Dostoyevsky, the French Surrealists, Beckett, etc. --- Call it a stream of consciousness view from the mind-soul of the Dublin bartender. This becomes a cosmic game of extreme verbal punning and satire. (Long live satire!) Vocabulary is cut to shreds like a jigsaw puzzle. Joyce creates a forever nightmare of human language in flux. --- It's my view that in "Ulysses" nearly all characters are delineated clearly, if briefly. As you know, most of those characters were associates of James Joyce, from Stephen Dedalus (being JJ), Buck Mulligan, Byrne, etc. They were real people. A few pop up in FW. "Ulysses" barely uses some stream of consciousness technique. "U" is a combination of various styles, from newspaper writing to play writing, while in FW stream of consciousness is full steam ahead.
Virgil Suarez said ----- Image for image. Take the opening as an example. You are reading words, but the words are taking you somewhere, they are opening mental pictures in your mind. Giving you the details you need to feel, see, smell, hear, touch, and taste. --- Because it has managed to endure by being in itself an interesting work of art. One we can figure out. Like Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. We like puzzles. We like enigmas. --- The approach. You cannot read it as a conventional plot. You must like it like poetry, one page at a time. Study it slowly. Savor it. --- (Technique) Stream of consciousness. --- FW sheds all the conventions. All the handles and holds we need to put on plot, as readers, that is.
Liam Mac Sheoinin said ---- Gravity's Rainbow and A Clockwork Orange seem Wakean. --- I think I use many of its techniques already. Who knows. --- It used to be a lonely experience until I became a member of the Joyce Society of New York and got on the internet. I find the first two chapters of Book three of immense interest. I especially enjoy Shaun the Post retraveling events already narrated. --- [Another question: Would you show words, phrases or lines of your favorite in FW if any?] The stew of words ladled out to us throughout FW taste of genius: O foenix culprit! Ex nickylow malo comes mickelmassed bonum. Hill, rill, ones in company, billeted, less be proud of. Breast high and bestride!
Joan Peternel said ----- Oh, yes. Any writer of prose fiction can learn - and many have learned -about the stream-of-consciousness technique from both Ulysses and the Wake. Joyce taught us how to express the unconscious in the Wake. I'm working on a novel at present, and two other drafts of novels are waiting for further work. I feel sure I will use some of the Wake techniques in several scenes in these novels. I would like to try portmanteau and hybrid words, for example, to express a character's sleeping state.
Joe Schork said ----- Practically speaking, no -- because FW is unique; it cannot be imitated (and can be parodied only in small bits). Theoretically, yes: any masterpiece (and it is) requires years of planning and revision, as did the WAKE. Hence, my special interest in its genesis and gradual revelation.
Alfred P. Crumlish said ----- FW consolidated and expanded upon many literary techniques, including the cutup, stream of consciousness, and compound words for example. It basically pushed everything to extremes. Studying the techniques can be useful. Still, writers need to make techniques their own, as Joyce did. --- [Another question: Would you comment on the musical aspects of FW?] To start with, the title and basic starting point of FW was a song. The book is peppered with musical allusions. The best way to illustrate the book as music is probably to listen to it read aloud or to one of the recordings. FW has also been used by composers, notably by John Cage. My own "26 Songs" was structured to enable the exploration of FW as sound, as well as the way the book is a kind of "canon" in many respect since there are so many overlapping lines. It is also operatic in the use of motives (verbal and otherwise) to signify the presence of a theme. The recurrence of formulations of HCE and ALP is the most common example. Music was also important to Joyce, as you know, and played a part in his life. He had a piano and reportedly sang beautifully.
Margot Norris said ----- You learn how complex language is. You receive a practical, intuitive, fascinating linguistic experience. You see the way a single letter or a single sound can determine or change meaning. You learn the way different languages overlap or flow into each other or change each other over time. You learn that a single sentence can really be four different sentences packed into one and mean contradictory things. You learn the complicated and possibly contradictory intentions and attitudes and effects at play when someone utters a bit of speech or produces a bit of discourse. You hear the poetry that exists in all language, and you learn that seemingly undisciplined and excessive language can be just as interesting and enticing as seemingly beautiful and tightly crafted language.
Patrick A. McCarthy said ----- The techniques of FW are so daring, so revolutionary, that few writers have been able to adapt them successfully for the writers' own purposes. An exception is Samuel R. Delany, who has used some Wakean techniques in his science fiction novels: for example, his 1974 novel Dhalgren employs a variation on Joyce's idea that a book could begin in the middle of the sentence with whose first half it would conclude. Many writers have used puns that demonstrate the influence of FW, and in general I think Joyce's experiments with stretching language to its limit are important because they demonstrate the resources all writers have at their command. As Norman Mailer said some years ago--with reference to Ulysses--even a writer who chooses not to use these resources so extensively will benefit from the knowledge that they are available. --- [Another question: Why didn't Joyce use ordinary English expression in FW? Does creating new words in FW contribute to an improvement or in some a distortion? Can you guess necessary reasons for those changes?] I don't think I can improve on Joyce's 1926 letter to Miss Weaver (cited in the revised version of the Ellmann biography, pp. 584-85): "One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cuttanddry grammar and goahead plot." By use of polylingual coinings Joyce was able to combine many meanings into one word and thereby suggest the shifting, ambiguous nature of the dreaming state and simultaneously to universalize the characters' experiences.
Richard Kostelanetz said ----- Every innovative text ultimately teaches you how to read itself. --- This is not for me to measure. Its influence on my electro-acoustic music composition appears most clearly in my INVOCATIONS (1981, 1984), which is briefly described under the category of Inventories on my website, www.richardkostelanetz.com. Also see under the sub-heading of media commissions, itself under Proposals, ACOUSTIC FINNEGANS WAKE, which I describe an electro-acoustic composition I'd like to do, support willing, also titled WORLD-AROUND WAKE. --- In my own experience, working with words in languages one did not know particularly well, such as the "string" poems that I've written (and published) in French, German, and Swedish. --- In my extended description of INVOCATIONS, accompanying the commercial release of the piece (Folkways-Smithsonian) and then reprinted in my RADIO WRITINGS (1995), I specifically identify the WAKE as influencing the theme that prayer in all languages sounds alike.
Geert Lernout said ----- The encyclopedic nature of the book makes that you cannot read this book without learning something. Sometimes I find that a lot of what I know seems to come from various failed attempts to understand some word or passage in FW.
Katarzyna Bazarnik said ----- I feel that the most important lesson a writer can get from FW is to look for the most appropriate, most adequate way of expressing what s/he wants to say. Be brave, don't hesitate even if your "technique" seems obscure or crazy. But work hard and give yourself time before you show it to the readers. Use experiences of different cultures to enrich your techniques. Be imaginative, not in the sense that you produce new stories but in the way you convey them. Besides, it seems to me that some writers have already learnt to write "polisemantically". --- Let me quote Fritz Senn: "making use of several meanings, ambiguities, which is commonly labeled (with utter lack of discrimination) ‘pun’." But it does not have to have a humorous effect, rather it gives a stimulus to think and to look for links. It does not only give you several meanings, it makes you produce meaning. In this sense it is close to (if not the same as) Eco's concept of 'openness' of a work of literature.
Mikio Fuse said ----- I don't think the techniques Joyce uses are worth learning, for they are all deliberately borrowed. It is his art that is unique and inimitable. His integrity as artist, and his faith in the calling.
Laurel Willis said ----- If you investigate all the Books Around the Wake, you can learn something. --- I think poets can learn literary techniques.
Ryan Van Cleave said ----- I learn something about the forced structure of the Traditional Narrative. I also learn something about the nature of language, how it exists in flux. --- The Traditional Narrative is similar to Freitag's Pyramid, the 5 parts to a story. (1) Beginning, (2) Rising Action (complications), (3) Climax (moment of greatest potential for change), (4) Denouement (falling action), (5) Conclusion. I like stories that deviate from this, as many Post-Modern writers try to do. I'm a big fan of Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and a host of others. It's no surprise that FW should appeal to someone like me. --- Using the unexpected - that's a lesson that can be learned from FW. --- Deviating from the expected (i.e. the Traditional Narrative) creates tension, and tension creates life, energy. I like stories that rattle around in my head rather than those that are simply sugar, saccharine.
Sheldon Brivic said ----- By teaching us that every word has an infinite number meanings and can be attached to every other word in the universe, the Wake expands on all possible techniques. At the Extreme Joyce Conference in Berkeley in June of 2001, I saw an amazing performance by Adam Harvey. Harvey had spent three years memorizing the entire "Shem" chapter and studying shamanism. He delivered the entire text in 75 minutes as if he were possessed by it. He accompanied it by vivid gestures that brought out many of the meanings of each word. His eyes glared and he seemed to turn into various animals, to pound his chest, to defecate, to stomp on himself, to turn into a mummy, and so forth. The effect was absolutely spellbinding, and demonstrated that on one level the Wake may be seen as the voice of the body speaking. Everyone in the audience of about 80 seemed to be astonished, and Harvey seemed to raise the performance and appreciation of the Wake to a new level. This was a powerful indication of the infinite possibilities for interpreting the text. All literary technique insofar as it is successful approaches the state of the Wake.
Tim Horner said ----- I've been reminded of the powerful relationship between the written word and the oral language, a relationship easily taken for granted. I've also learned that I am not nearly as clever as I think I am! --- FW has changed my perception of Joyce; I always thought of him as someone with all the answers, but now I view him as a searcher. While his previous works explored the human condition within (fairly) self-contained borders, and it is true that FW shares these geographical borders, FW searches for a universal truth that extends outside of the social world of western culture. --- (As technique) the advantages of the semi-colon; not to mention the power of the exclamation mark! --- This was my sad attempt at humor, sorry! If anything else, perhaps a comment on Joyce's use of the semi-colon, a usage that outnumbers all others!
Catrin Siedenbiedel said ----- Sure, you can learn quite a lot by reading FW. I think, the first and most important task is a methodological one: you learn to question the term 'reading' by studying this text. You learn to query or to doubt the representablity of world in language and by doing so you learn something about communication and its difficulties. Even though it might also be argued that by reading FW, you can learn something about Irish literature and history, this is only partly true. FW certainly alludes to many historical events and diverse literary texts - but you rather need some information about these to understand the text than vice versa. --- You cannot read FW as you read an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, since the words of the text are not to be found in a dictionary. But the words are constructed by bits and pieces of those that you find in the dictionaries of different languages. So you try to find these words which are "melted" in the language of FW and you combine the meaning of both to find out, what might be the meaning of the new word (the word in FW). Thereby you find out, that you cannot limit the meaning of the word to the meaning of one other word but rather derive several words: e.g. "a fadograph of a yestern scene" (FW 7.15) refers to photograph, to fade, graph, yesterday, western, etc., it is at once a photograph of a western scene, a fading photo of a scene of yesterday, or history as such; a fading memory of a past scene or of a western; an old western movie and so on... The meaning is not limited to one level and the question is, if it is more important to try to find out, what Joyce intended to write or what you could actually make out of it as a reader. Probably the reader makes more sense of it than Joyce himself. But who knows? Joyce does not live anymore, so he cannot authorize any particular reading of the line. And anyway, I would follow Gilbert in Oscar Wilde's "The Critic as Artist", who says: "...the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him, who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it." Accordingly, the meaning of FW has to be constituted in a new way by every reader. It is, as Eco calls it "an open artwork," which does not have a fixed meaning but one that is changing with every new reading process, which is of course a creative process in the reader's mind. Without the reader, every text remains just a piece of paper with some ink on it. --- There are diverse literary techniques and devices examples of which you can find in FW, yet to 'learn' them from FW is difficult since, I think, this text is unique in its use of form and not to be further developed, it marks in some respect a summit of the play with literary form.
Finn Fordham said ----- Yes - that all previous attempts at fiction come nowhere near Finnegans Wake does in coding, and in respecting the order and muddle of the world. But I should add, it doesn't reflect it but evokes it, by attempting to make something equally unique in its combination of order and muddle. Many techniques. Especially in the formal language-puzzle kind of area.
Donald Theall said ----- Personally I would consider FW one of the greatest books of the twentieth century and artistically on a par with Dante and Leonardo. Perhaps in the long run it is even more the unique epic of its time (like those of Homer, Vergil and Milton) than even his Ulysses is. It should be noted the impact that it has had on artist's and thinkers from diverse areas of interest such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jacques Derrida, Marshall McLuhan, and Phillipe Sollers. Further in the popular cultural sphere there are people such as Frank Zappa, Robert Dobbs - the Flipside columnist, and even the Beatles. In reaching such an evaluation I personally unabashedly rate as a high factor that it is an intensely intellectual, yet intensely human and emotional work contrary to many of our preferences of the present moment. While my references are focussed on the West, it is only because the generic direction Joyce chose rose out of that tradition, but as many discussions of Joyce have pointed out, his challenge was to produce one of those globally significant books on a level with the Upanishads, the Koran, the Book of the Dead, etc.(and perhaps in the secularizing the sacred and re-inserting it within the everyday world of physical love, he has succeeded). --- FW is connected to the Beatles on various occasions by John Lennon himself (see, for example, The Beatles Anthology, 176). In a brief reply it would be hard to encompass all the complex inter-relationships of Joyce with Derrida, Lacan and for that matter, Deleuze. Derrida has explained his own fascination in two lectures on Joyce, which are well known in the Joycean world. Lacan incorporated Joyce into his lectures that have been published. These issues have been explored in Geert Lernout's French Joyce, in the essays in Post-Structuralist Joyce (ed. Attridge and Rabaté) as well as more specific studies such as Allan Roughley's work on Joyce and Derrida. But basically Joyce was a pre-post-structuralist who anticipated in his practice many of the issues that Derrida, Lacan and Deleuze later theorized. Their interest in the Wake was an interest into the intuitive realization within Joyce's art of what vitiates many aspects of their theories. --- Obviously from my previous remarks I believe that I have learnt something by reading FW. It is also apparent that people like Cage and Derrida feel that they have. For an exemplary account of how much someone can learn by reading Finnegans Wake read the chapters about Joyce and McLuhan in my recent book The Virtual Marshall McLuhan. --- The relation between Joyce and McLuhan is so extensive that it permeates three chapters in my recent book., The Virtual Marshall McLuhan (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001). Therefore, I would suggest to anyone interested in Joyce and somewhat interested in McLuhan to read it. --- In a certain way, the Wake is an encyclopedia of literary styles, techniques and structures. Just as in Episode 7 of Ulysses, Joyce incorporates a comprehensive display of rhetorical figures and techniques. But he also incorporates an extensive display of the wide varieties of prosody. Most obviously, though, is his extensive variety of elaborate paranomasia and other forms of verbal display. Along with microstructures, the Wake like Ulysses exhibits a wide variety of macrostructures both in its overall structure which is a dream vision, a learned transformation of Menippean satire, an extended dramatic monologue, a cyclical or helical celebration of death and rebirth, etc., and the included structures with each of the seventeen episodes demonstrating one or more different generic forms. It could provide a major source of new literary techniques for contemporary writers, just as the variety of uses made by aspects of it by such various writers as John Cage, Anthony Burgess, Stanislaw Lem and Phillipe Sollers. Of particular importance was the way that Joyce was designing a new language to cope with the complexities of exploring a world in which the book was being transformed as all pre- and post-electric media were rapidly converging. This theme is associated in studies of this aspect of Joyce with the prehistory of cyberculture and virtual reality, and the emergence of hypermedia. --- [Another question: Would you explain more about the study of FW through the Internet?] This cannot be outlined in a brief interview. Apart from material in my books on Joyce about this subject. I have two articles which would be particularly relevant to anyone who might be interested. The first "Beyond the Orality/Literacy Principle: James Joyce and the Pre-History of Cyberspace" can be found on-line in Postmodern Culture (May 1992) at the John Hopkins University site or the Finnegans Web site at Trent University (www.trentu.ca/jjoyce). The other, which is about using the computer technology in Joyce research is available through the journal Text Technology (Fall, 2001) and is available at the web site of the Centre for Computing in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Toronto. The latter text is more specifically about using the powerful facilities of computers in textual analysis; the former is a more speculative consideration of the way Joyce's vision and the emergence of the Internet were connected. Neither fully examine the wide potential of the web for research for aids to understanding Joyce and the large number of Joyce aids available. Just the easy availability of the multitude of texts to which Joyce refers and the ease with which they may be searched is not only an impressive aid, but almost an anticipation of what Joyce's vision anticipated.
David Hayman said -----A great deal about yourself and your world and your traditions and society, but what you mainly learn is how flexible knowledge is, how many ways it can be rearranged. ---[Another question: Why was Joyce so flexible in his thought?] Joyce was a product of the end of the 19th Century, a period in which the encyclopedic impulses of the 18th C had their full impact. He must have been alert to the informational flux of the moment. On the other hand, Joyce was heir to writers like Flaubert and Mallarme. Flaubert's Temptation of St. Anthony, and Bouvard and Pecuchet were clear precedents. But I am simplifying this.
Aida Yared said ----- You can learn as much as you want. I have learned an enormous amount by reading books that have to do with the Wake one way or another. They include the Bible, Shakespeare's work, the Koran and many books about Islam and Mohammed, the Arabian Nights, books on African Exploration and the Discovery of the Nile, Irish life and politics... to mention a few. I think also that Finnegans Wake tends to bring people together: its readers have a very strong drive to understand or learn more about it, and therefore are eager to interact with other readers. This can be in reading groups or at Joyce conferences. In reading groups for example, many people have the intense and slightly anxious listening attitude you may see if a gypsy is reading your future in the palm of your hand or the grounds of your coffee. I have learned a lot for example from listening to presentations at the Joyce conferences, both about the topic the person was presenting and about the person presenting it. There is an enormous amount of humanity to these interactions. There is a group of people I really like that are my "Joycean friends" that I look forward to seeing once a year. The main one that I find interesting is the crossover of various languages as in the example I gave above. I also very much enjoy the punning and portemanteau words; when it is time for our evening meal, my children pretend to ring bells and call for "dinnerchime!" The most interesting technique I find in Finnegans Wake is the ability of a passage to relate some action in two totally different and parallel moods, with very different connotations. Joyce certainly wanted to push language to its limits. Although the language of FW may seem chaotic, I rather think that it is extremely precise. --- [Another question: Do you think FW concerns with politics?] FW is filled with references to various wars and historical events from Ireland and elsewhere. My particular interest is the British presence in Africa in the 19th century and the Sudanese war. There is no doubt also echoes of political events contemporary to the writing. --- [Another question: Is FW a book that has no censorship from the feminist viewpoint?] FW is a very interesting field for feminists, because it attracts very varied responses.

3. Do you think FW concerns sexual matter too much?

Fritz Senn said ----- Hard to say, “too much” is a value judgment. There is a lot of sexual content, for some readers there seems to be nothing else. One unfortunate result of finding something sexual in every passage is that thereby SEX is removed from the book. What I do miss, however, is anything erotic. --- Totally subjective. In my response none of the abundant parts with sexual content, or overtones (or vibrations, etc.), are erotic as something pleasant or stimulating, or cheerful. Other readers I am sure feel different. However, I believe that some of us engage in Joyce's text (the language, the interaction with the text, not any erotic content, I mean) is a kind of substitute for what cannot be had in real life. Many of us are amateurs in this sense as well. Reading is a kind of intercourse, almost in the original sense of a merging of the courses of the text and our own mind. A sort of sublimation: the next best thing, perhaps. (Maybe not well expressed).
Liam Mac Sheoinin said ----- Joyce appears to be playing with Freudian theories. After all, a Freudian reading of King Lear yields the conclusion that Goneril and Regan were sexually abused by their father. All the sexual allusions in FW are humorous. The insect incest thing is brilliantly hilarious. It could be I have a warped sense of humor.
Joan Peternel said ----- No. Sex is the basis of Life above the lowest forms, above those cells which divide to reproduce themselves. And so is spirit the basis of Life--"to rise" is meaningless without "to fall," but "to fall" is meaningless without "to rise." Joyce's vision was double, balanced-in other words, whole and harmonious. This is from the last section of the Wake: "Because graced be Gad and all giddy gadgets, in whose words were the beginnings, there are two signs to turn to." These signs are the yest and the ist (yesterday, the past, and “ist,” German for present, the present), the wright side and the wronged side, feeling aslip and wauking up, etc. All the author knows is that his purpose has been to total the tattle. Why? Because every "talk" has his "stay." Every dog has his day. There are the god/dog doubles so important in Ulysses. The author of the Wake is both "talk" and "gadget," both dog and creator with a small "c." HCE and ALP are beginning to wake. "Lok! A shaft of shivery in the act." The next word, "anilancinant," seems to be an image of copulation, "lancinant" meaning in Italian a stabbing as of pain, a penetration. The "ani" tacked onto the "lancinant" is a reference to Annie. Thus, sex. But the shaft of shivery is a "flash from a future of maybe mahamayability." Roland McHugh's gloss on "mahamayability" is simply "Maya: illusion." But "illusion" in this context does not refer to a mirage or a delusion. Jung explains. The male Shiva creates when the female Shakti becomes involved. From Shakti comes Maya, the "Spinning Woman," the "building material" of all things-matter. She creates illusion with her dancing, seducing a man into life's practical aspects, but also into paradoxes, where good and evil, or hope and despair, counterbalance each other. Thus, it seems more accurate to consider the Maya of the "mahamayability" not an illusion but a "fiction" or a "dream" of "possibilities." Therefore, Joyce is envisioning a future which is not a false picture but all possibilities. He is able and willing to look through a window of wonder into the wilderness that is a "weltr" of "whirbl."
Katarzyna Bazarnik said----- There is certainly a lot of sex in it, but how much depends to a great extend on how much you yourself read into it and see in it. Let me give you an example: I have just read an analysis of the Polish edition of ALP chapter (published in Polish and accompanied by beautiful designs drawing on Celtic, Egyptian and sea motifs) in which the author complained about the edition (both the text of the translation and the illustrations) being too obscene and vulgar. He was genuinely shocked by an illustration resembling a penis and a sketch of women exposing their drawers (mind you, not what's under them). The trouble here, I think, was that the translator saw "too much" sex in FW and the scholar "too little", so their readings were incompatible.
Catrin Siedenbiedel said ----- The theme of FW - if you can reduce this work to a single theme - is, I believe, the representation of world or life in language. Sexuality is life's and therefore the world's regenerating force. As FW attempts to be a regenerating force of language, it does not come as a surprise that sexuality is one of its central motifs. --- I only know the text and what he said about it. Well, he said to Eugene Jolas about FW. "I might easily have written this story in the traditional manner. [...] But I, after all, am trying to tell the story of this Chapelizod family in a new way. Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book. [...] Only I am trying to build many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose"(Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 554). And as regards the language of FW he said: "I have put language to sleep" (Ellmann, James Joyce, p. 546). Accordingly, he was quite aware of his focussing on language in the text. That is all I can prove on Joyce's intention to write the "book of language" from the beginning. And in the text you can find this in many parts, but for example, in the description of the Wellington monument as "that overgrown leadpencil" (FW 56,12) (a writer's instrument) with its phallic connotation.
C. George Sandulescu said ----- It must be understood once and for all that the 20th Century and its Great War (the First) brought about the collapse of the Victorian Puritanism in Literature and social morals, which had put Oscar Wilde into prison just before the Fin de Siècle (though it is still lingering on in some non-European cultural and political Establishments, such as China and Cuba and certain related areas). In the forefront of this change were writers like D.H. Lawrence & H.Miller. Joyce had identical intuitions with them and, in consequence, most, if not all, of his early books were banned for precisely the same reasons. The literary panorama nowadays is to such an extent overtolerant that the Joycean descriptions in --in Ulysses--of Poldy's defecation, Stephen's & Poldy's respective micturitions, and Molly's menstruation (there's symmetry in that!) look so benign by the side of the current literary output of, say, Anais Nin, Erica Jong, Régine Desforges, and even Alberto Moravia. To end this answer with a rhetorical question: how important is sex to current television programmes all over the world, with few totalitarian exceptions? It ultimately was Joyce who opened our literary eyes wide to it, though Stanley Kubrick wound it all up with his eyes wide shut. Then, on a lighter note, though wife sex & parents sex are never talked about in public, unless deviant, we shouldn't forget that we owe our own lives to our own parents' more than adequate sex life (singular, rather than plural; mutual & interactive, rather than individualistic & narrowly hedonistic). Joyce was more than aware as to how important Sex was to the newly set up Kingdom of Darwin, and, in incommunicado connivance with Lawrence (not the one of Arabia), helped bring down for ever the World Empire of Victorian Puritanism (which still survives in large pockets of the greenest Island of purest Ireland, where proper obstetrics is still practised only on board the Dutch ships). No, there is never enough Sex in the highBrow Dantesque Circle where our friend under scrutiny ―FW― sits. Just reRead Honuphrius etc. --- Joyce is the same (with the treatment of sex between Ulysses and FW): though his Freedom of Expression (on Sex) is far greater on account of his CRYPTIC discourse: that may have started it all! His cryptic stance, I mean!
Finn Fordham said ----- Not at all, there's hardly any sex in it. There is a lot of innuendo about genitals, and toilet humour but it's always a ridiculous surprise. In my opinion if there's too much of anything, it's obscure songs: they're hard to track down as a researcher, and you can't hear them unless you know them. --- [Another question: You wrote "FW and the dance" in the Abiko Quarterly #17. Doesn't the dance convey some sexual imagery?] Well dance is thought to be a vertical substitute for sex. Dancing is energetic and arouses. So the dance might seem erotic but no, there's a distinction in Joyce's world. Erotic dance involves issues of voyeurism, detachment from the body of another, a contract between dancer and audience: that's not sex as such. There's more dancing in the Wake than there is sex.
Donald Theall said ----- No, since embodiment is central to the core vision of the work. The entire sexual realm is relevant and significant. The celebration of the sacredness of human intercourse at all levels necessitates, even welcomes, the entire spectrum of sexual activity, including the tactility and sensitivity of the flesh of human bodies. --- [Another question: How do you think of the incest or triangular relationship in FW?] Incest is just one aspect of Joyce's encompassing all the modes of polymorphous perverse sexuality that permeate the Wake. It has a particular significance because of its association with the question of Freud-Jung and psychiatry which I'll comment on below, but it is only one of the modes of perverse sexuality that Joyce invokes and it is only one of the many sets of triangular relationship within the Wake. Joyce is not judgmental on any of these modes of sexuality, since he is reviewing the global modes of human existence through time and space that have been investigated anthropologically. Seeing he does approach these questions anthropologically through writers like Malinowski, Lévi-Bruhl, Jousse and others, he could approach the question of incest through its presence in tribal cultures as well as the early stages of biblical history. In this context it became an essential part of his Viconian history of the emergence of humankind.
Ryan Van Cleave ----- Much of the energy and power of life comes from sex, so in an effort to reproduce (pun intended) this energy, Joyce dives deep into the well of the body, the libido, the sexual character of life. Maybe I've watched too much late-night TV, but I see sexual matter all throughout FW. Perhaps I've been reading too much Freud, as well.
Tim Horner said ----- I must have missed that bit. . . seriously though, no I don't think so. Sexuality, particularly in its most primal, purposefully vulgar form, is a crucial thread to the Joycean tapestry. Whether it's the social commentary of An Encounter or the infinite loneliness presented during the Ulysses soliloquy, the sexual matter always serves the particular work as a whole. With FW, I would say that sex is not used gratuitously or in excess. There is nothing titillating about the sexual matter in FW; it serves the theme of repression in day-to-day Irish society and the manner in which it spills over into the night world. The central image of HCE, Issy and Phoenix Park is a case and point example of this duality of day and night, the consequences of repressed sexuality bubbling over. It brings to mind the recent headlines involving Irish Catholic priests, and the charges of sexual misconduct that have been laid against them by the (now adult) children who were trusted in their care. The sexual matter in FW serves as a statement about the dangers of repression, both on an individual level, and in Irish society as a whole.
Joe Schork said ----- There is sexual (and scatological) matter everywhere in the WAKE, but it generally takes a lot of digging to figure out what's going on, how, and to whom. The WAKE is not a pan-European KAMA SUTRA; on the other hand, there are many humorous and outrageous references to sexual matters of every sort -- and usually expressed in the language of clever, but raunchy high-school boys.
John S. Gordon said ----- No. --- I don’t see the distinction between erotic and comic sex in FW. It’s both. As, for that matter, is sex, period. --- Sorry for being facetious. What I mean is that, first, sex is in a way the most serious thing in life - it makes marriages, establishes families, produces children and love of children, lovers and love of lovers - and in another way the most ridiculous: the basis of a disproportionate percentage of the world's humor, jokes, ribaldry, farces, mixups, assuming of ridiculous positions. It has certainly been the cause of most of the bad or good or ridiculous or grand things I've done in my life. And none of that would be true if its (erotic) force were not very powerful. So its power to make people behave erotically is inseparable from its power to make people behave buffoonishly.
David Hayman said ----- Sexuality is a crucial part of (the) creation. By today's standards Joyce's sexual reference is hardly shocking. Joyce is honest and straight forward and never pornographic. --- [Another question: Was the sex in FW related to the Creation and the Fall in the biblical sense?] Yes, but much more generally to lived experience and to a broad range of myths.