Note:
The author, the publisher, the keyboard operators and the printers join in disclaiming responsibility for any misspelling of Joyces invented words; for any misunderstanding of his grammatical experiments; of his abuse of the vowels; his usage of punctuation.

All due care has been taken to preserve the originals, but the economics of perfection prohibits exactitude.

We take refuge in Joyces own understanding of such effort, his advice that “the words may be taken in any order”, and “So why, pray, sign anything as long as every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of it’s own?”

This decision justified by the fact of a similar disclaimer was made on behalf of Faber and Faber in their first edition of Finnegans Wake, 1939.

It is to be noted that the four parts of this essay are but dimly related to the four parts of The Wake. The small essays represent but daily readings, often at random, a page by page comment altogether too demanding.

A brief note on the Joyce who gave us Finnegans Wake.

This essay is no scholarly treatise, but the observations of an ordinary reader, ‘The reasonable man’ of the Law Courts; The man who is the very life of the publishing house, the man who buys books for the pleasure of reading.

But that man has his mind conditioned by exposure to the Australian ethos; a land so ancient that records of its native people extend back by at least 60,000 years; so old that its mountains are eroded down to low hills; its inland sea now dry; its rivers dying; a land which gives birth and life to a strong and virile people; tested by the smoke and heat of thousands of bush fires; hail stones of devastating power; floods which savage vast plains; annual cyclones, all in general terms the basis of the good life, beautiful beaches – modern roads and decent, tolerant but tough citizens, well adapted to the diversity and the rigours of the land.

Such the attitude of this writer when, holding a copy of the Wake, (Penguin 1992) just glancing thru, at the mélange of words, spotted, in plain English “Have I done it proper! Have I got it right.” This phrase, from a man capable of ‘Ulysses’ spoke volumes; he has written the maze of the Wake with purpose, and being well aware of the extraordinary creative talent of the man; it was clear that the Wake, following on Ulysses -  a useless story, in one of his own puns – could not possibly be ‘Unreadable’ – this a verdict of many influential commentators, and so, bought the book.

Few of the commentators could have ever attempted to read the Thing, for, tackled with determination it yields rich treasure.

The present writer finds intimations of deep human emotion and, or, feeling, in this enigmatic parody. Such findings will be debated in the text; and will reveal a man so tormented in spirit, that as with Prospero, “Every third thought is of the grave.”

Indeed, the introduction to the Penguin 1992 edition of the Wake, which has been the text for this essay; and by a noted Joyce scholar, the Dean of a Faculty in English; boldly states in his opening sentence that, “The first thing to say about Finnegans Wake is that it is, in an important sense unreadable” – “it needs only to be looked at rather than read.”

But the learned professor completely missed Joyce’s plea for understanding; for Joyce was clearly aware of his early impending death and hoped equally clearly for deliverance from the terrible affection which was taking over control of his mind.

That he created this masterpiece of work is a tribute; sadly written by himself; to the courage and tenacity of the man.

His, “Have I done it proper; have I got it right?” is a constant and poignant cry from the heart, even tho uttered in the Irish idiom of his youth. 

It seems clear that he knew, inwardly and intimately, with certain conviction, that the Fates had him in eye from his youth - for so the Wake tells us.

So having, by the aid of that vision imparted to all good readers by those same Fates, or by the Old Gods of this world; so having, early in my reading of this tragic valediction, gained an insight into the tragedy of Joyces life, one was bound by ordinary human decency, to let it be known; the experts are wrong – terribly wrong – Joyce’s Wake is worth reading. That he made it difficult to read is his concern, but it is a concern deeply crafted with a literary skill which we should – and can admire; tho asking, at the same time – Why? 

So now offered to the world, the heart and soul of Joyce, encoded in Finnegans Wake, but there for only those with; “Eyes to see and the heart to understand.”

 

The literary world has accepted the Wake as Churchill may have described it; a puzzle, written in paradox, concealed in enigma, the whole enveloped in mystery.
The exegetists have numbered the pages; numbered the lines, the episodes, sorted out the hundred lettered words and in general have created a mystique an hundred times more complex than Joyces brilliant original.

But, the Wake, in essence is not thus.

Finnegans Wake is his valediction; the tragic story of his last years; the story of relentless ill health; it presents us with the true story of the writing of Finnegans Wake; settles forever – or at least for the thousand years over which he hoped his work will be read; the story of the writing of the book.

This aspect has two phases; the conception; the planning; and the physical inscription of the text.

That such revelations are deliberate is made clear in the text. As he says;
 

 “Make no mistake, somebody done it, and there it is.”

To which we may, if we wish add, his;
 

 “Have I done it right? Have I got it proper?”

He tells us; not very clearly, but plainly enough that there are Seven Keys.
P 377
 

 “The Key Keeper of the Keys of the seven doors of dreamdory.”

‘Dreamdory’ – his house of dreams – Finnegans Wake.

As with any bunch of keys; the key to each door must be sorted from the bunch.

The location of such keys is indicated in the following essay.

Similarly, the gist of the hundred letter words is also treated with the touch of mystery and concealment, when he tells us of;

 “The clash of cymbals upon the quivering reeds.”

This a very different signature from that of;

 “The thunder of falling words.”

The myth that the book is ‘in an important way, unreadable’ is a literary myth; and there is little doubt that such was his intention.

But careful, searching reading reveals a most powerful, touching, human story.

Such the power of his works, it may rival that of Shakespeare. Certainly not one of the thousand or so books in print about the work and the man have so far even glimpsed the true worth of the man or his work.
 
 

 
 

Art, For Arts Sake

In Ulysses, his protagonist, Stephen, is consumed, mentally – not yet physically with the problem of “Artistic Integrity.”

Some unfortunates still ponder the intramysteries of this self inflicted mental aberration.

There is no remedy for the affliction; for it is but the product of the gravely serious tendency of the immature adolescent to feel, and believe, and be deluded, by a conviction that his thought process are of importance, or indeed have any relevance to the real world.

Most sufferers grow out of the delusion; there was a phase, happily a passing folly; in the period about the turn of the 20th century, when some artists wrote “manifestos” concerning their aberration; few read these declarations; they are now forgotten, though in social histories of the times, such words as “fauvism”, “expressionism”, “futurism” and other systems may be encountered.

The folly is however, not entirely dead.

Philosophy still waffles on about something, as yet undefined, but called “realism” and Literature still accepts the chains and restrictions of “Modernism” or, for the more argumentative “Post Modernism.”

There are other “isms” but the root word hardly matters; it is ever the argument which attracts.

The rest of the world does the real work, whether it be Art or Literature.

Stephens “artistic integrity” tho not granted the negative identity of an “ism” is not to be found in Joyces “Finnegans Wake.” He came to terms with the “integrity” in the writing of Ulysses.

Joyce suffered a hard damaging life; the daily grind of a poorly paid job in foreign places; shocking ill health; and a life style which made consistent productive literature, almost, but, the Gods be praised, not entirely impossible.

Simply put, Life knocked the nonsense about “Artistic Integrity” out of him; taught him a few survival skills; granted him the benefit; the ultimate blessing of half a dozen good and sympathetic friends; and thus made his output, his lifes works, possible.

So Finnegans Wake is the real man; but such the man; the mystique which drove him; that Finnegan is a puzzle, hidden in an enigma, wrapped in a mystery; the ultimate singularity of Literature, a paradox, deliberately fashioned to engage the attention of the professors for a thousand years.
 
 

 
 

Genius?

 
He was no genius. This in the beginning the dream of adolescence; later the claims of publishers.

He certainly had great talent; an amazing vocabulary; an excellent memory; a reasonable grasp of the Romance languages, and a fascinating way with words.
All these gifts of the gods, tinged with the gritty taste of a sad descent from a secure childhood into the grim distress of a gaunt poverty.

This unhappy life inflicted upon the Mother and family by the folly of the father, spending the family fortune with the publicans of Dublin and heaping disaster and ruin upon his family. Thousands of men indulge themselves in the folly.

Joyce, as the firstborn lived thru this descent into squalor; watched the growing folly of the father, saw deepening despair of the Mother, bearing in all thirteen children of whom six died in infancy before he left home in 1904, at twenty two years of age.

His mother gave up this unequal struggle in 1903, and Joyce suffered, the rest of his life, the remorse of having denied his dying mothers request for a prayer from the favoured firstborn, and at that time the main support of the family.

Wise heads in the Church had noted the talent of the child, and provided the growing boy with a free and thorough education; this with the purpose of James entering the priesthood, but after obtaining a pass “by grace”; his examination marks were dismal; he renounced both the opportunity of priesthood, and his religion.

On June 16 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, red of hair and bright of mind, and they fled Dublin to a teaching job in the underbelly of Europe.

He tells this story in many ways, in broken words and many tiny sentences, scattered thru both his books. ‘Ulysses’ which brought him world fame, a respected place in the literary world, and above all, the means to live a better lifestyle for his Anna Livia and his children. The Wake confirmed his place in the literary world.

His son did not inherit the fathers talent; his daughter tho, had a rare talent as a dancer and artist, but slipped into the terrors of schizophrenia, to the extent that she moved into permanent professional care.

‘Ulysses’ brought fame, Finnegans Wake became his valedictory; his book, his story, told in his own words.

It is essentially his personal book.

It was formally declared by the establishment to be “unreadable”. This essay, and much other work, demonstrates that “unreadable” is a literary myth.

That he ‘thumbed his nose’ at the literary establishment; those writers who live to dissect the work of others, the “sniffers of carrion” is now accepted. Beyond all criticism, the Wake is his book. It will keep them busy for a thousand years.

For Joyces own perception of his college and home life, his “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, and “Ulysses” are both good reading.
 
 

 
 

Finnegans Wake is 'Unreadable'

 
In the beginning, it was little more than a simple disbelief that the thing was unreadable.

This the general opinion, expressed even by experts.

The very first words to the introduction to the Penguin 92 edition states, flatly
 

“The first thing to say about Finnegans Wake is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable.”

The writer then offers an interesting forty two pages about the book, and its author, James Joyce, so, it seems that his first impression was a pretty general kind of observation.

So, looking deeper into the book the opinion was confirmed that the book was indeed readable, but in its own way; it is indeed difficult – teasing, grossly improbable, but probably, possible and that – deep in the chaff, were grains of wheat, enough indeed, to make into a decent loaf of bread; or more plainly that there was a deep and serious purpose buried in the maze of word.

It is this purpose, which has been searched out in this essay.

Readers quickly learn that much of the thing does not require reading. It is, as he warns us “all false tissues” “not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of pitiful fabrications.”
 

“It is a pinch of scribble, not wortha bottle of cabbies, overdrawn. Puffedly offal tosh.”

“Flummery is what I would call it if you were to ask me to put it in a single dimension what pronounced opinion I might possibly orally have about them bagses of trash which the mother and Mr Unmentionable (oh breed not his name) has reduced to writing. _ _ _ _ !”

Thus we pass by the long formless paragraphs; scan the word for the story revealed only in reasonable English.

These extracts are from the long pages of talk about the book. All are identified by page elsewhere in this essay. There are many pages of the book only lightly scanned; they are his broken and confused rambling on history – long argument (presumably) on nothing recognizable, merely inventions, providing a framework to introduce names; these allusions provided to keep research writers busy. It is doubtful if any such have yet plumbed the depths, or in any way exhausted the supply. 

It is believed by some that the history of Ireland, and thus of the world is hidden amongst those words; this on the basis that the microcosm reflects the macrocosm; the individual is the Universal; the particular, the general; or as Blake put it, “All the world in a grain of sand.”

So, thus far, there is a readable book. It is difficult. The writer of the book tells us bluntly that it is not a ‘real’ book. We note that he is interested not only in reincarnation but also in other Universal Matters. In Mythology, Life and Death; Black and White; Man and Woman; War and Peace; Guilt and Remorse, the Particular and the General.

Even the ordinary attracts him with simple relationships; up and down, in and out; left and right, fast and slow, hot and cold. We also note that all subjects, from the holy to the mundane, are treated with levity – He makes mock of all things, but, sadly, requires and commands thousands of words to say so little.

King Solomon wasted no words;
 

“Of the writing of many books there is no end; but all are vanity.”

So here we are faced with close to a quarter million words, of which the author himself is derisive; words which confuse rather than enlighten; words which hint and provoke but conceal the reality; high purpose reduced to laughter; revelation of eternal verities; the beginnings of language; this seen as the “Original Sin” of Hebrew Theology, and a dozen other arcane ideas are glossed over with broken words and linguistic gymnastics; all to be the subject of involved explanation, by professional wordsmiths.

The Work reminds one of so much modern art; art which demands pages of words to assist the understanding.

So this essay treats the main theme; the author of the work, Humphrey C Earwicker, in his several guises, and takes a brief and “ordinary readers” look at the thing as offered to the public.

This rather narrow view is a natural reaction from the reading of his earlier books, ‘The Portrait of the Artist’ and ‘Ulysses’. In both, the work is highly autobiographical; so the approach to the “Wake” was much the same; What Joyce has to say about himself in  ‘The Portrait’; is the story of the young man, the first flowering of a rich talent as the man about Town, and the town, Dublin. ‘Ulysses’; the mature man, loafing about the same town. In the Wake; surely not the old man, sans everything?

But indeed the recurring theme, clearly stated in both the opening and closing paragraphs is death, death defeated and softened with the hope of reincarnation; and throughout the book in all its chapters, it is not only himself, but the self and the chosen lover, mother of his children and bearer of life – immortalised in his work as Anna Livia Plurabella. The loved and lovely, river of life.

It was a fancy of Joyce that the Wake equaled the magnificent 6th Century Book of Kells; a beautiful manual on the gospels; hand drawn, and painted, and a National Treasure of Ireland.

This fancy, this belief, an ego fancy in Joyce; an image in the ‘dreamdoory’.
 
 

 
 

The ‘Brave New World’

 
Much of the ‘mystery’ of the Wake appears to be no more than a confusion of his mind; but this confusion very deliberate, a dream world.

He lived in the years of the deconstruction of the Victorian Age, its art, architecture; its science, literature; its basic economy, and its religion.

The West was deserting the Church; Womens liberation gaining public attention; physics was confronting classical theory; art & literature and architecture confronting cubism, Art Deco; realism and modernism. Poetry was flung out the window. Black versification a poor, dark, introspective and ugly substitute; philosophy yielding to New Age flights of fancy and a new look at ourselves and the world.

The Great Depression killed the economics of the Industrial Revolution; Capitalism, and its grim shadow, Communism, rapidly taking charge, and ably supported by the second World War.

Well, Communism failed miserably within two generations; and the other, the principles firmly supported by a new liberal society, is still flourishing, despite the many catastrophe theories, and its ever present threat of inflation. Gaslight was giving way to electricity, horses to motorcars, skirts were up; stays were out and silk stockings and cigarettes were in. Of these stupendous social changes, and many others; he noted little more than that TV killed telephony. Then back to Joyce.

But Joyce, though he denied the Church, is still subject to its teaching. He is neither agnostic nor atheist, though very disrespectful of God.
 

 “Reverend; or should I say Majesty.”

 “O moy Bog be contrited with melancetholy.”

“His gross the Ondt. O Kosmos!”

“Your Ominence, Your Imminence, and delicted fraternitrees.”

“Rocked of agues, cliffed for aye.”

There are many more, but none with either reverence or respect for believers.

But that early Church instruction is still alive, and adds colour to the story.

So with the old Victorian stability with its bitter controls breaking down under the terrors of the Great Depression, there was released with WWII, a vast seachange; the sudden understanding that we must pull together; to survive; a new understanding of the power and the opportunities of a more liberal society; a new appreciation of social wealth; a new sense of the Unity underlying both Nature and humanity; of such new thought; Joyce but glimpsed
 

 “_ _ _ A Magnificent Transformation Scene showing the Radium Wedding of Neid and Moorning _ _ _.”

But that’s about all. Just the flashes of light from the old days!

He died before the first wave of the Baby Boomers; never had a smile from the Flower People, nor read anything of the New Age literature but had a glimpse of “the new woman, with novel inside” odd, how she has blossomed; missed the vast exodus from the Church, when, during those most terrible years of the Holocaust, the bombing of the cities; so many pleaded, tears in their eyes, for help from the God of the Hebrew and of Christ and the Churches. And that God either did not hear, or did not care, so we left him.

So James wrote his valedictory from a mind bedeviled with guilt, denied of hope; dogged with glaucoma, with depression and probably dysphasia; and because he was too good a man and too good a writer, to offer lamentation and complaint, gave us the Wake; a literary singularity; an Irish jest at the Fates and at Life.
Every word of it in the mindset of the days of his youth.
 
 

 
 

The Artist At Work

 
The Aeolus segment of Ulysses contains a para which speaks of Blooms interest in the house of the Key(e)s.

In Joyce’s mind perhaps, the key to his Book of Kells?

This is a long shot, but the suggestion is there.

Also, Bloom has left his house key at home.

Twice is coincidence; three times speaks of purpose; thus in the last segment, Penelope, of Joyces Ulysses; Bloom having left the key at home, he must climb the fence and enter the house by a rear door. This chain of inconsequent items to be used as a motif in his Orange Book of Kells; the Wake.

Such the complexity of the human mind; he surely had the Wake in mind as he wrote his Ulysses, his Blue Book.

In the sacred caverns of the mind allusions and associations; cross references and recollections flow in fecund detail within and without every creative thought, and Joyce has a mind wholly consumed with word. His next paragraph! 
 

“It is amazing to view the unpar one alleled embarr two ars is it double ss ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging all the symmetry of a peeled pair under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn’t it?”

More that silly; it is deep and clever.

This dexterous play with words emergent in Ulysses, and now starkly dominating the structure of Finnegans Wake; the dozen or so variations of that name used throughout; all reasonable approximations accepted.

 We can trace, simply enough, the development of his experience with word, the growing maturity thru the successive books.

‘Dubliners,’ his first book, is the immature work of the emergent writer; full of purple patches; his men and women ever defeated. The stories dark, tragic; suburban folly, negative.

Then, the ‘Portrait’; a more skilled command of word; but the agony of the Artist in conflict with life. But all is not lost. Romance, desire transformed by love; starry eyes, and the wrenching discovery of beauty. Thus his bird woman.
 

“He was alone – – near to the wild heart of life. – – Alone and young and willful and wild hearted – – and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.”

“A girl stood before him – – alone and still – – whom magic has changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful sea bird. Her long slender legs, – – her thighs, fuller and soft hued as ivory – – .”

And so on – – a pretty little couple of hundred words; 
 

“Heavenly God! cried Stephen, in an outburst of heavenly joy – –.”

Then in Ulysses, we are given superb pieces such as the ‘Cyclops’ segment; The Wandering Rocks; the Scylla and Charybdis segment; and Eumaeus; these in conflict with the ‘Oxen of the Sun’; Ithica, and Penelope segments; in all these latter, Word – – more and more out of control; the Oxen of the Sun; a salmagundi of English as spoken over 500 years; Ithica 300 paragraphs of simple padding; and Penelope, a vivid exposure of Joyces internal monologue, thousands of words; all indicative of a failing talent.

This lack of control, the present writer suggests, is dysphasia; a failure of the motor function governing thought and the hand that writes. So the words pour out; and the hand writes as the mind conceives.

The opening bars of this Joycean literary curiosity are robust.

In a few words we meet Mister Finnegan, an Irishman whose life is overshadowed with thoughts of death and reincarnation; we meet Humphrey C. Earwicker, of Howth Castle and Environs; the first of the hundred lettered words; these a mysterious configuration of the alphabet, charged with significance; but this quality only rarely invoked.

We will have to keep an eye on these H.L. Words; they will crop up in one or two different forms and in unexpected places, and there may be outraged cries from those people who study the Wake professionally, as to the eligibility of two or three of such words as are noted here. These will be dealt with later in this essay.
It is claimed by some that the Wake embodies a history of Ireland, of the world and of James Joyce.

This latter may be traced with the application of some care in the wild fantasy of Word; for the Wake, as with both ‘Ulysses’ and The Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man; is autobiography with a rare flair. But history distorted by irony; and little else.

It will both amuse and amaze, confound and confuse, engage and enrage!

From P8, Joyce launches into a conducted tour of a museum devoted to the Duke of Wellington. England claims him as one of her sons, but, the Duke is an Irishman. One of so many great Englishmen who were Irishmen.

It seems strange that Joyce who was himself a peaceful gentle man, should devote pages of his book to the Duke, to the Russian General, and give space and words to so many soldiers and warriors.

He was a literary man, could have filled pages with lyrical prose on the Irishmen who have made England the world centre of our literary heritage.

This surely a study for an expert. Swift Steele Sterne, Berkeley Moore Shaw Wilde; these only who spring to mind. There are others.

Later in these first pages we will meet Mutt and Jute; two very talkative characters; be subject to his theory of the “fall” into language, run into the second H.L.  Word and H.C.E. a flitting tenuous figure in and out of the story, elusive, but ever the subject of words; and words; contradictory, allusive and illusive!

Later in Book I we will be introduced to Anna Livia, the loved one; to Shaun and Shem; the two aspects of his intellectual life; both voluble Irishmen. Through these he will tell all; Joyce says elsewhere; 

“Those are only beginners.” We will, possibly, begin to frame an answer to yet another question he asks of his readers, “Have I done it right? Am I doing it proper?”

 
 

Help!

Pages 103-125 of the Wake are the usual flow of words, but crafted into them is the revelation that others assisted him with the physical writing, and, of much greater interest, with the composition of the Wake. These pages demand some critical reading.

It is recognized that this is a general comment; the text though complex, tells the story, thus, the opening bars at P104. For starters, we are told by Anna (Livia) 
 

“The all maziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singsong sung _ _ _.”

This sentence suggests that Joyce was aware of the New Age concept of God as Her, surely not “She.”

Then follow about two hundred book titles, all apparently utter nonsense, followed by a paragraph of equally obtuse nonsense but ending, in plain English. P107,
 

“Our social something bowls along humpily, experiencing a jolting series of pre arranged disappointments down the long lane of generations, more generations, and still more generations.”

This an Irish comment on life!

So, life is difficult; “Prearranged disappointments.”

But these first pages, 104-107 are but a blind – padding; amusing, but add nothing to the real story.
 

“Say, baroun lousadoor, who in hallhagel wrote the durn thing?”

This a plain question; followed by a plain answer.
 

“_ _ _ _ That its author was always constitutionally incapable of misappropriating the spoken words of others.”

He then calls on the women of the world; 
 

“Mesdames; Marmouselles; Mescarfs; Silvapais; this, if you please, then, all she wants is to tell the truth about him; Kapak Kapuk! Don’t mix matters; he has to see life as it is; Kapak Kapuk; there were three men in him. Nolan and Brown and General Jinglesome himself begob.”

This a clear reference to the contributions of Brown and Nolan.

And so on, but as ever, the few grains of wheat in the horses nosebag!

Then also P113, picked out from the chaff,
 

“While the ears may be inclined to believe others; the eyes find it deviled hard to believe themselves.” – Tip 

“We cannot help but notice that some of the lines run north south; while others go east west.”

Does this not indicate different handwriting; different writers?
 

“A cosy little brown study all to oneself! – its importance in establishing the identities in the writer complexes (for if the hand was one, the minds of active and agitated were more than so.)”

Could hardy be more clear.

He then tells us that it is not necessary to sign letters ;
 

“Say it with missiles then and thus arabesque the page _ _ _ _So why, pray, sign anything, as long as every word, letter, penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own.”

The words speak for themselves, whosoever wrote them.

Then more chaff, till we spot this most cheeky comment.
 

“The father _ _ is not always the man who brings home the bacon _ _ _.”

Then more – and more on this possibility.

So it is clear enough that when speaking of parentage, he is dealing with words; in brutal short; others have had a hand, and a word, in the writing of the Wake.

Experts in Higher Criticism will enjoy the enigmatic constructs in these pages; then, still mocking, P116,
 

“If the lingo gasped between kicksheets – were used by philosophers, churchmen and others!”

This surely means if the language of this book were so spoken, no one would listen! If and when they did so read, they would be shocked! Or does he mean the language, the pillow talk of you, and I?

Then,
 

“So what are you going to do about it.”

 O dear!

Then on P118 yet another ambiguous and provocative paragraph. Experts only! This para too long for simple understanding.
 

“_ _ _ Anyhow, somehow and somewhere, somebody mentioned by name,  _ _ _ wrote it  _ _ _ O, _ _ yes, _ _ but one who deeper thinks will always bear in the baccbaccus of his mind that this downright there you are and there it is, is only all in his eye. Why.”

And surely confirmed in;
 

“It is not a riot of blots and blurs _ _ _ _ and wriggles and juxtaposed jottings _ _ _ we really ought to be thankful that at this _ _ _ hour we have even written anything at all to show for ourselves; _ _ _.”

And what does he mean, P122,
 

“The cruciform postscript _ _ _ carefully scraped away, plainly inspiring the tenebrous Tunc page of The Book of Kells _ _ _.”

Surely this means the editing of contributions to the dark pages of his book?

Once again, work for exegetists.

Then at the end he names one of the other – the other is considered more fully in Part III of this chaosmos; but the revelation!
 

“Kak, pfooi, bosh and fiety, much earny, gus, poteen? Sez you, Shem The Penman.”

This is of course, just the view of a general reader; the reasonable man; the chap who buys books for the pleasure of reading; so much more satisfying than staring into a screen, whether T.V.; Cinema; or Computer.

The experts may disagree but this chapter seems a plain statement of fact, despite the exotic words; the interesting, revealing simple fact that Nora, with others, have assisted in the writing of his book; and this because of increasing infirmity within himself.

Then on P.123 we are presented with, 

 “Lastly, when all is zed and done, the penelopean patience of its last paraphe, a colophon of no fewer that seven hundred and thirty two strokes, tailed by a leaping lasso – who thus in all his marveling, will but press on hotly to see the vaulting feminine libido of those interbranching ogham sex up and down sweeps sternly controlled and easily repersuaded by the uniform matteroffactness of a meandering male fist.”

Now, this para is in plain English -  this often a hint of real meaning.

Some might well think of an Irish ungentleman, breaching an honourable convention. ‘A man does not strike a woman.’

Perhaps however, it is no offense to Womans Lib.

The penelopean patience – the patience of Penelope, waiting those twenty years for the return of her husband, may well be a Joycean reference the long seventeen years of the work; the achieving of the last phrase, and paragraph of The Wake, this followed by a colophon, no doubt offered by Nora, in Ogham, the ancient Celtic text, for Nora, as was Joyce is Irish of long lineage.

Ogham is written in simple upright strokes above and below an horizontal centre line, thus 

 

So it seems Nora thought to write thus on the last page of his – his – manuscript! Thus in expectant mood; finish the book with a Celtic motif; but Joyce, supervising the work from his basket chair says, simple and flatly No! and removes the colophon with “one sweep of a meandering male fist.”
In plain English, a very definite NO.

Of course, there could never be such a colophon, for it is his intention to return the reader to the very beginning of the book; the last paragraph must, by a ‘commodius vicus of recirculation’, return the reader to Howth Castle and Environs, the opening words of his book.

No, there was no violence here; this was a literary matter, and equally clearly, Nora was indeed an accessory in the work.

Interesting indeed to examine the manuscript. It might well show an Ogham colophon, struck out!

This small essay on Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker provides an interesting comment on the special pleasure Joyce derived from writing mystery and paradox into his work.

Through the pages of the Wake are scores of usages of this sigla HCE, or h c e, arranged in three word phrases; and all an amusing variety. Possibly H2CE2 is a nod to science.

The cognomen are used, not randomly, but on almost every page.
 
 

 
 

Finnegans A Wake

The title of the book, Finnegans Wake was a closely guarded secret until publication of the full book.

The work was produced in installments, published in magazines, and under the name “Work in Progress”, the articles appearing between October 1923 and 1939 when Finnegans Wake was published.

However, Finnegans Wake is mentioned on two occasions in WiP

P 607 offers
 

“It is their signal -- -- to seek the shades of his retirement, and tease their partners, lovesoftfun at Finnegans Wake.”

And P 617 is a Joycean teaser!
 

“ _ _ _ Fing him aging, well this ought to weke him up, to make him.”

The full paragraph should be read; it is an intriguing Joycean puzzlejest!
 

 “Impossible to remember persons in improbable to forget person places.”

This is Finnegans Wake, aka Joyce, strongly hinting, in both instances, that it will be only “at his retirement” when “he is aged”; that this secret will be revealed, for the following hundred words report a funeral, an amusing Irish funeral.

This segment, Part IV of the Wake was the very first installment to be published.

Clearly Joyce had the end in view from the beginnings!

A long seventeen years between its first and its last; its back and its front; its beginning and its predetermined cyclic end in which he returns us to a most unsatisfactory beginning.
 
 

 
 

HCE

 
There are many names for him; Mr Porter, Old Foster Toster, Osty Fosty, Kevin, O’Conner Rex; a score of others: in the beginning it is Bygmeister Finnegan, with his “Addle liddle pfife Anna living at Howth Castle and Environs.

HCE is, at this time, “Haroun Childeria Egglesberth.”

Humphrey C. Earwicker is a later intervention.

P480 
 

“Hunkalies Childered Easterheld.”

P480, Also has 
 

“Eece Hagios Chrisman.”

P481, offers an experimental specimen;
 

“Hail him heathen, Courser_ _ _.Eld is endall earth.”

Then follows one such per page until P488, which moves into some very interesting pages about Brown and Nolan.

The phrase on P530 is noteworthy;
 

“Hotchkiss Culturs Everready.”

This surely a clear reference, historical now, to Field Marshal Hermann Goering, Air Marshal of the Nazi Airforce, who boasted,
 

“Whenever I hear the word Culture: I reach for my gun.”

Hotchkiss was the name of an early version of the quick fire repeating or machine gun. This seems to be Joyces only comment on the terror eating at the heart of Europe.

P582 of Pt III
 

“Humphrey champion Emir.”

P583-4, is a frisky love scene; a ball by ball fantasy, matched with a cricket match. Lovers, and cricket lovers should read with care. Very frank, but the erotic disguised, not only in flannels, but in Joycean art.

This cheerful peace finishes,
 

“Noball. He carries his bat. Ninehundred and dirty too. Not out.”

Is this segment a comment in Joycean Irish on Don Bradman?

P586 presents us with the probable printers error.
 

“Non---Coran---Ex.”

This should surely be “Hon” - would it be humanly possible to set the Wake in type without some of those printers devils, the typo?

P589 is another Joycean tidbit
 

“Elsies from Chelsies.”

Take the ‘lsies’ away from Chelsies and we have Che; clever. The best of his very clever play on words.

P590
 

“Honoured christmastyde easteredman.”

Two Christian festivals in three words!

These last pages of Part III are mildly erotic in Joyces dreamworld; but as to why the emphasis, the repeated use of these initials, other than to say that this is perhaps Joyce himself dreaming of his Anna Livia? Or is the repetition simply an ego thing?

Part IV moves into a different mode.
 

“Eireweeker to the whole bludyn world.”

That which follows is indeed Irish in idiom and no doubt in thought .

The sigla found in P593
 

“Haze see east _ _ _.”

The ‘see’ for C is plain to see. Thus, page by page the witty constructions; thirty witty phrases extracted from thirty two pages!

P597 offers, 
 

“Heat contest and enmity.”

P603 is clever,
 

“Hyacinssies.”

P604 
 

“Higgins Cairns and Egan.”

P613
 

“Health chalce and endnessessissity.”

P605 
 

“Highly charged with electrons.”

P619
 

 “Erect, confident and heroic.”

In the remaining pages of this saga, he is leaving this world; the word becomes a lament; then hope emerges from the doubts, and he dreams of reincarnation; envisages a past life more worthy of him than this life, but in the unremorseful end he returns us to the beginnings of his book yet again.

So, back to the beginning, and we find there that HCE, is Jarl van Hoother or Harold or Humphrey Chimpdon.

The origin of HCE and Here Comes Everybody is revealed in pages 30 to 32. An interesting story. P32

The great fact emerges, after that historical date -- -- -- all the holographs initialed by HCE, -- -- -- only while he was -- -- -- the good Dook Umphrey -- -- -- a pleasant turn of the populace gave him a sense of those normative letters.

So, something happened, “a pleasant turn”, “a great fact emerged” and HCE, up until now the spice of his imagination, became HCE, Here Comes Everybody.

This “pleasant turn of the populace” was, it seems, a political cartoon of Prime Minister Gladstone, by H.E. Childers, the cartoon telling of Gladstone, as “Here Comes Everybody.”

Joyce would immediately see the happy coincidence of his sigla; the name of Mr Childers and the mocking Here Comes Everybody, and hey presto; a literary character fit to endure a thousand years.

But this simple explanation offers no satisfaction regarding the heavy use of the phrase throughout the Wake.

Any intention; never revealed, and seemingly impossible to trace. This usage, can  be noted throughout, but this randomly.

This simple question, Why, to be asked of many parts of this enigmatic work.
 
 

 
 

A Family Affair

There is an intriguing couple of lines on P125
 

“Maybe growing a moustache did you say, with an adorable look of amusement.”

In the well known picture of him C.1904, Joyce is a fine upstanding young Irishman, sans moustache - in the equally well known photograph of Joyce with Sylvia Beach, in her shop in 1922, there is a most handsome moustache, Sylvia had successfully arranged the publication of Ulysses, with a French publisher. There is a good photo of the pair in her shop – she alert; he dapper, with bowler, cane and moustache.

This young lady deserves a better place in literature than Joyce granted to her.

Without Ms Beach, and Ms Weaver, who supported him most generously with cold cash and publication of Work in Progress, and Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, who risked “The Portrait” and “Ulysses” in America, and Nora Barnacle, his partner, mother of his children and his life long benefactor; without these women, neither Ulysses nor Finnegan would have been either completed or published. This comment appears to be beyond any contradiction. Sylvia Beach tells us, “At least one third added during the printing process.” His magazine publishers ever demanding work to meet deadlines.

But this is a digression; the moustache appeared sometimes during childhood of his daughter Lucia – the “adorable look of amusement” this surely because of a word, a comment by the adored daughter.

No doubt the experts, the serious students of Joyces life will be able to better pinpoint the arrival of the fuzz.

We may well wonder as to what Nora said!

No doubt it added a trifle to that long upper lip of the Irishman and here it is, clearly a happy memory, recalled in the wild chaosmos of the dreamworld of the Wake.

As with scores of other events and recollections in this wraith dream, the innocent comment, the “adorable look of amusement” betrays the very human man behind the words – and he is well aware of the disharmony throughout the work.

Now if this is not sufficient, the dreams in the Wake, or rather the dreams of the Wake resemble all to closely, the same intellectual carefully crafted pages of ‘internal monologue’ of Ulysses; and this in turn reflects the long impossible introspective paragraphs of “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

Most of the potential readers asleep, the book closed by P19; thus Ulysses!

The style – long long paragraphs of involved introspective speculations of the immature adolescent. And sadly, such paragraphs given free rein in the later work.
Thankfully, there is reason and purpose within the spate of word. The verbosity has a backbone.

Many happy recollections, such as this “adorable look of amusement.”

The Wake – which is a dream, is the story of his fight against depression, against blindness; against his growing dysphasia; the terrible afflictions of his daughter, Lucia, a victim of schizophrenia; and his daily struggle, to “write a word a week!” It might well be “weak”.

This man Joyce had more to bear than most; but carried the load with an infinite courage, lightened by much Irish wit and idiom, and, brightened somewhat by a rather shaky hope of reincarnation.

Indeed, in the last pages of his book the hope of return is clearly stated – a return home, before being recalled to another round on this most beautiful planet. So it is time to meet again with his stormies, with his haughty Niluna, his wild Amazia; truly this is a dreamworld. Few of us have any such recollection of a past life!
With him he will take, never to be forgotten, that adorable look of his loved daughter.

Perhaps he is right – now that there is neither Heaven nor Hell to glorify or damn any future life; we humans, who deeply and instinctively, know that we are immortal, will now accept in lieu of old gods, the hope, if not the promise of reincarnation.

Or, sadly, is this but another intellectual cry against the utter finality of death, where there can be no memory of love or of life. Nothing; nothing at all.

The plaintive hope of Elisabeth Barrett Browning, that
 

 “I shall but love thee better after death.”

Or Christina Rossetti with her sadly realistic,
 

“Haply I may remember, and haply I may forget.”

Or the American lady – who, as the carriage containing her now useless body passed by; noted with pleasure that,
 

“The horses heads were turned toward eternity.”

Every scrap of waste; bodies, ordure – everything in land sea or air is returned to Mother Earth again, to be, in her good time, returned to life again.

So what then of the human spirit – in what form may we – you and I, ask, in what form shall we be born again? Surely, as the physical is recycled; so will be the spirit? We may but speculate!

It seems clear that Evolution, or God, for believers, or Gaia, has been intent from the very beginning to bring into being, a high level of consciousness; the human animal the first to have self awareness, or self consciousness. Such exists in only an immature state in some mammals.

With ten billion years of life for planet Earth, there seems to be ahead of us the possibility of a creature with infinite consciousness and if consciousness, surely personality; as a wise old Hebrew poet observed “In that day we shall Know, as we are Known.” And that consciousness recycled again through countless lives.

What hope, what trust can we place in these vague thoughts on reincarnation; to see again, in another face, another time, another place, “an adorable look of amusement.” So may it be, ye Gods; as he asks on P358 of his weirdword.
 

 “Qith the tow loulosis and the gryffygryffygryffy at Finnegans Wick _ _ _ washed up whight and delivered rhight _ _ _” and so on.

This appears as a fair comment on our understanding of the mystery of reincarnation.

Forever and ever amen!
 
 

 
 

Literary Notes

There are many fascinating aspects in this reading of the Wake.

The first, is, of course, the reading; for most pages are just a task, but then, there comes an understanding. A paragraph stands clear – and with understanding follows always a flash of pleasure.

Much adverse publicity was stirred up when Ulysses appeared as installments in literary magazines, the Egoist in England and the Little Review in America.

The episodes were first banned; the book when published also banned in both countries. No English publisher would look at Ulysses, so Ms Sylvia Beach, whose bookshop in Paris provided friendship, encouragement and coffee to expatriate writers in Paris, provided much more than encouragement; she found cash and a French publisher, who possibly had little idea that he was producing the most controversial book of the century.

By the time The Wake was published, censorship of Ulysses had been lifted, first in America and later England; the American judge noting that Ulysses was “Offensive rather than obscene.”

The Wake also found little favour with publishers; there is little doubt but that it was published, as it were, on the shoulders of Ulysses. It was immediately described as ‘unreadable’, a poor judgment by the critics; and also it seems by many of his friends; for the judgment still carries weight; the work has had very little success in the literary world, other than the association with Joyce, and it seems, in the Universities.

It would be interesting to know what the staff thought as the work passed from publisher to editors, to typists, proof readers to compositor and printer!

The manuscript would not go to compositors? A terrible task to read and check those sadly abused words, and Joyce’s handwriting was by now almost illegible.

How was it possibly edited? With Joyce at elbow? Who checked the spelling of those exotic words? The hundred lettered words? Who did the proofs; or perhaps they did not bother?

Enough to frighten the linotype machine out of its wits! And what of the operator?

Or did Joyce give them an open hand? Free rein with his words. He suggests this; on P121?”
 

“Indicating that the words which follow may be taken in any order desired;” 

But this is but a dozen or so words, buried in a vast paragraph of about 1500 misused words; amongst which we note.

On P118
 

“_ _ _ Gossip will cry it out from the housetops, _ _ _ _ every person, place and thing in the chaosmus of All e _ _ _ _ as the time went on as it will, variously inflected differently pronounced, otherwise spelled, changably meaning vocable scriptsigns. No it is not _ _ _ _ an ineffectual whyacinthinous riot of blots and blurs and bars and balls and hoops, _ _ _ _ it only looks like it, and sure _ _ _ _ there is a limit to all things, so this will never do.”

These few words extracted from some four hundred, all on the same theme.

He offers this lighthearted comment on his own work.
 

“That ideal reader, suffering from an ideal insomnia _ _ _ Calling Unnecessary Attention to the text; _ _ _ errors and omissions.”

This entire chapter V of Part I (P104-125) are such an apology for the work, its writing and its imperfections.

So from this comment may we infer that the printed page is not exactly that which he wrote? For even the writing is suspect for, in this same paragraph he notes
 

“Passing with a frown, jerking too and fro, flinging phrases here, there.”

Also noted 
 

 “Throughout the papyrus the revise mark.”

He knew full well, the trouble he was causing, for he offers sympathy to 
 

“That ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia; all those red raddled obeli cayennepeppercast over the text, calling unnecessary attention to errors, omissions, repetitions and misalignments _ _ _.” 

Unnecessary attention to his words? So it’s possible that the typesetters had a free hand; with his consent.
 

“Fuddling fun for Finnegans sake.”

There is a real sense in which we are unable to express our deepest experiences. Words are not enough; for some experience there is no word.

One simple instance, experienced by many; to watch the moon rise above the edge of the sea. This brings a silence to so many; something so far beyond self as to deny word to express the emotion. Another striking and beautiful instance is that most marvelous picture of Earth, blue and white, taken from the moon. It silences most who see it!

Climbers, mountain men know this - it is greater than the self; that view of mountain tops above the mist, the vast reaches of hill and valley; some may say “wonderful” but the others are silenced by the sense of that which is so vast; so deeply beyond our self.

We feel a unity with the universe, sense the life flow in self, in the trees, the thousands tints of green - have an awareness of the life in those trees; the flow of the life in the little creatures, the streams, the lakes spread out below us, a strong realization of the oneness, a glimpse of the thing we call eternity; a startling sense of presence, and it becomes easy – simply, to say, when that splendid moment fades, and speech is again possible.
 

“All this I am
All this is part of me.”

Most of us come down from the mountain a little more wise than when we climbed, all with an experience never to be forgotten.

We have a word for this experience; the word is “ineffable” but this word, like all other possible word, only approximated the ‘experience’ this is felt only in a deep emotion, deep beyond word.

Joyce attempted to enter this experience in Ulysses. He attempted the task through pages of words attempting to record the dark stream of that subconscious dialogue, in which, endlessly it seems, we talk with ourselves and imagined advocates.

The words will flow unrestrained, if we allow it; the experience common to all humanity another aspect of the unity in which all exist.

Joyce gave Molly Bloom, in the Penelope episode of Ulysses unrestrained access to many pages, in one full, flowing stream of monologue but to little avail. Few indeed can manage it.

The observant reader, after only a page or so will say; “This is not what Molly Bloom thought. It is only what James Joyce thought she thought.”

It is the same with all experience, whatever words we use to describe it, the simple blunt truth is, that words cannot tell – all experience is an emotional adventure; the words ever an intrusion on the reality.

“Wonderful” “Marvelous” do not convey the depth of aroused feeling. “Nothing like it,” is banal.

This strangely raises another indicator; all the world intuitively recognizes that the body is a separate entity – ‘My’ body.

The “my”, the “me”; the “I am”; stands always beyond – as Joyce says in one of Stephens interminable monologues,
 

 “I seem to stand apart from my self, a little behind.”

An experience shared by many; perhaps all of us; unique and alone in the universe.

This a slightly different aspect of our story but New Age spiritual teaching of this duality, which is separation, is very plain, and to enjoy a full maturity as a human being, a sentient creature; this duality must be resolved – “I am” is; ‘I Am’, never a duality.

We have been in touch with the Life, the Spirit, call it what you will; had a glimpse, momentarily of creation; sensed a unity with Life itself, and it is utterly beyond us.
 

 “How can words say what love is. Words speak for the aching heart.”

As with the Wake, Joyce has a dark story to tell; but his words, even the words of Shakespeare are not enough; so he invents words, but ever the words stand, stark, dead; a sorry expression indeed of that which has so stirred his spirit.

We say – yes, a good trip - wonderful – other superlatives, but the experience is treasured in the deep of the mind forever.

Such is the human mind that even in our fading years, it is still possible, in reverse, to relive that rare moment; to be young again and above the clouds, beyond ones self, for a glorious moment, a never forgotten experience.

Joyce seems never to have had this lovely experience; no silence here; just the intellectual babble of words. Word used with deliberate purpose to tell the deeply personal story of pain, frustration and the driving determination complete the work, and to hell with the critics.

It has been said, and so true is it, that the underlying principle is now accepted as an axiom of Chaos Theory, that the flutter of a butterfly wing may ultimately create a typhoon half way around the world.

This principle indeed a very real aspect of nature.

Some smart mind noted it early, when in 1775 he said “The shot fired in Concord will reverberate round the world.”

That shot changed the world, sent history reeling down a new pathway; created the great USA, and initiated vast changes in human affairs; not yet come to an end, her children working in deep space; planning a living community on the moon.

As our Chinese people say, ‘We live in interesting times!’

So with James Joyce. He has a dream -  so do the rest of us; but Joyce did something about it; turned the dream into his “dreamdoory,” his dream story, a well crafted welter of words, crafted into a little book, Finnegans Wake; “A word a week,” “Writing when he felt like it,” but in the end a book is, like the bullet or the butterfly wing; making its way round the world.

Firmly entrenched in University; Google and other search engines, hundreds of chat shows, and, who knows; may be studied on Krypton or some other planet in some other world, such the magic of the Web and the Internet.

The thing which permits that shot to be heard in China, is but the Unity which underlies all living things in this world, and we should be exploring the possibility that such Unity also activates other worlds; that our contact with them will not, cannot be any space ship, but will be thru the contact of minds, their minds and ours, operating on a common vibratory rate, or perhaps, to be more acceptable, a common wavelength.

But this is a digression; springing from the remark about a butterfly wing!

Joyce also noted the principle; his observations based on the understanding of “The universal in the particular; or the history of Ireland as a pattern of world history, why not indeed, is not the author and creator of both histories, those of Ireland and World, but man?”

Man has created both of these illusions.

Blake put it nicely with his “See the world in a grain of sand.”

The unity is but the composite of the infinitesimal!

There is another thing! Did he remember Shakespeares Macbeth?
 

“Nature seems dead and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep.”

Nature seeming dead, simply because the Wake is a dream story; the wicked dreams; the impish perversion of word in the dreamdoory; curtained sleep, of course, Nora and the children asleep in their beds, James “creaking” jokes about the literary world, busy indeed, at producing “A word a week,” though in fact his work was much better than that.

The Wake was first published as installments in certain literary magazines; and as all writers will know such work is dominated by the dreaded ‘dead’ lines, the last day possible for publication. Miss the deadline and you’ve missed the chance. So by his editors insistence, this butterflys wing was brought into existence and has deeply troubled the literary world since. Just another instance for Chaos theory.
 
 

 
 

On The Writing

Yet another of those interesting little notes which make the Wake such a challenge.

It is often debated not only Why – but How and Who cobbled the book together. This problem is fully debated in the pages 104-125.

The pages are full of stardust or whatever the padding; you are offered the choice of P114
 

“Sand pounce powder drunkard paper or soft rag _ _ _ _ the teatimestained _ _ _ _ is a little brown study all to oneself, and whether it be thumbprint or just a poor trait of the artless, its importance of establishing the identities in the writer complexus for if the hand was one, the minds of active and agitated were more that so _ _ _ _.”

There follows a cryptic comment that, 
 

“It doesn’t pay to sign letters,”

“So why sign anything so long as every letter, word penstroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own.”

Surely these words tell us several, writers, copyists, stenographers or whatever, are contributing to the text; collaborating is a word he uses.? Telling us also, with scarce veiled mockery, on P115 that
 

“A true friend is known much more easily, and better into the bargain, by the personal touch _ _ _ _.”

In plain English, the more canny (observant) amongst you will be able to detect who wrote which, by the style, the ‘personal touch.’

These pages carry, within the verbose waste of words a clear, tho, concealed message. Others have assisted with the work.

One, no doubt debatable construction, surely that in his cosy brown study, one if not several writers, writers who shall not reveal their names, have added their parts to the whole?

In these few pages the queekspeak is volkspoke in verdant verbiage and the pathways thru the undergrowth are overgrown with bushlawyer and reveal concealment.

But those pages speak softly – secretly with glimpses of the hidden snakes, lizards and bandicoots in the undergrowth, then P.112
 

“ _ _ _ The meaning of every word of a phrase so far deciphered out of it _ _ _ we must vaunt no idle dubiousity as to its genuine authorship _ _ _ _ but one who sees deeper _ _  will always bear in his mind that this downright “There you are,” and “There it is” is only all in his eye.”

Why? It sets the mind at a dyssicult ask.
It was indeed, in a moment of doubtful uncertainty, that is seemed proper to attempt an essay on some understanding of Finnegans Wake.

Understanding, in the book, is a dream; the picture of Joyce which emerges in that dream is somewhat like the engaging picture of Joyce as seen by Caesar Abin on the cover of the Penguin copy used by this writer to quote from the Wake, and what better authority? P114
 

“It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic, or, in the view of the cannier, domestic economical. But by writing thetherways, ent to end, and turning, turning and end to ent hitherways, everything and with lanes of litters slithering up and louds of latters slithering down, the old cometomyplace and japetbackagain from them. Let Rise from Him Lit. Sleep. Where in the waste is the wisdom.”

Was there a split in the infinitive somewhere?

Kipling told us that every possible human question can be answered by the use of only six questions.
 

“I had six honest serving men,
They taught me all I know.
Their names are What and When and Where,
And Who and Why and How.”

It is suggested that we know Who; and; What. And When and Where.

So “Why” is a good question, and “How” another.

Both probabilities looked at within this essay, but, please note, not by any literary critic, nor a professional exegetist, but a plain ordinary and reasonable fellow, interested only in good reading, and who, quite properly, assumes that since Joyce wrote the thing he intended it to be read.

Yet, it seems impossible that an extremely talented one, as Joyce was, would spend 17 years of his life, and produce so great a flood of words, new, old and in between, to produce an unreadable book.

We imagine it to be readable, and quickly discover how to so read. A glance at the pages shows us, equally clearly, that the reading will be difficult.

It is rather like Stephen Hawkings, “A short history of Time.” The opening statement is interesting. But the arguments to prove this statement but add to the confusion.

Thus, the Wake is difficult, but not “unreadable.” As the short history of time has demonstrated, difficult is by no means impossible.

The following pages should convince any reasonable man that there is something worth searching out in the Wake; and the findings will stir the heart.

The writer has but dipped more or less at random into the word fest; so much of it unread, but some direction and some interests has been gleaned.

We do not put our Agatha Christie down because it is difficult; nor ignore the weekly crossword.

So, the first work was, exploratory; a turning of pages at random to assess the task.

It was a surprise to note that much is written in an idiom, which, though irregular in an Irish way was legible and reasonably plain English, but treated so surely, so  deliberately as to become vague in meaning. There is a message hidden within the exotic flood of verbiage.

This verbosity so clearly a deliberate imposition on the basic ideas, as to make it equally clear, that to read sense into the text one must ignore the extraneous words, so, one must thin out the forest so that one may see the trees.

Such is the method used to read the Wake.

Examples offered throughout in a very brief sampling of the work, reveal a rather impish mind; disrespectful of society in general, and many of the ‘sacred cows’ of society; quite prepared to make history conform to Henry Fords definitive; “All history is bunk,” this reduction ad absurdum seems to include the history of Ireland; a seeming contradiction to his confessed intention of finding the “Soul of Ireland,” for the world.

He has a fixation of mind regarding the beginnings of language, together with a deep misunderstanding of the function of language; he draws four of his most voluble characters from the heart of the New Testament, this in sharp contrast to his early references to the first five books of the Old Testament; he displays an adolescent and sadly immature concept of women; in history and in our daily life; his protagonist either believes in, or just hopes for reincarnation; but he offers neither learning nor exposition on that ancient belief.

Sadly, he has nothing to offer on the incredible burden which both law and war place on the weary shoulders of humanity. However, pages 572-576 offer a rabid or ribald case to consider. Todays lawyers would make millions from it.

Memories of his childhood flow thru these pages Humpty Dumpty; and other childhood rhymes; echoes of John Peel with coat so grey, and other ballads and songs; a few words on early films, black and white of course, Charlie Chaplin and the like; he notes the advent of radio – of T.V. but nothing of which he recalls will satisfy the social scientists of tomorrow.

In brief, we appear to have a man suffering from glaucoma and some form of depression, a willful, impish and compulsive obsession with words; an extraordinary memory; a richly inventive imagination and an impressive talent; a talent such, that many reputable literary critics have granted him the accolade of genius, but as the Wake displays, a sadly abused and deeply distressed genius; genius, perhaps reduced to talent?

This entire section of the Wake chapter V of Part I; is written in reasonable language; clearly different in style from other sections. It is essential reading for any understanding of the Wake. 
 
 

 
 

The Mind Alight

Reading the Wake, brings to mind “Grays Elegy in a country churchyard.”
 

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

Thus it is with the Wake. Within the dark unfathomed paragraphs are gems, the deserts of vain words offer a flower, a fragrance, a bird, the bird ever on the wing.

But all such must be searched out. 

There is however a simple key. Search out, usually at the end of a paragraph, the few words offered in reasonable English; sometimes no zany words at all. 
But the bulk of the Wake is the desert or the dark unfathomed.

There is much in the human make up, the matrix of emotion; of response; of observation; of understanding, and creativity that no man has yet; fully explored the depths. Neither poet, writer; philosopher or priest; neither analyst nor alienist; none have yet made the ultimate statement on the human mind.

Joyce, and the Wake also fail the task; the impression given is that Life is a cosmic joke: But be not deceived. Many, with a wider perception will be aware of serious purpose; so much misunderstanding between us even in simple things;
 

 “I thought you meant;” or “I see it this way;” or, “But don’t you think.”

Such simple basics have spawned thousands of books; the Wake but adding to the number.

The simple explanation the best; the reasonable statement as defined by Occams Razor.

But not of Finnegans Wake. Education, which is but the understanding of words and concepts has also failed in this book. Joyce fails the common man in this despite his insistence on the importance of word.

University and the high school children will fail if the instinctive learning at Mothers Knee, the discipline of the home is not learned. It is in the home that we learn the principles of family and social life, the understanding of our personal reality. This is the place for the concepts of security; love and confidence to be learned, the Ten Commandments of Life.

It seems clear, from his life and every one of his lifes works, that such confidence and sense of security were lost to James, as the love and trust of his father were destroyed; in the conflict with his mother over religious practice.

The Wake is the product of that deep insecurity. A vast tirade against insecurity; depression and confidence in ones self; the cold intellect at war with the restless ever dissatisfied spirit.

Humour, yes; courage; yes; a zest for life, yes, indeed; all rampant in the Wake, but the underlying themes come from the dark side of the mind; the certainties of faith now but hope; and as the Greeks well knew, hope is indeed a poor need on which to rely for any achievement.

So apply Occams Razor to the text of the Wake. Ignore, as best as can, the wild words, the duplicitous paragraphs, the play with words; seek out the sentences writ in plain almost honest English; thus of say ten pages we rescue but fifty words, it is they will carry the theme along.

This is the key used for the compilation of this essay; we derive only a few underlying themes, but sufficient to demonstrate the validity of his book.

The first mentioned is that of reincarnation; you’ll beginnagain Mr Finnegan; then a long, to be continued, comic history of the Duke of Wellington, sadly confused with the wider world, all supervised by himself.

Then as a motif, the story of the writing of Ulysses and the Wake. The Portrait not mentioned!

Then there are his ideas on the supposed “fall” into language, this a poorly argued thesis. Not at all PhD level by an Irish mile. The Wake, almost unreadable, reflects these ideas.

Then, a constant feature from beginning, is his fixation with young women.  Girlies, pipettes usually; this sexuality has a slightly offensive influence over the text. It seems the product of immaturity; an attitude irretrievably embedded in his adolescence. The offense, intended or implied lies in the immaturity. The impression created is that the man never enjoyed a mutually satisfying relationship – experience in plenty – but little of any lasting pleasure; no depth.

There is another strange fixation with some obscure Russian general. Another with Bishop Berkeley, a 16th century cleric with advanced views on optics; perhaps his glaucoma is the bond.

Then there is the story of the writing of ‘Ulysses’ and the ‘Wake’ as told by Shaun, the optimist, and Shem, his ‘alter ego,’ the penman and the pessimist.

There is a curious familiarity with the Church and that other Book. On the second page he tells us that he knows of the first five books of the Bible, but he rarely gets past the titles. Later in the work he involves the four evangelists, Matt, Marcus, Lukes and Jonathon, with variations, but we learn little from them, but their duels with words are marvelous!

Through the work there is constant patter over Anna Livia, sometimes Plurabella, the River of Life. She becomes a totemic reference in many guises. She is wife to Humphrey C Earwicker; the protagonist; the A.L.P. of the story. She is the women of Ireland, but lower class – washerwomen; and flighty!

She graces the word with the few phrases, the old paragraph of beauty, is ever the motif for the recurring life; the reincarnation of which, in the last pages, she tells us; of his strong recollection of past life, the wild Amazia; the haughty Niluna; so he slips away confident that as Finnegan he will live again; and amid memories of that lost life, he dreams of our eternal hope of recurring life.

In our day a courageous Pope has declared in a Papal Bull that Heaven & Hell are but images of the human mind. There is, and has never been any existence of such; so poor lone humanity turns to reincarnation as a residual hope; for the belief is expressed in the Upanishads long years before the Church gave us Heaven and Hell as disciplinary encouragements to behave.

So, the end returns the reader “By a commodius vicus of recirculation,” to the very beginning, “Riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, to Howth Castle and Environs.”

Throughout, apparent unconsciously, is a regret of the early loss of faith.

On P381 
 

“ _ _ the beautification of the degeneration by neuhumorisation of our kristianization.”

Despite these words the early childhood teaching of the church never far from his mind. The apostasy ever an accusation in his mind. 
On P231
 

“_ _ it was soon that he, that he rehad himself. By a prayer? No, that came later. By contrite attrition? Nay that we passed. Mid esercizism? So is richt!”

Then, at last P368
 

“The finely ending was consummated by the completion of accomplishment.”

These words an early anticipation of a later event.

At the beginning, it is a good thing to give some attention to the cover of the Penguin (92) edition.

This displays a truly delightful caricature of Joyce by Cesare Abin: the world at his feet, the script of,  “Let me like a solider fall,” in pocket; a trifle the worse for wear, but undefeated, even tho the world seems a big dog, with a big black patch, for Ireland, or for Dublin, and snapping at him. A nice piece of work. 

The picture shows the wear and tear of much usage; this because it is the cover of the 1992 Penguin; and this is the sole text used in the creation of this study.

Well worn; well read and thoroughly enjoyed.

Unreadable! Indeed not!
 

        

 

 
 

The Hundred Letters

This hundred lettered word! It is an abomination; but the wretched thing is here and must be treated with care; a care amounting to exactitude.

Fortunately only some instances have the hundred letter as such. As ever, with Joyce, the pattern breaks down; the models differ.

Some, as will be shown later in this work, are in the form of devious puzzles.

For the benefit of new readers of the Wake, the first of the HLW is reprinted here.
 

(bababadalgharaghtakamminaironnkonnbronntonnertonronntuonnthunntrovarrhounaawnskawntoohoohoordenonthurmuk!)

This is described sometimes as a Fall, as in this case; sometimes as a wall; sometimes as noise and on several occasions simply inserted into the text, without explanation, introduction or apparent reason.

But imagine if you can the difficulties for the typist; the proofreaders, the editor and compositor.

What fun creating them; as he admits of one usage, “To creak a jest.”

It should be noted that at least one of these little beauties, consists of more or less proper words, joined together, no spaces between, and what with inverted vowels and other fancies, purports to have a literal meaning.

There will be other references to the HLW, one of the recurring themes.

Such meaning will be beyond most readers. It lies beyond this writer.

So in this essay, having beaten the first into submission, all future references will be by acronym. HLW, hundred lettered word, and no apologies to those who in the hardness of heart would expect each such word to be spelled out, checked and rechecked simply to maintain the integrity of the original.

As Joyce asks somewhere, “Why.”

And somewhere else says, “Hork.”

And elsewhere, “You feeling like you was lost in the bush boy?”

And otherwise, “Himhim Himhim.”

Or for the religious reader, “Amen.”

But there are some six hundred and more pages. Trust not this writer.

Read for thyself, ever with Joyces own easy going advice in mind;

P121
 

“Indicating that the words which follow may be taken in any order desired.”

A decision was made at this point to ferret out some of these HLW’s.

So more on them later.
 
 

 
 

Introducing The Professors

It is a literary myth he wrote the Wake for the Americans.

But it may well be so.

For the Amelicans – a generous gift; 
For the Amoricans – an Irish jest 
For the Europasianised Affreyank in sweet revenge?
For the United States of Ourania. Yep. 

But, P185 after pages of loose talk about what appears may be himself or someone else, we have,
 

“Then pious Ereas, conformant to the fulminant firman which enjoins on the tremylose terrain, that when the call comes he shall produce nichthemically from his unheavenly body a nouncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by Copyright in the United States of Ourania or bedeed or bedood and bedang and be dung to him, with this double dye brought to blood heat gallic acid on iron ore _ _ _ _.” 

And on and on.

Surely this is his way of saying that he intends even if it kills him to produce a heap of slag for the Mensheviks of Ourania, for did they not steal his copyright of The Portrait?

There are several such references to Amelica, and other like names, places, obscure in his invented prose; but one can well imagine his amused pleasure as he searched for unwords, his little tittle tattler tidbits of verbosity for the unholy purpose of taunting the literary establishment of the Union Strikes of Amelika.
Then there is the, 
 

“But it never stphruck your mudheads obtundity _ _ _ _ that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit _ _ _ _ _ _  the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.”

This a crack, and an amusing crack at the experts dissecting every phrase of the Work, it would be a pleasure for him in our day to have such a crack at the verbal constructions (that is, the scraping of carrots etc) of Modern and Postmodernism, concerning his life and work.

But he goes on – this P190
 

“_ _ _ _ Shemming amid everyones hapressed laughter to conceal your scatchophily by mating, like a thorough paste prosodite, masculine monosylables of the same numerical mus, an Irish emigrant the wrong way out, sitting on your crooked supanny stile, an unfrillfrocked quackfriah, you (well you for the laugh of Scheekspair just help me with the epithet), same semetic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you)  Europasianised Affreryank!!"

This, written in more or less plain English; a common usage when he wishes to say “something” plainly in plain English, perhaps?

More on America to follow. 
 
 

 
 

A Fantasy; There Will Be Others!

We were caught, in a lift, an old fashioned lift in an equally old fashioned building; there were four of us, a little old lady, with a granddaughter, another fellow, and myself.

A voice from above has called, called and called, the voice echoing down the liftwell.
 

“Hi, down there; Everybody all right? Are you ok. Hang on, wont be long – only about an hour. I’ll have a cuppa tea ready when the man gets you out. Just hang on it’ll be all right. Just stuck, you won’t fall – nothing to worry about just hang on try to look on the bright side.”

And words to this effect. Clearly he was as worried as we were, and a great deal more vocal, for, after the first bout of shouting to raise the alarm, we have been treated to half a dozen entreaties, “Not to worry.” And so stopped calling.

The old lady was at first visibly concerned.

I think it was a fear of being trapped with two men that worried her, for she pulled the child to her and hissed, “You stay close to me,” and glared at us, yes, defiantly.

We, the men, laughed and that eased the tension.

She said, in a short few seconds, “Well, you never know.”

I said “Not in a lift, I’ll be late for my appointment.”

 She nodded, “Me too! Its for the girl, 'Say good morning Joyce'.”

Well, little Joyce was a darling, stood tall, smoothed her dress, smiled like an angel, the dear child, and intoned, clearly well drilled, “Good morning.”

The other fellow said, “Good morning Joyce.”

On hearing her name was Joyce, I had deliberately let him have first say.

So I opened my briefcase, and produced a book, then having everyones attention said – “Good morning to you Madam, and you Sir, and to you Joyce; and do you know, this book is written by a man called Joyce.”

Little Joyce claimed, “Oh Joyce that’s nice.”

The old lady said, “Good gracious, how interesting,” but the tone of her voice was not that of real interest.

The other chap said, “Joyce? Surely you don’t read Joyce, is that Ulysses?

I decided to take him further, said, “Not Ulysses, the other one?

He said, “You mean the Portrait of the Artist?”

I said, “No not that one.”

He said, “Here, let me see.”

So I meekly handed the book to him.

The little old lady was now interested, as was the child.

He turned a few pages. I would love to tell you that he went pale, or fell silent, but no, not this fellow.

He said, “The Wake. You can’t be reading it, it’s utter rot, not readable - !!” 

I said, “I beg your pardon, but must tell you again. I am reading Joyces book.” 

Little Joyce said, holding out her hand, “Please mister can I have a look.”

The old lady said sharply, “Joyce, you don’t speak to strangers.”

I said, “Madam, we are no longer strangers, we are four people trapped in a lift for an hour – at least – and must act like good human beings. So I think you should let Joyce look at Joyce, look there’s his picture on the cover.”

She took the book, looked at the picture – that delightful cartoon by Cesar Abin, spiderwebs and patched pants and the world at his feet. She said “Joyce,” again.

I said, tracing my words as I spoke to her, over the Abin drawing, “You see Joyce, this Joyce was a great man; hundreds of people have read his books; but for a long time he was very poor; see his clothes are old and patched; he has spiderwebs over his head, to show that he wrote mysterious hidden things”

“You see his black eyes, those glasses? Well this Joyce was nearly blind – but, just as the man here said, this book is awfully hard to read, because he made his own words and not only that, but this book is about a dream.”

The darling child, she MUST have been somebody’s darling, probably a darling child to many people, was clearly interested.

 “This child,” I said to the old lady, and by association to the other fellow, “Will be able to tell the world, when she grows up, that she read Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, in a lift, when she was only seven years old, won’t you Joyce, and exactly how old are you Joyce?”

Well drilled this child; she looked up at grandma for approval before she replied, “I’m just on seven mister.”

The other chap laughed, “That’s just how everybody reads Joyce,” he mocked me, “He’s unreadable.”

Little Joyce was turning the pages, alas, no understanding there, but clearly purpose. She finished, flicked a few pages again, handed the book to me – said gravely, “There are no pictures.”

 I said “That’s a perceptive comment for a seven year old.” Then said quietly to Granny, “I imagine you are Joyces Grandmother, if you care to let me have an address, I will send you a good picture of Joyce, and you will have the pleasure of giving it to her.”

She nodded, not speaking unnecessarily to any fellow in a lift, but took an envelope from her hand bag, extracted the letter, from it, returned letter to handbag and gave me the envelope; this I placed inside the book, said to the chap, “Would you care to look at it, again?”

All three of us looking at him he could not refuse; took the book flicked thru the pages, hardly noticing the words, handed it back to me saying, “As I said, the thing is unreadable.”

I turned to the very last pages and read quietly but with feeling, the words of Finnegan on his death bed, his longing for life.

I know that I read selectively, those who have read the book will know, but that was my intention, so;

“Home: for my time is come; I done my best when I was let; thinking always, when I go, all go; a hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? My people are not their people. How she was handsome my wild Amazia, and my haughty Niluna; they are my stormies. I am passing out, O bitter ending; I’ll slip away before they’re up; they’ll never see, nor know, nor miss me. Its all old and old so old, and its sad and old, and its sad and weary I am _ _.”

But it was the little old lady was listening – she said sharply “That’s enough thank you: we all grow old, why, I don’t know – but he surely did.”

Little Joyce has also been listening; she asks quietly, “What are stormies Granmar? I think Amazia is a nice name.”

The old lady said, “Yes dear it is, Amazia,” and repeated the name Amazia, Amazia, almost if remembering someone from a thousand years lost and gone.
Another time, another life, another place.

I said to the other chap, “That’s only a trifle – I know, but believe me, this unreadable book is full of such trifles. A generous handful of raisins in this damper.”

I had added that last phrase, for it was evident in the well baked skin, the stance of the man, that he was an outback Australian and would know all about raisins in the damper.

He did, said, “Well, thanks for the revelation, I might even have another go at it.”

He took the book again, reading a word or so there – shaking his head, utterly unconvinced. He handed the Wake back to me; “Sorry just haven’t the time.”

I nodded, slipped the book back into the satchel.

When the call came up the liftwell, “Hey you, up there, anyone like a cuppa tea?”

We were each in a corner on our haunches and dozing.

‘That’s life!
 
 

 
 

Another Insight Into Joyce

Here, P181, is that imp, again!
 

“Jymes wishes to hear from wearers of abandoned female costumes, gratefully received, wadmel jumper, not her full frair of culottes and othergarmenteries, to start city life together. His Jymes is out of job, would sit and write. He has lately committed one of the ten commandments, but she well now assist. Superior built, domestic, regular layer. Also got the boot. He appreciates it. Copies (Abortisement)”

Now this is, plainly speaking another jest – aimed at Nora no doubt. She needs some warm clothing; they have moved again. He is out of a job, just writing, and she is helping him.

To make sure his readers realize it is but a joke he tells us in large letters, it is an advertisement.

But what are we meant to read into this? P172
 

“(Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come to buy. You will enjoy cattlemens spring meat. Johns is now a quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quartering and pieces. Feel his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap. Exex! His liver too is great value a spatiality! Exexex! COMMUNICATED)”

Now it is to be noted that this free advertisement is endorsed in brackets – that is, as a comment, a passing thought, an aside, rather that a part of the story; but why?

Is this a, “Thank you, Mr. Johns?”

Did the butcher, one day – about 1898, say to the young fellow, whilst weighing out a pound of sausages, “You’re a bright young fellow; going to write a book a or two, make a name and earn some money.” Something like that, so now James remembering all things, remembers Mr. Johns. Good on ya, James.
 
 

 
 

The Word

So, we are told, by a respected literary critic that the Wake is unreadable; this opinion qualified by the phrase, “In an important sense.”

A fair comment!

It certainly looks like a book, a delightful sketch of Joyce on cover, neat and compact, full of promise.

But open the thing; just to scan the pages puts one off.

The truly curious will say, “Surely not; this page a printers error; but looking futher that first impression is confirmed; the damn thing is the same, all through! As Joyce himself warns us, the things the same from ‘ent to and’; or possibly ant to ent.

So, very few, in Oz, have read the thing.

Most will know that “Oz” means Australia. All good dictionaries list the word. It is used here simply because few Australians are able to pronounce the word; properly; clearly or distinctly; it is believed by many that politicians, teachers, these to include University lecturers; and media people in particular should be refused public appearance until competent, at the very least, in this small but important ability.

 “What,” someone may ask, “Has this to do with the Wake?”

It is simply that, throughout the Book, there is a strong emphasis on the importance of ‘The Word’ as a significant feature of human life. A key symbol in our mythos. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.” The Book does say so. “And God said,” and things happened. A great pity that He doesn’t say a word or so to the warmongers and a few others round the beautiful earth he or she has made.

So from the beginning of our question and answer games about life and the Universe we live in, we are deeply concerned with the power of speech, the power of the Word. The Biblical Word has the power and creativeness of poetry; none know exactly what happened in our early days, but the poetic vision is probably more real that the physicists complex dream of a big bang. God help humanity and all creation, when, someday it will be discovered that a false conclusion has been derived from some faulted assumption. The physics are even less intelligible than the Wake.

The text books on the latter are more difficult than the poetic vision of the beginning; the vision is different; the first a beautiful simplicity; the latter an unresolved, dangerously unstable creation of word engulfed in number; and these, apples and oranges all picked green and unripe.

So, Joyce, in the Wake, but touches lightly on this matter, knowing well that no resolution of the great question will be possible for yet a few million years; He does attempt to tell us that the Word has power, but, though using a quarter million words fails to clarify either his thinking or our understanding of the Word.

The simple feature which comes thru the welter of invented words, is that words have great importance in human life.

This is true; once uttered the Word can never be wiped out; not ever completely; withdrawn, regretted; an abject apology; or forgiven; but the memory remains and has its power.

This “life” in the word becomes bluntly obvious in our speech, in our daily life. This is sometimes painfully true, here in Australia; and one supposes, everywhere else.

The common language, all too often common slanguage; sometimes very common indeed.

What was called ‘gutter language’ only a generation ago, may now be heard in many places in our society; but it is still gutter language.

Work it out of public usage we must, before we can hope to achieve that mysterious ‘Australian Identity’ beloved of our politicians, for language is a vital tool of the mind; and as every tradesman, every artificer, every wordsmith knows, dirty and ill used tools produce very poor work indeed.

Coarse language has no place in a good mind.

Joyce, a superb writer knew this, the coarse words used by him only in the speech of coarse people. Never in the body of his work; and always with care, sparsely!

Speech is the vehicle of the mind and speaks to the world of the essential man – and woman.

But, back to the Wake;

Joyces preoccupation with the Word, has a strong element of compulsive obsession, but an obsession which with a strong determination not to become a helpless victim, he learned to use the Word for his own purposes.

This is a strong emerging feature in any reasonable attempt to read the thing.

A growing understanding of his physical and mental illness; and of the means he uses to defeat such weakness; we learn that there is purpose in the maze of words; and that is a grim and determined purpose!

It is revealed in The Wake that he was aware of an impending early death; that he had hope of, or even a belief in the promise of a renewed life, not in any Christian gilded Heaven, nor in the Airy Faery land of the New Age, but in a reincarnation as a rational man – and an Irishman at that!

He knew the power of Word to bring the visionary idea, the thought, into reality; that he used – and abused word; twisted and broke them; inverted words; played with vowels; all the terrible things he did with language, words and their structure were offered to the world with purpose, a deep and subtle purpose, but to sense that purpose one must apply method and skills equal to the task.

We see the beginnings of his long pilgrimage toward ‘The Word’ in the ‘Portrait of the Artist’; in ‘Ulysses’; in the long contrived passages of internal monologue.
The Wake is the fullness, the fruition; and thus is essentially his lifes work, his Golden Book of Kells, his book of Life.

 
 

Depression?

There is a simple Key which may be applied to the reading of the Wake. It opens the door to a fuller understanding of the work.

The extract offered below is but the last few words of one eight page long paragraph – a paragraph of nonsense but for the words quoted; the few words in plain English which tell all.

This is the key to the reading of the essential Wake.

We scan, quickly the eight page paragraphs in P1, Ch III. This is a wild but amusing, inventive total description of our lucid and lyrical English language. We use an idiomatic version of that language here in Australia. We call it “Strine.”

Joyce refers to his versions as Finnegans Weak… no doubt with a malicious grin.

This entire chapter seems created in the ups and downs of a serious depression. He lays the blame for it upon Shem, the Penman, brother of Shaun; he of the silver tongue; thrice truthful teller, who gives us in PIII of the Book, a more wholesome but equally critical version of the work.

But Ch II is Joyce the Penman, Shem but an artifact of his imagination, a wraith, created to tell us of the Dark side; to expose the power of the “haunted ink bottle,” to tell of the threat of Churchill’s “Black Dog,” the mental stress of depression, the toil and the stress of the Work; even guilt – self accusation; of his self exile in Europe.

But with this burden, a burden of internal mental stress; he is going blind; suffers many operations, can scarce see to write, but soldiers on, a battler as we say in Oz; a good bloke, but the Work and the Word ever challenging the man.

So the Work proceeds, as he says, “So strikingly brainy and well lettered.”

The purpose of the carefully crafted weird words still lies hidden in the vast paragraphs of nonsense; the dyslectic internal monologue of Ulysses, in all its native complexity is maturing in the Wake, the forms, the content, the words different, but the driving, developing inconsistencies of the mind taking increasing control over his creativity.

But the man is never defeated; not James Joyce.

He tells all, but only to those with eyes to see, the heart to understand; in this Part II of his book. Pages 179 onward, must be read with care. And take notes! 
P180, 
 

“The buzz in his braintrees; the fog of his mind fag; the tic of his conscience; the bats in his belfry; the woollies one to think of it.”

He laughs over Ulysses, the book which made him famous; the fame being the sole justification for the publication of the Wake.

P179,
 

“Making believe to read his uselessly unreadable Blue Book of Eceles.”

Useless! Even blind Freddie can spot the rough anagram with Ulysses! A book for the soul indeed!

And go back a page or so to P117 where he asks
 

“Who short of a madhouse would believe it?”

But this chapter of the book is a dark exposure of the state of mind; an acknowledgement of the mental strains taking control; a daily defiance, a conquest, a justification of the Work, and the processes by which the work is accomplished.

But, it is noted, here yet again, that the Key, as he noted elsewhere of Efas Taem; this being interpreted means “Meat Safe,” such the Irish in him; thus the key is given.

But be not deceived, this chapter is essential study for Joyce students – and the professors.

Many will read it as an eulogy; or perhaps as his own valediction; his formal ‘farewell to literature’ or more commonly, ‘Cheers, I’m off, see ya later, another time, another place.’

Hear then, ye men of the thousand years, walk softly upon his shadow; and treat but gently the Word; for, he tells us, thus was the Word revealed – thus P184,
 

“Tumult, son of Thunder, self exiled upon his ego, a nightlong shaking between white or redder horrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an inclustable phantom (may the Shaper have mercery upon him), writing the history of himself on furniture.”

Who else was it, said, “In travail and in woe was the word revealed?

But this is James, and one suspects, nay believes, that in such moments his Nora was with him, ever the comforter and the good companion.

Such hours, half blind, he suffered many operations on that eye, and these with none of the surgical expertise of our day; his daemon demanding attention; the words tumbling over and into each other; a little Dutch courage to continue, and thus thru the dreamnight of the Wake the pages completed; the parts stapled together, hour by agonizing hour was the word made plain.

But his “Inkbottle is haunted”; on this simple statement, so the Work is not wholly his own; the man but the instrument of that dark inhabitant of the abyss of his mind; that mind ever with todays thought conditioned by the experience of his yesteryears. But thru the mystery of our being, that yesteryear, tainted with untold ages of life and death in the flux and reflux of the spinal cord and the Ancestral brain. So deeply is the past ever with us!

So his fixation, his compulsion with word; with history, with Mutt, Markus, Lucies and Jonajon, with death and hopefully a reincarnation.

Random samplings of Part II of the Wake are daunting; this is the most difficult of the four parts of the whole.

Closer examination only confirms the first impression.

Second and third impressions indicate that the complexity of plot – is there a plot? Is tainted with the presence of a persistent and suggestive indecency; the snide assessment of woman in what a Judge of the High Court of America described as, “Offensive, rather than obscene.”

This the “Immature adolescent” which Virginia Woolf, saw in her perception of Ulysses; for the attitude pervades Ulysses as it is evident in The Wake. So, Pt II is bypassed, in this reading of the work.

One small instance of the obscurity so evident thru Pt II is offered P331-2
 

“To the lactification of disgeneration by neuhumorisation of our kristianisation.”

Does this mean; “The softening of our inhumanities thru generations of the awakening of our humanity thru the teachings of the Christ?”

And proceeds
 

“ _ _ _ For hanigen with hunigen still haunt ahunt to finnd their hinnigen where Pappapappa _ _ _.”

This continuing for the next hundred undesignated letters. And then this terrible hundredletteredwordagain, is followed by
 

 “And unruly person creaked a jest again.”

The jest confuses reason over many pages.

There is much of the pessimist; the nihilist philosophers view of life.

Is it possible to wonder at his state of mind when he wrote Part II; or was it written by some sympathetic friend?

Or perhaps one of his Ante-collaborators wrote it? Perhaps Joyce provided guide lines; the other fattened them out.

Somewhat as Dumas wrote so many of his books.

Thousands of books are written thus and surely a critical eye can see the guidelines, spot the fat, in this part of the Wake.

Compared with Part III this section though witty, is more turgid than flowing, the humour, less so, the very theme is different.

As in the natural world the All hath its differences; there is the tiger and the lamb, maid and man, the other side of every coin; the dark that falls with the passing of the light; the up and the down, in and out, snakes and ladders, glutton and hunger, Ultimate Good and Bad.

But the world belongs to the optimist.

The early and the last books of the Wake, all display the optimist; Part II seems the gloomy work of a pessimist.

That Black Dog, Depression was ever with Joyce, as was the hard life; indeed his life, until his success with Ulysses, was bitterly hard; but his strong jesting spirit is always evident – when he wrote. The Joycean spirit seems absent in Pt II of the Wake.

It is hard to believe that he wrote Part II.

So, on P167,
 

“My unchanging Word is sacred. The Word is my Wife to expense and expound, to vend and to vilnerate, and may the curlews crown our nuptials.”

Part II does not read like that!

P216 
 

“Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, elm! Night, night! Tellmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthivering waters of. Night!”

So, tell me, who are Shem and Shaun and the Moose and the Gripes; Burrus and Caseous; Justius and Mercius; Glugg and Chuff; Dolph and Kevv, Kerse and the Norwegian Captain; Butt and Taff; the Ondt and the Gracehoper; Mutt and Juva? St Patrick and the Archdruid? Who were these twins? ; Ever with him thru the work. They seem to be so much more than mere literary inventions, perhaps they reflect those who worked with him in the writing of his book!

The question in the minds eye, a ripe fruit awaiting the moment; but another, a teasing bat of a thing, out of the darkness, a fleeting fluttering thing, but now centered on that luscious ripe fruit, it takes direction, the full flutter is now a gliding, a direction a prize – and the thought is captured – all these pairs, or pears, are the same; they are mentioned, possibly, or probably by name, in the long loose talk of Shem the Penman.

They are with him, in one guise or the other throughout much of the Wake; these the friends with whom he tossed words about ever seeking and finding the passages of perverted prose, shaping those sadly bruised intolerable paragraphs, sharpening the keen edge of wit, paradox pun and jest, his devils advocate, his Sham and his Shaun – etc etc.

As pointedly pointed out this but a fleeting thought; a bat in the belfry; a cat in a cathedral, a mouse in a mosque; or a star in the sky, or perhaps but a hole in a colander.

But a thought worthy of thinking on in the complexity of this Work; the tricky thought patterns, the puzzles, enigma and paradox of Finnegans Wake.

But, and the ‘But’ is important, there are pages, and more pages telling of helpers and assistants, Nora, and Browne and Nolan, the friends from Kings Avenue; Nora, ‘scherote’ “there were three men in him”; and Nolan and Browne are mentioned frequently from ‘ant to ent’ even to Browne being 52 years old; and the four of them having a happy lunch together! Good friends, indeed; and a strong and continuing pattern thru the book.

His most acute inventiveness ever in these conversation pieces; it is the same in Ulysses, and in the Portrait; the long paragraphs ever turgid; the conversation pieces alive and rich.