Friday, August 7, 2009

A 1939 Review of Finnegan's Wake


The following review appeared in the Guardian newspaper in 1939, one of the first 'reviews' of Finnegans Wake. The author felt incapable of "appraising it" at the time, suggesting he needed at least 20 years of intense study to comprehend it fully. This suggests just how difficult a text it continues to be.

The shock of the new
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce - in lieu of review, the Guardian, May 12 1939


Mr Joyce's Finnegans Wake, parts of which have been published as "Work in Progress", does not admit of review. In 20 years' time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it.

The work is not written in English, or in any other language, as language is commonly known. I can detect words made up out of some eight or nine languages, but this must be only a part of the equipment employed. This polyglot element is only a minor difficulty, for Mr Joyce is using language in a new way.

A random example will illustrate: "Margaritomancy! Hyacinthous pervinciveness! Flowers. A cloud. But Bruto and Cassio are ware only of trifid tongues the whispered wilfulness ('tis demonal!) and shadows shadows multiplicating (il folsoletto nel falsoletto col fazzolotto dal fuzzolezzo), totients quotients, they tackle their quarrel."

The easiest way to deal with the book would be to become "clever" and satirical or to write off Mr Joyce's latest volume as the work of a charlatan. But the author is obviously not a charlatan, but an artist of very considerable proportions. I prefer to suspend judgment. If I had had to review Blake's Prophetic Books when they first appeared I would have been forced to a similar decision.

What Mr Joyce is attempting, I imagine, is to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context. Compared with this, Ulysses is a first-form primer. In this volume the theme is the language and the language the theme, and a language where every association of sound and free association is exploited. In one of the more lucid passages Mr Joyce appears to be discussing language: "has any usual sort of ornery josser, flat-chested, fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination... ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everyday looking stamped addressed envelope?"

What, it may be asked, is the book about? That, I imagine, is a question which Mr Joyce would not admit. This book is nothing apart from its form, and one might as easily describe in words the theme of a Beethoven symphony.

The clearest object in time in the book is the Liffey, Anna Livia, Dublin's legendary stream, and the most continuous character is HC Earwicker, "Here Comes Everybody": the Liffey as the moment in time and space, and everything, everybody, all time as the terms of reference, back to Adam or Humpty Dumpty, but never away from Dublin.

This seems the suggestion of the musical half-sentence with which the work begins: "River run, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

Who, it may be asked, was Finnegan? Again, I should have been unable to tell, unaided, from Mr Joyce's book. But I gather that there is an Irish story of a contractor who fell and was stretched out for dead. When his friends toasted him he rose at the word "whiskey" and drank with them. In a book where all is considered, this legend, too, has its relevance.

One concluding note. Mr Joyce in a parody of Jung and Freud ("Tung-Toyd") mentioned "Schizo-phrenia". One might imagine that Mr Joyce had used his great powers deliberately to show the language of a schizophrenic mind. He alone could explain his book and, I suppose, he alone review it.
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2 comments:

  1. hi amy,
    i'm looking for someone to share ideas with concerning the wake. unfortunately blogspot is blocked on my computer and i'm writing this email from a web cafe. could you contact me at kylefoley202@gmail.com. i've been doing a very detailed analysis of it and am eager to discuss it with someone.

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  2. Thank you for posting this. This tone here is the only way to approach any sort of criticism & analysis of this book. It's endlessly rewarding but don't ever make the mistake of thinking you 'get it' because then you really don't 'get it.' And it'll get mad at you if you do.
    Hope you post more stuff.

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