Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Excerpts from Finnegan's Wake


A complete analysis of
Finnegan's Wake would require a lifetime's worth of knowledge and effort, as it consumed all of Joyce's powers and creativity for two decades. However, it not necessary to understand all the sixty-odd languages used, the endless allusions and elusions and illusions, or even the basic workings of the narrative in order to enjoy the many aesthetic qualities of the book.

If you enjoy any sort poetry on a sound level alone, Joyce is a master poet, just on his ability to hear, combine, mutilate, mate, bowdlerize, satirize words. This weekly series will highlight fragments chosen at random because, as someone once told me, you can literally turn to any page of Finnegan's Wake and find something interesting and beautiful.
"Chuffy was a nangel then and his soard fleshed light like likening. Fools top! Singty, sangty, meekly loose, defendy nous from prowlabouts. Make a shine on the curst. Emen." (pg 222)
The first sentence already demonstrates the prolific amount of puns and portmanteaus. Also, in a contextual view, the combination of the sacred and profane. Just by shifting a letter, "a nangel" suggests a hard "g" sound, sounding close to angle or mongrel, or perhaps the name Nagel. There is an "Anne Nagel" silent actress. Perhaps Joyce was an avid moviegoer? Regardless, the notion of an "angel" is already removed from the divine both by this transposition, and the name Chuffy--something that is fat and swollen or rude and morose.

The next part of this sentence again combines the sacred and profane. "Soard" is an archaic spelling of "sward" which is defined either as green turf or bacon rinds, however it also can be seen as the "sword" of the angel, referencing Ezekiel 21, or Michael from Paradise Lost who brandishes the sword to protect Eden, or as "soar'd" as "in flight". "Fleshed" is a pun on "flashed" but again references the body or the worldly. "Likening" is a pun for "lightning" and it seems in context to be pronounced "like-ning", yet it also is its own word. The metaphor then becomes a beautiful inversion, comparing all the previous combinations of words; they liken or compare to themselves. So this sentence, the angel, his sword, flight, and lightning are melded with fat, flesh, rinds and turf and is concluded with a reference to its own power of comparison.

"Fools top" can be seen as "fool stop" like the previous transposition, or "fool's top" referencing the foolscap, a jester's hat or, notedly, printing paper. In the next sentence the sing-song quality is doubly referenced in "Singty, sangty" both on meter and context. Indeed almost anytime Joyce uses closely sounding pairs, the sentence uses poetic meter. And indeed, the two sentences beginning with "Fools..." are in perfect trochees. Remember to read Finnegan's Wake aloud! Also,
the "oo" sound is repeated and emphasized by appearing on only stressed syllables. Fools, loose, and nous share this assonance and, if you take the previous sentence's demonstration of Joyce's skill to subconsciously change our pronunciations, I would suggest "prowlabouts" would sound almost like a Scottish "prowlaboots". Another interesting wordplay is on the word "nous". Nous is the french pronoun for "we" and makes sense grammatically, but the repeated ending "s" sound of the other rhymed words and the child-song quality of the sentence (it is preceded by "defendy" in order to maintain meter) would suggest that this "s" would be pronounced as well. The french "nous" also affects "sangty"--"sang" being the french for "blood". The religious connotation then adds an extra level of punnery--sangty and sanctity.

The final sentences continue the rending and recombining of language and by extension, religion. Joyce, again, plays with puns and our subconscious idea of what is "correct". "Makes a shine on the curst" is a manipulation of "make a sign of the cross". Indeed the latter phrase has become enough of a cliche to subconsciously inform our pronunciation and understanding of the former. "Curst" operates as the pun on "cross" and is an archaic spelling of "cursed". I think that Joyce here decides not to use the more closely sounding "curse" as a pun for "cross" because of the germane difference between a abstract curse and those cursed, the use of "soard" in the previous sentence (the abbreviated soar'd seems akin to curs'd grammatically and auditorially), and finally--amazingly--the final letter "t" in fact is the cross in miniature, thus giving an ending visual referent to the pun and removing doubt about the final mating together of Christianity and a blasphemous glee in the manipulation of language.

The final "Emen" punctuates the paragraph. As for meaning beyond the pun of "Amen" I leave the reader to decide. However, think of any limerick, and read the first sentence of the quote again, aloud.

Joyce, and Finnegan's Wake in particular, are open to multiple interpretations. This quality can be positive or negative, but the power of this work is that it can withstand the closest scrutiny and provide sublime moments on every page, even every sentence.

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