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/lit/ - Literature

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11584497 No.11584497 [Reply] [Original]

>So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the—riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

It's beautiful, but what does it all mean?

>> No.11584507

>>11584497
>mememormee
mhmm

>> No.11584624

>>11584497
it means
>well, I was incapable of writing Lolita, so I'll try and compensate with this shit

>> No.11584640

>>11584624
Lolita is inferior to all of Joyce's novels by a huge margin, which isn't to say that Nabokov didn't write great prose

>> No.11584647

>>11584624
Awful taste

>> No.11584725

>>11584497
I tried to read this what the actual fuck. Pls someone explain, is he mocking us ?

>> No.11584753

>>11584497
Roughly translated it means he dreams of becoming a carefree happy child each night and the only relevant part of being awake is taking a shit so that he can comfortably be reborn into innocence again.

>> No.11584763

>>11584497
>Lps

>> No.11584765

>>11584725
Break it up and you can decipher it more clearly, a lot of it is actually fairly clear if you take into account the portmanteau and onomatopoeia, as in:
>My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes.
>Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair!
>f I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup.
>Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to.
>Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again!
>Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given!
>A way a lone a last a loved a long the—
the above line is the end of the novel, cycling into...
>riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Which is the start.

>> No.11584946

>>11584765
>portmanteau
That helps

>> No.11584960

>>11584765
was Joyce literally fucking the English languge?

>> No.11585002
File: 194 KB, 1009x566, Capture d’écran_2018-08-05_10-47-20.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11585002

>>11584497
Bagatelles pour un massacre > Finnegans Wake


"Dine ! Paradine ! Crèvent ! Boursouflent ! Ventre dieu !... 487 millions ! d'empalafies cosacologues ! Quid ? Quid ? Quod ? Dans tous les chancres de la Slavie ! Quid ? De Baltique slavigote en Blanche Altramer noire ? Quam ? Balkans ! Visqueux ! Ratagan ! De concombres !... mornes ! roteux ! de ratamerde ! Je m'en pourfentre !... Barbatoliers ? immensement ! Volgaronof !... mongomoleux Tartaronesques !... Stakhanoviciants !...Culodovitch !... Quatre cent milles verstes myriametres... de steppes de condachiures, de peaux de Zebris-Laridon !... Ventre poultre ! Je m'en gratte tous les Vesuves !"

>> No.11585039

>>11585002
>Literal axis propaganda masquerading as a modernist novel
Yeah... no.

>> No.11585118

>>11585002
>All the same, you need only consider, a little more closely, the pretty puss of the average kike, male or female, to remember it forever…. Those spying eyes, lyingly pale…that uptight smile…those livestocky lips that recall: a hyena…. And then out of nowhere there’s that look that drifts, heavy, leaden, stunned…the nigger’s blood that flows…. Those twitchy naso-labial commisures…twisted, furrowed, downward curving, defensive, hollowed by hate and disgust…for you!…for the abject animal of the enemy race, accursed, to be destroyed…. Their nose, the “toucan” beak of the swindler, the traitor, the felon…the sordid schemes, the betrayals, a nose that points to, lowers toward, and falls over their mouths, their hideous slots, that rotten banana, their croissant, their filthy kike grins, boorish, slimy, even in beauty pageants, the very outline of a sucking snout: the Vampire…. It’s pure zoology!…elementary!… It’s your blood these ghouls are after!… It’s enough to make you scream…to shudder, if you have the least inkling of instinct left in your veins, if anything still moves around in your meat and your head, other than pasty lukewarm rhetoric, stuffed with cunning little tricks, the gray suit of bloodless clichés, marinated in alcohol…. Grins of the kind you find on Jewish pusses, understand, aren’t improvised, they don’t date from yesterday or from the Dreyfus Affair…. They erupt from the depths of the ages, to terrify us, to draw us into miscegenation, into bloody Talmudic mires and, finally, into the Apocalypse!…

It's hardly Joyce

>> No.11585205

>>11584507
Mormon memes! He wants us to post Mormon memes!1

>> No.11585208

Of all the sections in the book I've read that's actually one of the most intelligible parts I've found

>> No.11585223

>>11584497
>spoils the ending right in the OP
What the fuck dude?

>> No.11585259

>>11584497
This passage is basically ALP’s monologue as she flows back into the sea (ALP represents all the rivers of the world, especially the river Liffey)

Avelaval: “ave atque vale” means “hello and goodbye” in Latin. It is also a name of a poem by Catullus in which he mourns the death of his brother. This poem has a grief-stricken and tender tone which mirrors the tone of this passage. “Avelaval” also sounds like a combination of aval (the French word “downstream”) and lavare (the Latin word for “to wash”)

My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still: Here “leaves” also means “pages”. “But one clings still” refers to the last page of Finnegans Wake, the page on which we see this passage.

Lff: river Liffey, life, leaf (the last “leaf” or page of the book), Lif (a woman from Norse mythology who survived the Ragnarok and began the new cycle of history (historical cycles are a very prominent theme in Finnegans Wake))

So soft this morning, ours: The events of this passage takes place in the early morning as HCE slowly wakes up.

Yes: recalls the final word of Ulysses, which, just like Finnegans Wake, ends with an internal monologue of a main female character

Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair: apparently, this sentence was once said to Joyce by his daughter. “Taddy” is a combination of “daddy” wnd “tad” (the Welsh word for “father”). “Toy fair” sounds similar to “taufer” (the German word for “baptist”), thereby recalling “tauftauf” from the first page of Finnegans Wake

If I seen him bearing down: “to bear down” means “to sail with the wind” in nautical slang

under whitespread wings: poetical reference to the sails of a ship. Also of a reference to rhe wings of Archangel (cf. “Arkangels”) Gabriele as he descends to Virgin Mary (who is represented by ALP) to foretell the birth of Jesus.

Arkangels: Archangel Gabriel, Arkhangelsk (a city in Russia situated at the head of the delta of Dvina River), “arc-en-ciel” (the French word for “rainbow”, probably a reference to a rainbow which appears after the Flood in Genesis 9:13)

I can go on if you want

>> No.11585288

>>11585118
Translated Joyce (not to get into translated Finnegans Wake) is hardly Celine, what's your point

>> No.11585300

>>11585259
Please do. I enjoy how he uses near homophones to give things multiple meanings. Reminds me of some "phonetic Kabbalah" shit I read about a while ago

>> No.11585320

>>11585300
Yeah, Joyce was really influenced by Kabbalah.

>> No.11585333

>>11585288
Do you know that for certain? There are a lot translations that manage to be exquisite - In Search of Lost Time, for example, contains some of the most amazing prose even in English

>> No.11585341

>>11585259
Thanks for this - Joyce was a genius. If only you could do this for the whole novel

>> No.11585390

>>11585333
>In Search of Lost Time
don't you mean Remembrance of Things Past? pleb?

>> No.11585410

>>11585333
Proust is easier to translate than Celine or even Flaubert. I don't think there's much lost in translating Proust.

>> No.11585653

>>11585300
Ok

I sink I’d die down: sounds like “I think I’d lie down”. “Die down” may also be a reference to Dido, whose lament “remember me” in Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas” is echoed in “mememoreme”

over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup: “humbly dumbly” is a reference to Humpty Dumpty, whose fall from the wall is often compared to the fall from the ladder of Tim Finnegan in this book. “His feet" and "washup" echoe Christ's washing the feet of his disciples in John 13:5-11. It’s also a reference to baptism (cf. “toy fair”) and cleansing. “Washup” also sounds like “worship” and “wake up”

Tid: a rare word which means “tender” or “soft” (cf. “Bussoftlhee”), it also means “time” in Danish

behush: combination of “behind” and “hush”

Whish!: sounds like “whist!”, the Irish word for “silence!” or “hush!” (cf. “behush”. It’s also probably an imitation of a sibilant sound.

Far calls. Coming, far!: “far” is means “father” in Danish

End here: mirrors “I will end here”, the words of Marina in Shakespeare’s play “Pericles, Prince of Tyre”

Us then: “Us” sounds like “aus”, the German word for “out” or “off” which may basically mean “end” or “finish” in this context

Take: Joyce himself claimed that this is a reference to the following passage from “Measure for Measure”: “Take, O, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn; But my kisses bring again, bring again; Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, seal'd in vain”

Bussoftlhee: “Bussoft” sounds like “but softly” or “but be quiet” (cf. “behush”). A reference to the following passage from Hamlet: “But soft! methinks I scent the morning air”

mememormee!: “remember me!”, “my memory!” or “me, me, more me!”

Till thousendsthee: “till thou sends thee”or “till thousand ends” (Finnegans Wake ends with the word “the”)

Lps: lips. In Dion Boucicault's play “Arrah-na-Pogue”, Arrah passes a message to her foster-brother by kissing him on the lips. This message saves him from imprisonment, similar to how ALP’s letter saves HCE.

The keys to. Given!: sounds like “the keys to Heaven”

the: “thé” is the French word for “tea” (a reference to teastain in the end of ALP’s letter). Joyce: In Ulysses, to depict the babbling of a woman going to sleep, I had sought to end with the least forceful word I could possibly find. I had found the word "yes," which is barely pronounced, which denotes acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance. In Work in Progress, I’ve tried to do better if I could. This time, I have found the word which is the most slippery, the least accented, the weakest word in English, a word which is not even a word, which is scarcely sounded between the teeth, a breath, a nothing, the article the

>> No.11585719

>>11585259
>>11585653
This is by no means an exhaustive interpretation, I’ve left out a lot of things which you can find in Roland McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake as well as the following blogs:

https://johngordonfinnegan.weebly.com
http://fwannotated.blogspot.com/?m=1

>> No.11585810
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11585810

>>11585259

Is reading supplemental material the way to "getting" things like this?

I've been reading as a hobby for a few years now, but recently I've been trying to get the most out of what I read. Catching references to other works, analyzing themes and imagery, basically doing literature homework for fun. Passages like these take that feeling of "I'm not getting this 100%" and magnify it to absurd levels.

Are there any good books on literary analysis that one can use to hone their skills and train the eye for such reading? Or is it better to just read the 400 page dissertation on whatever you picked up at the thrift store?

>> No.11585814

>>11585390
Inferior title that doesn't capture the French or what the novel is actually about

>> No.11585831

>>11585653
"Remember me!" could well be another Hamlet reference as the words spoken by the Ghost as he departs, tying in with ALP returning to the sea

>> No.11586329

>>11584497
*BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPP*

>> No.11586353

Why am i reading it like a childrens song?

>> No.11586377

>>11584497
youre right, this is both incomprehensible and sublime. each line gives me an evocative dreamlike image. how the hell did he do it?

>> No.11586400

>>11586377
He painted with words, i believe the people that over analyze it are missing the point

>> No.11586465

>>11586400
i just read the op again and it's really breathtaking. ive been trudging my way through ulysses and hope i can tackle wake sometime soon.

>> No.11586502

>>11586465
>>11586377
did you take some sort of drug? I don't see the sublime in this. May be I'm just a pleb.

>> No.11586536

>>11586502
read it like it's your own internal monologue. put some rhythm into it.

>> No.11586561

>>11584497

some boring bullshit.

>> No.11586574

>>11584497
It's shit

>> No.11586586

>>11584497
that is melodrama mixed with some burlesque. what makes it unique is that it is text-specific. its posts like this that make me understand that there should be a philosophy board. i understand the literary merit to this but i don't care. i'm not some kind of philosophy expert at all either i'm a total novice but i see the difference and i think there is a growing population on the board that does as well. this is some really poetic stuff but the people that like this stuff do not mix with people that want to discuss philosophy at all, even at the asinine level we discuss philosophy at.

>> No.11586635

>>11586586
lol gay, chill

>> No.11587289

>>11585653
Very enjoyable post, thanks

>> No.11587293

>>11586586
Keep philosophy to the humanities board aka /his/ where it belongs. We really don't need more Sam Harris threads here.