Finnegans Wake Reading Group - Week 3

[Anonymous No.12570325]

>>So you need hardly spell me how every word will be bound over to carry three score and ten toptypsical readings throughout the book of Doublends Jined (20)
REMINDER: you can join the reading group at any moment. The book is non linear, therefore you do not have to start reading from the beginning!

>FINNEGANS WAKE READING GROUP
Around 20/30 pages a week.
Sunday Threads
Comfy pacing, comfy discussion.

>Week 1, 27/01: I.1 (p.3-29)
>Week 2, 03/02: I.2 & I.3 (p. 30-74)
>Week 3, 10/02: I.4 (p. 75-103)

>SECONDARY LITERATURE
J. Bishop - Joyce’s Book of the Dark
A. Burgess - ReJoyce
J. Campbell - A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake
U. Eco - The Aesthetics of Chaosmos
R. Elllmann - James Joyce
J. Gordon - Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary
R. McHugh - Annotations to Finnegans Wake
W.Y. Tindall - A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake

>USEFUL LINKS
FW Hypertext (notes, explanation of the words, etc.): http://finwake.com/
“An Adventurer’s Guide to Finnegans Wake”: http://www.fractiousfiction.com/finnegans_wake.html
“The Finnegans Wake Toolkit”: http://www.fractiousfiction.com/fwtoolkit.html
Joyce reading from Finnegans Wake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFqiv8Vww
The Ballad of Tim Finnegan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S5UTbUSiLM

>TODAY’S DISCUSSION (10/02): I.4 (p. 75-103)
What did you understand of the chapter?
What passages where you impressed with the most?
What’s the most interesting word(s) you find and why?
Are you enjoying the general experience or not?
Also suggestions on how to improve the thread

>READING FOR WEEK 4 (17/02): I.5 (p. 104-25)

>But the world, mind, is, was and will be writing its own runes forever, man, on all matters that fall under the ban of our infrarational senses fore the last milchcamel, the heartvein throbbing between his eyebrowns, has still to moor before the tomb of his cousin chairman where is date is tethered by the palm that’s hers. But the horn, the drinking, the day of dread are not now. (19-20)

>>(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this daybook, what curiosof signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (sinceWe and Thou had it out already) its world. It is the same toldof all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. Tieckle. Theylived und laughed ant loved end left. Forsin. Thy thingdome isgiven to the Meades and Porsons. The meandertale, aloss andagain, of our old Heidenburgh in the days when Head-in- Cloudswalked the earth.(18)

[Anonymous No.12570374]

Again, a lot of very interesting stuff happening here. Still struggling to understand what is going on. Reading this is like listening to a muffled conversation through a wall and trying to figure out what is being said. You have the impression, from the tone, that people are angry or happy or sad or crazy, but you cannot know what they are talking about, precisely. I have to say, though, that the more I listen/read the more themes seem to recall each other.

As for the chapter, Tindall divides it as such:
- brief intro (75-76)
- meditation on death and burial (76-80)
- another story of the Cad (81-86)
- HCE trial before the judges (86-96)
- a fox hunt and his flight into exile (96-101)
- a hymn to ALP and the river (101-02)

The trial for me was possibly the most understandable part, together with the fox hunt. But I really enjoyed some quotations from the end of the chapter that got me really curious about the rest:

>she who had given his eye for her bed and a tooth for a child till one and one ten and one hundred again, O me and O ye! cadet and prim, the hungry and anngreen (and if she is older now than her teeth she has hair that is younger than thighs, my dear!) she who shuttered him after his fall and waked him widows sparing and gave him keen and made him able and held adazillahs to each arche of his noes (101-102)

>For we, we have taken our sheet upon her stones where we have hanged our hearts in her trees; and we list, as she bibs us, by the waters of babalong (103)

These two quotations about ALP are just beautiful, the second one in particular - the expression “we hanged our hearts in her trees” is so poetic. There was an anon last time who said that almost every page has something quotable and I am finding it very true.

[Anonymous No.12570376]

Reposting my old content as encouragement to you. Also Vico's New Science (extended commentary on presocratics/ancients) is apparently important. t. never read it, natch, though the McLuhans are also useful.

Reading "around" it also led me into some great reading about the Book of Kells (Henry), I did this other thread recently which came about through reading extensively about the Book of Kells for no other reason than the pic on the Penguin FW cover.

>>/lit/thread/S12465604

I have a clear linear progression that I would want to do, none of which I've actually read:

Waterfield presocratic reader (unlock: Vico)

Joyce, Portrait (have-done, re-read)

Iliad/Odyssey (with Portrait, unlock: Ulysses)

Vico (with Ulysses, unlock: the Meme)

[Anonymous No.12570623]

>>12570376

Thanks for this. One of the features of the book and its density is that it gets you curious about other books, which is great. I also feel like I want to reread Portrait after this, and possibly read the Ellman biography before summer. I have been lucky because I got a used copy for 5£, but it's not the 1986 revised one (hopefully there is not much difference). Really curious to read about Lucia Joyce as well, I have found some interesting stuff yesterday about her being a great inspiration for FW.

[Anonymous No.12570849]

Not involved in the FW reading group, but super hyped for a joyce re-read over the next year or so.

When I read them all for the first time I was like 19. Now, going back to them a little older, wiser and better read and also having mirrored some of Joyces own experiences (I'm an expat who used to live in Dublin).
I wonder what more I can take from them,

[Anonymous No.12571007]

I thought Finnegan's wake was bullshit. Then I read some Aristophanes and something stuck me.

The sound the frogs make - Brekkek kekkek kekkek! Koax Koax!

I thought Joyce was bullshitting, but he's actually referencing Aristophanes. Just wow.

[Anonymous No.12571010]

>>12571007

Well sure, I mean Finnegan's wake's entire schtick is the constant references to various writers and events through history

[Anonymous No.12571597]

>>12570849

I understand the hype, I feel like this is one of the few authors I could reread at different stages of life and always get something out of the experience.

[Anonymous No.12571623]

>>12570325
>Finnegans Wake

[Anonymous No.12571634]

>>12571007
>BrekKEK KEKKEK KEKEK

wdjmbt?

[Anonymous No.12571785]

Thunderword at the bottom of page 90
https://youtu.be/CGZJHpCqYVg

[Anonymous No.12571804]

>>12571785
>implying I want to listen to someone with a voice so prideful you can tell he's barely keeping down the smug self-satisfaction he consumes on a daily basis.

Although, he certainly represents the typical FW reader.

[Anonymous No.12571866]

What’s the best digital version of the book?

[Anonymous No.12571974]

>>12571866
Its not translated (though, perhaps it ought to be) and there aren't any versions with annotations.

[Anonymous No.12572157]

>>12571804
uh.. he doesn't sound prideful he just sounds nerdy

[Anonymous No.12572167]

>>12571785
That guy's typographic videos of FW are amazing. I've watched each at least 10 times.

[Anonymous No.12572192]

>>12572157
He's one step away from having an Ivy League accent like Frasier Crane.

[Anonymous No.12572284]

>>12572192
yeah and who's a bigger nerd than Frasier Crane, who btw actually has a massive inferiority complex which he offsets with an *attempt* to appear outwardly superior through intellectualism

[Anonymous No.12572543]

Ok, here are some more thoughts. As Gordon puts it, there is a sequence ending with this chapter. What has been happening is not really what is described (of course, given that what is described is barely understandable) but it is part of a stream of psychic life going on during HCE everyday’s actions - or, again, the stories narrated overlap this sequence of actions.

1 (3-10) waking up, recall of fall, trips outdoors to privy, voyage outward fused with returned voyage
2 (10-18) return to house, encounter of male with male: birth of son, brother battle, brother son battle
3 (18-29) re-established in bed hearing Issy’s voice: birth of daughter, first occurrence of blandness and flood.
4 (30-47) Noise from without and breaking of windows: vengeful mob, often identified with children, attacks the rear riving intruder.
5 (48-74) cowering in room, hearing banging sound and wind alternative with daughter seductive voice from upstairs: imagined male-fight over woman, intensified attack, cries of indignation from without; the fog is the worsening of glaucoma with “overclouded” Joyce’s sight.
6 (75-101) Shattered in, turns inward: defeated, ruined, starting to brew up Finnegans Wake
7 (101-) Sinking deep into self, at the end of the tether, turns to woman, remembers youth with her, starts cycle over again: final blindness, flood, rainbow, the letter, the book, ricorso

This helped me think about the complexities of the stories and words read to this point as part of a single psychic process - and a single scene - being mostly about HCE reaction to what he has done and its consequences. I was also thinking that the process may mostly be an image of guilt or an inner monologue about his guilt.

[Anonymous No.12573223]

>>12572284
Yes, exactly like this guy is doing irl unironically.