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Finnegans Wake

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Jennifer1984 On July 20, 2022
Returner and proud





Penzance, United Kingdom
#16New Post! Oct 06, 2020 @ 06:58:45
I've been trying to read this book for a couple weeks now. Only a little here and there, on and off because life is very busy right now. But I'm giving it a go.

I can't seem to be able to find any sort of linear narrative to this. it's jumping all over the place and not making much in the way of sense so far. It's hard work.

Will come back again on this one when I think I might be able to say something about it that I understand.
dookie On December 16, 2023
Foolish Bombu





, United Kingdom
#17New Post! Oct 06, 2020 @ 08:22:45
@Jennifer1984 Said

I've been trying to read this book for a couple weeks now. Only a little here and there, on and off because life is very busy right now. But I'm giving it a go.

I can't seem to be able to find any sort of linear narrative to this. it's jumping all over the place and not making much in the way of sense so far. It's hard work.

Will come back again on this one when I think I might be able to say something about it that I understand.


I think it's a case of simply laying back and thinking of England.....

Maybe one intention of Joyce was to keep the literary professionals busy for centuries seeking to decipher all the meanings - his way of seeking a form of immortality.

I think you can just try to enjoy some of the wordplay (some of which I have mentioned in this thread) but maybe a guide is needed for grasping its themes. There are many available.
dookie On December 16, 2023
Foolish Bombu





, United Kingdom
#18New Post! Oct 06, 2020 @ 09:44:13
For anyone interested, my blog on Finnegans Wake......




Blog

(With glorious illustrations!)
dookie On December 16, 2023
Foolish Bombu





, United Kingdom
#19New Post! Oct 08, 2020 @ 11:42:00
Back in Costa's before another stint in Oxfam, a nice toastie inside of me, the coffee still hot in the cup. My mind drifts to something said by Samuel Beckett about Finnegans Wake. He said that the book was not about anything so much as being the thing itself . Joyce was seeking to get beyond art as "representing" or pointing to, anything else. All good art should involve the inter-relationship of the art "object" and the "subject" who looks/reads. Beckett wrote of those waiting for Godot but waiting seems impossible in a way. Reality is always demanding our "answers" in each and every moment. We give them, ready or not, willing or unwilling.

I feel myself the temptation of a book with all the answers, something "out there", given, interpreted for me. That I can then adapt to, mimic, repeat to others as a solution to every question. Although a temptation, I think such is a prison.

All life then is the thing itself, at least for me. A book cannot be life itself, only an integral part of it, therefore Finnegans Wake can only act as an ejector seat that offers freedom to be ourselves - or simply chains, if we get sucked in, insisting all must see as we do.

I was listening to another chapter of Ulysses a day or so ago. Chapter 4, which introduces Leopold Bloom, or "Poldy" as his wayward wife Molly calls him. And calls him often as she lingers in bed, asking him to bring her a pot of tea. Leopold, an Irish jew, shuffles around he kitchen, feeding the cat, then pops out for some mutton kidneys, returns to have them for breakfast. The chapter ends as he goes to the Jakes, a copy of Tid Bits for the necessary paper to wipe himself. His bowel movements and resultant smell are well described by Joyce, who saw all life as having the potential to offer signs, or maybe to be the thing itself.

When it was suggested to him that Ulysses was "unfit to read" he said that, if so, then "life was unfit to live."

Anyway, I waffle. Make of it what you will.
dookie On December 16, 2023
Foolish Bombu





, United Kingdom
#20New Post! Oct 09, 2020 @ 09:29:13
Quotes from Finnegans Wake:-

"One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.”


"Let us leave theories there and return to here’s hear.”

"He is cured by faith who is sick of fate.”

"I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me.”

"Group drinkards maaks grope thinkards.”

"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!”


More available on request, or google for your own.
dookie On December 16, 2023
Foolish Bombu





, United Kingdom
#21New Post! Oct 10, 2020 @ 09:27:13
Rather than begin yet another thread (which more often than not taxes me with exactly what section to put it in) I'll waffle on here. (There seems some strange relationship between the text of Finnegans Wake and The Blue Cliff Record spoken of below - perhaps that both are best read when inebriated)

For a year or more (I think quite a lot more) I have dipped into a book "Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record". A record of 100 zen koans with added commentary by two "masters". Translated by Thomas Cleary.

Well, despite the zen master Dogen saying that "throughout the entire universe there is nothing that is hidden" (yet how refreshing to hear that) the secrets of the Blue Cliff Record remain secret.

I am up to "Case 42" called "Nice Snow" for reasons I have yet to understand.

Here is how it begins:-

Even a simple presentation drips water and drags mud; the cooperation of inquiry and response is a silver mountain and an iron wall. If you try to discuss it, you see ghosts in front of your skull; if you seek it in thought, you sit on a mountain of darkness. The clear bright sun lights up the sky....


The "master" Tenkei comments about "the clear bright sun"..... It’s right in front of your nose; nothing is hidden.

Which brings me back to Dogen.

Do things seem obscure to you? Do you think you understand anything?
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