Complete Works of James Joyce (149 page)
Read Complete Works of James Joyce Online
Authors: Unknown
Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921
Published in 1939, this work of comic fiction is significant for its experimental style and is now reputed to be one of the most challenging works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, two years before Joyce’s death,
Finnegans Wake
was the novelist’s final complete work. The entire novel is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, formed of a mixture of Standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which many critics believe attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Owing to the work’s expansive linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations and abandonment of typical novel conventions of plot and character construction,
Finnegans Wake
remains an enigma to many people.
Please note:
to aid your understanding of this very challenging text, a synopsis for each part has been included, which you may choose to read or to ignore if you wish to experience the text unaided.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Joyce in his final year
PART
I
Synopsis of the first part
Finnegans Wake
is a cyclical work from the very start of the novel: the last sentence — a fragment — recirculates to the beginning sentence: “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.” Joyce himself revealed that the novel “ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence.” The introductory chapter establishes the novel’s setting as “Howth Castle and Environs”, and introduces Dublin hod carrier “Finnegan”, who falls to his death from a ladder while constructing a wall. Finnegan’s wife Annie puts out his corpse as a meal spread for the mourners at his wake, but he vanishes before they can eat him. A series of episodic vignettes follows, loosely related to the dead Finnegan, most commonly referred to as “The Willingdone Museyroom”, “Mutt and Jute”, and “The Prankquean”. At the chapter’s close a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan’s corpse, and “the dead Finnegan rises from his coffin bawling for whiskey and his mourners put him back to rest”, persuading him that he is better off where he is. The chapter ends with the image of the Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker character sailing into Dublin Bay to take a central role in the story.
The second chapter opens with an account of “Harold or Humphrey” Chimpden receiving the nickname “Earwicker” from the Sailor King, who encounters him attempting to catch earwigs with an inverted flowerpot on a stick while manning a tollgate through which the King is passing. This name helps Chimpden, now known by his initials Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, to rise to prominence in Dublin society as “Here Comes Everybody”. He is then brought low by a rumor that begins to spread across Dublin, apparently concerning a sexual trespass involving two girls in the Phoenix Park, although details of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker’s transgression change with each retelling of events.
Chapters two to four follow the progress of this rumor, starting with Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker’s encounter with “a cad with a pipe” in Phoenix Park. The cad greets Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker in Gaelic and asks the time, but Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker misunderstands the question as an accusation, and incriminates himself by denying rumours the cad has not yet heard. These rumours quickly spread across Dublin, gathering momentum until they are turned into a song penned by the character Hosty called “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly”. As a result, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker goes into hiding, where he is besieged at the closed gate of his pub by a visiting American looking for drink after hours. However Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker remains silent – not responding to the accusations or verbal abuse – dreams, is buried in a coffin at the bottom of Lough Neagh, and is finally brought to trial, under the name Festy King. He is eventually freed, and goes once more into hiding. An important piece of evidence during the trial – a letter about Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker written by his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle – is called for so that it can be examined in closer detail.
Anna Livia Plurabelle’s Letter becomes the focal point as it is analysed in detail in I.5. This letter was dictated by Anna Livia Plurabelle to her son Shem, a writer, and entrusted to her other son Shaun, a postman, for delivery. The letter never reaches its intended destination, ending up in a midden heap where it is unearthed by a hen named Biddy. Chapter I.6 digresses from the narrative in order to present the main and minor characters in more detail, in the form of twelve riddles and answers.
In the final two chapters of Part I we learn more about the letter’s writer Shem the Penman (I.7) and its original author, his mother Anna Livia Plurabelle (I.8). The Shem chapter consists of “Shaun’s character assassination of his brother Shem”, describing the hermetic artist as a forger and a “sham”, before “Shem is protected by his mother [Anna Livia Plurabelle], who appears at the end to come and defend her son.” The following chapter concerning Shem’s mother, known as “Anna Livia Plurabelle”, is interwoven with thousands of river names from all over the globe, and is widely considered the novel’s most celebrated passage. The chapter was described by Joyce in 1924 as “a chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone.” These two washerwomen gossip about Anna Livia Plurabelle’s response to the allegations laid against her husband Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, as they wash clothes in the Liffey. Anna Livia Plurabelle is said to have written a letter declaring herself tired of her mate. Their gossip then digresses to her youthful affairs and sexual encounters, before returning to the publication of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker’s guilt in the morning newspaper, and his wife’s revenge on his enemies: borrowing a “mailsack” from her son Shaun the Post, she delivers presents to her 111 children. At the chapter’s close the washerwomen try to pick up the thread of the story, but their conversation is increasingly difficult as they are on opposite sides of the widening Liffey, and it is getting dark. Finally, as they turn into a tree and a stone, they ask to be told a Tale of Shem or Shaun.
