I take no shame in admitting that I cannot read this book. I was defeated after three paragraphs.

The text presented seems like a jumble of words and sounds that are completely beyond my comprehension.

The passage is filled with strange and made-up words, as well as a chaotic arrangement of letters and syllables.

It's as if Joyce is deliberately trying to push the boundaries of language and create something that is almost impossible to understand.

I can't even begin to decipher what he is trying to convey, nor do I have the patience or will to do so.

I see what he is doing; he is having fun with words and experimenting with new forms of expression.

But for me, it's just too much. Is this modernism gone too far?

I'm not sure, but I do know that this kind of writing is not for me.

I prefer books that are more accessible and easier to understand.

Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to appreciate Joyce's work, but that's okay.

Everyone has their own tastes and preferences when it comes to literature, and that's what makes it so diverse and interesting.

There are books that have a legitimate reason to be on the MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE list. And this particular book is constantly found in the HARDEST BOOKS to read lists. However, the thing is, it's not difficult in the way Shakespeare's works are hard, nor is it because it's a Homeros poem or Kant's dialectic philosophy. It's only hard because this son of a bitch wrote it in his own street language that even his fellow Irishmen can't understand! Have you seen the movie SNATCH? Imagine an entire book written by BRAD PITT in that language! Motherfucker, lol.

There is no grammatical value, nor is there any philosophical hidden message. There's just a simple jerk who decided to write in a very bad language. And it all boils down to this: if I can understand Kant and have read THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV twice, then I sure as hell won't label your work as hard, Mr. James. Your work is simply a waste of time.

Motherfucker.

Finnegan's Wake is the night counterpart to Ulysses' day.

It is filled with highly obfuscatory language, deliberately designed to distance the reader from the events being described, much like a sleeper is cut off from his waking consciousness.

If there is anyone who has truly managed to capture the language of dreams, it would surely be Joyce.

His writing in this work is often both playful and insightful, but at other times it can be aggravating and even loathsome.

I, like many others, went through a Joyce phase at one point. During that time, reading his works was like indulging in the most delicious ambrosia. I simply could not put his books down for fear of losing my tenuous hold on his unique reality.

I have come across numerous ways to approach this challenging book.

For the academic, it is recommended to read it in a class setting and engage in discussions about potential meanings and thematic occurrences. However, I must say that this seems like a lifelong task to me.

For the poet, the suggestion is to read the book aloud, randomly sampling different texts as one would savor a delectable fruit.

And for the avid reader, the advice is to forget about meaning, forget about plot, lock oneself in a room for a week with plenty of whiskey, and stop searching for a specific point. Instead, simply step into the strange and wonderful twilight zone of books that Finnegan's Wake represents.

I'm in awe. Not awesome, just in awe.

If Ulysses is a 3-dimensional mind compressed onto flat black & white pages, Finnegans Wake is a journey through time for a reader's mind. Its pathways are layered because Joyce writes for communities. He writes for everyone and anyone who's curious enough to just try, to just let go of knowing and harken into bewilderment.

To say I understand and have read this book would be a shame. A real shame because the first reading is just barely an introduction to the depths of this eternal dream. The shallow pools I can see into are four themes: languages/linguistics/words, religion, sex, and my unknown connections between them all.

To read Joyce is to begin a lifelong journey with a writer. He writes for layfolk, academics, that 18-year-old chap hiding under the covers with newly discovered adult material, and the poets and writers in all of us.

I went into this trying my damndest to not snoop at what the eggheads have to say. I peeked at the last line when I heard about its contents. As with Ulysses, I avoided any schema or the chapter summaries provided. As a blindfolded, extreme reader, I dropped out of the plane and skydove into this book knowing nothing of what to expect. It really is dreamlike, to shuffle along blindly reading for a word or phrase that glimmers in the darkness of ignorance. So now, after 5 months of stubbing my toe in the darkness of this book, I have snippets of phrases, paragraphs that drift back into bewilderment, and real gems of sentences to treasure forever and use as a compass for the next read through.

If you're curious to give it a try, just jump in!! Some safety barriers though, try the complete Joycean journey: begin with Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist, Ulysses (a real learning curve), and then Finnegans Wake. It took me a year to bumble through them all. It could take you longer or less.

Be patient, remember these works took Joyce's full lifetime to write and Finnegans Wake was his own race with mortality to finish.

Overall, Joyce's works are a complex and rewarding exploration of the human mind and experience. They challenge us to think differently, to expand our understanding of language and literature, and to embark on a journey of self-discovery. Whether you're a seasoned reader or a beginner, there's something in Joyce's works for everyone. So don't be afraid to take the plunge and see where it takes you.

Inextricable, inexpugnable, intraducible, interminable, indescifrable, ilegible, insufrible, inabarcable, inescrutable, insostenible, inaccesible, impenetrable, impredecible, inalcanzable, inasequible, incomprensible, incongruente, intimidante, inaceptable, intragable, insoportable, invulnerable, indefinible, inexplicable, imposible.

These are just some of the qualifying adjectives that could be perfectly applied to this colossal work of art. If with "Ulysses" James Joyce had reached the limit of all possible variants with language, with "Finnegans Wake" he surpasses it to transform it into something with its own entity and turn it into a new literary universe.

The extreme complexity of the language introduced in the book, added to dozens of neologisms created by the writer, stretches to a whopping 250,000 words in a tightly packed text of 628 pages. To revolutionize the text, Joyce includes distorted words, guttural sounds of babies, onomatopoeias, linguistic creations, 3,500 real and invented proper names, and languages from all over the planet, including dialects and dead languages. More than 70 languages to be more precise.

Playing with words is another of his favorite pastimes and for this he becomes a worthy successor of Lewis Carroll, who in his books "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" already coined the system of hybrid word creation or invented completely implausible names (that of the Jabberwocky is a clear example).

In some chapters, like the one that closes Book I and is attributed to one of the main characters, Anna Livia Plurabelle, we discover that for example Joyce includes the names of more than 600 rivers from all over the world. Any part of the book that one reads is innovative or revolutionary. In fact, the ambivalence is inherent in the very title of the book, "Finnegans Wake" (thus, without an apostrophe), since "wake" means both "wake" and "awaken", hence the circular nature of the book, where the beginning of the first chapter is a sentence already started that links with the unfinished sentence of the last page. And although it may seem like a lie, this book also has a plot or storyline, but hidden among tons of unrelated words, dreamy dialogues, and disconcerting phrases.

Another interesting aspect is the construction that Joyce makes with words and the creation of hybrid words. Many of them, starting from a common root, are constructed with two and even three different words and show to what extent he twisted words to give them a new meaning. I cite some examples of word combinations to be more graphic: escéano (scene + ocean), sordiota (deaf + idiot), literasura (literature + garbage), amornecer (love + dawn), obsceñor (obscene + sir). These terms are taken from the translation by Marcelo Zabaloy, who made the first complete translation into Spanish for the first time in history, but this is something I will comment on later.

Related to this topic and to understand and share that Joyce did not write this book without any sense but with erudition and in a meticulous way, let's take this hundred-letter word that seems incongruent and that already hits us full on the third page: ¡bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk! This term, word or whatever you want to call it is not included just like that. After doing some research, I found an explanation of it on the internet and it is the following. It starts with "bababadal", a term that means "Tower of Babel" in Genesis 11:1-9, in which God punishes everyone to speak in dozens of different languages (what a coincidence, something that populates all the pages of this book). This long term breaks down to mean "thunder" in ten different languages, associating its phonetic roots with these languages, namely: gharaghta (Hindi/r'ad), kamminarronnkonn (Japanese/kaminari), bronn (Greek/brontê), tonnerronn (French/tonerre), tuonn (Italian/tuono), thunn (English/thunder), trovarr (Portuguese/trovão), hounawnskawn (Swedish and Irish/aska and scán), toohoohoordenen (Danish/torden), thurnuk (Irish/tórnach).

What do I want to achieve with this? First of all, to affirm that James Joyce was a genius, regardless of who it bothers, even to all his detractors and critics to whom he warned "I can justify every line of my book". Secondly, to understand that no normal reader (like me) could decipher that never without his help or by people who are dedicated to studying the book and, moreover, that that word is on the third page! Imagine if we wanted to discover every strange word throughout the 628 pages. It would take us hundreds of years. I take off my hat in the face of such genius.

Passing on to the plot of the book itself, roughly speaking, the book deals, first of all, with a reference to Adam and Eve and the fall of man and with the mythical story of the giant Finn MacCool, who disrupts his existence in Finnegans, a Dublin builder who, while working on the construction of a wall, falls off the ladder and dies. His wife Annie arranges the body of the dead man to serve as a feast at the wake, however, this disappears before they can start devouring it.

After that, there is a wake full of incidents. There is a fight where whiskey accidentally spills on the corpse of Finnegan, who rises from his coffin pleading for a drink. But to complicate the plot even more, that same Finnegans can be considered a dream of the giant Finn and perhaps what happens from there becomes part of the dream world, where everything is possible and at the same time is replicated through the cryptic language in which the book is written.

On the other hand, the adventures of a Dublin publican, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, are narrated. His name will mutate into dozens of others that will start with the initials HCE, since this character will constantly metamorphose, hence the initials are not taken at random: HCE is also "Here Comes Everybody". HCE is a particular man, but also all of us ("Here comes everybody").

And in addition to HCE and ALP, we find their twin sons, Shem the writer and Shaun the postman, who dispute the love of the young Iseut with all the baggage of reading that these instances generate in the book.

"Finnegans Wake" is a book that is read blindly and the first obstacle that the reader encounters in the dark is that of language. There is no other way to explain it. To be honest about this, I maintain that the main character of the book is language. It is the cause, the consequence, the means and the end. It is the total master and when the reader reads it, he easily falls into the fact of trying to understand what is narrated there, generating a paralysis or blockage of reading, and in other cases certain states of desperation that lead to abandoning it and never picking it up again. If one thinks that when reading "Ulysses" Joyce reached the limit of the imaginable and bearable, with "Finnegans Wake" one falls into a much worse and disconcerting abyss.

And if "Ulysses" is the book of what happens during the day, "Finnegans Wake" is the book of the night and this is easily explained: in "Ulysses", everything takes place during the day with the characters of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus walking all over Dublin. In "Finnegans Wake", everything that is read in the 628 pages happens in one night.

The supposed end of the book, that is, of the last pages, traces a direct relationship with "Ulysses", since the interior monologue of Anna Livia Plurabelle is equated with that of Molly Bloom during eight eternal sentences that occupy the last forty pages (40!) of the book without a break or the use of a single comma. The difference is that in "Finnegans Wake" this monologue is shorter, but no less difficult to read.

I'm not going to be hypocritical and I confess that I skipped several pages at different times during the reading, because there is so much indecipherable abundance of the text that it achieves an exasperating disconcertion in the reader and one annuls oneself. One must close the book and pick it up again on another occasion so as not to succumb, but I feel calm with the fact of knowing that it is not a crime, because paraphrasing Kafka, if a book does not split our heads, why read it? In my case, it was not for lack of interest but because at times I felt completely overcome by the text, since after all I am just a fallible reader.

Regarding its translator, Marcelo Zabaloy, it is highly meritorious to recognize that he was the first to dare to translate the book in its entirety after previous translations that were considered in a certain way deficient and even more meritorious because Zabaloy is completely outside of any literary circuit: he translated the book as a hobby for seven long years and being a systems analyst! Neither a writer, nor a translator, nor anything related to literature but just a man who fixes computers in his native Bahía Blanca, in the south-central part of Argentina and who also made his own translation of "Ulysses", both published by the El Cuenco de Plata publishing house.

The complication of Zabaloy's edition lies in the fact that together with the publishing house they decided not to include explanatory notes at the bottom, explaining that the edition of the book would have been stretched to 1,500 or 2,000 pages. The complexity of the words in the text is explained by Zabaloy when he says "in a line where there are ten words, four of them do not exist. They are not in the dictionaries. You are obliged to create neologisms. "Finnegans Wake" is to approach something that has no real entity, a kind of universal language, which creates by amalgamating elements taken from more than eighty natural languages, with English as the common substratum. It is as if in your house you had a shed and someone brought you a bag with one hundred kilos of puzzles, and of the one hundred kilos you have thirty kilos of a gray that varies from one end to the other, in one hundred scales. Where the floor and the ceiling are the same and you have to put each piece correctly so that it is assembled."

In any case, Zabaloy did not work without tools. He read the book in its original language, accumulated essays, criticisms, encyclopedias, read the French edition corrected by Joyce himself, consulted the FWEET (Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury), an online page with more than 80,000 annotations since the book was published, and relied on most of the books that different writers published as guide books for reading, such as those of Roland McHugh and met Hervé Michel, who translated it into French, among other things. I only have words of admiration for the titanic, enormous effort of Marcelo Zabaloy in which he invested seven years of his life.

Finally, and to close this long review, I return to the figure of James Joyce, eternal, giant, who dedicated 17 years of his life to creating a unique work, published two years before his death, practically blind, highly depressed, with his daughter hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital and escaping from the Nazis who had already set in motion their terrifying death machine. Joyce, after showing critics and editors the first pages of the book, was able to affirm: «The critics who were so grateful for "Ulysses" now complain about my new work. Since they are unable to understand it, they claim that it has no meaning. Now, if it had no meaning, it could have been written quickly, without thinking, without pain, without erudition, but I assure you that these twenty pages that we have in front of us have cost me 1,200 hours and an enormous expenditure of spirit.» Master, what more can I add. After reading such a book, paradoxically, I was left without words.

Joyce's Finnegans Wake receives a highly interesting treatment in Verbivoracious Festschrift Volume Three: The Syllabus.

The issue with Finn Egan's Splashy Fest-o-the-Dye Inn is largely about how much there is to admire and take in, and how much to create and add to the mix. It seems that not a single cautious chance has a nanobreadth's worth of a following or abillybongabitty in all of the onrushininginfinity to Die Cifre.

This complex and somewhat cryptic description leaves one wondering about the true nature of the events and experiences that are taking place within the context of Finn Egan's establishment. It makes one curious to explore further and try to understand the deeper meanings and implications hidden within these words.

Perhaps there are hidden treasures of wisdom and inspiration waiting to be discovered, or maybe it is simply a vivid and imaginative portrayal of a unique and otherworldly place.

Figata, written in the distant April 2016.

When the package containing the book arrived, this spontaneous comment came to me: in 140 pages (and what pages! A refined edition and beautiful paper, always pleasant to have between one's fingers even in these times of barbaric digitalization), in 140 pages, I said, we have an interesting introduction, an essay by Samuel Beckett, a florilegium of passages taken from the monumental work reported in the original language and enriched by the translation of Rodolfo Wilcock, plus various articles that the translator himself wrote over the years on the great Irish Author.

Good stuff, I thought then, and remained in respectful adoration, looking at it from a distance; after all, I had already partly done my duty, I had bought it and even roughly commented on it.

Now I have decided to tackle it (and after all, if not now when?: a week in absolute nothingness, ample spaces to scatter the family, the only distractions the rustle of leaves in the wind and some stupid little insect).

Well, at the end of the reading, I can only confirm: figata!!

An untranslatable text and never completely translated, the quintessence of experimental language and the anti-novel, an amphetamine-like, delirious, infernal, diabolically prophetic book (it seems to contain the words "email", "google", "Nike" about shoes, "tigerwoods", and even, at a relatively close distance, the combination of the words "fungo" and "Nogeysoky" that someone has wanted to read as "Nagasaky"…). One can understand why some translators went crazy before finishing the work, and others committed suicide, and for all anyway this text has been an obsession?

The book is also very erudite, full of biblical, anthropological, ethnic, cabalistic references; words that are indeed invented, but have in themselves a plenitude of intrinsic meanings, wink at Latin and borrow roots from Sanskrit, are permeated with religiosity. In all this, the plot and the setting of the work decidedly take a back seat: here the form is the content; it is known anyway that it tells the dream of the old Finnegan who, having reached the end of his life, retraces the historical events of Ireland and the birth of the world.

There are therefore many keys to reading and different possible approaches: those who want to deepen the philological and historical aspect will have plenty to chew on; I, due to an evident lack of means, have read it for entertainment and for the pure pleasure of savoring the wonderful world of words that the Author has created (very useful, in this, the original version) and the fanciful refinement of the work done by the Translator. Two poets, there is nothing more to say.

Interesting are the writings of Wilcock reported in the appendix; from which one learns, for example, that Joyce did not love Rome and had a very bad experience during his stay in the capital: he worked there as a bank clerk living in Via Frattina (a very trendy location today, but probably damp and run-down at the time); the Tiber scared him because it was too big and too turbulent; the antiquities seemed to him a cemetery and everything spoke to him of death and ruin; his pastime was to get drunk while the future wife Nora waited for him at home furious, and he even ended up being robbed by two stupid drinking companions…

I was kind of a weird teenager.

I firmly believe that I was around 15 or 16 years old when I delved into the complex and mysterious world of Finnegans Wake.

At that time, reading Joyce seemed to be of utmost importance and felt much more urgent than having friends. In fact, I didn't have a large circle of friends.

Obviously, there was a vast amount in FW that I didn't understand. Indeed, it's quite possible that I didn't understand anything at all.

And yet, strangely enough, I didn't really find it "difficult."

Unlike when dealing with other classics, I didn't have to engage in the tedious work of following a convoluted plot or painstakingly keeping track of a myriad of characters.

In Finnegans Wake, everything seemed to mean everything, and every possible association was equally valid, opening up a world of limitless possibilities and interpretations for me.

This unique experience of reading Joyce's masterpiece had a profound impact on my young and impressionable mind.

I spent a couple of years painstakingly working my way through this remarkable book.

Besides Flannery O'Connor's short stories and Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony, I can scarcely think of any other text that has the power to inspire me with such evangelical zeal.

When I think about Finnegans Wake, an intense desire wells up within me to convert everyone to the Church of James Joyce.

For me, delving into the Wake was all about getting to know Joyce on a profound level.

Finnegans Wake is composed in a stream of consciousness that is both delightfully unconscious, resembling the language of dreams, and astonishingly clever, with puns that abound in a multitude of modern and ancient languages.

Discovering the hidden depths of meaning in a single word or phrase was often like being granted a precious window into Joyce's brilliant mind.

Ha. Now you can all clearly see what I meant by that "evangelical zeal." I might sound like a complete fool when I talk about Joyce, but that's just how passionate I am about this work.

p.s. In no way do I mean to imply that I possess any substantial knowledge of FW. I'm simply overjoyed that I dedicated the time to skirt the edges of this extraordinary book.

A way a lone a last a loved a long the

Review in progress. This may take a while.

I think I've been accidentally reading a Dutch version mistakenly marked as English. It's quite a strange situation. However, I have since found the Dutch translation which is, surprisingly, in perfect English. I firmly believe that this is what's caused all the confusion amongst scholars for all these years.

Beckettian babbling is indeed better than Jimmy Joyce's jabbering. I can't go on, yet I'll go on. I still have a preference for Beckett; he's like the student who shows great promise rather than the established master.

Although the book makes no sense to me, there are sentences that are amusing and worth quoting. For example, 'Here's lumbos. Where misties swaddlum, where misches lodge none, where mystries pour kind on, O sleepy! So be yet!' Taken in small doses, it's quite fun reading a book that is impossible to understand.

I couldn't find 'weenybeenyveenyteeny' in the dictionary. I'm not sure why not. Maybe it's a word Joyce made up.

Apparently, Joyce got nervous when he heard rumours that readers were beginning to understand 'Ulysses'. So, he came up with 'Finnegans Wake' as if to say, 'take that you bastards!'

End of Chapter One....

Bigamy Bob and Sordid Sam.

The hat of Mr Melancholy Slow.

Warning: this book may contain normal words.

'Giv the gav of the grube.'

'From velveteens to dimities is barely a fivefinger span...'

I have a particular fondness for John Bishop's edition.

One of the main reasons is that it has larger pages, which provides me with more space to annotate upon.

This is extremely beneficial as it allows me to jot down my thoughts, ideas, and comments freely.

I can make detailed annotations without having to worry about running out of room.

With the larger pages, I can also organize my annotations more neatly and clearly.

It makes it easier for me to refer back to my notes and review my thoughts later on.

Moreover, the bigger pages give the book a more substantial and luxurious feel.

It enhances the overall reading experience and makes me enjoy the book even more.

John Bishop's edition truly stands out for its generous page size, which is a great advantage for anyone who likes to annotate and engage deeply with the text.

Was this medieval Irish Brainrot?

Medieval Ireland is a fascinating subject, but the question of whether there was something like "brainrot" during that time period is an interesting one to explore. The Middle Ages were a complex and often tumultuous era, with various social, political, and cultural factors at play.

Some might argue that the rigid hierarchical structures, limited access to education, and prevalence of superstition could have contributed to a certain degree of intellectual stagnation or "brainrot." However, it is important to note that this is a rather one-sided view.

Medieval Ireland also had its moments of innovation and creativity. There were great works of literature, art, and architecture that emerged during this time. Additionally, the oral traditions and storytelling that were so prominent in Irish culture helped to preserve and pass down knowledge from generation to generation.

So, while there may have been some aspects of medieval Irish society that could be considered less than ideal from an intellectual perspective, it would be inaccurate to simply label it as "brainrot." A more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of this period is needed to truly appreciate its complexity and significance.