A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake

by David Hayman

James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is a complex novel that blends the reality of life with a dream world. The motive idea of the novel, inspired by the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, is that history is cyclical. To demonstrate this, the book ends with the first half of the first sentence of the novel. Thus, the last line is actually part of the first line, and the first line a part of the last line. The plot itself is difficult to follow, as the novel explores a number of fractured story lines.A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake sheds light on Joyce's intent through the development of the Finnegans Wake manuscript.

337 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

This charming piece of Wake scholarship made its way to my home via the grand graciousness of one of our angelic gr Angels. Thank you!


Here weir, reach, island, bridge. There! That’s what cockles the hearty! A bit beside the bush and then a walk along the
Paris
1922-38

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I cannot claim to have read the bulk of David Hayman's 54 year-old book just yet (neither have I finished reading FINNEGANS WAKE (FW) for that matter), I nevertheless feel prepared to write a small review about it. Nor for that matter have I read Phillip Herring's JOYCE'S NOTESHEETS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM from cover to cover despite considering it to be one of the prized jewels of my Joycean collection. During this early phase of my own Wakean adventures, I consider A FIRST-DRAFT VERSION OF FINNEGANS WAKE (FDV) to be a book more for reference than for reading. This review concerns itself mostly with Hayman's lengthy introduction to his book.

Preparatory to writing this little appraisal I also read Sam Slote's 2002 article "A second look at the First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake" (Genetic Joyce Studies), which endeavors to place Hayman's book in some perspective given 40 years of hindsight. As Slote intimates, Hayman's book might have better been titled along the lines of: "A Mélange of Early Scribbled, Overwritten and Crossed Through Fragments Reconstituted in the Shape of Finnegans Wake," by which I certainly intend no unfavorable judgment. Ironically, because of its complicated structure, FDV might be considered to represent yet another cumulative layer of Wakean nightlitter and commentary all rolled into one. And yet it does shine a great deal of light into the darkness. Of course any transcription must conceal even as it reveals, and a FW transcription might well be more susceptible to this high-contrast effect than any other book for which such troves of early drafts remain extant. (What are some apposite comparisons? None come to mind.) FDV is one writer's vision, or version, of Joyce's entire composition of FW, from its earliest days (1922) to publication (1939), a transtemporal, evolutionary gestalt.

Stole mentions a present-day preference for researchers referring to the James Joyce Archive. I should not be surprised to learn that today's scholars of Joyce frequently turn to Hayman (and to Scholes and Kain, to Herring) before dipping down into the digital stew. Hayman's introduction to FDV must surely remain today as indispensable and concise an account of Joyce's composition of FW as ever. Hyman lays out a detailed year-by-year history of FW's production. Most importantly, in his "Sources" section, Hayman blocks out a carefully elaborated compendium of Joyce's notes and draft versions from which FW was cobbled together, which material is now mostly harbored at the University of Buffalo and the British Museum. This Hayman follows with an inestimable chapter-by-chapter guide to his own first draft version, providing the exact sources and pertinent informative narrative about how the constituent fragments were formed and modified and went first into Joyce's concreting assembly and into Hayman's own, and how all appears in the published FW. The desirability of keeping this guide close at hand while reading FW cannot be overstated.

I haven't read the main text all the way through, but I have referred to it piecemeal while reading FW in the last few years, and it provides a kind of foundation for helping to understand the final text. Hayman's complete marginal annotation provides FW pagination and a running guide to Joyce's notes that is wonderfully helpful. The long "Draft Catalogue" at the end of the book is also rather incredible, expanding on these marginal references in the main text: an extensive and exacting compilation of sources with other annotations included.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But who comes yond with pire on poletop? He who relights the moon. andAnd the hag the call damename Coverfew hists from her lane. And haste 'tis time for bairn to hame. Da'mselle's, we chickchilds' comeho to roo. Comehome to roo as chickchilds do.

Helpmeat too, his fiery goos goss goosemother, [woman who did,] he tell princes of the age about. who not knows she early when first come into the pictures factory fresh wronged by whomsoever. he take rap for that [early] party. and whenceforward Ani Mama and her forty bustles terrified of mountains? but would wave her hat to the papal legate on account of all her quaqueduxed.

It darkles, all this our fun nominal world. Man and beast are chill. In deeryard imbraced, alleged, injointed and unlatched, the birds, even thumbtit, quail silent. Was vesper ere awhile. Now conticinium. No chare of beagles, frantling of peacocks, no muzzing of the camel, smuttering of apes. Lights, pageboy, lights! When otter leaps in outer parts then Yul remembers May. Her hung maid mohns are bluming look to greet the loes on yon coast of amethyst; arcglow's seafire siemens here and warnerforth's hookercrookers. Darkpark's acoo with sucking loves. Rosimund's by her wishing well. And if you wand to Livmouth, wenderer, here is lurks no iron welcome. Bing. Bong. Bingbang: Thunderation! Were you Marely quean of scuts or but Christien the Last here's dapplebellied mugs and troublebedded rooms and sawdust strown in expectoration. Mr Knight, big tapster, buttles; his alewife's up to his hips. And Wasty Lyke looks after all rinsings and don't omiss Kate, put in with the bricks. A's the sign and one's the number. So who ever comes ever for whoopee week must put up with the Jug and Chambers."