Finnegans Wake: Reading for the first time

[Aloha]

Bob, are you rereading Ulysses?

[Bob]

Alas, no.........although I'm way overdue. In theory I'm reading Ellmann. In practice I'm doing (not enough) writing about Dubliners. And I'm easily distracted by all things Wakean......

[Bob]

Re: reading Finnegans Wake for the first time....

One of the big hurdles is a matter of faith. I don't think I mean this in a religious sense, but maybe I do. Maybe that's exactly how I mean it.

By the time I'd succeeded with Ulysses and had mastered it to one degree or another, I already knew a fair amount about the Wake, that intimidating tome. I'd heard people talk about it, I'd read about it, I'd dipped into it here and there. Testing the waters. Reading articles about the Wake didn't seem any less complicated than diving into the book itself. There are no real exegeses of the Wake: there are only personal reports of the flashing images that different readers have seen reflected in its rippling pages. The opinions range from it being the work of genius down to the inchoate scribblings of a syphilitic madman. Take your pick, or anywhere along the scale contained between these poles. What's more, all of these wildly disparate opinions are expressed equally by both uninformed dilettantes and members of the literati.

To be a Joycean has always been indistinguishable from being a member of the Cult of Joyce. There are those academicians, I'm told, who are lovers of literature, and then there are those ― you know, them ― who are in the Joyce Cult. You don't want to fall down that rabbit hole. Therein lies madness.

So before I was able to successfully read the Wake I had to confront the possibility that, as some claim, I was wasting my time. It might be that Finnegans Wake neither means nor signifies anything at all. It might be, as many insist, that it's only a colossal joke perpetuated by Joyce on the reader. If that's true, you're being made a fool of if you try to do something akin to "reading" it.

An early hurdle, yes. It took a while for me to put the dilemma into words: Do I have faith in Joyce?

Once I concluded that Ulysses and everything else indicated that Joyce was deserving of my trust, then I found my faith. No, the Wake could not be a joke on me. There must be something there. I'm willing to trust Joyce one more time. I'm willing to press on no matter how meaningless this matter seems to me.

And after a few hundred pages it did start making more sense. Complex of course, but not without signification. Not madness. A vastly intricate construct.

If you can find your faith in Joyce as I did, maybe that will prove a major hurdle that you can surmount, too.

[Phillip]

مجتبی wrote: "Hi there. I am an M.A graduate of English Literature from Iran.
since my bachelor I was always fascinated with FW. I wrote my thesis on FW. It's been more than 2 years now.

I believe after such a ..."

good luck on the translation! bravo!