round about page 243...

I pretty much popped in and out of the Wake group last night, August being an awfully busy month for me, so rather than posting something lengthy, I'll just say that I was struck by Tom's take on Shem. He said that Shem's stance was always one of mediated reality--mediated by words, that is--rather than that of the man of action, represented by Shaun. As if in affirmation, Campbell writes that Shem, an outcast from the guess the colors game, which he fails at, threatened to write a jeremiad against them.

I can certainly relate to the Shem position, because I think I tend to come at things a bit obliquely, describing my experience of something by relating it to some other thing.

But in reality aren't we all by necessity Shaun as well? We must have the unmediated reality before we can have the mediated one. Maybe a Shaun accepts reality in its unmediated form more easily, while a Shem has to describe it to himself or others before he knows it is real...

Finn group recap--pages 237-239

I haven't been all that good about recapping where we as a group actually got to in the last session, so let me correct that a bit. It's pretty easy this time. We began on page 237 with the rainbow girls saying "Enchainted, dear sweet Stainusless..."

Stainusless is of course a play on Stanislaus, Joyce's brother, who has the fortunate or unfortunate role of playing the good or at least "upright" brother. Shaun to his Shem, Chuff to his Glugg, and so on. In the story right now, as Chuff, he is in the enviable position of both the center of their circle and the center of their admiring attention as well. (Glugg is well out of the charmed circle). Although he is being worshipped, it is somewhat in negative form, as he is NOT unclean, NOT outcaste, all of which brings us back to remembering Shem, the one who is all these things. And 'stainusless' is after all not the same thing as 'stainusnotatall'. There's a bit of wolf in sheep's clothing aspect to Chuff.

Brought into the litany of worship are some other elements that we noticed and speculated about. There's a lot about Egypt and the Egyptian underworld in particular. There is also a lot of Buddhism, or more precisely, the tales of Buddha's life, this time in the form of the tale of the hermit and a very faithful hare. And many many plays on words involving the Catholic mass. ("May he colp, may he colp her, may he mixandmass colp her!")Also a bit of a tale from Greek tragedy, about Philomena and the King of Thrace.

Ready for the next meeting, then? Well, as always, ready as we'll ever be.

The Mary Ellen Bute film

Here's the film that Ed linked to a couple of posts back. It's on YouTube, so we might as well have it here as well:

Translation II: I really think so

I found a copy of Finnegans Wake in Japanese. 

Who would do such a thing? 

It's sort of like one of those impossible tasks you undertake when you are asleep, like solving problems in quantum chromodynamics in ornamental pastry, arranging global conference calls for basset hounds, or perhaps plugging a tree into an electric socket. Really!



Nice cover though.

Passages from Finnegans Wake - Mary Ellen Bute- intro - YouTube

Finnegans Wake - Mary Ellen Bute- intro - YouTube:

This is from a movie called "Passages from Finnegans Wake".  The passages are reassembled in snippets that actually have enough narrative to form a film.  The handling is creative--and funny.  Thought you'd get a kick out of it.

'via Blog this'

"Mary Ellen Bute (November 21, 1906—October 17, 1983) was a pioneer American film animator significant as one of the first female experimental filmmakers. Her specialty was visual musicand, while working in New York between 1934 and 1953, made fourteen short, abstract musical films. Many of these were seen in regular movie theaters, such as Radio City Music Hall, usually preceding a prestigious film. Several of her later abstract films were categorized as part of her Seeing Sound series...."


Passages from Finnegans Wake – 1965-67, b&w, 97 mins. (director and co-writer) 
Screened at the Cannes Film Festival

--Wikipedia