Hurtleturtle, off we go! Page 3-7

We began in earnest this Wednesday, experimenting with a slightly different format. All eight of us present read a paragraph and when we had got round the table, each person said a few words about what had struck them. Although I struggled a bit to formulate anything, I liked this approach, as it was instructive to get a glimpse as to what others had experienced.

Although I probably won't attempt this every time, I thought I'd give a sense of what people came up with.

Cathy was struck this time around by how much Joyce is talking about the Fall, as spoken of in Jewish and Christian tradition, including his own Irish-Catholic past.

Leslie noticed how the opening is like an overture, in which the rest of the work is already hinted at.

Ed, the only one of us who has read the Wake multiple times, wanted to emphasize that Finnegan's fall from the ladder encompasses other kinds of falling as well, and found himself, ardent Joycean that he is, thinking of Marlene Dietrich singing "Falling in Love Again".

Melissa, who teaches literature, said that she gets so overwhelmed by the beauty and cleverness of Joyce's words that it is hard for her to keep up with the sense of the whole.

Ann, who is partly reading this time the lens of The Curse of the Kabbalah by John P. Anderson, was struck by what that author calls 'the curse of repetition'. We are fated to go through it all again. Another cycle. Someone else added "Groundhog Day".

Frank, new to the group, said that at times he just closed his eyes and listened--as with difficult poetry, the feeling is as important as the lmeaning. Others agreed that this is perhaps the way Joyce wanted us to take it in. He liked the feeling of language "coming up at me."

Tom wrote down words as we came to different passages, partly to suggest their mood or tone: potent, event, background voices, narrative, closure, celebration. He also mentioned that when we all read the first "thunderword" together, it felt a bit like an incantation, and seemed almost creepy. Are we summoning up the cycle of the Wake again?

As for me, I was struck by a curious division in myself. I was surprised by how much continues to elude me, I suppose thinking I was going to find this all if not easy, then easier, but at the same time seeing how some things did feel familiar--this time around, at least there were a few signposts.

Melissa had the good or bad luck to read the very Joycean word "hierarchitectitiptitoploftical" (FW 005.01,) and though I think with the help of our reference works we managed to figure out some of its meanings, getting the sense of heights and tipping over, I thought I'd share a link to David Atwood's entry on his blog, as he says it's his favorite Wakean word. We tend to think of a fall as something bad, but as he points out, "all things topple or fall in the fullness of time, whether buildings, bridges political figures, governments, administrative structures, the tower of Babel, Jerusalem or Adam and Eve." In the current political climate, I see some of that as hopeful.

We learned that, among many other things (of course), the "penisolate war" refers to a fight between the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon , which plays out throughout the book. Have to keep that in mind this time round.

Finally, as we were discussing Jacob and Esau as variations on the twins of the book, Shem the Penman and Shaun the postman, I wondered, but isn't this a story about tricking your brother out of his birthright? And I couldn't quite see how that played out either between Shem and Shaun or between James Joyce and his brother Stanislaus. But I've now found an excellent blog called Finnegans Wake--a Prescriptive Guide, and an entry entitled Jacob, Esau and Isaac, which is well worth reading. It tells us that, although we think of Joyce as the oldest son, in fact there was an older brother who died at birth. Joyce didn't literally steal his birthright, but it's easy to think he might have felt like he did.