No More Learning

The alential value cf the pun (If" portl1UJlleau-word in HIrtIIga1U Wa. b Ii. . OOt in ill elu,ive and luggesli. . . e qualitiet bul in its capacily to oonlprcsa much meaning into little space. T oo much ILu been written about the Stlggcstive, connolatiV'C
aspec'" of Hlf1Itgmu Walt and 100 liltle about the power of Joyce's new polyhedral vocabolary to accumulate denotation. In OOnl. . . . 110 Ihe effccl created by greM luggcstive wwb like
those: ofMaLlanne-with which Joyce', art h. . . ail110lt nothing io common-Ihe more one reado Fju,lfU'$ Wah and karns to recognilC how all the little bricks fil inlO the finUbed struClure. the ""'" suggati,. . , Ihe book tttnu. f. . arly impressioou of myftery aoo hypnolic inc. . nlation begin to wear a"'ay, and the tech- nique hegins to look mOT~ ! ike a . df-coruciou. lIylistic short- itand thart an appeal dire<:1 to the unOOll3Cioou mind M the car. Tite manuscripts. nowJO}tt in the pmc'! ofadding to h. ia tCllt 001 music or colour Or emotive 0. . . 0 1 0 _ , but ICmantcmes. H e
was certainly not indifferenl 10 those other thingl, but almOlt C\'CI')'Where me ukidoeoopic effecll of imagery io PUlMllIN
1Y. . . u and ! he peculiar texture of the writing are achieved, . . . in the bell of Sir Thoma. . Browne, by a massi,,, concentration of pun: denotation jostling around in a confined 'pace. Again, the puus . Ihou. . ld not be: judged by the wual criterion of willy effectiven. . . Mr. Atland Uaher u ntiWng the point when he oomplai. . . of the 'weakncsa' of a pun like 'Sea "a~t a pool' (338"41. ' Sometimes Joyce """tea verticaUy ruher than hori? zontally, hamumieally rather than contrapuntally, in wruch ea. e a clwter of pUll! may aU oontain internally iUuminating
L A . U . h << , ' I . , . , . . G . . . . . I ' W O - . . L o o d . . , . 'g~ ? ? p . ' ! I l I . ,.
? SOIm Asputs of Finneg(111s Wake
rdatiomhip", Su~h puns (xilt in their OWn right at . . ,If. . ufficienl liltle ideograms. A good example i. the word 'paltipsypote' (337. 2. ) from the '&ene in the Public', which neatly integrates 'pal', 'tipsy' and 'pote' into the idea of 'participating' in a round of Guinne",. But J oyce does not always write harmoni- cally, and just at the harmonic relationship" in a mu. iul fugue may very well be irrdevant, SO the vertical relationship" of the twO or more meanings within aJoycean pun are onen unimpor- tant, which can never be true of the everyday pun or humorow
intent. What always matte. . . mOSI is IhaL ill each enat: the pUll alSure the horizQTl\. a1 continuity of the various 'VQic<:s' in the passage. In the clUlmple which troubl. . Mr. U,sher there arc at least four voi=, hardly relatrd to each other (except in SO far as Fi1llutallS Wak, uhimatdy relates all conte:<U). but all carrying the matrix of the 'Butt and Tall"' epWe One step further. First, there i. the obvious content of the whole: 'Sev""topol', the scene of the shooting of the Russian G""erai; next, thc mOilt appal""t meaning of all pam tu"" as a d au. . ,: 'see a vast pool'. which . . t. abl"h. . tbe correspondence of the
battleo at Sevastopol and Dublin ('Black_poor), and the horm. . . of the Flood; there is probably an allusion to the 'apple' which brought about the original Fall and all ito VlUt consequences (the pun we are considering is plaerd at the beginning of the
'Butt and TalY' episode); and, finally, the first two word. con- tain the name ofSiva, the d. . troyer_god wbo presides over the . imaliuie a. pe<:to of the battle and . taughter. "n. . , pun i, there- fore rich in content and economic of 'pace SO that for Joyce'. purpo. . ,. il cannot in any. . ,me be called ""'u.
To punue the m. w. cal analogy a little further, Joyce often IlSC. 'I a group of purn to "",ate a kind of drone_base or pedal- point with which 10 accompany the whole development of a section and $0 provide it with a general ambiance, each p"n rontributing iIJ small quota of attllOi! phere. On~ aga. in there II no necessary ronnexion between Ihit atmoophcric f"nction of a pun and the rest of its control. Thw the river-nam. . in
'Anna Livia', the NO'""'<'gian vocabulary in 'The Norwegian C a p t a i n ' e p i s o d e ( 3 ' '"""3~), a n d t h e c i t y - n a m e s i n ' H a v e t h
,"
? &lilt Asptcts,yFi/UUgQJIS Wait
Childen Everywhere' (! i32-54), wb. ite they treate *' rich atTTlOllpbere, rardy have any other functional relationship to the 'peeial oonlatl in which they are embedded.
There it much that is funny in Fw. . . p>as Wah, bUI tbe hn. mour ia ",,,,,,Uy independent ef the punning, wllich it not onen U$Cd purely to tickle our. em( ef the grolesq~ Or to relcax the
belly. laugb. Indeed, after a few reading. all but a very few of the puns cease to amuse. Mr. Rober! Ryf finds that their oontinual flow ultimately cre:o. lCI an atmosphere of oadneo$, of painruJjocularity. ' but I think that for most pc'-Ient readefs of H1IJUIDIU IV,. ! ;, it would be truer to Jay lhat lhe word_play creates, in the Ions run, nQ emotionally charged u PlQSpllere at all. II oorncs to be &c<<plcd, just as the ordinary reader of an on:! inuy book aeccpts tbe usual oonvenrions oflanguag. :. Mter a few hundn:d pages we are . . . . . . Iurated with pUN that nothing surpriRl, nothing shocks; the mind'. ear take. pan-writing for gunled, the mind'. eye it f,xed in a pcrm:onent lIale ofmultiple
viIinn .
jOY~'1 vcrballucaa in FUw~1U Wah is due in par! 10 a
simple confidence-ui. :k. The univcru. lity ofhia themes and Ibe breadth of thcir treatment make virtually any vubal or sym- bolic felicity relevant 10 the lext 10 that an effect of brilliant appoIilen. . . . it IOmetima acbieved more eaaily than i. s at on<< apparent. If the pieces in a jia-saw punle are n'lade "". U enough and numerous enough, II. piece of a1motl any lhapc can be made to fit---apccially if the picture oonsil\! of lever. l lupcrimpc FE:l pattema. joyce'. eclectic method is open not ooly to fairly easy imitation, hut abo 10 constant extension within F_p>as Wahiadt. ManyreadenfedthattheycouldimptO\? c on niH. . . . of lb~ text, tightening up correspondences here and th~re and tbickening the texture Itill more. Mr. Niall Mont- gomery hu made oome arnusingluggationl. ' I'w. . .
, ofwhatean be done with
Hjd 11. . 111 colla", in literallIn. j oyce was quite unimpressed
, l\. , RyI', A St. /1 " 1 _ ' J_', ''''/roil''tJ. . ,t,t:! Jl. ,. r _ MOIl', Ann Arbor, '9~! h PI', "7. . . e (on miuo/iIm) .
? N. MOfitpoerr, 'Joyw:. Q. . . ;oo. . m tJ~. . ", Eoootr,,. "j. V, >>00 '7. p. ? ? .
? Some Aspnts ifFinMgans Wake
hy the vi<ual am, so that it il highly unlikely that he ",/fe. . w. any dircct infiw:nce from twenLieth-century painting techniques, but hi. method is nfu:n mikingly ,imilar. n;~ and pi= arc picked up and inC<'lrporated into the taturc with litde modification, whil~ the pre<:is~ nalurc of each individual fragment unot always of great importance. If there ;. a C(ln- fidence-! :rick, however, J(ly<:e ufuudamentally hone,t about it
and even make. the ! :rick i~lra part ofru. . grand design. As T have said abov<:, he aimed at providing FitwgallJ W4M with as many external I<)OJ( end, '" po1l,iblc in order to cll! urc a connexion with as much experience as possible. TIt<: fact that we can continue to pun oU! "Selves inlo Ihe game ofwriting it i, one demonstration of Joytt'S 'IDCl"-<:SS in this dircction. The Work is eternally in Pmgrw .
Joyce said that the difficulti. . ofhu wor4lay nQl in the idea. they contain but in the meall! ofpr=ntation: 'In my eMe the thought i. always simple'. ' The truth of lb. . i> broad a. w:rtion
depend. very much on what Joy<:e intend< by 'thnught'. If, with ""ptct to Fj"''''g<m. < Walt, he m~. . ns the overall world_view and the outlines nf the mythic tales through which it is dc- v. loped, then the comment is jtUt enough. &yond this, however, Joyce would I! CCm to be dtcciving either himself or his t~ad=. The relatiOIUlhip of part! , the (. Onc;o. t~nation of metaphor and image, the details of argument in Fi"""glltU Wah are often very subtle and extTCmdy difficult to g'""'p fidly. Tbh is n~v~r SO apparent to the reader as when he emharb (lI1 a $hott oxplicG- tum tU 14m of SOme more or less . . ,If_contained p. . . . ag? . No matter how thorough tb" lingu;"tic analysi1, n" matter h"w many of the refcr~ntiallonot: ends may be gathue<l together, the difficulties tUually fail todlspc! "Se. A Imnwle<lgt' nfN"orwegian, for example, docs not help bim to undenland the 'No,w~gian
Captain' SIOI)'. He may build up a lut"fse",ral hundrW word, from that language, a v"l)' /i:w of whid ' oerve 10 orientate a sentence or giv<: point 10 . "me otherwi3tc apparently meaning- I. . . phrase, but n~arly all ofwhich are . . ,en to ha", been uacd
purely fOr mosaic decoraLion; the fundamental difficulties of , II. Iludg=,J_}v;>t-t/hi. M'Itiy,tfUIJ-,l. ondoo,'9~p. >91.
35
? S(l1IU Aspeds rif Filmegam Wake
understanding the personal relationships eJ<plo",d in the tale, the . yrnbolit ';gnificance of the journey, the rn)"t. rio'" dia? logue and dbu",,,,,,"I, ",main uIlttSOI""d. ! ndeW. it mmt to IIOme extent comfurt the ordinary ""ader to discover that this is 50, to bot fO. ssured that F;MlgQ1IJ Wait i. not just a Cl'O! ISword puzzle which he will bot able to . . ,1"" when he ha. ac~ to a long shelf of dictionari. . and can a/ford 10 burn enough mid-
night oil. The proble"", that he faces are in facl very famili. . " they a"" Ih. ,. . , involved in learning how to make an adequate anal)"i. and ",synthtsi. of a symbolic language.
Joyce keep' admonishing his puzzled ""ad" to use hi. ca~ ; 'if)'<lu are looling for the bilder deep yOUT car on the movie?
tone' (6~,oR)-and while il is true that he must c:<mItantly attend to prosodies and accents if the full content of the book is to hot: apprehended, IIOWld and rhythm arc nO more Ihan a part of Ihe IOtal pallem and have, ! hot:lieve, been ovcr-. lr<:<. <ed. Moot ofJoy",,'. neologisms are mo"" easily undel"! i(KKI hy eye than by ear. Tricks and coincidenc. . of typography and ortho-
graphy allow greater vinuooity than do their audihk equiva. 1011;$. Joy. -,c is undoubtedly writing fOT the ear nearly an Ihe time, but mO>t of his attention is dev<lted to the apreararu;e of the words on Ihe page. That the greater part of the meaningful oounterpoint in FinNgallS lVa. 1;, cannot bot amany communi. c>. ted, is revealed byJoyce'IOWn celebrated reading fmm 'Anna Livi,,' which, though finely o. . . ;hestrated within" ,mall GOn,p""', totally rails to GOnvcy more th"n one level of meaning from a
""pr"",ntativeiy complex passage. In ffiO$l caS<:! a variety of pronunciations '" n = a r y for ea~h word, and many ph,. ,. . . ,.
offer $/:v. :ral possibiliti. . of rhythm and It. . . ,. S. In theory, highly controlled choral. peaking by a small group would hot: the only . . . . tisfac,lOry ",Iunon to the prohkm of how 10 read Fin""tlJJtS
Walt aloud, each . peaker adhering to one 'voice' oflheGOunter_ point and u,ing the appropriate ,,""nt and str""".
For all iUl splendidly varied rhythm. and its multitudinous parodi. . of all the media of aural GOmmunication, it see"", difficult to justify the usual . tat<:menl that FitwgdllS Wah is primarily intended to work nn the auditory imagination.
,6
? &mu Aspects of Finntgans Wa. <<
ProfCSlOr Harry I. . . vin has gone so rar as to make the astoniAhing claim that Fimul"'" Wak. 'lacb vuual imagery'. ' T h = are few places in;1 where the world ofsound is not evoked, but, . . , in UIysus, the great bulk ofthe imagery remaim =tially visuaL Thue never was a book more clutlere<l with "wble symbols;
me optical f",ld ;, constantly crammed with every variety of . tage_property, from the tiniC$1 trine to the Il\O! lt megalomaniac objects of desir<:. The cosmic sccne ill continually being reset, the charaetc. . . appear in a multitude of exotic costumes, barr. ,]- loads of knick_lmack> arc ",. . ,wo over the Hoc. . . , ,hip" sail into
view and depart as . warn, =. . and flowe. . . . pcout and wither in the wildem. . . " fireHi"" glitter, sky>ernpcrs rUe and fall, fires ra! \<, and the rainbow glows on the horizon, There h"" bttn rather too much easy talk alxlUI the sharpened car of the pur. blind man.