Talk:Finnegans Wake/Archive 4

Thunders
I've never even read "Finnegans Wake", and yet I'm surprised that this article doesn't mention the "ten thunders" at all. For example, Marshall McLuhan thought they were pretty important, and so does his son Eric. —  Scott  •  talk  19:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

This is as good a place as any to describe a recent edit. I've added an edit along the above lines, and I intend to improve it soon. '''I particularly encourage proof-reading of the hundred-lettered words per the above. -MinnesotanUser ''' — Preceding unsigned comment added by MinnesotanUser (talk • contribs) 09:25, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Vico || Tom Finnegan
"Tim Finnegan, born "with a love for the liquor", falls from a ladder, breaks his skull, and is thought to be dead."

de:WP Vico falls from a ladder, breaks his skull and remained unconscious for hours.

de:WP"In seiner Autobiographie schrieb Vico, dass er im Alter von sieben Jahren von einer Leiter gefallen sei, sich einen Schädelbruch zugezogen habe und fünf Stunden lang bewusstlos gewesen sei."--91.34.206.127 (talk) 09:27, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

multilingual puns
Even these are a red herring, really. It's important to bear in mind that it is an Irish novel written in English. ""Joyce's method became one of "increasingly obsessional concern with note-taking, since [he] obviously felt that any word he wrote had first to have been recorded in some notebook." As Joyce continued to incorporate these notes into his work, the text became increasingly dense and obscure."" Another way of saying this is that Joyce did a huge amount of SHOE-HORNING, and this is how the wake reads. I read it in 1985, then I spent 30 years learning 9 or 10 European languages (well enough to read Proust twice in the original, for example). I've just re-read the first 150 pages of the wake. My reception of it is no different from 30 years ago. The interesting thing about the obscurity is that it is possible to read things in it that Joyce didn't intend but welcomed anyway. So if you look up mishe-mishe in Finneganswiki you'll see lots of possibilities, but no guarantee that Joyce was aware of half of them. And in fact, mishe mishe is always paired with teufteuf - French for choochoo train, at least I've noted it on pages 3, 145, 203, 225, 240, 249, 277, 290, 291. Finneganswiki doesn't seem to have cottoned on to this coupling). At the end of Watt, Samuel Beckett ambiguously writes "no symbols where none intended". In the case of FW, "no puns where none intended" would not be true! Dreams? See p.293 - "the death he has lived through becomes the life he is to die into". I think that expresses it better. The repeated cultural references may well all stem from Jung. It's easier to criticise the Wake if, as I do, you think Ulysses is a curate's egg. I think it's also important to realise that perhaps the Wake is becoming old-fashioned. I first became interested in Joyce 40 years ago, when the Wake was about 40 years old. It has doubled its age since then! And Joyce's Ireland is the Ireland of Queen Victoria, or Edward VII, if you are precise about Joyce leaving it behind in 1904 (and dreaming about it for, coincidentally, nearly 40 years).
 * He would ask friends for lists of words in languages they knew and then stick them in randomly. QuentinUK (talk) 11:20, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Multilingual versions
Reference to where the Chinese version is abridged? It's not yet **complete** as only Part 1 is published (and annotated like mad), but the assertion that Dai's translation is abridged seems unfounded. L talk 10:10, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Aphra 10:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alainna First, I apologise if this should have been written swhere else; I am new to Wiki ways and templates. Re Joyce: I would say that translations of parts/excerpts/fragments/chapters of 'Finnegans Wake' should *not* be mentioned in the entry. For two reasons. (1) A fragment of 'FW' is not 'FW'. (2) There are dozens and dozens of such attempts in lots of languages. (Why distinguish Dai Cong Rong's work then?) Btw I take 'unabridged/abridged' to be synonymous to 'complete/partial'. Cheers. [User:Wikibidd] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikibidd (talk • contribs) 10:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

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Partial translations?
Should we allow partial translations? Compare this entry by with this one by.

I don't think we should include partial translations. What is the cutoff for size? How important are they? Kablammo (talk) 15:10, 1 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Previous edit was surely inadequate in not indicating Dai Congrong's (ongoing) Chinese translation as partial. I would suggest an exception should be made; this is a significant work, the first volume of an intended full-text translation, and not partial as in abridged or excerpted; the very substantial attention it has received in China and internationally leave this section otherwise rather incomplete. Tosk Albanian (talk) 15:21, 1 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I would have no objection to mentioning an ongoing, active project translating the entire work. Kablammo (talk) 23:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I would restore Turkish as the end of the sentence and add a new sentence that the first volume of what is expected to be a multi-volume translation into Mandarin (Chinese, if you prefer) sold out its first print run within a month and reportedly was surpassed in sales only by a biography of one-time leader Deng Xiaoping. This sounds like the start of a monumental work in progress, if you'll excuse the pun, not just a translation. (775 pages for just the first volume!) — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 01:24, 2 November 2017 (UTC)


 * If exception is made for the Chinese FW in progress, then, for consistency's sake, dozens of other attempts should be allowed for as well. [Why not Russian? Catalan? Italian? Hungarian? Another Japanese? Several in German?] Btw, the "first print" report, as it comes from the Graniaud, amounts to 8.000 copies, which is hardly an impressive number given the population of China. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikibidd (talk • contribs) 11:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)


 * If there are other on-going efforts to translate FW that are note-worthy, I think they should be included as well. Partial translations, in my opinion, should not be added. As far as how many books were involved, I don't know the typical size of a first printing in China of a translation of a 75-year-old foreign work that has international notoriety for being "difficult"—do you? That's why I rely on reliable sources like the London Review of Books instead of guessing. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:45, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Norwegian influence?
The article mentions the "Norwegian influence", that is, the allusions Finnegans Wake makes to Norway and its language. While this seems to be true (as I don't speak Norwegian, these allusions are among the ones I miss), Norwegian is not the only language the books frequently alludes to. It is rife with Dutch, German, French, Latin, Irish, Spanish and other puns, and as a Ducthman I don't miss references to Dutch topography either. So why include a separate section specifically about Norwegian influence? Steinbach (talk) 10:48, 12 February 2018 (UTC)


 * James Joyce learnt Norwegian so that he could read the works of Henrik Ibsen in the original. He knew a few other languages, he did not really know more about the world's languages than that, but he knew smatterings of many other languages. Vorbee (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2019 (UTC)


 * But Verbee, Ibsen wrote his plays in Dutch.Forthooster (talk) 07:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * He wrote in Danish. But your point stands. 14:14, 24 July 2022 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cross Reference (talk • contribs)

Comic sourced
I studied Finnegan's Wake with the Wake specialist, Edmund Epstein and never did he describe the book as a comic fiction. Is comic sourced? If not I would remove it. Finnegan's Wake may have funny parts but its far from comic.(Littleolive oil (talk) 23:10, 3 April 2018 (UTC))
 * See Talk:Finnegans_Wake/Archive_3. The lede once said it was "comic prose", and was sourced. See, and Conley, p. 107. That was later removed and I see that I am the one who added it back, changing it to "comic fiction", but without the cite. Certainly Joyce thought it was comic; he was heard to laugh out loud when he was writing it.  I don't see it can really be called a novel.  See Conley, p. 109.  Kablammo (talk) 02:41, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Some Google gleanings:
 * from Anthony Burgess: "a great comic vision, one of the few books of the world that can make us laugh aloud on nearly every page"; as quoted in the lede.
 * Edmund Epstein: "extremely funny ... and there is indeed a laugh on every page of the Wake"
 * "comic obsessions" of the work
 * "Comedy and Affirmation in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake"
 * "a romance of the word—a synthesis of the comic with the poetic into a single entity of language. As it is often impossible to separate the meaning from the language in Finnegans Wake—its form being derived intrinsically from its content—it is equally impossible to segregate the humorous from the poetic."
 * Perhaps our lede could mention the blend of comic and poetic. Kablammo (talk) 11:42, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I could see saying the book is an avant-garde, fictional narrative or novel with comic and romantic elements... something like that?(Littleolive oil (talk) 23:50, 6 April 2018 (UTC))
 * I adapted it; feel free to edit it. Kablammo (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks good.(Littleolive oil (talk) 00:03, 7 April 2018 (UTC))

Is FW translatable into other languages?
Is FW translatable into other languages? Has it been attempted?


 * - see Finnegans Wake - Epinoia (talk) 14:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Term quark
This article says the term "quark" originates from Finnegans Wake. Should it also say that the word "quark" should be pronounced to rhyme with "sharK"? Vorbee (talk) 18:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)