Until the end of last year, I had no idea Bognor could lay claim to connections with two literary giants.
I recently wrote about the cottage in Felpham, currently undergoing restoration, where William Blake spent three years at the very start of the 19th century. There he wrote, amongst other things, the words ‘And did those feet’, which we now know as the hymn, or unofficial national anthem, Jerusalem.
I was surprised to find that, as well as Blake, there was a link with James Joyce, who stayed in Bognor in 1923 where he wrote some of the early passages that eventually found their way into Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s last and notoriously ‘unreadable’ major novel.
Unexpected local connections
I was particularly taken by reading that Joyce found the name for his central character, as much as there is one, on a gravestone in a local churchyard in Sidlesham. He may have liked ‘Earwicker’ due its similarity to ‘earwigger’, as in eavesdropper.
It is also said that the name for the subatomic particles, quarks, is derived from Joyce’s transcription of the sound of seagulls on Bognor beach, remarkable not least for the deduction that at least one physicist has read the book.
Such is the reputation of Finnegans Wake, that unlike more recent, unreadable heavyweights such as Infinite Jest, my impression is that hardly anyone even tries to start to read it.
Not one to leave a rabbit hole unexplored or a challenge unaddressed, I gave it a go and like a post-Damascene St Paul, feel a duty to try and convert the cultured readers of Sussex Bylines to give it a go too, not least because of some unexpected links to our county, beyond the already surprising realisation that Joyce had ever even been here.
Useful background: Parnell
There seem to be two basic approaches to reading Joyce, one involving painstaking interrogation of every reference and often almost word, with annotated editions in which the novels are footnoted to death, or simply diving in and immersing yourself in the ‘dream’.
Even if inclination and stamina incline you to the latter, it is quickly clear that a few pointers are helpful and reading the introduction that all editions come with is highly recommended!
One of the pointers it is useful, but not essential, to know is the story of Charles Stewart Parnell, charismatic 19th century Irish nationalist politician who briefly held the balance of power in Gladstone’s time and almost achieved Home Rule, until he was brought down by his affair with Kitty O’Shea.
He had also been earlier falsely linked with some earlier political murders in Phoenix Park in Dublin. Much of the ‘action’ in Finnegans Wake, such as it is, and certainly the central ‘crime’ alleged against Earwicker, occurs in Phoenix Park.
Brighton residents, even with no knowledge of Irish history, may recognise the name of Kitty O’Shea as she has one of the local buses named after her. She was a Hove resident for many years, including at the time of her affair. After the divorce that ended Parnell’s political hopes, he and Kitty were married and briefly lived on Hove seafront until his early death at the age of 45.
As an admirer of Parnell, Joyce would have known of the Sussex link.
Link with Joyce’s daughter Lucia
Another piece of background information that floats though my reading of Finnegans Wake is the knowledge that Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, was developing signs of mental illness, eventually diagnosed as schizophrenia, during the time he was writing the novel.
He took her to see Carl Jung, perhaps surprisingly as Jung had earlier written a negative review of Ulysses, declaring that Joyce’s writing was rooted in raw, bodily, and unconscious processes rather than intellect: “a brilliant but hellish monster-birth”, as worms might “write with a sympathetic nervous system rather than a brain”. Maybe Jung meant this as a good thing, but Joyce wouldn’t have read it as positive.
The old idea of schizophrenia being a consequence of bad parenting is now discredited, but Joyce himself thought that there was a direct link between his creativity and Lucia’s state of mind: “Whatever spark or gift I possess has been transmitted to Lucia and it has kindled a fire in her brain.”The association of, or difference between, genius and madness has been debated for centuries. Jung suggested Joyce and his daughter were “like two people going to the bottom of a river: one falling and the other diving”.
It is interesting to question whether the opposite intergenerational impact, that of Joyce living with Lucia, had upon the composition of the Wake. ‘Pressure of speech’ and ‘flight of ideas’ are classic diagnostic signs of mania, but could also be a description of the style of Finnegans Wake.
Don’t expect a narrative – more like a dream
Certainly, don’t expect a narrative in the orthodox sense. As Samuel Beckett wrote, it is ‘not about something; it is that something itself”.
The language is full of ‘amalgamerge’d words, often puns (I particularly like ‘truetowife’ and ‘scandiknavery’). Apparently, there are also words from over 70 languages, not to forget the 100 letter ‘thunderwords’ that are scattered through the book.
Even though nominally written in English, it is sometimes more like listening to an opera in Italian. As someone who has lived in a patois-speaking country, it is the same experience. You get the feeling if not the exact meaning. To reiterate the link with Bognor, biographers have tracked down that Joyce was reading about pidgin while in Sussex.
The other comparison often made is with the structure and language of dreams. If Ulysses is a ‘stream of consciousness’ novel, Finnegans Wake is a ‘stream of unconsciousness’.
Images flit past, as in half sleep, often just out of reach, buried under the next, but build up to deliver something literally, and literarily unique. Thankfully.
I ‘confess’ I haven’t finished it but am not convinced it is really necessary, other than to score pointless bragging rights. The novel is non-linear, and circular, the first sentence famously starting halfway through, completing the first half of the one at the end of the book
Jump in and enjoy the infinite jest… then climb out before you start ‘falling’.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
