< Finding Music in 'Finnegans Wake'

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Heard on All Things Considered

November 11, 2007 - JACKI LYDEN, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Jacki Lyden.

"Finnegan's Wake," James Joyce's final masterpiece, has always confounded readers. Many people would call the book impenetrable in print. There's no narrative or made tenuous one, and language breaks apart and images come in and out of focus. But the prose comes to life when read aloud, especially when you hear James Joyce read it himself.

(Soundbite of archived recording)

Mr. JAMES JOYCE (Author, "Finnegan's Wake"): (Reading) Well, you know or don't you kennet or haven't I told you every telling has a taling and that's the he and the she of it.

LYDEN: "Finnegan's Wake" was published in 1939 on the eve of World War II. Joyce had worked on it for 17 years.

(Soundbite of archived recording)

Mr. JOYCE: (Reading) Pingpong. There's the Belle for Sexaloitez. And Concepta de Send-us-pray. Pang. Wring out the clothes. Wring out the clothes…

LYDEN: That recording is included in the new anthology, "Poetry Speaks Expanded." An Irish-born poet, Paul Muldoon, wrote the essay in this collection, introducing Joyce's work and joins us now.

Hello, Paul Muldoon.

Professor PAUL MULDOON (Poet; Humanities and Creative Writing, Princeton University): Hello. How are you?

LYDEN: Great to have you with us. In your essay, you quoted a critic, who says that "Finnegan's Wake" is meant to be plunged into. Is there any background information you think our listeners should know before we play a bit more?

Prof. MULDOON: Well, that was Harry Levin who wrote about "Finnegan's Wake" in 1939. He wrote: Its texture is so close, its structure so organic that it cannot yet, he says, be considered readable in the sense of an ordinary novel. And I suppose in many ways what Levin was getting as was that "Finnegan's Wake" is much more like a musical composition, one that might be performed as it were by the individual reader and, of course, by Joyce himself.

(Soundbite of archived recording)

Mr. JOYCE: (Reading) You won your limpopo limp from the husky hussars when Collars and Cuffs was heir to the town and your slur gave the stink to Carlow. Holy Scamander, I sar it again.

Prof. MULDOON: It's almost what we call in the Irish tradition mouth(ph) music. Mouth music involves often a nonsensical component.

(Soundbite of scatting)

Prof. MULDOON: I'm not sure if that was the best interpretation you'll ever hear of it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

LYDEN: I like it just fine.

Prof. MULDOON: But Joyce, of course, we should remember, was a terrific singer himself. And indeed, that musical intensity, the intelligence continues through all his work. And, you know, I think it's not simply that we're going to say that it should merely be understood in a musical sense. That's a metaphor for finding a way into reading it, I think.

(Soundbite of archived recording)

Mr. JOYCE: (Reading) Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper. It's well I know your sort of slop. Flap. Ireland sober is Ireland stiff. Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me. Your prayers. I sonht zo. Madammangut.

Prof. MULDOON: One is led there through Maria, full of grease, the load is with me. Maria, full of grease, of course, G-R-E-A-S-E as it's spelled here. We would usually say grace. But then, of course, Hiberno-English, it would be pronounced grease, the load from the lord is with me.

So he's constantly repositioning us in relation to what we think we understand. And that, of course, what every great artist does.

LYDEN: Paul Muldoon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor at Princeton University.

Thank you for joining us. It was great.

Prof. MULDOON: It's great pleasure. Thank you so much.

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