Satori

It's been several days since I've been able to pick up the book, but I had a pretty exciting moment today when I read a paragraph and felt really anchored for the whole thing. Is this because I'm improving in my ability to translate this foreign language? Or is Joyce suddenly being more clear? In one way, the victory of almost understanding one paragraph in a 628 page book may seem ridiculous, but it still made me almost giddy. Here's the paragraph in question:

Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie? of a trying thirstay mournin? Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of ululation. There was plubs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers and raiders and cinemen too. And the all gained in with the shoutmost shoviality. Agog and magog and round them agrog. To the continuation of that celebration until Hanandhunigan's exgtermination! Some in kinkin corass, more, kankan keening. Belling him up and filling him down. He's stiff but he's steady is Priam Olim! 'Twas he was the dacent gaylabouring youth. Sharpen his pillowscone, tap up his bier! E'erawhere in this whorl would ye hear sich a din again? With their deepbrow fundings and the dusty fidelios. They laid him brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head. Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the twoddle of the fuddled, O! (p. 6)

I would be interested if anyone feels the same about this paragraph. I'm not pretending to understand every word, but I was able to read it straight through, with a real sense of comprehension, as well as a simultaneous appreciation for the internal rhyme ("all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in their consternation") and telling mispellings ("the shoutmost shoviality").

Reading this way reminds me of that phenomenon in which the human brain can read words that are completely misspelled as long as the first and last letter are in the correct position. In case you haven't seen this, here's what I'm talking about.

Reading this paragraph in Joyce is not exactly the same, but the feeling in the brain is the same. In addition, there is another benefit in the word play (as noted in the previous entry), and allusions that are thrown in.

And now I've just read 4 pages in a row with the same result. I'm definitely getting the hang of something here! But I can definitely feel my brain functioning differently as I read. It's like I can feel the neurons stretching in a different direction, but for the first time today, it's a direction they enjoy stretching in, like a good yoga class.

Here's a little description I enjoyed:

The wagrant wind's awalt'zaround the piltdowns and on every blasted knollyrock (if you can spot fifty I spy four more) there's that gnarlybird ygathering, a runalittle, doalittle, preealittle, pouralittle, wipealittle, kicksalittle, severalittle, eatalittle, whinealittle, kenalittle, helfalittle, peflalittle gnarlybird. (p. 10)

This is the perfect proof of the value of what Joyce is attempting . I could spend all day spelling words correctly and clearly, and never capture the personality of that little bird half as well as this does when read aloud (and read quickly). The only example I know of that could come close is another of my favorite poets - again a great experimenter - Gerard Manley Hopkins:

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-

dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him stead air, and striding

Hi there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

That's always been one of my favorite poems, especially when read aloud, because it captures the movement of the falcon so perfectly. Hopkins and cummings and Joyce are the great grammar busters, and they really do show the limitations of grammar (this from an English teacher). Grammatical correctness is like political correctness - it offends no one and is also not all that interesting.

While I'm in the middle of my paradigm shift here, I'm reminded of one more story that sheds some light on why I'm doing this project the way I'm doing it. There is an American theater director named Robert Wilson who was born in Texas, but has developed a much bigger following in Europe than in the United States. Perhaps his most (in)famous production is a 5-hour play with no intermission called Einstein on the Beach, in which a group of people in Einstein wigs perform repetitive motions almost endlessly. The first production I actually saw of his was a Wagner opera in which one of the most rousing numbers consisted of a single spotlight focused tightly on the hand of one of the singers, with everything else in blackness. This was the same production that began with a huge rousing overture in which the only thing happening on-stage was a single light cue from black to green for the entire piece. I was not only bewildered but also sort of offended by the experience, that I would be expected to sit through such a torturous experience for so many hours.

But I have never wanted to let anything defeat me, and so I picked up a book on Wilson on the way home. I read the book and learned that Wilson is profoundly dyslexic. He says he cannot follow a complex plot, and so did not want to create one. Instead, he says, he wants to create an experience that is trace-like, to put his viewers into a transcendent state rather than appeal to their intellect. This is why there is no intermission. You can leave the show whenever you want to go to the bathroom or get something to eat - when you come back, you haven't missed anything, you can just re-enter the meditation.

Knowing this made a huge difference for me. I went to see another Wilson show when he was back in town - this one written by Lou Reed - and without the expectation of a linear plot, I just settled into my seat the way that you might get settled in for a long plane ride. Turning off the critical factor, I did indeed find myself transported beyond the intellect into a remarkable experience of color and sound and an altered sense of time.

Without any scholarly guidance, I've had trouble entering Finnegan's Wake in this way because I don't know what part of my consciousness to turn off, and what to turn on. But I seem to be fumbling my way forward, and - for today anyway - making a tiny bit of progress.