We read as far as "Fair man and foul suggestion." (445.9)
As Shaun seems to have gotten increasingly aggressive about what he will do, how he will treat anyone who sings/says (?) 'Charley you're my darling'* to his sister, Issy, we started wondering about the context of all these vicious threats and asking ourselves whether Shaun is really such a sadistic person. After all he himself proclaims, 'I'll have plenary satisfaction,...'
Below is what Joseph Campbell** writes about the general context of Finnegans Wake:
"Running riddle and fluid answer, Finnegans Wake is a mighty allegory of the fall and resurrection of mankind. It is a strange book, a compound of fables, symphony, and nightmare - a monstrous enigma beckoning imperiously from the shadowy pits of sleep. Its mechanics resemble those of a team, a dream which has freed the author from the necessities of common logic and has enabled him to compress all periods of history, all phases of individual and racial development, into a circular design, of which every part is beginning, middle, and end.
In a gigantic wheeling rebus, dim effigies rumble past, disappear into foggy horizons, and are replaced by other images, vague but half-consciously familiar. On this revolving stage, mythological heroes and evens of remotest antiquity occupy the same spatial and temporal planes as modern personages and contemporary happenings. All time occurs simultaneously; Tristram and the Duke of Wellington, Father Adam and Humpty Dumpty merge in a single percept. Multiple meanings are present in every line; interlocking allusions to key words and phrases are woven like fugal themes into the pattern of the work. Finnegans Wake is a prodigious, multifaceted mono myth, not only the cauchemar of a Dublin citizen but the dreamlike saga of guilt-stained, evolving humanity."
Personally I find consolation when I think of what we read as taking place in a big dream world!
* Charlie, He's my Darling is a Scottish song and is available in many versions. Here is one that is attributed to the Scottish poet and lyricist, Robert Burns (1759 -1796).
** 'A skeleton key to Finnegans Wake, Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork' by Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson, New World Library, p.3, 2005, ISBN 1-57731-405-0
As Shaun seems to have gotten increasingly aggressive about what he will do, how he will treat anyone who sings/says (?) 'Charley you're my darling'* to his sister, Issy, we started wondering about the context of all these vicious threats and asking ourselves whether Shaun is really such a sadistic person. After all he himself proclaims, 'I'll have plenary satisfaction,...'
Below is what Joseph Campbell** writes about the general context of Finnegans Wake:
"Running riddle and fluid answer, Finnegans Wake is a mighty allegory of the fall and resurrection of mankind. It is a strange book, a compound of fables, symphony, and nightmare - a monstrous enigma beckoning imperiously from the shadowy pits of sleep. Its mechanics resemble those of a team, a dream which has freed the author from the necessities of common logic and has enabled him to compress all periods of history, all phases of individual and racial development, into a circular design, of which every part is beginning, middle, and end.
In a gigantic wheeling rebus, dim effigies rumble past, disappear into foggy horizons, and are replaced by other images, vague but half-consciously familiar. On this revolving stage, mythological heroes and evens of remotest antiquity occupy the same spatial and temporal planes as modern personages and contemporary happenings. All time occurs simultaneously; Tristram and the Duke of Wellington, Father Adam and Humpty Dumpty merge in a single percept. Multiple meanings are present in every line; interlocking allusions to key words and phrases are woven like fugal themes into the pattern of the work. Finnegans Wake is a prodigious, multifaceted mono myth, not only the cauchemar of a Dublin citizen but the dreamlike saga of guilt-stained, evolving humanity."
Personally I find consolation when I think of what we read as taking place in a big dream world!
* Charlie, He's my Darling is a Scottish song and is available in many versions. Here is one that is attributed to the Scottish poet and lyricist, Robert Burns (1759 -1796).
** 'A skeleton key to Finnegans Wake, Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork' by Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson, New World Library, p.3, 2005, ISBN 1-57731-405-0
