James Joyce: Thus the Unfacts

They lived and laughed and loved and left. 
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First we feel. Then we fall.
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In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven! 
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A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

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Let us leave theories there and return to here’s hear.

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Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.

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Three quarks for Muster Mark!

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The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity. 

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I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it’s all! And me letting on to meself always. And lilting on all the time. 

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In the ignorance that implies the impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality. 

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And you’ll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday. 

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Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason, have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sore and pustules, by the auspices of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the auguries of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamatisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot of sweetempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst but it never stphruck your mudhead’s obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I’ll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew. 

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For she was the only girl they loved, as she is the queenly pearl you prize, because of the way the night that first we met she is bound to be, methinks, and not in vain, the darling of my heart, sleeping in her april cot, within her singachamer, with her greengageflavoured candywhistle duetted to the crazyquilt, Isobel, she is so pretty, truth to tell, wildwood’s eyes and primarose hair, quietly, all the woods so wild, in mauves of moss and daphnedews, how all so still she lay, neath of the whitethorn, child of tree, like some losthappy leaf, like blowing flower stilled, as fain would she anon, for soon again ’twill be, win me, woo me, wed me, ah weary me!

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Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude… 

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ere the hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea 

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He is cured by faith who is sick of fate. 

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Hohohoho, Mister Finn, you’re going to be Mister Finnagain! Comeday morm and, O, you’re vine! Sendday’s eve and, ah you’re vinegar! Hahahaha, Mister Funn, you’re going to be fined again! 

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It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic, or, in the view of the cannier, domestic economical. But by writing thithaways end to end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and jupetbackagain from tham Let Raise till Hum Lit. Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?

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We’ll meet again, we’ll part once more.

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These quotations are from Finnegans Wake by Irish writer James Joyce. It has been called “a work of fiction which combines a body of fables … with the work of analysis and deconstruction.” It is significant for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works in the Western canon. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, Finnegans Wake was Joyce’s final work. The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, which blends standard English words with neologisms and multilingual puns. Many critics believe the technique was Joyce’s attempt to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams. Owing to the work’s linguistic experiments and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegan‘s Wake remains largely unread by the general public.