Daily Summary Reading
Finnegans Wake
Chapter / Pages : 37-47
What happens? The stranger spreads disinformation
about Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker’s supposed sexual misadventures in the park. This information revises itself into the
music hall song, “The Ballad of Persy O’Reilly” which is printed as sheet music
and in full ballad stanzas at the end of Book 1’s Chapter 2. There is a great deal of Dublin place-naming
and experience rolled into the description of the various characters in this
section.
Experience of the
text: Very fluid text – from page 39 to 44
there are 4 sentences, each very long with many, many clauses. There are around 450 words per page, so those
4 sentences average 110 words per sentence. They are very long sentences, in the
way that the word on page 1 is long (approximately the same number of
letters as there are words in these sentences.). Interesting. The reading in this section seems
increasingly easy to traverse than previous. Chapter 2 concludes and it has
been much more legible than Chapter 1. Although, I will say, it still registers
somewhere between at 25 and 50% comprehension.
So, still very challenging, although, like Jabberwocky, you seem to
glimpse the authorial intent fairly well. Very humorous and melodic. The text demands much rereading.
.
Procedure: 1. First reading –
aloud 2. Second reading – read with
annotations / gloss and the Skeleton Key
text by Campbell 3. Third reading – silent read through following first two
readings.
Discussion:
Poor HCE, his misadventure in the park is defined,
memorialized and transmitted as song – it has become part of local color,
history and popular culture, a sort of microcosm of Finnegans Wake – also a
song, a myth, etc.
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