Philosophical Imaginatrix: Because it's 'Finnegans Wake' by James Joyce

A book written while Joyce was sinking. That's what Carl Jung tells about Finnegans Wake. Jung deduced that Joyce's works come as a process of unconscious exploration. The book is an experimentation of language that Joyce carried out for 17 long years. It's a bewildering book. Rarely we read such a gem. Because it's incomparable to any other book. Just like Joyce's Ulysses. Even the harshest critique would have nothing to say about it. If they do, well they are critique. Finnegans Wake remains a pinnacle of linguistic achievement in English. 

What makes Finnegans Wake so special? The answer is simple. It's that book, that is everything. For a reader, it's like jumping into the Rabbit Hole that was once jumped by Alice. Finnegans Wake is a wonderland. It's a novel, a myth, a poem and a riddle. It's the dreamspeak of Joyce. Joseph Campbell famously said that 'If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake'. Now Campbell is a hard nut to crack. He is a mythologist. And mythologists are lucid when they talk. But even Campbell had to admit the brilliance of Finnegans Wake. Some say, it's the funniest and dirtiest book there is.

But why am I writing about Finnegans Wake? Because I am a student of life and a lover of poetry. And the book represents life and poetry for me. I am inspired by Joyce. And mostly people love his darling Ulysses the most. But I love Finnegans Wake more than Ulysses. The book is mystifying with charm and depth. You dive a little more with every word you read. And it's like a trip, high on some psychedelic substance. Or a meditative euphoria. The play of words gives you a lucid state of thinking. I am not even sure how to define that feeling that Joyce can project in the reader's mind. The book just is the book. 

What is the book about? Well, it's about a family of a modern man who was once a giant called Finnegan. It's a story of his awakening. Like a cookbook is a bible for a chef. Finnegans Wake is a bible for a writer. So much to learn. So many layers. Such intricate details and unfoldings. Such a beautiful book. I have to accept, I feel the same about so many other books. But Finnegans Wake has a special place to a writer in me. Or may be I am just wanting to be cool. Am I? May be. But NO. Its a sincere blending of thoughts and experience. A book is a lifetime lived. 

The book can be summarized as the story of five main characters of the Earwicker family. The father 

Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, the mother Anna Livia Plurabelle, and their three childrens. Though it's not the all day every day kind of book. Its dreamy and lucid, you don't even realize a plot changing, the character intermingling and the whole thing looking like a mess. Sometime, you have to read the whole chapter again. Because nothing makes sense, but you know so much is hidden in it. And you need to find it out. It's a psychological puzzle that you have to solve. Many have called it a vague book. But like James told Vanity Fair, everything in the book is consecutive and interrelated. He also said that he can justify every sentence in the book. 

Here's a little poem I wrote, to explain what it is to read Finnegans Wake.

Every word-
twists into a jungle of gibberish,
mid-plot endings,
a new story without a start
and it ended. WHEN?
How would I know. It ended.
It did? Yes, it did.
If so, why are you dangling?
Because it ended.
Ended when? Now.
But you said it ended a while ago.
Yes it did. But how can
an end, end again?
Because it can. What can?
IT. It what? The end.
End when? Then.
Then when? Now. So, now.
But what ended now?
This. What is this?
The start. So, the start ended
in the end of a start that
ended in the end of a start
that was the start of the end
and the end of the start. 

Yes, that is exactly how I feel when I read Finnegans Wake.  

Imagine you suddenly reading something like this: 

"bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk!"

Surely you would think what the F, am I reading. And after a little digging you find out it is suppose to mean symbolic thunderclap associated with the fall of Adam and Eve. That's just crazy. A sound cannot be a word. But it can, when you are reading Finnegans Wake. 

Or imagine reading this:

"So weenybeenyveenyteeny."

The book is complex to the core of complexities. And its wholesome. It's stretchy and elastic. Its numb, dull and boggling. Its simple. It childish, as if a blabbering blabberbush of a blabberzub baby. It's slippery, with meanings that mean one and a hundred things. It's interesting that Joyce even used the word Twitter. Though indirectly. A passage in the books read:

"ere teh hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea, when suppertide and souvenir to Charlatan Mall jointly kem gently along the quiet darkenings of Grand and Royal, ff, flitmansfluh, and, kk, ‘t crept i’ hedge whenas to many a softongue’s pawkytalk mude unswer u sufter poghyogh….."

Imagine how the book ends. The exact sentence reads:

A way a lone a last a loved a long the.

Finnegans wake is an alchemical book. It has a deeper auto-hypnosis involved. Its very clear when you read it as a student of the mysterious art. Or as a student of life. It's a web of allusions working together to form a story hidden behind a story. An elongated metaphor. Alchemy is the study of degree. And reading Finnegans Wake is also a process of reading in degrees. In Alchemy the union of sulphur and mercury is considered to be an incestous union of the king and queen. Incest is a repeated theme in the book. A long thread of parallels can be drawn. It's a beyond belongs. 

The book is dreamy. It's mental. And that's why it's beautiful. Thus, have we a book of a aura great. Listen the inside sound of the many faces. The wake of the giant. Roads twisted into travels of doors of mind. Motion that it is in. An opulence of presence combined. A recurrent lights of rippling water front. A velocity detector of a unfolding philosophy. A book beautiful. 

"over the bowls of memory where every hollow holds a hallow"

Because it's Finnegans Wake.