20 June 2022

Putting It All Together

 

 James Joyce (Time, 8 May 1939)

the book of Doublends Jined

In its final form, Finnegans Wake comprised seventeen chapters, which were distributed into four parts, or books. Book I had eight chapters, Books II and III had four chapters each, and Book IV comprised only a single chapter. These seventeen chapters are usually referred to using a combination of Roman and Hindi-Arabic numerals, as follows:

  • I.1, I.2, I.3, I.4, I.5, I.6, I.7, I.8

  • II.1, II.2, II.3, II.4

  • III.1, III.2, III.3, III.4

  • IV.1

IV.1 is often referred to simply as IV, but I prefer the more precise designation. In The Restored Finnegans Wake, Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon have gone so far as to divide Book IV into four mini-chapters. This actually makes sense. Joyce himself pointed out in a number of his letters that Book III balances Book I (Hart 67). Adaline Glasheen believed that a similar relationship held between Books II and IV:

 I, too, am clear that Book II is balanced by Book IV and Book I by Book III. What does it mean? When we say “balanced by” do we mean opposite ends of a balance. Identity of opposites? (McHugh 55)

As Book II comprises four chapters, it would be fitting if Book IV had four sections. This is possibly the rationale behind Rose and O’Hanlon’s decision to split IV.1 into four sections. Nevertheless, these sections are not chapters, so IV.1 will always designate the whole of Book IV.

Unlike the eighteen episodes of Ulysses, the seventeen chapters of Finnegans Wake never acquired official titles. Joyce did devise unofficial nicknames for some of them, which he used in his correspondence, and some Wakean scholars have suggested provisional titles for others, but there has never been any consensus on the matter. Isolated episodes in some chapters have also acquired unofficial titles over the years. There follows a list of chapter titles I am adopting, the meanings of which will become clear in the reading of the book:

he scrabbled and scratched and scriobbled and skrevened

I mentioned before that Joyce did not write Finnegans Wake in sequence from beginning to end: he constructed the book from numerous fragments of text that were drafted and reworked out of sequence before being integrated into the whole.

The following table summarizes what we know—or what we think we know—of this complicated sequence of events. My two sources were not always in agreement, and some educated guesswork was required in compiling this table. FW gives the pagination in the original edition of 1939, while RFW gives the pagination in The Restored Finnegans Wake of 2010, which is my preferred edition of the book. Month and Year give the approximate dates when Joyce first drafted the various sections of the book. Where appropriate, I have included unofficial titles for the sections:

Sources: Crispi & Slote 485-489 : Hayman 286-330

  • The Tristan and Isolde sketch of late March 1923 was merged in a complex manner with the Mamalujo sketch of the same year to create II.4 §2, so there is no II.4 §1 in the final text. This took place in 1938.

  • I.3 §2 and I.3 §3 were probably drafted as alternative versions of the one passage. But rather than use one and discard the other, Joyce conflated the two into one continuous passage.

  • I.5 §2, The Revered Letter, was subsequently removed from I.5 and inserted in 1938 into the final chapter as IV.1 §4.

  • I.5 §3, The Delivery of the Letter, was subsequently removed from I.5 and became the node from which the whole of Book III ramified.

  • II.2 §4 was the original version of Scribbledehobbles, which Joyce abandoned in 1934. He replaced it with a new version, II.2 §5, in the winter of 1937-38.

Some Points of Interest

On 16 August 1924, Joyce wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver:

I am sorry my cyclopeyed face has that worried look. Really I have got some rest and a good deal of sea air. But it is true that I have been thinking and thinking how and how and how can I and can it—all about the fusion of two parts of the book—while my one bedazzled eye searched the sea like Cain-Shem-Tristan-Patrick from his lighthouse in Boulogne. I hope the solution will presently appear. At least I have never found anything in any other way than sitting with my mouth open picturesquely. (Letters I 16 August 1924)

At this time, he had written most of Book I and some of Book III. When he wrote of the fusion of two parts of the book, he must have been referring to the linking of Book I to Book III. Presumably the idea of an interconnecting Book II was beginning to take shape in his mind, but he would not draft the first fragment—The Triangle— of Book II until July 1926, and he would not begin to work on Book II in earnest until October 1930.


On 21 May 1926, when most of Books I and III had been drafted, Joyce wrote to Weaver about his future plans for the book:

I have the book now fairly well planned out in my head. I am as yet uncertain whether I shall start [work next] on the twilight games [II.1] ... which will follow immediately after [I.8 Anna Livia Plurabelle] or on to K’s orisons [IV.1], to follow [III.4]. (Letters I 21 May 1926)

Note that he had not yet, properly speaking, begun Book II. At this stage, it seems, he only envisaged a single chapter between Books I and III. A few weeks later, however, he wrote again to Weaver:

Between the close of [I.8 Anna Livia Plurabelle] at nightfall and [III.1 The First Watch of Shaun] there are three or four other episodes, the children’s games [II.1], night studies [II.2], a scene in the ‘public’ [II.3] and a ‘lights out in the village’ [II.4]. (Letters I 7 June 1926)

By the middle of 1926, then, Joyce had the book more or less mapped out in his head. It would take a dozen or more years to transform that abstract map into actual words on the page. Between May 1927 and May 1930 he struggled to make progress, and even considered giving up and deputizing another Irish writer, James Stephens, to take over and finish the book for him. This plan was no mere chimera: Joyce actually approached Stephens and asked him if he were willing to take on the task. Stephens tentatively accepted, and Joyce paved the way by explaining to him all about the book. Joyce was attracted by the fact that they shared the same name and—Joyce erroneously believed—birthday. Stephens’ surname also echoed the given name of Joyce’s alter ego Stephen Dedalus. He joked that the finished book would be by JJ&S.

In the end, nothing came of this bizarre episode. In May 1930 Joyce began Book II in earnest, and his enthusiasm for the projected revived. Stephens was not needed, and he took Joyce’s secrets with him to the grave.

During this time Joyce’s eyesight continued to deteriorate despite numerous operations, but such was his commitment to his art that he ignored his ophthalmologist’s advice to stop working. It is sometimes forgotten that James Joyce was willing to risk blindness in order to finish a book that few people would bother to read.

To summarize, then:

  • Joyce first drafted most of Book I, Chapters 2-5, 7-8 in 1923-24.

  • He then drafted most of Book III in 1924-25 and in 1928.

  • He drafted the opening chapter of the book, Riverrun, in late 1926.

  • He drafted the sixth chapter of Book I, The Quiz, in the second half of 1927.

  • He drafted most of Book II between Autumn 1930 and Autumn 1938.

  • He drafted the final chapter of the book, Ricorso, in 1938.

The salient points to note are:

  • Book III originally followed Book I without a break.

  • Book I originally had only six chapters: Riverrun and The Quiz were afterthoughts.

  • Book II, another afterthought, was originally a single chapter, before ramifying into four chapters.

  • Although Book IV was not drafted until 1938, the idea for this chapter was in place by 1926.

Work in Progress

But that is not the whole story. There is another peculiarity about Finnegans Wake that should not be overlooked. In the course of the sixteen or more years that Joyce spent writing Finnegans Wake, about fifty extracts from the unfinished book appeared in various publications. Most of these excerpts were approved by Joyce, but a few were pirated from authorized editions.

The first of these fragments, an early draft of Mamalujo, was published in April 1924 by Ford Madox Ford in the fourth issue of his literary magazine the transatlantic review. As Joyce had not yet settled on a title for his new novel, Ford took the liberty of calling the extract From Work in Progress. Joyce liked the name and adopted it himself: variations of this self-referential phrase crop up all over Finnegans Wake.


transition 1

As Oscar Wilde once wrote: There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about (Wilde 8-9). Fearing irrelevance, Joyce was very much in favour of keeping both himself and his Work in Progress in the public consciousness during the book’s lengthy gestation. In September 1926, when ten or more fragments had been published, he wrote to Harriet Shaw Weaver about his failure to get a fragment into the esteemed American magazine The Dial:

I am sorry the Dial has rejected the pieces as I wanted them to appear slowly and regularly in a prominent place. (Letters I 24 September 1926)

Just as Joyce was beginning to sense that many of those who had championed the author of Ulysses were losing interest in the author of Work in Progress, a new coterie of admirers materialized. Among these devotees were Eugene and Maria Jolas, Myron and Helen Nutting, and Elliot Paul. In January 1927, following a private reading by Joyce of the opening lines of Work in Progress, these new friends agreed to serialize Joyce’s novel from the beginning. Eugene Jolas was already in the process of founding a literary magazine, which was to be called transition. This magazine became the principal vehicle for the serialization of Work in Progress.

Twenty-seven numbers of transition appeared between April 1927 and May 1938. The first item in the table of contents for transition 1 read:

JAMES JOYCE Opening Pages of a Work in Progress.

Subsequent fragments were styled Continuation of A Work in Progress, or simply Work in Progress. They appeared in Numbers 2-8, 11-13, 15, 18, 22-23, 26-27. The first eight installments serialized the eight chapters of Book I. Book II was represented by a single fragment in Number 11 known as The Triangle from II.2, Night Studies (FW 282.05-304.04, RFW 218.27-233.04), as this was all Joyce had written of this Book. Numbers 12, 13, 15 and 18 serialized the four chapters of Book III. Number 22 included the first chapter of Book II (Twilight Games). Number 23 filled out most of II.2 with the opening and closing fragments that enclose The Triangle. Number 26 published the opening section of II.3, The Scene in the Public. Finally, Number 27 included a “Fragment from Work in Progress”, the Butt and Taff episode from II.3.

Taken together, the transition fragments represented a substantial chunk of the final text, although many passages would be heavily revised or reworked before final publication. For example, the opening words of the very first fragment read:

riverrun brings us back to Howth Castle and Environs. (Jolas & Paul 9)

That now reads as a bit of a damp squib compared to the final version:

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.

Still, it’s better than Joyce’s first draft of the opening words of the book:

Howth Castle & Environs! (Hayman 46)


transition 1, Page 9

In addition to these magazine publications—some of which were quite substantial—several volumes of fragments also appeared in book form before the completion of the novel:

  • Anna Livia Plurabelle, Crosby Gaige, New York (1928)

  • Tales Told of Shem and Shaun, Black Sun Press, Paris (1929)

  • Haveth Childers Everywhere, Fountain Press, Paris (1930)

  • Anna Livia Plurabelle, Faber & Faber, London (1930)

  • Haveth Childers Everywhere, Faber & Faber, London (1931)

  • Two Tales of Shem and Shaun, Faber & Faber, London (1932)

  • The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies, Servire Press, The Hague (1934)

  • Storiella as She Is Syung, Corvinus Press, London (1937)

These volumes are interesting in recording how the text evolved as Joyce reworked each fragment from first draft to final publication. They are also sometimes helpful in elucidating obscure passages of the final text, as they generally record earlier, less obscure drafts.

Recently, Dirk Van Hulle of the University of Antwerp brought out a study of this important phase of the history of Finnegans Wake: James Joyce’s ‘Work in Progress’: Pre-Book Publications of Finnegans Wake Fragments. For those who are interested in such minutiae, Van Hulle’s work promises to provide the reader with a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding each of these various publications.

Another volume dealing with the genesis and gestation of Finnegans Wake might also be mentioned here: How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake, edited by Luca Crispi and Sam Slote. This collection of essays might seem to be taking the genetic approach a little too far, but the contributors frequently share their own ideas about Finnegans Wake and what it means to them. I found this book surprisingly insightful and very helpful at a time when my own views on the book were taking shape. I recommend it.

How it ends?

By the close of 1938 Joyce’s final page proofs were in the hands of his printers, MacLehose of Glasgow. In mid-January 1939 he telegraphed some last minute changes, marking the end of a process that had begun in a hotel in Nice more than sixteen years before. On 30 January, three days before his fifty-seventh birthday, a printed copy of Finnegans Wake—still unpublished—was in the author’s hands. His telegram of gratitude to Faber & Faber in London read:

MY WARM THANKS TO ALL CONCERNED FOR PATIENCE PROMPTITUDE WHICH I GREATLY APPRECIATE. (Ellmann 714-715)

The book was formally published on 4 May 1939, appearing simultaneously in London (Faber & Faber) and New York (The Viking Press).

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

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