Episode 002
RIVERRUN
PAGE 3:1-8:8 | 2024-05-16
PODCAST AUDIO
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall
[Music fades out]
Adam Seelig: Welcome to the opening pages of James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 2, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading the opening five pages of Joyce’s last novel, recorded with a live audience in my home in Toronto. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]
Adam Seelig: Finnegans Wake is a production of One Little Goat Theatre Company. For the next five years, One Little Goat will film and record all 17 chapters (roughly 30 Hours) of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake before live audiences in various locations, screening and releasing them along along the way, with the aim of completing the entire book in time for its 90th birthday, May 4, 2029. One Little Goat Theatre Company is an official charity in Canada and the United States — if you’d like to support our work, please visit us online at www.OneLittleGoat.org to make a charitable donation. And if monetary support is not an option, you can still help this podcast by rating and reviewing it and by spreading the word. To get in touch, you’ll find our email address on the One Little Goat Theatre Company website and we’d love to hear from you.
[Music fades out]
Adam Seelig: Some of you listening know a lot more about this novel than I, and some of you are new to it entirely. I’m going to say a few things about Finnegans Wake in general and today’s reading in particular because I think it’s helpful to have some ideas and signposts going in. There’s really no end to what we can read into this extraordinary book, which seems to have as many interpretations as it does readers — everyone will find something new here. I’m simply going to share some of what I find amazing about it, often with thanks to others, including my partner in this project, Richard Harte, and the many people who have commented on the Wake since its publication 85 years ago.
If you prefer to hear Richard’s reading and Richard’s reading alone without any preamble (however illuminating such preamble may be), then feel free to jump ahead. I don’t mind in the least.
In Episode 1 we listened to the folk song that gave Finnegan Wake its title and its main theme: the rise and fall and rise again (and fall and rise etc.) of humanity.
That rising and falling motion carries over from the title to the first word we see and hear in the book: “riverrun” — a word of Joyce’s invention that combines “river” and “run” to form “riverrun”, a word that is central to the overall movement of this book with its riverrun of language, of musical sound, with music and sound being so important to Joyce that his whole approach could be summarized in the words of French poet Stephanne Mallarmé: “To give music back to poetry.”
“riverrun” — that first word brings us naturally to water. Richard Ellmann’s biography describes a friend complaining to Joyce that Finnegans Wake is all nonsense, to which the author responded, “It is an attempt to subordinate words to the rhythm of water.” Ellmann adds (and this is my favourite moment in the biography): “[Joyce] felt some misgivings about Finnegans Wake the night it was finished, and went down to the Seine [Joyce lived in Paris at the time] to listen by one of the bridges to the waters. He came back content.”
“riverrun”, like so many words in the Wake, generates many more meanings. Roland McHugh’s Annotations—which cover nearly every word and phrase of the novel in mind-blowing detail—offers us “riverrun” as “an excursion on a river,” fitting for those of us embarking on reading the Wake. John Gordon invites us to hear “riverrun” as “rêverons,” French for “we will dream,” and as “Reverend,” which will be significant later in the novel. “Reverend” is close to “reverence,” reverence for the river before us, which for Joyce and the Wake, so grounded in the city of Dublin, is the River Liffey.
“riverrun” also points us to streams, in this case the stream of consciousness narratives Joyce famously explored. Or more precisely, Joyce’s previous novel, Ulysses, explores streams of consciousness, while Finnegans Wake explores streams of unconsciousness. Ulysses is the daytime novel that unfolds chronologically; Finnegans Wake is the night novel that unfolds in a dream. It is a dream book.
Which brings us to a gloss on “riverrun” that French-Canadian poet Thierry Bissonnette and I came up with recently in conversation, and that is “rêve rond” meaning “round dream.” Finnegans Wake is famously a circular novel whose opening line is actually a continuation of the novel’s last. So what we have in Finnegans Wake is a circular dream novel, a rounded dream, a rêve rond, a riverrun. It brings to mind Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest: “We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.”
Finnegans Wake is a dream world that’s mostly nonlinear. And it’s a dream language that’s often nonsensical, a dream dialect comprised of as many languages as Joyce could possibly stuff in there. Incredibly, the Wake includes phrases, words and phonemes from—according to McHugh—62 languages (and remember, kids, this was before the internuts). They include — get ready:
Albanian
Amaro (an Italian criminal slang)
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Indian
Armenian (Eastern dialect)
Arabic
Basque
Bog Latin
Beche-la-Mar (a Melanesian pidgin)
Bearlagair Na Saer
Breton
Bulgarian
Burmese
Chinese (Mandarin)
Chinese with French romanization of characters
Chinese pidgin
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
French
Finnish
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindustani
Hungarian
Irish
Icelandic
Italian
Japanese
Latin
Lithuanian
Malay
Middle English
Modern Greek
Norwegian
Old Church Slavonic
Old English
Old French
Old Icelandic
Old Norse
Persian
Portuguese
Provençal
Pan-Slavonic
Romani
Romanian
Roumansch
Russian
Samoan
Sanskrit
Serbo-Croat
Shelta
Spanish
Swahili
Swiss German
Turkish
Ukrainian
Volapük (an artificial language)
Welsh
and… English.
Who are the characters in Finnegans Wake? Even though they’re not characters in a conventional sense—they’re a little too porous and malleable for that—we can say there are two principals, Anna Livia Plurabelle, or ALP, a woman associated with the water who may date back as far as Eve, and her husband, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE, a man associated with the land who may date back as far as Adam. Together they have two sons and one daughter. We’ll meet and talk about them all later in the novel.
And there’s one more thing I want to say about Finnegans Wake before we get into the first pages, and it’s something that’s not said nearly enough: Finnegans Wake is a comedy. Is it filled with puns? Abundantly! Are there puerile gags and fart jokes? Yes, yes there are. There are also moments that sound funny — we’re not always sure why, yet somehow they tickle us. I often think of the Wake as a kind of Mother Goose for adults, taking us back to a pre-verbal state akin to that of a baby finding pleasure in a nursery rhyme. And the truth is, we (humans) are far from fully understanding what makes something funny, though the best explanation I’ve found is this: laughter is ultimately not about getting the joke, but about getting along, which is a great way to think of this book that’s so often read and shared with others: we may not always get Finnegans Wake, but we can certainly get along with it and each other. Maybe this is my roundabout way of saying: I’m glad you’re here to share the novel with Richard and me.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano, music fades]
In a few minutes we’re going to hear Richard Harte read the opening pages of Finnegans Wake. The first page is a kind of overture to the entire novel, sounding out its motifs, including the cyclical fall and rise of humankind, love/desire/sin, family, the city of Dublin. I mentioned before that the so-called ‘first line’ on page 3 is actually a continuation of the book’s ‘last’ on page 628, which explains why the opening word, “riverrun”, is not capitalized. It also explains why the word “recirculation” comes up in this opening sentence. I also mentioned “riverrun” as “rêve rond” or circular dream — another kind of recirculation. To that I’ll add “riverrun” as “rive rond” or “round shore”. And indeed we’ll hear the word “shore” in the novel’s opening line, that is, the shore of Dublin’s River Liffey. The river runs past certain places in Dublin in this opening line, including Adam and Eve’s Church and Howth Castle.
Edmund Epstein in his Guide Through Finnegans Wake describes the river Liffey here as flowing in reverse, away from the sea and back into Dublin Bay, hence Adam and Eve’s Church becomes “Eve and Adam’s”, followed soon by the word “back”. Marshall McLuhan has an equally ingenious take on the river’s reverse flow: in his first annotated copy of the Wake, he notes that “back” in the opening sentence sounds like “Bach” (as in Johann Sebastian), and “bach” is German for “brook,” which is a stream or kind of river. So this ‘river running backwards’ is also a ‘river running Bachwords,’ making Joyce’s text a kind of verbal fugue. And I’ll also state the obvious in this opening sentence, that Eve and Adam, biblically speaking, are the world’s original woman and man.
There’s so much more to say about the novel’s opening line alone, but I’m going to move on now to point out a few things in the rest of the reading. Early on we’re going to hear a ‘thunderword,’ a word comprised of 100 letters and many languages whose phonemes all mean thunder. Is this thunder the sound of Tim Finnegan falling off his ladder, or Adam and Eve falling from their original apple-eating sin, or the thunder engendering the first frightened stutters of humanity at the prehistoric dawn of our speech (as theorized by the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, whose influence was so great on Joyce that we hear his name in the novel’s second line), or is this the sound of Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall? Humpty D will also make a cameo on the novel’s first page, which ends with the word “livvy”, linking to the Liffey, to life, to love and to Anna Livia Plurabelle, the Eve of the novel. We’ll then hear of heroic clashes in a paragraph that ends with the word “phoenish,” spelled in a way that resembles “Phoenix,” the mythological fire bird that falls and rises again and again, the dynamic cycle central to Finnegans Wake. Then Tim Finnegan, the tipsy folk song character we heard about in our first podcast episode, makes an appearance, along with a number of analogous characters or avatars, including HCE himself, and as we know from the song, he climbs his ladder only to fall down. We hear of this character’s coat of arms, his gigantism, his drinking. And then the book asks, ‘What brought about this sinful tragedy that led to his fall?’ Its answer is that while there may be 1,001 versions of the tale, we at least seem to know that, as in the folk song, Tim-Finnegan/HCE/etc. fell to his death on a building site. That building is first called a “collupsus” (combining “colossus” and “collapse,” which doesn’t sound especially auspicious) and later it’s called an “erection” (which sounds a lot more exciting). So there’s a sexual aspect to this downfall, much like the Original Sin of Adam & Eve. We then go to this man’s wake, where mourners cry and sob and sing his praises and other songs. They place a bucket of whiskey at his feet and barrel of Guinness at his head. And then in a kind of zoom out, we get a sense for the massive contours of this Finnegan or HCE character, described as a sleeping giant of the Dublin landscape stretching from head in Howth to toes in Chapelizod (a distance of about a dozen miles or 20 km), with his better half, the Liffey or ALP right there beside him to awaken him. Not merely a giant, though, HCE becomes Christ-like, and like Christ, is the Host or sacramental bread or in this case fish that can be eaten, and sure enough, those around him say “Grace before Glutton” and chow down. The sleeping giant, now an eaten salmon, goes back to sleep like a kind of dinosaur or “brontoichthyan” by the riverside. Then the clouds roll by and we zoom out even further for for a bird’s-eye view of HCE and ALP’s landscape, i.e. Dublin, and the green we see is Phoenix—there’s that bird again—Phoenix Park, within which there’s a large mound mass that also serves as a war museum. It’s the “museomound” to which admission is free but we’ll need a new character, Kate, to give us the tour. And that’s where this episode’s reading ends and Episode 3 will begin.
We could talk about these opening pages for days, but it’s time to get to the text itself. For those who want more detail, I linked to some resources in the show notes. Do not worry if a lot of the reading rushes past you quickly — it’s impossible to catch it all — and feel free to take solace in what Gertrude Stein had to say about Joyce’s writing: “Joyce is good. He is a good writer. People like him because he is incomprehensible and anybody can understand him.”
Richard Harte, our reader, is third generation in a family of actors and musicians, but I assure you he’s still a lovely, kind person — and gifted, most certainly, at reading Joyce. Born in Ireland’s capital and raised in both Dublin and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Richard has made Toronto his home for the past 25 years. He’s performed on prestigious stages across Canada, hundreds of times with One Little Goat Theatre Company, and made numerous TV appearances. He is also a member of Toronto’s Anna Livia Company, performing Joyce’s Ulysses every Bloomsday (June 16).
The opening pages from Chapter 1 were shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small—and at that time all masked—audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.
And now it’s time to welcome you all into my home for Richard’s terrific reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 3 line 1 to page 8 line 8 in Chapter 1.
[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:1-8:8.]
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.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-
linsfirst loved livvy.
[p.4] What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-
gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu
Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still
out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-
pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie
Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod's brood, be me fear!
Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-
killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired
and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-
solvers! What true feeling for their's hayair with what strawng
voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the
duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and
body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of
soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks
of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if
you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the
pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.
Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen's mau-
rer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofar-
back for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers
or Helviticus committed deuteronomy (one yeastyday he sternely
struxk his tete in a tub for to watsch the future of his fates but ere
he swiftly stook it out again, by the might of moses, the very wat-
er was eviparated and all the guenneses had met their exodus so
that ought to show you what a pentschanjeuchy chap he was!)
and during mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edi-
fices in Toper's Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the
banks for the livers by the Soangso. He addle liddle phifie Annie
ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part
inher. Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in
grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like
Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-
les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the
liquor wheretwin 'twas born, his roundhead staple of other days
to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth
of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from
[p.5] next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitec-
titiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and
with larrons o'toolers clittering up and tombles a'buckets clotter-
ing down.
Of the first was he to bare arms and a name: Wassaily Boos-
laeugh of Riesengeborg. His crest of huroldry, in vert with
ancillars, troublant, argent, a hegoak, poursuivant, horrid, horned.
His scutschum fessed, with archers strung, helio, of the second.
Hootch is for husbandman handling his hoe. 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!
What then agentlike brought about that tragoady thundersday
this municipal sin business? Our cubehouse still rocks as earwitness
to the thunder of his arafatas but we hear also through successive
ages that shebby choruysh of unkalified muzzlenimiissilehims that
would blackguardise the whitestone ever hurtleturtled out of
heaven. Stay us wherefore in our search for tighteousness, O Sus-
tainer, what time we rise and when we take up to toothmick and
before we lump down upown our leatherbed and in the night and
at the fading of the stars! For a nod to the nabir is better than wink
to the wabsanti. Otherways wesways like that provost scoffing
bedoueen the jebel and the jpysian sea. Cropherb the crunch-
bracken shall decide. Then we'll know if the feast is a flyday. She
has a gift of seek on site and she allcasually ansars helpers, the
dreamydeary. Heed! Heed! It may half been a missfired brick, as
some say, or it mought have been due to a collupsus of his back
promises, as others looked at it. (There extand by now one thou-
sand and one stories, all told, of the same). But so sore did abe
ite ivvy's holired abbles, (what with the wallhall's horrors of rolls-
rights, carhacks, stonengens, kisstvanes, tramtrees, fargobawlers,
autokinotons, hippohobbilies, streetfleets, tournintaxes, mega-
phoggs, circuses and wardsmoats and basilikerks and aeropagods
and the hoyse and the jollybrool and the peeler in the coat and
the mecklenburk bitch bite at his ear and the merlinburrow bur-
rocks and his fore old porecourts, the bore the more, and his
[p.6] blightblack workingstacks at twelvepins a dozen and the noobi-
busses sleighding along Safetyfirst Street and the derryjellybies
snooping around Tell-No-Tailors' Corner and the fumes and the
hopes and the strupithump of his ville's indigenous romekeepers,
homesweepers, domecreepers, thurum and thurum in fancymud
murumd and all the uproor from all the aufroofs, a roof for may
and a reef for hugh butt under his bridge suits tony) wan warn-
ing Phill filt tippling full. His howd feeled heavy, his hoddit did
shake. (There was a wall of course in erection) Dimb! He stot-
tered from the latter. Damb! he was dud. Dumb! Mastabatoom,
mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute is all long. For
whole the world to see.
Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie?
of a trying thirstay mournin? Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's
chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in
their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of
ululation. There was plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers
and raiders and cinemen too. And the all gianed in with the shout-
most shoviality. Agog and magog and the round of them agrog.
To the continuation of that celebration until Hanandhunigan's
extermination! Some in kinkin corass, more, kankan keening.
Belling him up and filling him down. He's stiff but he's steady is
Priam Olim! 'Twas he was the dacent gaylabouring youth. Sharpen
his pillowscone, tap up his bier! E'erawhere in this whorl would ye
hear sich a din again? With their deepbrow fundigs and the dusty
fidelios. They laid him brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips
of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head.
Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the twoddle of the fuddled, O!
Hurrah, there is but young gleve for the owl globe wheels in
view which is tautaulogically the same thing. Well, Him a being
so on the flounder of his bulk like an overgrown babeling, let wee
peep, see, at Hom, well, see peegee ought he ought, platterplate. *E*
Hum! From Shopalist to Bailywick or from ashtun to baronoath
or from Buythebanks to Roundthehead or from the foot of the
bill to ireglint's eye he calmly extensolies. And all the way (a
horn!) from fiord to fjell his baywinds' oboboes shall wail him
[p.7] rockbound (hoahoahoah!) in swimswamswum and all the livvy-
long night, the delldale dalppling night, the night of bluerybells,
her flittaflute in tricky trochees (O carina! O carina!) wake him.
With her issavan essavans and her patterjackmartins about all
them inns and ouses. Tilling a teel of a tum, telling a toll of a tea-
ry turty Taubling. Grace before Glutton. For what we are, gifs
a gross if we are, about to believe. So pool the begg and pass the
kish for crawsake. Omen. So sigh us. Grampupus is fallen down
but grinny sprids the boord. Whase on the joint of a desh? Fin-
foefom the Fush. Whase be his baken head? A loaf of Singpan-
try's Kennedy bread. And whase hitched to the hop in his tayle?
A glass of Danu U'Dunnell's foamous olde Dobbelin ayle. But,
lo, as you would quaffoff his fraudstuff and sink teeth through
that pyth of a flowerwhite bodey behold of him as behemoth for
he is noewhemoe. Finiche! Only a fadograph of a yestern scene.
Almost rubicund Salmosalar, ancient fromout the ages of the Ag-
apemonides, he is smolten in our mist, woebecanned and packt
away. So that meal's dead off for summan, schlook, schlice and
goodridhirring.
Yet may we not see still the brontoichthyan form outlined a-
slumbered, even in our own nighttime by the sedge of the trout-
ling stream that Bronto loved and Brunto has a lean on. Hiccubat
edilis. Apud libertinam parvulam. Whatif she be in flags or flitters,
reekierags or sundyechosies, with a mint of mines or beggar a
pinnyweight. Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we
mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid
piddle med puddle, she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by. Yoh!
Brontolone slaaps, yoh snoores. Upon Benn Heather, in Seeple
Isout too. The cranic head on him, caster of his reasons, peer yu-
thner in yondmist. Whooth? His clay feet, swarded in verdigrass,
stick up starck where he last fellonem, by the mund of the maga-
zine wall, where our maggy seen all, with her sisterin shawl.
While over against this belles' alliance beyind Ill Sixty, ollol-
lowed ill! bagsides of the fort, bom, tarabom, tarabom, lurk the
ombushes, the site of the lyffing-in-wait of the upjock and hock-
ums. Hence when the clouds roll by, jamey, a proudseye view is
[p.8] enjoyable of our mounding's mass, now Wallinstone national
museum, with, in some greenish distance, the charmful water-
loose country and the two quitewhite villagettes who hear show
of themselves so gigglesomes minxt the follyages, the prettilees!
Penetrators are permitted into the museomound free. Welsh and
the Paddy Patkinses, one shelenk! Redismembers invalids of old
guard find poussepousse pousseypram to sate the sort of their butt.
For her passkey supply to the janitrix, the mistress Kathe. Tip.
[End of reading excerpt]
Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading the beginning of Finnegans Wake, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.
Join us for Episode 3 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake, including the famous “Museyroom” scene. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including liner notes & trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]
Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!
And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Laura Lakatosh; Rehearsal Stage Management by Sandi Becker; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.
Thanks to our live audience of Pip Dwyer, Kevin Kennedy, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig. And thanks to our rehearsal audience of Jackie Chau, Jordy Koffman, Andrew Moodie & Shai Rotbard-Seelig. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.
One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org
Thank you for listening!
[Music fades out]
Mentioned: riverrun, music, sound, rivers, water, streams of consciousness and unconsciousness, dreams, dream language, multiple languages, characters ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle) and HCE (Earwicker), comedy, Mother Goose, what makes something funny?, circularity and “recirculation,” synopsis, Roland McHugh, John Gordon, Edmund Epstein, Marshall McLuhan’s copy of the Wake (accessed at Fisher Rare Books Library), Thierry Bissonnette, Gertrude Stein.
Resources:
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall. A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
For fun: “What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing,” John Tierney. New York Times, March 13, 2007.