BK Naxo 002067
BK Naxo 002067
BK Naxo 002067
COM PLETE
CLASSICS
JOYCE
UNABRIDGED
Barry McGovern is a Dubliner. He was born in Eccles Street, graduated with a B.A. from University
College Dublin and lives in Chapelizod. He played Stephen Dedalus in the Abbey Theatre’s production of
Hugh Leonard’s Stephen D. and Buck Mulligan in Anthony Burgess’s Blooms of Dublin. TV appearances
include Game of Thrones, Vikings and Foundation, and among his many films are Joe Versus the
Volcano, Far and Away, Citizen Lane and Wild Mountain Thyme. He is perhaps best known for his
appearances in the work of Samuel Beckett. His two one-man Beckett shows I’ll Go On and Watt have
played worldwide and he played Vladimir in the Beckett-on-Film Waiting for Godot.
Marcella Riordan began her career at The Abbey School in Dublin and has worked in theatres all over
Ireland and the UK, including Druid Theatre and Lyric (Belfast). She has worked extensively on BBC
Radio and RTÉ. Her previous work on James Joyce text includes playing Gerty McDowell in Anthony
Burgess’s Blooms of Dublin (BBC/RTÉ), Zoe in Ulysses (RTÉ) and Molly Bloom for Naxos AudioBooks’s
recording of Ulysses. She was awarded Best Actress for her portrayal of Nancy in the BBC Radio play
The Old Jest. Her film and TV work includes playing the lead role in The Long March, a BBC play about
the deaths of 10 Republican prisoners on hunger strike.
Roger Marsh is a composer and former Professor of Music at the University of York. His music has been
performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. In 1995 he abridged Ulysses and produced it for Naxos
AudioBooks, and then went on to produce all of Joyce’s major novels, as well as Dante’s Divine Comedy,
also for Naxos. He currently lives in the south of France, where he continues to write and compose.
Total running time: 29:18:16 • View our full range of titles at n-ab.com
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Book 1
1 [The fall]
1 ‘riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s…’ 16:10
The scene is set and the themes of history, the fall, the twin brothers and ‘Bygmester Finnegan’ set out. We hear the first of the
hundred-letter ‘thunder words’. HCE has fallen (‘Hic Cubat Edilis’), we have attended his wake, and now he lies like a giant hill
beside his Liffeying wife (Apud Libertinam Parvulam).
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12 ‘And thus, with this rochelly exetur of Bully Acre…’ 2:56
The testimonies are complete and we can see HCE again as an ancient hero. ‘Animadiabolum, mene credidisti mortuum’ is dog
Latin for: ‘Soul of the devil do you think me dead?’ (the last line of the ballad of Finnegan’s Wake). HCE is reduced again to a
slumbering mass.
16 ‘Meirdreach an Oincuish! But a new complexion was put upon the matter…’ 13:48
The differing testimonies of ‘Pegger Festy’ and ‘Wet Pinter’ introduce the theme of the twins, equal and opposite, Shem the
Penman and Shaun the Postman. We also meet the four judges who will follow the case throughout the book.
22 ‘Now, kapnimancy and infusionism may both fit as tight as two trivets…’ 22:50
We should be grateful to have this document (the letter) and ‘cling to it as with drowning hands’. It is compared to the mediaeval
Book of Kells, the precious illuminated manuscript which now resides under glass at Trinity College, Dublin, but which, like the
letter, once lay hidden ‘under a sod’. Our document shows no sign of any punctuation, but when held up to the light, reveals it
has been punctured by a four-pronged instrument (a fork?). This makes it hard to read the fragmented texts, which also seem
to have accrued a variety of foreign accents. Finally Shaun gives up his interruptions, and gives way to Shem – the Penman.
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25 ‘10. What bitter’s love but yurning…’ 14:54
This question seems to be addressed by a rejected lover to the temptress Isolde (Iseult, Isobel...), and the answer is a lengthy
monologue, which in many ways looks forward to the reminiscences of Anna at the very close of the book.
26 ‘11. If you met on the binge a poor acheseyeld from Ailing...’ 9:23
A question in the form of a schoolboy rhyme is answered by the professor first in rather scholarly terms. Since his pupils appear
not to follow, he begins again with a fable.
31 ‘One hailcannon night (for his departure was attended by a heavy downpour)…’ 12:15
One stormy night he was chased by a mob, and instead of standing to fight he ‘stank out of sight’, retiring to the safety of his
‘inkbattle house’. That’s how low he was.
32 ‘What, para Saom Plaom, in the names of Deucalion and Pyrrha…’ 14:40
There he wrote his ‘usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles’ (Ulysses). He sang too, ‘infinitely better than Baraton McGlucklin’
(John McCormack). (In 1902 and again in 1904 Joyce appeared on the same concert platform as McCormack.)
33 ‘Of course our low hero was a self valeter by choice of need…’ 10:10
He cooked for himself all kinds of eggs and was self sufficient until ‘the pulpic dictators… boycotted him of all mutton-suet
candles and romeruled stationery’ and he was forced to flee ‘across the kathartic ocean’ to make his own ink and paper.
37 ‘First she let her hair fal and down it flussed to her feet…’ 18:25
She bathed and got dressed and set off like Santa Claus with a sack over her shoulder, to deliver presents (bribes?) to one and all.
38 ‘Well, you know or don’t you kennet or haven’t I told you…’ 10:00
As they chatter, the story disintegrates and night begins to fall. The two women turn to tree and stone (‘My foos won’t moos’:
‘I can’t move my feet’). This is the passage famously recorded by Joyce himself.
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Book 2
48 ‘PANOPTICAL PURVIEW OF POLITICAL PROGRESS AND THE FUTURE PRESENTATION OF THE PAST.’ 15:36
‘Stop doting on the dung pile of the past. The new has shunted the old…’ ‘Grumbledum’ has fallen from his wall and ‘Hanah
Levy’ (Anna Livia) is delivering her spoils. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? The same anew?
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51 ‘HYPOTHESES OF COMMONEST EXPERIENCES BEFORE APOTHEOSIS OF THE LUSTRAL PRINCIPIUM.’ 20:10
Turning now to geometry, Kev needs a hand from Dolph, starting with an equilateral triangle, which is the symbol of Woman.
Dolph is introducing Kev to the secrets of sex, but his flow is abruptly interrupted by the professor – in Latin to begin with – and
a long digression about the boy’s scurrilous past and the injustices suffered by women.
53 ‘SICK US A SOCK WITH SOME SEDIMENT IN IT FOR THE SAKE OF OUR DARNING WIVES.’ 15:08
More on the rivalry and the differences between the two brothers. Kevin may not be a writer like Dolph, but if he wrote to a fine
lady he could write as well as ‘that moultylousy Erewhig’. Instead he resorts to punching his brother, who seems not to mind
despite his black eye.
54 ‘ENTER THE COP AND HOW. SECURES GUBERNANT URBIS TERROREM.’ 7:46
The study period is over – ‘We’ve had our day at triv and quad’ – apart from a long list of titles for further study, followed by the
numbers one to ten in Gaelic, symbolising the ten emanations of the Kabbalah. And then a ‘Nightletter’ (or Christmas card?)
from the children to their ‘Pep and Memmy’ below.
57 ‘So for the second tryon all the meeting of the acarras had it.’ 11:38
After a pause, a new story told by ‘Kersse’ or ‘Ashe Junior’, who has been at the races, becomes a heated brawl, until one of the
tailors calls to them to sit down and shut up.
60 ‘We want Bud. We want Bud Budderly. We want Bud Budderly boddily.’ 11:48
The customers would rather listen to the popular radio show ‘Butt and Taff’. This episode, written out like a play script, touches
on Buckley shooting the Russian General (while he was defecating) at Sevastopol, but also the alleged misdemeanours of HCE
in Phoenix Park, witnessed by three redcoats.
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63 ‘Shutmup. And bud did down well right.’ 12:48
The customers call for the radio to be turned off, and they argue ‘[a]s to whom the major guiltfeather pertained’. The innkeeper
agrees with them that perhaps all men are guilty, not least him. He has been reading such things in a book with woodcuts by
Aubrey Beardsley. He returns to his till, while the company metaphorically take him apart.
64 ‘Group A. You have jest (a ham) beamed listening through (a ham pig)…’ 23:00
With radio back on again, a presenter introduces a musical programme (spot the references), but the listeners appear to
recognise in his voice the very sea captain they have been arguing about. They turn their attentions again to HCE demanding
that he resume his story and account for himself. He does so, at length, confessing to his many crimes and prepared to take his
punishment.
66 ‘He shook be ashaped of hempshelves, hiding that shepe in his goat.’ 20:59
From within, HCE can hear the crowd continuing to demand justice. Eventually he falls asleep, and it is to be hoped the sounds
of fighting outside (‘BENK’, ‘BINK’, ‘BUNK’) are not disturbing his sleeping family.
69 ‘And still at that time of the dynast days of old konning Soteric Sulkinbored and Bargomuster Bart…’ 18:35
The recollections and stories gradually return us to Isolde (‘Iseult la Belle’: ‘Lizzy my love’) and the dream ends with a paean
of praise delivered by the four old men in their four regional accents, after which ‘[t]he way is free’ for Shaun and Shem
(‘johnajeams’) in the following chapters.
Book 3
71 ‘His handpalm lifted, his handshell cupped, his handsign pointed…’ 19:42
Shaun addresses the people and is cross-examined by them. It was Shaun who delivered the fateful letter. Who gave it to him? Of
course Shaun was just doing his job. Though a ‘mailman of peace’ he is unworthy of bearing important messages – that should
perhaps be better done by his brother.
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2 [Jaun and the girls]
75 ‘Jaunty Jaun, as I was shortly before that made aware…’ 28:50
Out on a nighttime walk Jaun encounters twenty-nine girls from St Bride’s ‘national nightschool’. Having flirted with them a bit,
he realises that one of them is his sister Izzy and his tone changes. He begins a lengthy sermon passing on advice about how
they should conduct themselves.
76 ‘Poof! There’s puff for ye, begor, and planxty of it, all abound me breadth!’ 17:46
After a pause for breath, Jaun continues, addressing his remarks directly to Izzy. If any ‘lapwhelp’ should try it on with her, he’ll
have Jaun to answer to. On the other hand if he found her up to no good, he would dish out punishment himself.
77 ‘Unbeknownst to you would ire turn o’er see, a nuncio would I return here.’ 20:32
If he were overseas he would be thinking of her. His tone is now more like that of a lover, with Izzy as his confidante.
81 ‘After poor Jaun the Boast’s last fireless words of postludium…’ 11:18
The girls leap forward to offer him their assistance should he leap or fall, and call after him as he disappears with a wailing
lament. Then curiously Jaun waved his hand across the sea, his hat ‘blew off in a loveblast’ and he was ‘quickly lost to sight’.
3 [Interrogation of Yawn]
82 ‘Longly, lowly, a wail went forth. Pure Yawn lay low.’ 20:15
Jaun or Shaun is now called Yawn, and he lies asleep in a heap upon a hillside. Up the hill climb the four old men, now called
senators, who question him at length. They want to understand what he knows about the crimes that may have been committed
by HCE, but his answers are evasive.
88 ‘Now, just wash and brush up your memoirias a little bit.’ 19:23
Was Thom a peeper, and was he also known as ‘Shivering William’? Were there two girls involved, called P and Q? And was there
also a ball or a wake that night at the Tailor’s Hall? Or at ‘Finn’s Hotel’? Or at some other hostelry?
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90 ‘Pro general continuation and in particular explication…’ 13:27
Testimony now comes from Treacle Tom, whose evidence concerning himself and Frisky Shorty is, quite literally, ‘fishy’, and
implicates Izzy, who now gives evidence in the form of an internal monologue.
94 ‘But I was firm with her. And I did take the reached of my delights…’ 21:00
His wife was always faithful to him, and he treated her well, his ‘little ana countrymouse’. He taught her to read, and built a
garden for her (‘with a magicscene wall’) and brewed for his ‘alpine plurabelle’. Bear witness Matthew, Mark, Luke and John!
98 ‘Let us consider. The procurator lnterrogarius Mealterum presends us this proposer.’ 15:39
The action is paused while the family relationships are analysed objectively in the form of a long legal presentation, interrupted
occasionally by the children stirring in sleep.
Book 4
1 [Ricorso (Return)]
101 ‘Sandhyas! Sandhyas! Sandhyas!’ 21:51
The sanskrit morning prayer announces dawn. We are urged to wake up and begin the cycle anew, and are reminded that
‘genghis is ghoon for you’. We have been having a sound night’s sleep and now it is about to ‘rolywholyover’ and begin again.
It was a long dark night. Much has happened, but no time has passed: ‘Upon the thuds trokes... it will be exactlyso fewer hours
by so many minutes of the ope of the diurn...’
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103 ‘The cry of Stena chills the vitals of slumbring off the motther…’ 21:36
We are passing from sleep into the ‘wikeawades warld’, though it was all so agreeable touring the dreamworld with Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John and their dappled ass. But now we await the risen sun with ‘Muta and Juva’, whose strange conversation
heralds the arrival of St Patrick at the Grand National. Forget what has gone, but remember it. The whole cycle will repeat and
all the particles of that decomposed letter will be reassembled and will be on the table at breakfast, ‘as sure as herself pits hen
to paper and there’s scribings scrawled on eggs’.
JAMES JOYCE
(1882–1941)
Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin Street, His friends assembled at the wake,
A gentleman Irish mighty odd, And Mrs Finnegan called for lunch,
He’d a bit of a brogue both rich and sweet, First they brought in tay and cake,
An’ to rise in the world he carried a hod. Then pipes, tobacco, and whiskey punch.
Now Tim had a sort of a tipplin’ way, Miss Biddy O’Brien began to cry,
With the love of the liquor he was born, ‘Such a nice clean corpse, did you ever see,
An’ to help him on with his work each day, Arrah, Tim avourneen, why did you die?’
He’d a drop of the craythur every morn. ‘Ah, hould your gab,’ said Paddy McGee.
Even before James Joyce published Finnegans Wake in 1939 it ‘The Ondt and the Gracehopper’ is a parody of a fable by La
would have been anticipated as a novel of great importance. Fontaine (The Ant and the Grasshopper) written in difficult but
After all, the author of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as amusing language reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.
a Young Man and Ulysses had been working on it for 17 ‘The Mookse and the Gripes’ – one of the most difficult passages
years. What’s more, Joyce, with his talent for generating both in the novel – is also deceptive because of its fairy-tale style. It
publicity and an atmosphere of mystery, had already published begins: ‘Eins within a space and a weary wide space it wast, ere
short sections of the ‘Work in Progress’ as separate stories, whoned a Mookse…’, and it ends: ‘But the river tripped on her
apparently with the idea of giving his public a ‘taster’ of what by and by, lapping as though her heart was brook: Why, why,
was to come – and also providing some much needed income why! Weh, oh weh! I’se so silly to be flowing but I no canna
along the way. stay!’ Such charm may allay the unease of the reader who on
These ‘tasters’ may, as Anthony Burgess suggests,1 have first reading (but possibly also on second and third) might find it
led his public to expect a work of almost childlike charm. hard to decipher the precise meaning of these fables.
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Another section published separately – in which two In the novel’s flotsam and jetsam dreamworld, however,
washerwomen gossip about the exploits of Anna Livia Earwicker, Anna and the rest come and go in a shifting
Plurabelle (‘O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear all landscape which sometimes defies logic. Their presence is often
about Anna Livia! Well, you know Anna Livia…’) – is imbued signalled by the appearance of their initials, HCE and ALP. So
with such musicality and so many delicious watery puns, we encounter Earwicker, for example, as ‘Howth Castle and
including references to hundreds of the world’s rivers, that a Environs’, or ‘A hand from the cloud emerges’; and Anna Livia
reader may be less concerned to know the precise background appears as ‘Amnis Limnia Permanent’ or ‘And the larpnotes
to the gossip. For the language takes us with it, and as the prittle’. And it is no coincidence that their pub is in the Dublin
washerwomen turn into tree and stone on the river bank and suburb of Chapelizod, an anagram of HCE, ALP and Izod (Isolde).
night falls, the poetic conclusion is satisfying in itself: ‘Tell me, The sons, Shem and Shaun, are twins and yet opposites. Shem,
tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. like Joyce himself, is a ‘penman’, an artist and man of ideas.
Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. His brother Shaun is more practical and less imaginative – a
Night!’ postman, antagonistic towards his more famous brother, who
As Samuel Beckett wrote, in his essay Dante… Bruno. Vico… he considers a charlatan and degenerate.
Joyce:2 ‘His writing is not about something; it is that something On one level these brothers are indeed James and his
itself… When the sense is sleep, the words go to sleep… When brother Stanislaus, who was of the opinion that Finnegans
the sense is dancing, the words dance.’ Wake represented ‘the witless wandering of literature before its
And yet the novel certainly is ‘about something’, and on final extinction’.4 On another level, though, they represent all
its publication there must have been rather widespread dismay archetypal opposites – active and passive, positive and negative,
when enthusiastic fans of Ulysses discovered how difficult Joyce Yin and Yang, East and West – as well as, for Joyce, the doctrine
had made it for them to discover what that ‘something’ might of the 16th-century philosopher Giordano Bruno of Nola, which
be. Now, at least there was a title – Finnegans Wake – and from sees unity in the reconciliation of opposites. Bruno the Nolan
this title alone a number of deductions could be made. One is encountered several times in Finnegans Wake, sometimes
could assume that these words had more than one connotation. playfully confused with the Dublin booksellers Browne and
In this case all the analyses lead in a similar direction. Finnegan, Nolan.
a common enough Irish name, contains within it the suggestion A more important philosophical background to Joyce’s
of an end and a beginning (Fin/again). It might also recall the dream history, however, is the Neapolitan Giambattista Vico,
popular children’s round concerning Michael Finnegan: ‘…he who divided human history into recurring cycles – theocratic,
grew whiskers on his chin again; the wind came up and blew aristocratic and democratic ages followed by a ‘ricorso’, or
them in again; poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again…’ return. These four recurring divisions of time allow us to see
Certainly, an end is implied in the notion of a wake – where history as circular, like the seasons of the year or the human
the lamentation (or merrymaking) beside the corpse is intended life cycle – birth, marriage, death, burial and resurrection.
to escort the soul to its afterlife; but a beginning, too, for after Thus, Joyce structures his entire book in this way – three large
sleep, we wake. And some readers may be familiar with an old chapters and a shorter fourth one (Ricorso), while individual
popular Irish American ballad called Finnegan’s Wake, which sentences often refer to the Viconian cycle: ‘The lightning
had been a favourite of Joyce’s brother Stanislaus when, as look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the
youngsters, they joined in the family musical evenings. times’/ ‘A good clap, a fore wedding, a bad wake, tell hell’s
The fall and resurrection of Finnegan the hod-carrier is a well’. According to Vico, each cycle is initiated by a thunderclap
kind of modern myth with obvious resonances in Joyce’s novel. (a big bang?), and Joyce borrows this idea, transforming the
Clear references to the song, and paraphrases from it, are to thunderclap into a series of 100-letter words.
be encountered throughout the book: ‘Wan warning Phill filt Central to the entire edifice of Finnegans Wake is Dublin
tippling full, his howd feeled heavy, his hoddit did shake...’ But itself – along with the Liffey and Howth Head – just as in
at the same time, the mythical hero of this novel is another Ulysses. Seen from across the bay of Dublin, Howth Head looks
‘Finn’ – the legendary Irish giant Finn MacCumhal. According to like a person asleep or laid out for a wake. Some refer to it as
Richard Ellman, Joyce later informed a friend: ‘He conceived of the sleeping princess, but for Joyce it is the sleeping (or dying)
his book as the dream of old Finn, lying in death beside the river Finn MacCumhal. The River Liffey, Anna Livia, is like the cycle of
Liffey and watching the history of Ireland and the world – past life itself. From its source in the Wicklow Hills, the Liffey trickles
and future – flow through his mind like flotsam on the river of and grows for 80 miles before flowing past HCE’s pub and the
life.’3 Phoenix Park, with its monument to Wellington the Iron Duke,
Nothing less than the history of Ireland and the world, bringing life to the city of Dublin (Baile-atha-Cleath) and water
then, is the subject of Joyce’s novel. But there is yet another to the Guinness Brewery (‘Guinness is good for you’, as Joyce
incarnation of hero Finn – a rather more immediate fictitious regularly reminds us). From the city she passes out into the sea
protagonist – one Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, publican, where she can be absorbed before being taken up into the
a lumbering fellow with a stutter, a hump on his back and atmosphere to fall again as rain on the Wicklow Hills.
a rather disreputable past, for he may have been involved in Famously, Finnegans Wake begins and ends in mid sentence:
some sexual impropriety in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. His pub, the ‘A way a lone a last a loved a long the’ – leading us back to
Mullingar, beside the Liffey at Chapelizod, is also home to his ‘riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s...’
wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, their two sons (Shem and Shaun)
and their daughter Isobel (or Isolde). Notes by Roger Marsh
2 B
eckett S. in Our Exagmination around his Factification for Incamination of Work in 4 Ibid., p. 589
Progress, Faber & Faber, 1972, p. 14
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THE MUSIC
‘FINNEGAN’S WAKE’ BALLAD SUNG BY BARRY MCGOVERN
MOZART DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE 8.660030–31
Cast, Hungarian Festival Chorus, Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra, Michael Halász
VERDI LA FORZA DEL DESTINO 8.554077
Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, Pier Giorgio Morandi
MCCORMACK MCCORMACK EDITION, VOL. 2: THE ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS (1910–1911) 8.110329
BELLINI NORMA 8.557109
Marina Mescheriakova, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Michael Halász
EXILE OF ERIN DSL–92153
Ensemble Galilei
MARSH ‘NOT A SOUL BUT OURSELVES…’ WERGO 60094
Electric Phoenix
DROPS OF BRANDY EUCD2227
Kieran Fahy
WAGNER ISOLDE’S LIEBESTOD 8.551107
Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Johannes Wildner
WAGNER PARSIFAL CDS497
Catherine Cangiano, Teatro la Fenice Chorus, Teatro la Fenice Orchestra, Gabor Otvos
WAGNER TRISTAN UND ISOLDE 8.660152–54
Martina Dike, Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra, Leif Segerstam
BACH MASS IN B MINOR, BWV 232 8.557448–49
Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Dresden Chamber Choir, Helmut Müller-Brühl
Music programmed by Roger Marsh
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