ABSTRACT
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce's new book, has taken sixteen years to write; the burning question for a reviewer is how long it will take to read, if reading means understanding. In sixteen days it would be possible to go over the book and glance at the words, as fine a collection of words as anyone could wish for, in English, Scottish, Erse, French, German, Italian, Spanish and a number of other languages ranging in knowledgability to Finnish. After these come the portmanteau words, the puns, the distorted words and invented words; the Franco-German words and Anglo-Italian words, the dog Latin bedogged again and the pidgin English once more bepidgined. This is the ‘night language’ which Yeats said Mr. Joyce set out to discover. It is an enormous lingual feat; it does give the feeling sometimes that one is moving in a world where everything, including language and syntax and the principles of mental association, are different; it is an attempt never attempted before, which could only have been undertaken by a man of Mr. Joyce's genius and perseverance. To say that the attempt is either successful or unsuccessful, after the few days’ grace given to a reviewer by the convention of reviewing, would be absurd; it is possible that any such attempt must be unsuccessful: I do not see how we can share Mr. Joyce's nights. But this book by all appearances describes his sleep-world in the language of sleep; and without being a sleep-reader, one must make what one can out of it.
