Product Description

Traduit pour la première fois dans sa version intégrale, Finnegans Wake, oeuvre rebelle, s'exprime par épiphanies, telles que définies dans Ulysse - c'est-à-dire ces instants où les mots comme des photons reconstituent la figure d'interférence, visible seulement dans sa frange brillante. Pour certains, la révolution est à peine suffisante. Ils partent, hantent les asiles dont ils font une bibliothèque, habitent les prisons où flotte le feu de leurs rêves, créent un pseudo-langage qui n'est plus entendu mais reconnu de leurs seuls semblables. Errants jusqu'à l'inconsistance, telle la révolutionnaire russe Alexandra Kollontaï : " ... Comme j'aimais Kuusa en septembre... l'odeur des pins et, comme des toiles d'araignées tendues entre eux, les nuages chargés de rosée, au matin. "

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #506659 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-30
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews

not yet finished.
i haven't yet finished my first read through of this book, but even now i think it's fair to say that this is an amazing piece of work. i just want to reiterate what a couple of people have said. firstly this is not literature, as such, it shares far more with music than it does with literature, and secondly, it should be read as you would listen to music, letting it wash over you, not trying to control any of it, not trying to realize what is happening. you should realize that after a while things will make sense, and even if the book never makes sense to you entirely it doesn't matter. to view this book as beautiful nonsense does no disservice to it, i think, because it is definitely the ultimate in beautiful nonsense if that's the way you want to see it.

and really, if you're going to write this off as gibberish, realize the man spent 17 years of his life perfecting this book. he went blind while writing it. his daughter was put into a mental asylum and europe was in the begining throes of world war II and still he wrote this book. more work has been lovingly poured into these pages than most writers put into their entire career. if you don't like it, fine, but calling this book gibberish is doing a huge disservice to the author and only making yourself look stupid. just say you don't like it, that's all you need to say.

Bizarre, confusing, enigmatic, overwhelming- but wonderful!
I just finished reading FW last night after almost six weeks of thorough plowing-ahead through it. I don't know where to begin in my review of it. I would start by summing it up in the word amazing. This book reinvents language. All through school, we're taught grammar, spelling, punctuation, the format for writing essays, letters, etc., but Joyce rejects that education, says the hell with it and does his own thing. What interpretation of a word is right? Is there a correct interpretation to be conceived? Is there any possible way to wrestle the magnitude of this book to the ground and pin it down to really understand what's going on?? Who knows. Joyce has the reader in the palm of his hand, and it's frightening what FW can do to one's mind. I'm sure that now everything else I read will make me think of Joyce in one way or another. I probably don't know 2% of the amount of foreign languages, literary, geographical, historical and mythological allusions and references which are crammed into the book, but the parts that I CAN decipher are very clever. It's not an interesting "story", but it's captivating simply because it's such an enigma of a book.
There is not so much a story here as there is a SERIES of stories or vignettes parodying various myths, historical events, etc. But several patterns occur and reoccur. Variations of the initials H C E and A L P (What does Joyce achieve with FW? Why, He Confuses Everyone! All Living Persons!), rearrangements of the name of Finn MacCool, the mythological Irish hero, and the predominant Vicoian theme of history repeating itself. H C E is born and reborn as Adam, as Humpty Dumpty, as Finn MacCool himself.. ad infinitum. Joyce deliberately left the whole thing open-ended so that every word can be interpreted in any way, depending on the individual readers personal knowledge. The more you learn, the more meanings will apply themselves to FW. Tip.
And those of you who call this book a piece of garbage have to admit one thing- at least it's original and unique. There's no other book quite like it. Joyce didn't write for other people to understand him. He didn't write to appeal to the literary elite. Joyce wrote for Joyce, and if the reader can be in on the joke, it can produce great results. If you don't get it and call it a pretentious collection of random phrases, then darn it, it's your loss. And don't criticize people for saying they like it. And no, I'm NOT "pretending" to like it- I LIKE IT! Certainly it has some dull spots, but it's 90% great!
It Awnly tuck me sicksweex to reed the hole booke, anned I enjoid it vary moch. Tip. To you extramely pretentious revousers who say that knowbody has ever red it all the weigh thru (whaat maycs you so dammed shore of it in the fursed plays?!), then increase the number of people of all time who have read it all the way through from "zero" to ONE. That one being me. Not only did I read every last word, but I ENJOYED it, and very much so. So stack that in yore piep und smoe kit!
On to bigger and better(?) things! I'm starting Ulysses tonight!

Nice story
You will probably consider this novel to be difficult. I agree with anybody who thinks so. It is very difficult. It certainly is hard to grasp, but once you get into it, that is it. James Joyce stretched the language and brought the book to a far higher form of writing that is uncommon around. Uncommon in the sense that you have to get into it to love it. For easier, compelling reads, I recommend the works of Janvier Tisi.

Also recommended: Disciples of Fortune, Parsifial Mosaic