Home > Creative Writing > Finnegans Wake Bibliomancy

Finnegans Wake Bibliomancy

I'm a James Joyce nut and an amateur Wakean--a reader of Finnegans Wake.  I've been reading the book for a few years now and have not made it very far.  I'm comfortable with that.  It's too much for me to take on seriously at this moment but that
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  1. February 15th, 2009 at 18:57 | #1

    Basically what I get from this excerpt is that we are all screwed. Seems to me that bibliomancy has worked perfectly yet again.

    I too, have used this technique before I ever knew there was a name, but I find that most thoughts are in existence without needing a word to make them real.

  2. Suri
    February 21st, 2009 at 00:54 | #2

    I do that all the time :) When I was younger a friend gave me this big book of movie quotes (I collect quotations…) and it said you were supposed to ask a question and then open to a quote for an answer. Ever since then I do that with my books :)

    And although I don’t fully understand it, your pick seems to be a less than optimistic passage…

  3. February 27th, 2009 at 15:44 | #3

    So Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (a band) took a passage from Finnegan’s Wake and made it into some good blackmetal.

    Lyrics to Helpless Corpses Enactment :
    The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must.

    A hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded. The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle up in a coddlepot, Pu Nuseht, lord of risings in the yonderworld of Ntamplin, tohp triumphant, speaketh.

    Mother of moth ! I will to show herword in flesh
    Of all the stranger things that ever not even in the hundrund and badst pageans of unthowsent and wonst nice or in eddas and oddes bokes of tomb, dyke and hollow to be have happened! The untireties of livesliving being the one substrance of a streamsbecoming. Totalled in toldteld and teldtold.

    Ascend out of your bed, cavern of a trunk, and shrine!

    Vah! Suvarn Sur! Scatter brand to the reneweller of the sky,
    thou who agnitest! Dah! Arcthuris comeing! Be! Verb
    umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! Kilt by kelt shell kithagain
    with kinagain. We elect for thee, Tirtangel. We
    Durbalanars, theeadjure. A way, the Margan, from our astamite,
    through dimdom done till light kindling light has led we hopas
    but hunt me the journeyon, iteritinerant, the kal his course,
    amid the semitary of Somnionia.

    Too mult sleepth. Let sleepth.

    The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must

    And one might think that these here lyrics could never flow harmoniously into a song. Well, here is the video for the song, so you can see that they in fact can.

    Brilliance begets brilliance. Or does it?

    “Totalled in toldteld and teldtold.”

    -R

  4. February 27th, 2009 at 15:44 | #4

    Okay, so I guess no embedding. Here is the link.
    Check it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELyco68w5ks

    -R

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