I’m going to do something which betrays the philistine in me and post up two extracts from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, recorded nearly thirty years after they were written. Philistine because I must admit I haven’t read the book, but these recordings are quite captivating in themselves, as is the link to Joyce reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle.
Anna Livia is thought to be the personification of the river Liffey in Dublin.
However, the academic Carol Schloss believes that Joyce’s daughter Lucia – who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1935 – was her father’s muse for Finnegans Wake.
Anna Livia Plurabelle - Siobhan McKenna
I find McKenna’s reading in particular to be hypnotic and moving – it’s hard to believe it’s still language at times; it seems to move beyond mere assonance and alliteration into something richer, stranger.
Here is Joyce reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle in 1929.
Shem the Penman - Cyril Cusack
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| The cover of Nino Frank’s translation of Anna Livia Plurabelle (1938) |
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| Anna Livia with her Baudeloire Maids - one of the illustrations Stella Steyn produced after a request from Joyce (1929) |
However, the academic Carol Schloss believes that Joyce’s daughter Lucia – who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1935 – was her father’s muse for Finnegans Wake.
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| ABOVE: Lucia, who, it is argued, is was Joyce’s muse while writing Finnegans Wake. |
I find McKenna’s reading in particular to be hypnotic and moving – it’s hard to believe it’s still language at times; it seems to move beyond mere assonance and alliteration into something richer, stranger.
Here is Joyce reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle in 1929.
Shem the Penman - Cyril Cusack
Shem is thought to be Joyce’s alter ego in Finnegans Wake. He is the son of Anna Livia and is an experimental artist, possibly because, as we find out in Chapter Seven, he seems to be physically inferior:
Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his cold toes, a bladder tristended...
...and so on.
Finally, I thought that some of you might like this, which appears when you put ALP into Google:
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