In Finnegans Wake
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Dounia Bunis Christiani Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake compiled by C. George Sandulescu Contemporary Literature Press Bucureşti 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu ISBN: 978-606-8366-17-3 © The University of Bucharest Technical editor: Lidia Vianu. © C. George Sandulescu IT Expertise: Cristina Petrescu Typing: Angelica Ţăpoca © Dounia Bunis Christiani Publicity: Ruxandra Câmpeanu. Acknowledgements. The present Lexicon is a profound and thoroughgoing lexicographic re-processing of Dounia Bunis Christiani‘s book, entitled Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake, published by Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1965, 259 pages. I hereby duly express all acknowledgements to it. Personally, I do not claim originality in this book, except for a fair knowledge of the three Scandinavian languages. My genuinely original contributions are the lexicographic techniques and procedures, which prove to be essential in the structuring of the Lexicon. All credit for the choice of the Scandinavian entries should therefore go to Dounia Bunis Christiani. I cannot but express my gratitude, thanks and admiration to her for her own selection of Finnegans Wake entries, as listed in print in the 1965 book. Sadly, her lexicographic competence was not quite up to standards. I am still surprised, however, that Roland McHugh never even mentions her name in his itemized Acknowledgements to his massive Annotations to Finnegans Wake (1980 and 1991). The only place where Roland McHugh mentions Dounia Bunis Christiani is in his book on The Sigla of Finnegans Wake. The fundamental hurdle for everybody is the inability to surmount the clearcut opposition between the Synchronic and the Diachronic. That is the reason why the first Epigraph of the Lexicon is the quotation from Joyce to the effect that ―history is a nigthmare‖... I wish to thank Professor Bengt Sigurd, Head of the Departments of Theoretical Linguistics in the University of Stockholm, and afterwards in the University of Lund, for his careful reading of early extracts from this Scandinavian Lexicon. His most relevant comments over the many years I worked with him on the inter-relationship between these three Scandinavian languages have been of great assistance to me. G.S. Acknowledgements are also due to Gustaf Stern and James Atherton for the following: Gustaf Stern. Meaning and Change of Meaning. With special reference to the English language. Published by Indiana University Press at Bloomington. 1931. 466 pages. James Atherton. The Books at the Wake. A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Published by Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville. 1959. 308 pages. Henrik Ibsen‘s photograph (by Bettman/Corbis) was published by The Guardian. His siganture appears in the book Henrik Ibsen’s Prose Dramas, published in London. James Joyce‘s signature after the Holograph List of 40 Languages is taken from his Letter to Henrik Ibsen (March 1901). 2 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake compiled by C. George Sandulescu History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. (said by Stephen Dedalus to Mr Deasy…) Ulysses, 2.377 Le signe est un renvoi. Roman Jakobson, 1974 You want to know a language really well? Then, write a Dictionary for it! And do it from scratch! Leon D. Leviţchi 3 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu To the memory of Leon D. Leviţchi, teacher and friend, the greatest lexicographer of us all. 4 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu Table of Contents Joyce‘s List of Forty Languages in Holograph Version, p. 7 C. George Sandulescu: On Languages, p. 9 Dounia Bunis Christiani: The Polyglot Poetry of Finnegans Wake, p. 14 C. George Sandulescu: Formal Structure of Finnegans Wake, p. 31 A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, p. 35-159 PART ONE: 1. Episode A for ADA (27 pages, from 003 to 029) p. 37-42 2. Episode B for BETT (18 pages, from 030 to 047) p. 43-45 3. Episode C for CELIA (27 pages, from 048 to 074) p. 46-51 4. Episode D for DELIA (29 pages, from 075 to 103) p. 52-56 5. Episode E for ENA (22 pages, from 104 to 125) p. 57-58 6. Episode F for FRETTA (43 pages, from 126 to 168) p. 59-64 7. Episode G for GILDA (27 pages, from 169 to 195) p. 65-68 8. Episode H for HILDA (21 pages, from 196 to 218) p. 69-72 PART TWO: 9. Episode I for ITA (41 pages, from 219 to 259) p. 73-80 10. Episode J for JESS (49 pages, from 260 to 308) p. 81-88 11. Episode K for KATTY (74 pages, from 309 to 382) p. 89-114 12. Episode L for LOU (17 pages, from 383 to 402) p. 115-117 PART THREE: 13. Episode M for MINA (26 pages, from 403 to 428) p. 118-121 14. Episode N for NIPPA (45 pages, from 429 to 473) p. 122-126 15. Episode O for OPSY (81 pages, from 474 to 554) p. 127-141 16. Episode P for POLL (36 pages, from 555 to 590) p. 142-149 PART FOUR: 17. Episode Q for QUEENIEE (36 pages, from 591 to 628) p. 150-157 5 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu Appendices Gustaf Stern: Meaning and Change of Meaning. Chapter Seven, ―General Theory of Sense-Change‖, p. 160 Rudiments of Norse Mythology, p. 170 James Atherton: The Books at the Wake. Chapter Thirteen, ―The Eddas‖, p. 183 Index, p. 190 6 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu Holograph List of the Forty Languages used by James Joyce in writing Finnegans Wake. 7 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu This is the Rosetta Stone – Champollion‘s centre-piece in deciphering the hieroglyphs. Its most important feature was that the three diffrent texts on it were written in three different languages and three different scripts. It was that very feature that asisted Champollion in deciphering the famous Egyptian hieroglyphs. Hence the analogy with Joyce‘s poly-linguistic Finnegans Wake. IN THE SAME SERIES: Joyce Lexicography: 1. The Romanian Lexicon of Finnegans Wake. 2. Helmut Bonheim‘s German Lexicon of Finnegans Wake. In preparation: Extracts from the overall Romance Lexicon of Finnegans Wake. 8 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu On Languages. To Joyce in his later years, after Ulysses, all languages are one. One language. All in one. Once you understand this, you begin to understand Finnegans Wake. The overwhelming point is that he knows them, and everything that goes with them by way of culture et civilisation… In fact, just like Jim Atherton‘s Books at the Wake (1959). That is why you are all badly in need of Bejamin Lee Whorf‘s idea of genius, labelled by himself Standard Average European in order to understand the whole world around us, and Joyce, and Joyce and his World. Ultimately, that may be the workings of William Blake‘s Devil as he appears in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell… That is how Babel the Tower lands as Babble-cum-Beelzebub right in your lap. And you are unprepared. The trouble is that everybody— especially the Americans—are quite unprepared. What can you do to unravel the conundrum? The solution I propose here is to resort to a multiple reading of the text by means of what the French might choose to call tranches de langage, largely depending on your personal linguistic background (with the proviso that you are familiar with more languages than just one). Say, begin with 9 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C. George Sandulescu German and Scandinavian, and—most important—learn the Glossaries first! As Joyce himself had done. For learning by rote three to four hundred alien words is nothing to you, is it? You are quite aware that we are all of us today well-travelled citizens of the world (where is Oliver Goldsmith to hear this?) in The Global Village of today. At a rate of speed of one hundred words a day, you are through the whole bunch in less than a week. Et ainsi de suite! Afterwards, when it comes to less linguistic information, Louis Mink and his Gazeteer of Finnegans Wake (1978) you are sure to chew out properly in a fortnight—and what a mouthful of a word (favourite with the Americans) that word fortnight is! Adaline Glasheen? Give her double the time! She is a difficult lady… Her three successive Censuses (1956. 1963. 1977.) is very hard work! One last thing: Joyce was no ordinary language learner. He was coming quite close to a linguistic genius. That way it was easy to him to intuit Whorf‘s Standard Average European. And, that way too, he could see the objective existence of Common Scandinavian (much in the same way in which travelled Germans bracket together Germany with Austria, large chunks of Switzerland and smaller bits of Northern Italy, when they say—Echt deutsch spricht man in Österreich!). 10 Contemporary Literature Press 2012 Joyce Lexicography: A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake, compiled by C.