52 Wave Words in the Wake

A list of 52 Wave Words in Finnegans Wake.
An attempt to read Finnegans Wake only for the wave lines.

(See also Several Short Videos of the Sea from my iPhone.)

                                                 "By the fearse wave behoughted."

(18.02)

"the jimminies was to keep the peacewave"

(23.13)

                   "The soundwaves are his buffeteers"

(23.26)

                  "the wave of roary and the wave of hooshed"

(23.28)

"and the wave hawhawhawrd
and the wave of neverheedthem-"
(23.28)

"Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island"

(46.11)

"They have waved his green boughs o'er him as they have torn him limb from lamb." (58.06)

"under night's altosonority, shipalone, a raven of the wave"

(62.04)

"Wave bore it. Reed wrote of it. Syce ran with it. Hand tore it and wild went war."

(94.06)

"flammelwaving warwife"

(101.18)

"that the upper reaches of her mouthless face and her impermanent waves were the better half of her"

(101.30)

"Rockabill Booby in the Wave Trough"

(104.07)

"burning body to aiger air on melting mountain in wooing wave"

(132.08)

"and the bergs of Iceland melt in waves of fire"

(139.20)

"The meeting of mahoganies, be the waves"

(159.34)

"But the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes."

(203.31)

"trickle me through was she marcellewaved or was it weirdly a wig she wore."

(204.23)

"sequansewn and teddybearlined, with wavy rushgreen epaulettes"

(208.17)

"Well, arundgirond in a waveny lyne aringarouma she pattered and swung and sidled"

(209.18)

"twinglings of twitchbells in rondel after, with waverings that made shimmershake"

(222.34)

"a message interfering intermitting interskips from them (pet!) on herzian waves"

(232.11)

"Arise, Land-under-Wave!" 

(248.08)

"what are the sound waves saying"

(256.23)

"That grene ray of earong it waves us to yonder"

(267.13)

"our lavy in waving"

(275.12)

"(Wave gently in the ere turning ptover.)"

(280.19)

"Will you walk into my wavetrap?"

(287.F01)

"fin above wave after duckydowndivvy"

(331.24)

"on the fields of the foam of the waves of the seas" 

(331.35)

"Waves."

(373.08)

"the four maaster waves of Erin, all listening, four.

There was old Matt Gregoryand then besides old Matt

there was old Marcus Lyons, the four waves"

(384.06-08)

"not to forget the four of the Welsh waves, leaping laughing"

(390.16)

"at their windswidths in the waveslength"

(394.17)

"I might as well be talking to the four waves"

(424.29)

"he knowed his love by her waves of splabashing" 

(431.16)

"we come to newsky prospect from west the wave on schedule time"

(442.12)

"twill carry on my hearz'waves my still waters reflections in words"

(460.25)

"It was then he made as if be but waved instead a handacross the sea"

(470.35)

"with a posse of tossing hankerwaves to his windward"

(471.23)

"trailing the wavy line of his partition footsteps"

(475.25)

"They came from all lands beyond the wave for songs of Inishfeel."

(510.32)

"Among the shivering sedges so? Weedy waving."

(526.05)

"and there, by wavebrink, on strond of south"

(547.21)

"These brilling waveleaplights!"

(571.01)

"Only trees such as these such were those, waving there"

(588.30)

"awike in wave risurging into chrest"

(596.06)

"mild beam of the wave his polar bearing, steerner among stars"

(602.29)

"you spun your yarns to him on the swishbarque waves"

(620.35)

"When the waves give up yours the soil may for me."

(624.03)

Video: Binaries & Bibliomancy: Finnegans Wake as the Western I-Ching

(contributed for Maybe Day 2020 http://maybeday.net/)

This essay was originally presented at the 2019 James Joyce Symposium in Mexico City and earlier this week I recorded it as a video for the virtual Maybe Day celebration on July 23rd celebrating the work of Robert Anton Wilson. "Binaries & Bibliomancy" essentially builds upon the theories presented in Wilson's great book Coincidance where he outlines an isomorphic relationship (in mathematics, systems that are parallel in form) between the I-Ching and Finnegans Wake. In my piece I talk about the machinery of these two distinctly different classics, how both books are built as thinking machines, always up-to-date, always encouraging open readings. The Wake advertises itself as a book of "Opendoor Ospices" (FW p. 71) allowing for open-door readings and "Ospices" or auspices, consulting for prophecy much like the I-Ching. As Finn Fordham described it in his book Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake, "Through its continuously self-generating transformation, it is a text of modulation and becoming, flux and flow, an alternative classic of change to the I Ching."

Robert Anton Wilson Day was officially declared to be July 23rd by the mayor of Santa Cruz, California. John Higgs wrote a great article in The Guardian years back describing what RAW Day is all about. I enjoy the Santa Cruz connection with RAW because our Austin Finnegans Wake Reading Group has a lot of Santa Cruz links. We've had multiple longtime members from Santa Cruz who became good buddies of mine, the host of the Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Santa Cruz is also an old pal of mine, I got to visit up there and attend their Wake groups multiple times. Robert Anton Wilson also had a Finnegans Wake reading group in Santa Cruz for many years. Last time I was there I got to hear stories from folks who knew RAW and also knew Norman O. Brown, the legendary UC Santa Cruz professor, scholar, and theatrical Wakean.

I want to thank Bobby Campbell (https://bobbycampbell.net/) for putting together the amazing virtual tribute to RAW with contributions from a talented group of RAW readers. There's some incredible visuals, writings, comics, and videos over at the 2020 celebration of Happy Maybe Day. I also got to participate in a live panel with the contributors that was a really inspiring and informative time, really enjoyed it and grateful to be a part of this event.

The Great Letter and the Infinite Process of Self-Embedding

"When a part so ptee does duty for the holos 

we soon grow to use of an allforabit." 

- FW p. 18-19

"Will you walk into my wavetrap? 

said the spiter to the shy." 
- FW p. 287

"Joyce wants his text to contain the whole universe with all its recursive times (recorso) and histories. He also wants the whole of the Wake to be contained in each of its self-similar parts. His ideal reader is supposed to grasp the text both in recursive loops of readings and in a holistic perception of the whole text in each part. If one wants to imagine a fractal text that entails the 'infinite self-embedding of complexity,' Finnegans Wake comes as close to it as possible. The Wake enfolds words into words that enfold other words, and all these imaginary word-worlds enfold narratives within narratives of other narratives, or characters that are the effects of other characters, and so on ad infinitum. Joyce even seems to tease us about this infinite process of self-embedding when he deposits the Great Letter in the muddy surface of his text. The Great Letter is figured as a miniature Finnegans Wake which in turn, contains the Great Letter which contains Finnegans Wake which contains the Great Letter which contains Finnegans Wake... Chaos theory has termed this well-known mise-en-abîme 'self-similarity.' Defined as symmetry across scale, self-similarity 'implies recursion, pattern inside of pattern' (Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, 103). 'Fractal meant self-similar,' writes Gleick (...). The Wake drives this dream of infinite self-similarity to its extreme: as an enfolded replica of Finnegans Wake which, in turn, is figured as a text able to store all texts, sounds, and signs of all times, past and future, the Great Letter also embodies, somewhat self-ironically, the Wake's dream of being a written hologram of a self-similar universe."

- Gabriele Schwab, The Mirror and the Killer-Queen: Otherness in Literary Language, p. 76

(Encountered on p. 145 of Joyce & Liberature by Katarzyna Bazarnik, which I discussed further here.)

Mathematicians Confirm: Finnegans Wake is Fractal

While constructing Finnegans Wake, James Joyce boasted, "I am really one of the greatest engineers, if not the greatest, in the world."

In studying the intricate designs of the Wake, one realizes this statement applies to many different aspects of it. The book is a living machine, cranking out fresh meanings, references, and connections every time you engage with it. It was published nearly 80 years ago yet somehow its material can always apply to the present day.

It was also, as I've written about recently, engineered as a rotating reconstruction of the Earth.

And its entire framework, from the most minor details to the overriding structure, is fractal. Devoted Wake-heads have always been aware of this, but now some physicists and mathematicians examining literature have confirmed the Wake's fractal fabric.

From The Guardian:

“The absolute record in terms of multifractality turned out to be Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. The results of our analysis of this text are virtually indistinguishable from ideal, purely mathematical multifractals,” said Professor Stanisław Drożdż, another author of the paper, which has just been published in the computer science journal Information Sciences."

fractal (n) - a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.

"find, if you are not literally cooefficient, how minney combinaisies and permutandies can be played on the international surd!" - FW p. 284