Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Crossroads: Literature as Jazz
In cabin 579 on board the Cristoforo Colombo (see August 22 entry) in 1975, I had the ambition to read Finnegans Wake. I even brought a reader’s guide. My conclusion after struggling with Chapter 1 was:
”So much has happened since then (dylan, the great war, new worlds, new ways to speak, a new history and new associations) and his world* is so wound up in itself. A meaningless monument to the memory of a man. Of local interest to Irish with knowledge of latin and a liking for puns.
*) like the book”
Having arrived in Buenos Aires I immediately sent the books home.
At the Umeå Jazz Festival, the Swiss-Dutch singer Susanne Abbuehl made great renderings of Joyce’s and other’s texts. One of the most beautiful was from one of the last pages of Finnegans Wake:
“Sea, sea! Here, weir, reach, island, bridge. Where you meet I. The day. Remember! Why there that moment and us two only? I was but teen, a tiler's dot.”
// posted by The beaver @ 5:38 PM 
