An heir to Finnegans Wake

literati

Jul 24, 2024 10:35 PM

Finnegans Wake is unique in the true sense of the word—there can only be one. More eloquently, A. Alvarez called it “aesthetically terminal”. Despite this sheer uniqueness, or perhaps because this makes it seem a challenge, the work has several direct progeny—the most prominent being Zettels Traum as an affirmation and Beckett’s Trilogy as a rejection—but none of the affirmations manage to equal its brilliance. To write in Joyce’s shadow is to be eclipsed by his shadow.

Larva is an attempt to embody the linguistic puzzles of Wake but in a less serious manner (that's my delicate way of saying it's full of sexual entendres). It’s an inferior work, but one can say that about nearly any book; A Midsummer Night’s Babel is still brilliant.

This is not a book one reads for the plot but I’ll include it because this review would be incomplete without it: our protagonist Milalias is at an orgy in a mansion dressed up as Don Juan and is looking for a woman named Babelle dressed as Sleeping Beauty.

An early paragraph in the English translation:

Three-partying through our folie à deux: do I, don’t I, he loves me he leaves me not, leaf by leafing through the nocturnotes of our bacchantes, back hunting buck-beans in the back cuntry. ((Seek. Dartful Lodger, your tarts in Hyde Park . . .)) Living in clover . . . |Sauberes Klee! Awesumptuous trio! This summer sum of some of the ... There’s no threesome folia a dos? he would calculatedly ask himself one night, that highest bidder of a thousand aliases paperilously perusing papers with his babelic beauty (( : Sing, sing, christening after christening)) in the Tower of Paper. Babelle, Milalias and... Herr Narrator. Qui? she inquired. Who? A sort of ventriloquacious nut who misproduces our voices, he explained. A cunning conning cofounder and confounder. The Echommentator who dubdoubles us and tries to root in black-and-white everything we live and write en route . . . Twice as crazy for being split. Narr and Tor, so | Germangied him into Herr Narrator. Ah bon. You'll get to know him... In his deliriums he thinks he’s the author of our feuilleton, our surreal serial... .: Au! Tor! let the doubler be doubled . . . Anyway. here they have me, the aforementioned nut, trapped between brackets, making me Herr Narrator.] And now. King of Clovers! Roi de trefle! Kleekönig! in ah-one ah-two ah-three to trick or treat you with

Pillow Notes 1, p. 453.

The last phrase is in reference to the Pillow Notes section at the end, containing endnotes of a sort which elaborate on the lives of Babelle and Milalias. If that wasn't enough, there are also footnotes.

The first thing you’ll notice about the excerpt is that it’s far more readable than Wake. Similarly, the puns are a lot more obvious and less multilayered. To most, this would seem an obvious negative—the masochistic fun of Wake lies in its difficulty and density.

That is fair, but this passage is nonetheless rife with linguistic games. Furthermore, the book varies widely—there are phrases resembling Joyce’s depiction of lightning in the beginning, maps, photographs, parts with comparable density and impenetrability to that of Wake—so one is not starved for entomological and semiotic fun.

The chief difference between this and Wake, however, is in tone. This book is not serious, which Wake is, even in all its puns. Flipping to a page at random of Larva, I’m treated to the sentences “Tsarapat! Rasputin jumped doubled up like a toad, Tsar à pattes! Oui-da! Da! Dada!² kicking out his legs with each jump, Topotat! Topotat!”

It’s all great, dazzling fun, but this passage reveals a strength that is simultaneously a weakness. Look at the repetition of Tsarapat and its homophones or, from the first excerpt, folie à deux. With Joyce, a phrase would have multiple meanings to be read simultaneously—he wouldn’t spell them out for you. With Ríos, some of the puns are pointed out for you; he can’t resist flaunting his genius. I will admit that the story would not feel quite so whimsical without the repetition, so it’s a necessary evil. He gains artistic merit but takes from the reader the opportunity to discover some of the puns on their own.

Additionally, he has not been analyzed near as much as Joyce. A reader, especially an anglophonic one, is blind. Perhaps this ease is an improvement. Were it more dense, I’d likely have given up and opted to reread its predecessor instead.

I read the Spanish original but I’ve heard the translation is brilliant, on par with that of Woods’s rendition of Traum. There were three translators, including the author, so rest assured of the quality.

This book is hilarious and erudite—a rare combination which makes it one of the best works I’ve read.