Finnegans Wake: An Autobiography?

Reading too much of an author’s life into his work is now generally accepted as one of the cardinal sins of literary criticism. Readers sometimes assume they understand the life of J.D. Salinger, for example, because they’re well-read on the Glass family.  But fiction doesn’t always work that way. Yes, authors fictionalize their own lives, but jumping to conclusions about an author based solely on a fictional text is a shortcut to misreadings, bad grades and eventual social ostracism.

I say all this while knowing that Finnegans Wake is a different monster altogether. The regular rules don’t apply to this sui generis text. With so many challenges inherent in Joyce’s masterwork, looking to his personal life provides an obvious foothold.  Simply put, when deciphering Finnegans Wake, you take what you can get from wherever you can get it.

Joyce doesn’t exactly discourage an autobiographical reading, either.  He peppers the text with allusions to his real life.  On the very first page, he works in this line: “nor avoice from afire bellowed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick.” Read it phonetically, and we can understand this as, “Nora voice from afar,” as in, his wife, Nora Barnacle. Perhaps she was calling to him from the next room and, chuckling to himself, Joyce worked that into his writing.

Or maybe he didn’t do that intentionally.  It doesn’t matter.  Finnegans Wake at its core is about the multiplicity of meanings exploding through our human language. Joyce implores us to make every connection available.

It’s not hard to find more of these examples in Finnegans Wake. Here’s a not-subtle Ulysses reference from page 179: "It would have diverted if ever seen the shuddersome spectacle of this semidemented zany amid the inspissated grime of his glaucous den making believe to read his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles.”

That’s a pretty blatant signal that in the world of Finnegans Wake, there exists James Joyce, the author of Ulysses. Or that Finnegans Wake exists in our world. In all our worlds. Whatever, you get it.

In chapters VI and VII we get more of Shaun and  Shem, the latter of whom acts as a clear Joyce stand-in much of the time.  Joyce uses Shem to anticipate and respond to criticism of his work, of Finnegans Wake, and of himself.

Then there is James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia. Back in 2003, a Joyce scholar named Carol Loeb Shloss published a book called Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake. Although I haven’t read the book myself, according to just about every online review I’ve encountered, Shloss takes some incredible liberties to recreate the relationship between James and Lucia. Partly this is because most of the letters that existed between the two were destroyed after James Joyce passed away.  You see, Lucia spent the majority of her life in asylums, having been diagnosed and re-diagnosed with a litany of mental disorders. This was embarrassing to some, and Lucia’s presence was blurred (if not entirely stricken) from the record.

Shloss seems to be invested in reclaiming Lucia from the easy characterization of “mad daughter of genius author.” Shloss explores Lucia’s own career as a dancer, and imagines that the relationship between genius-author-father and genius-dancer-daughter is splashed across the pages of the Wake.

Lucia Joyce

Maybe so, maybe not. But knowing a little bit more about Lucia does open some possibilities in Finnegans Wake. She was a dancer who studied ballet, she had a relationship with Samuel Beckett, and she suffered from (probably) schizophrenia.  Carl Jung took her on as a patient (from page 115 of the Wake we have this little nugget: “they were yung and easily freudened”).  In fact, Jung said that James and Lucia were quite similar, “like two people going to the bottom of a river, one falling and the other diving.” Jung was referring to Joyce’s experiments with language, suggesting something similar but without the safety line of artistic genius was occurring in Lucia’s mind. Perhaps that was one of the many reasons James Joyce decided that Jung wasn’t the best fit as a doctor.  (Also, there’s another blog post in there, looking at schizophrenia and the destabilization of meaning in language—another day, however).

And so, that brings back to Finnegans Wake. In chapter VI, we meet Nuvoletta.  This is Issy, HCE’s daughter. On page 159: “O!  Yes!  And Nuvoletta, a lass. Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one.”

It’s hard not to look for Lucia Joyce in this figure.  Issy grows in prominence in future chapters, or so I am led to believe. So I’ll be on the lookout, for dancing and daughters and a father who is concerned for his daughter’s mental well-being. I don’t really expect to come to the conclusion that Lucia Joyce was the secret inspiration for Finnegans Wake—I’ve read too much to accept any one interpretation.  But could there be some clues? I certainly think so.