The words rolled out, natural and clear, and I listened with new ears and understanding. Enlightenment had finally come. Passages spoken aloud in an Irish accent, by someone who loved the prose enough to commit long passages to memory, released the book’s power. Its beauty had been unlocked not by a literary intellectual, but by a half-tight man in a cheap suit standing at the bar of a Dublin pub. Finnegans Wake was revealed as a work of sound rather than sense, a form of high falutin’, Gaelic, literary rap. Ireland talking in her sleep . . .
I explained to the man the revelation that his passionate recitation had brought about, and told of my previous scepticism and bewilderment. He was exhilarated at the news of my conversion, a mood consolidated by the offer of a drink. ‘A pint would keep the whistle whetted,’ he said. ‘We will drink side by side beside the Liffey, and the sloothering slide of her, giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Annalivia’ . . .
Christopher Robbins on Finnegans Wake (Issue 22)
