Finnegans Wake is different. And Finnegans Wake is difficult – opaque, with “stupefying obscurity” (Bishop 3). This obscurity is willed into the composition of the text, which by James Joyce’s own admission is unclear because it is a work of the night, and things cannot be too straightforward and intelligible in the dark. Richard Ellmann, Joyce’s biographer, quotes Nora, Joyce’s wife, who told him: “Why don’t you write sensible books that people can understand?” (Ellmann 590). But mostly the Wake is different, which is the only excuse to which I had recourse when I began thinking about translating it into Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu.
Let us see what the first line of the Wake does:
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us
by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs
(Joyce 3).
There is meaning here like a pile of leaves shifting in the wind or an upturned umbrella let loose in thunder. However, a somewhat standard reading of this line exists, a version of which I will demonstrate below with the help of Joseph Campbell’s 1944 book, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, as well as Roland McHugh’s 1980 Annotations to Finnegans Wake, both of which are the usual suspects for such an exercise with any part of the text.
Starting with “riverrun,” the word continues from the line at the end of the Wake. The text continues and cycles on endlessly keeping with the riverine leitmotifs of its waterlogged language. The final line in the novel goes “A way a lone a last a loved a” (628) to the opening page’s “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s” (3) and onwards, like a “rosary of history” beginning all over again (Campbell 29). The river Joyce is writing of is the Liffey, around which the city of Dublin has been raised. It flows past the Adam and Eve’s Church. Note that the line refers to it as “Eve and Adam’s.” The proper noun has been reversed to allay stability and to include within itself the beginnings of the history of man at the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. This reversal also has to do with the primacy which the Wake ascribes to the feminine, who is the composite of all the riverine motifs in the novel. The river then proceeds to the Dublin Bay. The “vicus,” which means street or highway is wide and “commodius.” What is also far-ranging like this street is the idea of a cyclical history found in the work of the Italian philosopher Vico whose Latin name would be Vicus. Commodius of course is also the Roman emperor Commodus under whose regime the decline of Rome began, a reference which latches on to the text’s preoccupation with downfall. Howth Castle finally is a detail of historical importance as proof of Irish might against invaders, also scratching in the spatial boundaries of Joyce’s project. “Howth Castle and Environs,” or H.C.E., is an initialism for Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, the hero of the Wake in whose fall is encapsulated the fall of man, of mankind, and of Finnegan, who himself in an Irish ballad dies of a terrible fall but awakens when some whiskey falls on him during his raucous wake ceremony (Campbell 29-30). At other times, H.C.E. becomes “Here Comes Everybody” (Joyce 32), the everyman around whom turns the universality of every downfall.
Irishness, cosmic history, the rhythm of dream language, and the character-specific details of the text all come together in, or rather through, the cartography of Dublin from the very first sentence of the Wake. Now let us establish a control group for my actual translation, by starting with a literal translation.
नदीचल एडम और ईव पार, किनारे की झूम से खाड़ी के मोड़ तक, ले आता है हमें दोबाराबहाव की एक चौड़ी गली से होथ किले और आसपास |
nadīchal adam aur eve pār, kināre ki jhūm se khāḌī ke moḌ tak, le ātā hai humeñ dobārābahāv ki ek chauḌi galī se Howth Kile aur āspās
Not only has the multiplicity of the paronomasiac language of the original disappeared here, this translation into our target language simply does not say as much as Joyce does. We are not looking to transmit each and every particle of meaning one by one, but if we begin with the Wake as a text which says much and says so simultaneously, with many talking heads for each and every word, then our Hindustani translation must begin by saying much too. As it stands now, it is accessible, but it is not really Joyce who has become accessible. The cartography of the city of Dublin is there, yet there is nothing which like a gestalt.
A commentary on one of the French translations of the text done by André du Bouchet observes that the several puns are not translated directly into French, and it almost seems that “the translator considers the process of punning to be more important than the specific meaning of each pun” (Costanzo 129). This translation begins, “courrive, passé notre Adame” (cited in Costanzo 232). The first word has been translated to something closer to “runriver.” The geographical detail of the church in Dublin disappears and the novel is brought to Paris with the reference to Notre-Dame de Paris. The Portuguese version does something similar, bringing the Wake home to São Paulo with a reference to its church devoted to Nossa Senhora do Ó. The line in Schuler’s translation begins, “e passa por Nossenhora d’Ohmem’s,” as collected in Patrick O’Neill’s book Impossible Joyce (42). Commenting on the many translations of the Wake into Western European languages, O’Neill also notes that none of them take up the reference to it being past Eve, that is, the time being that of night (46). It is as if the Wakefulness takes over everything, and the city is what is retained as the center of these translations of spirit. The translated city is the everycity like H.C.E. is the everyman – Dublin disappears.
The same continues with “commodius vicus,” although the translation is easier for some Western European languages due to the presence of cognates, all of Latinate origin. For example, an Italian translation of the opening by Anthony Burgess from 1975 translates part of the sentence as “giambattistamente comodo” (cited in O’Neill 52) thereby keeping an altered reference to Giambattista Vico in the translation. For the final part of the sentence, “Howth Castle and Environs,” the initialism has to be retained as far as possible for diegetic purposes relevant to the rest of the novel, or alternatively, the initialism has to be changed to something other than H.C.E. which can then be uniformly retained wherever the protagonist is mentioned again. A 1993 German translation by Dieter H. Stündel goes “Haus Castell und Emccebung” (cited in O’Neill 55). The German word for surroundings is “umgebung,” but the translator alters the beginning to make a reference to the famous Einsteinian theory of special relativity, which according to O’Neill adds a layer of surprising instability to the already writhing sentence (57). Howth too is changed to the German “Haus” which means house. An Irishman’s house is indeed his castle. Another German translation, this one by Friedhelm Rathjen, substitutes “Entourage” in place of “Environs,” which O’Neill notes is a French “tour” or tower added to an Irish castle. Finally, an Italian translation by Luigi Schenoni ends the sentence with “Howth Castle Edintorni” (cited in O’Neill 55). The “e” which in Italian would mean “and” is combined with “dintorni” which means “surroundings,” to make “Edintorni.” A reference to Eden is added to mark the imminent lapse which thematizes the novel, while the initials H.C.E. are also retained (O’Neill 58).
There are two things of note here. One, that the translations seem to posit the Liffey as all rivers, and Dublin as all cities, infinitely substitutable for one another. The translators are not providing access to the sound of Irish sense or nonsense which makes the Wake. What becomes accessible is the city, and the noise of Wakese. This noise, like the soundscape of the everycity, is multiply significant. That is the second object of note: the paronomasiac spirit. The translations are willing to pun wherever possible, eager to scramble the order, and ready to introduce references which often align with the original in bare thematic terms and nothing else. As long as the river, the church, the Abrahamic creation myth, the Latinate references, and the castle are there, it matters not how they are brought up or alluded to, or in what order, as long as there is sufficient correspondence. The pile of shifting leaves is there, albeit under a different tree.
Let me then try and revise my earlier Hindustani translation of Joyce, with two rules to direct us: one, the city is everycity; two, paronomasia is its foundation.
जलचल गिरिजा आदम पार, किनारे की झूम से खाड़ी केमोड़स तक, ले आता है हमें फिरसफर की एक विकोरम गली से हव्वा चर्महल और इधरउधर|
jalchal girijā ādam pār, kināre ki jhūm se khāḌī kemoḌas tak, le ātā hai humeñ phirsafar ki ek vikoram galī se havvā charmehal aur idharudhar
Here is a Hindustani translation which is alliterative in “jalchal.” It transmits the motif of the fall and keeps the church in the line, albeit not a specific one, when it says “girijā ādam.” The Latinate references too are kept, in spite of the fact that the target language here is not cognate with English the same way Western European languages are. So we have “kemoḌas” and “vikoram.” H.C.E. is adhered to, albeit by changing the city and substituting the castle with a palace in “havvā charmehal.” This palace too however has a protective layer or “charm” which means skin or any bodily protective covering. This translation follows in the model of the translations discussed above. Like them, it privileges the city, and the motifs of cartography, myth, and history are all combined within its noise. This also gives us a different model of translation which renders Finnegans Wake worldly.
Here is something that came up in a panel on translating Joyce at Trieste. The general consensus there was that it would be “more rewarding and profitable for writers to do their own Wake than resuscitate Joyce in another language” (Knuth 269). It is as if the Wake, more than being a novel, is an act upon language, an act of Wakese on a language already there, and that it would be much more prudent for writers of other nationalities and other languages to Wakify their own words and mimic the same act upon their own languages rather than translate Joyce. This act would be performed through the particular and peculiar devices afforded by each of the languages being acted upon.
Mario Siskind’s term “conversion” (332) is useful here. He uses it to denote the process of modernization which involves the reproduction of European modernity in subject cultures, and in the novel form. The translation of Finnegans Wake would involve a conversion from the sound of Irish sense, or rather Irish nonsense, to the sound of Polish or French or Finnish or German or Hindustani nonsense. While it seems from the translations we have discussed and performed that no Irishness is held on to, the act being performed on the English language is the quintessence of Joyce’s Irishness – and it is no doubt that this act must be understood through Ireland’s colonial struggle and the struggle for linguistic sovereignty.
It goes without saying that the city which is the undeniable site of Wakese is rooted in Western Europe as the center of world culture. This dominant model of the world city is what gives us the map of our everycity. Wakese is the overly signifying noise of this everycity acting on the city’s languages, and if Dublin’s pubs and its people yelling across the loud spate of the Liffey river give shape to the babble of Finnegans Wake, other cities would have different spaces for this creative noise. That is at the heart of the Wake’s worldliness. Even as Irishness is effaced in translation, the world comes down to become accessible to the peculiar sound of Irish sense.
Works Cited
Bishop, John. Joyce’s Book of the Dark. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
Campbell, Joseph and Henry Morton Robinson. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1947.
Costanzo, V.W. “The French Version of ‘Finnegans Wake’: Translation, Adaptation, Recreation.” James Joyce Quarterly 9.2 (1972): 225-236.
Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Revised ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 2012.
Knuth, Leo. “The ‘Finnegans Wake’ Translation Panel at Trieste.” James Joyce Quarterly 9.2 (1972): 266-269.
O’Neill, Patrick. Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wake. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
Siskind, Mario. “The Globalization of the Novel and the Novelization of the Global: A Critique of World Literature.” World Literature: A Reader. Ed. Theo D’haen, César Dominguez, and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen. London: Routledge, 2013. 329-352.
Shantam Goyal studies English Literature at the University at Buffalo for his PhD. He completed his M.Phil in 2018 from the University of Delhi with a dissertation titled “Listen Ulysses: Joyce and Sound,” and is now working on Finnegans Wake and mishearing. Besides Joyce Studies and Sound Studies, he works on cinema and South Asia, and is also attempting to translate parts of Ulysses into Hindi as a personal project. His reviews, articles, and creative work have appeared in The Print, The Hindu Business Line, Vayavya, ColdNoon, Daath Voyage, Café Dissensus, SoundingOut!, Kairos, Journal of Modern Literature, Lateral, and Sanglap among other publications.
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