CIPHERING

The special ciphering of James Joyce understood as a carefully designed communication process embeded on print technology.

Take a look at Finnegans Jargon or A Classical Lexicon for Finnegans Wake: A Glossary of the Greek and Latin in the Major Works of Joyce, Including Finnegans Wake, the Poems, Dubliners, specially Finnegans list

The "standard" way scholars approach this characteristic of James Joyce which is epitomized at Finnegans Wake is, to my understanding, totally mistaken and fruit of a misconception that leads to a misunderstanding mixed with a miscomprehension that ends up placing James Joyce and those who follows that trend in a quirk position, to say the least.

What about how many languages Joyce knew, and how many there are and in which proportion at Finnegans?

When I take a look at such fine books such as this one above, or the magnificent work A Classical Lexicon for Finnegans Wake: A Glossary of the Greek and Latin in the Major Works of Joyce, Including Finnegans Wake, the Poems, Dubliners, specially Finnegans list, and other lexicon in German A Lexicon of the German in Finnegans Wake – September, 1984 by Helmut Bonheim (Author) I wonder why, with so much computer power to explore texts, people insists on the "70 languages" Joyce used in Finnegans".

The language is unmistakably English which, as we know, drew heavily from Latin.

The Classical Lexicon in Latin above has 500 pages and the one in German 176.

French, Italian, Spanish, to name the major occidental cultures languages do not have a study such as those for German and Latin because it would be simply too small...As matter of fact what you will find is a small glossary at the end of their translation.

Incidentally there is a study as such for "small languages":

A Lexicon of “Small” Languages in Finnegans Wake edited by C. George Sandulescu. This book informs that Joyce himself admited having used 40 languages, and the book iteself is concerned with 19 "minor" languages. 236 pages.

This same author also published A Lexicon of Common Scandinavian in Finnegans Wake 195 pages.

He also edited A Lexicon of Romanian in Finnegans Wake 74 pages.

It is much more a case of idioglossia than anything else and at the end of the day, a form of ciphering.

How does Joyce carefully designs this ciphering?

The mixing is intentional because of the following history:

The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

Page 15: "Come in"

An anecdote given by Richard Ellmann shows Joyce's unusual attitude: "Becket was staking dictation from Joyce for Finnegans Wake; there was a knock on the door and Joyce said, "Come in". Beckett, who hadn't heard the knock, by mistake wrote down "Come in" as part of the dictated text. Afterwards he read it back to Joyce who said, "What's that 'Come in'? "That`s what you dictated," Beckett replied. Joyce thought for a moment realizing that Beckett hadn`t heard the knock; then he said, "Let it stand". The very fact that the misunderstanding had occurred in actuality gave it prestige for Joyce.' This incident shows - I think - rather more than Kerner suggests, Joyce was not in his own opinion simply writing a book, he was also performing a work of magic.

The S + M = P embeded in Ulysses

The Square as a symbol of Finnegans Wake

To the above, it should be added that Whatever he might had in mind, he was doomed to fail when he decided to "square the circle" his way...Printed word is not enough to pursue that...

I have explored somewhere else Victor Hugo`s quote about the relation which has between his printing invention and Notre Dame Cathedral and due to the fact we are now with Internet and the computer being sent back to the era before printing and with jobs like this one, what will happen is that he will be oblivion just like Gothic Cathedrals, because it is possible to see very clearly what he was really up to and perhaps what can be said is:

“The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.” G.M. Trevelyan

Which is what you feel if you visit Chartres...(Notre Dame is always too crowded...)

Similarity with context free Grammar such as computer programs use

It is very difficult to place the sentence construction of Finnegans Wake under the idea of Phase Structure Rules and it might be confused with the best example of it because due to the fact that the context is so much hidden deep inside that it falls more under the case (and I quote), of context free grammar:

A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar - except in computer science, where it is known as just a grammar, usually context-free.

There is much more that links James Joyce to Computers and computers languages. Take a look at His Lexycon .

The cult of obscurity is very similar to that from the Occultists

As we can see in the Webster's Dictionary, occult theory or practice : belief in or study of the action or influence of supernatural or super normal powers. Which obviously is a case of ignorance...

The ignorance resides in the fact that this new religion follows Joyce's ideas that words have a power of their own and he could magically do whatever he wanted with them.

The salvation of his new religion is to "understand" what he "buried" in his text and expected scholars to look out when he stated:

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

James Joyce Idiosincrasy

Tha is a difficult one... the main issue is under Health... and as I said there and I quote?

An assessment of Joyce's health, including his mental state, how it underlies his works and life, is in itself preposterous, if not impossible.
Fortunately or unfortunately it is what we are going to do here because no matter how far or how close from the truth we will get it is perhaps the most important aspect underlying his life and works.

There is no doubt that he had a prodigious mind.

Last, but not least, the cult of obscurity

It is very similar to that from the Occultists. As we can see in the Webster's Dictionary, occult theory or practice : belief in or study of the action or influence of supernatural or super normal powers.

The ignorance resides in the fact that this new religion follows Joyce's ideas that words have a power of their own and he could magically do whatever he wanted with them.

The salvation of his new religion is to "understand" what he "buried" in his text and expected scholars to look out when he stated:

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.