An Unpublished Fragment of Finnegans Wake I.6?
- An Unpublished Fragment of Finnegans Wake I.6?
The following fragment, discovered in the hatband of a homburg worn by Joyce in 1927, may have been intended as an addition to the question-answer session in Finnegans Wake I.6. It is written on a goodish-sized sheet of letter paper marked with teastains, in a wandering hand, possibly due to intoxication. As it is unsigned, scholars at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation are divided on the question of its authenticity, some suspecting a forgery by one Vladimir Dixon.
12. If a Jim in a jam had a pen in his handwith a view to absolving himself of his sins,as he emptied his bile on a Shaun and a Finn,and took cover behind an improbable Shamwhile he simmered his jargon in hellish fermenttill you hardly could tell what he once might have meant,would you drink of that brew served at one hundred proofOn the house, as it were, till you fell from the roof?Answer: Slant. Shinshin. [End Page 455]
DAVID SPURR is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva. He has published widely on Joyce and serves as a trustee of both the International James Joyce Foundation and the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. Among his books are Joyce and the Scene of Modernity, Architecture and Modern Literature, and, most recently, Frankenstein, créé des ténèbres.
