"Every ephemeral anniversary": "Finnegans Wake at 80," Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, 11–13 April 2019

It was with some trepidation that I traipsed up to Trinity College Dublin at 8.30 A.M. on Thursday, 11 April 2019. I was there to attend a three-day symposium in celebration of the eightieth anniversary of Finnegans Wake being published in full. Despite the early hour, the architecturally impressive Trinity Long Room Hub was already awash with excited Wake scholars. And herein lies the cause of my trepidation: I am not a Wake scholar. I fully identify as a Joycean; I have attended many Joyce events, acquired an impressive array of Joyce-themed t-shirts and accessories, spent over a decade reading and rereading Joyce's writing, and published a monograph on Joyce. But a Wakean I am not. I have participated in Wake reading groups and waded, alone, through the book's "collideorscape" of "mooxed metaphors," and I am starting to engage in the text more deeply as part of my new investigation into modernist literature and non-normative vision (FW 70.32, 143.28). In a field that still seems somewhat divided, however, I have been Team Ulysses rather than Team Wake.

Happily, my trepidation was short-lived. It soon became apparent that the event, expertly organized by Sam Slote, was refreshingly inclusive. Attendees spanned generations; students mixed with professors; members of Team Ulysses were welcomed by members of Team Wake; and views from those outside of literary studies—and outside of the academy—were not only encouraged but actively promoted. Musical and artistic approaches to Finnegans Wake featured prominently, with Derek Pyle and Susie Lopez turning a Trinity teaching room into an interactive art space in which symposium attendees were invited to write a birthday card to the Wake and post it in a miniature coffin. The arts were also present in several of the papers; a variety of interdisciplinary angles teased out connections between Joyce's text and different art forms. Drawing on material from her forthcoming book, James Joyce and Photography, Georgina Binnie discussed possible sources for the "Tulloch-Turnbull girl with her coldblood kodak" (FW 171.31-32). Taking a musicological approach, Jonathan McCreedy argued for the influence of acoustic harmony theory on the Wake. Chrissie Van Mierlo put her art-history background to good use in her captivating keynote talk, in which she presented a variety of images, from portraits to cartoon sketches, as likely sources for the Wake's characters. As Pyle and Lopez recognized in the blurb that accompanied their art installation, reading the Wake is "inherently a creative process"; "[n]o one can agree on its correct translation," and online versions of the text serve to multiply, rather than decode, the "endless sea of readings and meanings."

Translation, and the multiplicity of meanings, emerged—rather unsurprisingly—as a key theme of the symposium. As someone who is woefully and embarrassingly monolingual, I am continually in awe of the glittering language skills that are showcased within the Wake and, also, of the impressive multilingualism being brought to bear upon the Wake by the book's worldwide readership and intrepid translators. It was a real privilege to hear about the varied approaches to translating Joyce's notoriously difficult text and to be treated to live readings from the different translations. We heard from Fuat Sevimay (Turkish); Enrico Terrinoni (Italian); Congrong Dai (Chinese); and Erik Bindervoet (Dutch). It was a fascinating discussion, covering questions of fidelity and accuracy; thoughts on whether translators should actively seek to open up or close down the multiplicity of the text; what one should do when one is faced with a word in the target language (such as the multiple Italian and/or part-Italian words already present in the Wake); the appropriateness, or inappropriateness, of reorienting certain words or passages so as to make them more relevant to the new cultural setting; and whether the text's Irishness should be played up or played down. I enjoyed hearing about Terrinoni's habit of sneaking the names of eminent Joyce scholars, including Fritz Senn, into his Italian translation, adding yet another layer...