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Chapter 12 - No symbols where none intended: Derrida's war at Finnegans Wake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Sam Slote
Edited by
Laurent Milesi
Sam Slote
Affiliation:
Poetry/Rare Books Collection, SUNY-Buffalo
Laurent Milesi
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Summary

Kidoosh! Of their fear they broke, they ate wind, they fled; where they ate there they fled; of their fear they fled, they broke away. Go to, let us extol Azrael with our harks, by our brews, on our jambses, in his gaits. To Mezouzalem with the Dephilim, didits dinkun's dud? Yip! Yup! Yarrah! And let Nek Nekulon extol Mak Makal and let him say unto him: Immi ammi Semmi. And shall not Babel be with Lebab? And he war. And he shall open his mouth and answer: I hear, O Ismael, how they laud is only as my loud is one. If Nekulon shall be havonfalled surely Makal haven hevens. Go to, let us extell Makal, yea, let us exceedingly extell. Though you have lien amung your posspots my excellency is over Ismael. Great is him whom is over Ismael and he shall mekanek of Mak Nakulon. And he deed.

(FW 258.5–18)

Jacques Derrida's abbreviated essay on Finnegans Wake, ‘Deux mots pour Joyce’, has undergone a most peculiar reception: detractors and admirers alike claim that the essay has more to do with Derrida's project than with a cogent reading of the Babel passage that closes FW Ⅱ.1. Such a claim is not immediately surprising considering Derrida's typically circumlocutory style.

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James Joyce and the Difference of Language , pp. 195 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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