Alan Tucker

 
Skinny dipping in the Liffey: Notes

There are mountains and there are the reflections of mountains. Peaks of literature are hard labour to climb.

the mind moves upon the surface

the image of the mountain can be turned this way and that: it is possible in the mind to walk around the images of the mind in the mind

it is possible to swim through the reflection of the Wake with your eyes open and imagine you have touched bottom

the movement of the mind swayed by words, sentences, measures of rhythm as music

the depths beneath the surface are an infinite number of layered surfaces

beware the 'narrative bottom' – the 'underlying story' – the freedom with which meanings drift unchecked through the text and settle as though real objects, rubbish thrown in by passers-by

don't get stuck

the surface which is not an illusion – you are floating on that – the idea of a bottom, a sea bed, terminologically inexact, for this is simply another surface, more resistant to gaze, to the penetrating intelligence, for there are strata, bedrocks, beyond them fire, electrical and magnetic charge fields, space-time continuums, strings attached or unattached and who knows what dark matter, you can feel it you swim in it you could float and be carried where where where

a badinerie. 'Have you heard the one..' the one the one Noah after the other one and another one Noah floating on the visionless sea chatting with his sons, still no land in sight, have another Noah

QUOTES ( pages Faber 1946 edition)

p108   'Now, patience, and remember patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience.'

p109   'Yet to concentrate solely on the literal sense.. '.. .' the stamped addressed envelope'

p222   'the whole thugogmagog, including the portions understood to be oddmitted as the results of the respective titulars neglecting to produce themselves, to be wound up for an afterenactment by a Magnificent Transformation Scene showing the Radium Wedding of Neif and Moorning and the Dawn if Peace, Pure, Perfect and Perpetual, Waking the Weary of the World.

An argument follows'

p552   attachatouchy floodmud

Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake

                                                                                                       - Alan Tucker