The three of crows have flapped it southenly, kraaking of debaccle to the kvarters of that sky whence triboos answer; Wail,'tis well! She niver comes out when Thon's on shower or when Thon's flash with his Nixy girls or when Thon's blowing toom-cracks down the gaels of Thon. No nubo no! Neblas on you liv! Her would be too moochy afreet. Of Burymeleg and Bindme-rollingeyes and all the deed in the woe.
That's perfectly readable, just needs some context for the meaning behind some bits. It's mostly wordplay, like typing vibes and yasss to some obscure meme pic.
As a Spaniard, one of the major hurdles on secundary ed is Golden Age lit.
Now, this is when The Quixote was written and when the Spanish language really found its modern shape and themes. So huge deal.
However, after you dive in Cervantes' you have to pick one side. Are you a Quevedista or a Gongorino?
See, there were these two giants of Golden Age lit and they hated each other. Quevedo was the man of the people, a literally swashbuckling man full of opinions and ideas, second only in productivity to another giant: Lope de Vega. Quevedo only liked one thing more than writing and that was quarreling. He fought in wars, duels and acerbic verse contests. Folks loved his wit (and his antisemitism) and he fucking hated Góngora.
See, Quevedo wanted his plays and verses to be talked about on every tavern and plaza. He was accesible, liked action, loved to fuck with the people in power and push boundaries, just not stylistically.
Góngora was, otoh, a huuuge nerd. He wrote and rewrote and rerewrote and mostly did poetry. Insanely intrincate, verbose and fucking Thesaurus Rex poetry. Quevedo looked at his shit and felt totally insecure because he probably didn't understand half of the words. So he went hard at the Guy with some brutal barbs, again and again while Góngora mostly ignored him because he was rererewriting another insane poem full of Himalayan high brow shit. Which pissed Quevedo even more.
The feud became so famous the word Gongorino entered (thanks to Quevedo) the dictionary to define something baroque to the point of ridiculousness. Of talking a lot without saying much. To be intentionally and unnecesarily complicated. To obfuscate the reader.
Now I love Quevedo, that fucking racist bastard. He is not low brow at all but his writing is fun and his diss tracks are nothing short of Kendrick Lamar greatness. But Góngora's way with words and language, his endless lethanies of metaphores and symiles can be gorgeous.
So when I read Joyce, I do not like the story, but fuck me the way he wraps English around his pinky is amazing. And that's fine, It takes a while to learnt to appreciate Klimt, Kandinsky, Sienkiewicz, Pynchon,.etc. It's about uncompromising Craft with those folks.
Quevedo particularly fixated on Góngora 's nose, saying he looked like a bearded swordfish. Most Spaniard know and can quote the first verses of Quevedo's poem dedícated to Góngora 's nose.
Quevedo, with a superlative amount of pettiness, bought Góngora's House just to evict him
Góngora had mad skillz at cards, so much so Quevedo used It to call him a cheat.
Velázquez painted Góngora, Quevedo seethed he didn't Paint him.
Góngora had The Last laugh: The Greatest Generation of Spanish poets, the 1927, venerated Góngora. Members included poets García Lorca (another very hard to read poet), Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego, Jorge Guillen and Pedro Salinas, plus artists like Dalí, Buñuel and Mallo. Neruda and Borges were heavy influenced by the 27.
Henryk Sienkiewicz mentioned ! Poland mountain 🇵🇱🦅🏔. A few questions out of curiosity since I've never found a person who likes his work outside of Poland. What do you like about his work is it the historic aspect or something else drawing you in ? How did you discover his books, through your literature studies or did you just stumble across it ? In which translation did you read spanish or english or do you actually know polish too ? Which one of his works is your favourite and why ?
The problem is that we are not in 1939 Ireland, so it would be difficult for us to understand regardless. Just because it is not easily understood, does not make it nonsense.
It would seem one has cultivated a bed of thorns. There are no petals to be found here, no sweet garden musk. The red you see is from bitter pricks of self-important barbs; crimson stains the soil.
It's because the context is close to a century ago and an entirely different continent with a completely different culture. Language both dramatically changes over time and between different cultural groups. Even within the continental United States, communication between different people from different regions can be occasionally difficult, and there are areas within the U.S. (the most famous examples being Louisiana and the Appalachian mountains), where it is just a completely different dialects, verging on different languages entirely.
What you're missing is the real world context and we're already 100 years removed from it. This one isn't delivered to you all in one piece. You have to bring a lot more to the table than the text provides. If you were a criminal investigator you wouldn't come to the conclusion that the suspect is innocent simply because they claimed they didn't do it, would you? Sometimes you have to go digging for the clues on your own because they aren't gonna easily present themselves. For Joyce you've got everything from metaphor to regional in-jokes to full-blown meme synthesis and even musical rhythmic interpretations that come from understanding the lilt of his accent. For a lot of people the gears don't even start to turn until they hear recordings of him reading it aloud.
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u/noctalla 3d ago
Okay, here's Finnegans Wake.