Finnegans wake
First French edition of the last masterpiece of James Joyce.
A very fine untrimmed and unopened copy printed on large paper in publisher’s wrappers, as issued.
Octavo, (1) blank leaf, (3) leaves, 650 pages, (1) page, copy in original broché binding, untrimmed and unopened.
215 x 146 mm.
One of 88 deluxe copies, numbered, printed on Arches Arjomari-Prioux vellum paper.
Joyce, James. Finnegans wake.Paris, Gallimard, 1982.
First French edition of Finnegans Wake, James Joyce’s last masterpiece.
“The Wake has passages of unearthly beauty (particularly the last page) and huge comic scenes " (Connolly).
“The first thing to say about Finnegans Wake is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable.
In order to pay it the attention it so impertinently and endlessly demands, the reader must forego most of the conventions about reading and about language that constitute him/her as a reader. Joyce’s last great work is an extraordinary performance, a transcription into a miniaturized form of the whole western literary tradition (…) The language of the Wake is a composite of words and syllables combined with such a degree of fertile inventiveness that new sounds and new meanings are constantly ingeminated”.
“Every work by Joyce is so closely connected to the preceding ones that its own movement finds its place within the broader overall rhythm: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was already virtually present in Dubliners, and Ulysses in Portrait of the Artist; Finnegans Wake finally in Ulysses. Ulysses appeared as a summation: wakefulness at its height, morning communion, midday heaviness, examination of conscience and evening fall. The book stopped at the threshold of the night. With Finnegans Wake, we cross that threshold. In this sense, one can say that Finnegans Wake is a supplementary book, closing the circle (…) The language of Finnegans Wake is liquid like the river that is its theme, but at the same time so intimately tied to the book’s depths that it is also, at once, its rock, its nourishing soil, and its sap.” (Dictionnaire des Œuvres).
An appealing copy, untrimmed and uncut, very clean, as new, preserved in the original publisher’s wrappers, as issued.
A precious and appealing copy, untrimmed and uncut, kept as issued, of the author’s defining modernist experiment.
