James Joyce

Finnegans Wake-Deutsch (Gesammelte Annäherungen)

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989. Edition Suhrkamp, Neue Folge, Band 524. Edited by Klaus Reichert and Fritz Senn. 3518115243 320 pages.

Softcover volume, measuring approximately 4.5" x 7.25", is in fine condition. Illustrated with frontispiece by Robert Motherwell.

1989 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of *Finnegans Wake*, that inscrutable work of world literature. Although considered untranslatable, the book has—precisely for that reason—continually challenged translators and writers, outsiders and experts alike, to attempt a translation. Joyce himself provided the initial impetus when he encouraged Beckett and other friends to render a lengthy passage into French. Substantial excerpts have since appeared in French and Italian. In Germany, too, there has been—ever since the attempt by Georg Goyert, Joyce’s first translator—a wealth of translational approaches, varying in success but invariably bold rather than timid. The editors of the Frankfurt Joyce Edition have gathered all of these—or at least all that could be located. It is precisely the diversity of these approaches—ranging from the meticulous assembly of individual layers of meaning to an elegant skimming over the surface—that manages to convey a sense of this enigmatic book.