James Joyce and New Zealand!

Gosh, hard to believe but someone has actually finished James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake".  Certainly not me. I'm sorry but just because I have a Masters in Literature doesn't ever mean I finished the sodding thing.

I tried. Oh gosh, I tried.  It was the Irish in me and I saw it as a badge of honour and a professing of my Irishness, and, sure, I got through "The Dubliners" which was easy-breezy and quite lovely, and I managed "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man." but ... sorry, "Finnegan's Wake" brought me to my knees and after that I didn't even dare attempt "Ulysses".

Same goes for that awful Henry James.  Sure, he was never as 'challenging' as Ireland's Very Own Modernist but, gosh, trying to read through that heinous turgid prose and hating the characters and knowing that you didn't give a sod about anything they did, said or anything else in it!  Shudder!  Looking at my own row of Henry James, sitting there untouched for decades, I thought "Mmmm, so that's where antiques come from.  Stuff that's so generally unpleasant no one touches it EVER!"

And don't ever get me started on Virginia Woolf's "The Waves".

Anyway, we're meant to be talking about James Joyce!  There's an article in today's New Zealand Herald (go here) where a Kiwi writer Dean Parker challenges the long-established notion that certain passages in "Finnegan's Wake" are about The Battle of Waterloo.

Let me give you one of those passages he quotes:

"Let us propel us for the frey of the fray! Us, us, beraddy!

Ko Niutirenis hauru leish! A lala! Ko Niutirenis haururu laleish! Ala lala! The Wullingthund sturm is breaking. The sound of maormaoring The Wellingthund sturm waxes fuercilier. The whackawhacks of the sturm. Katu te ihis ihis! Katu te wana wana! The strength of the rawshorn generand is known throughout the world. Let us say if we may what a weeny wukeleen can do.

Au! Au! Aue! Ha! Heish! A lala!"

Oh yeah!  That's The Battle of Waterloo for you in a nutshell.  NOT!!!  OK, I can see the reason for that interpretation.  It's the mention of Wellington, right?  But Wellington wasn't just a general; it's also a city in New Zealand. And ... well, we from the Antipodes are all well aware that certain souls among "the maormaoring" do a certain war cry before they go into battle ... these days on the rugby field, and that there was a certain Kiwi team called The All Blacks who play rugby and who perform a certain war dance beforehand which we all know is called The Haka ...

... and although everyone now believes that the All Blacks have always done the "Ta Mate" ("You die!") Haka - although a quick whizz around youtube will inform you that this is not exactly true because they use a number of different Hakas in there, particularly during the South African World Cup - this lovely Kiwi writer-fellow, Dean Parker, has discovered that they did an entirely different Haka (The Wellington Storm Haka) during their Rugby Tour of France in 1918 ... and those are indeed the words - kinda - of the Wellington Storm Haka ... and that James Joyce was indeed at one of those games and was simply blown away.

Oh yeah, I'm so with Dean Parker here, and am simply blown away to discover that James Joyce is just one of us blown away by The All Blacks and also by the All Blacks Haka.

I told you, didn't I, about walking down Lockhart Road during the last Rugby World Cup and feeling this sudden electricity race through the street and sudden excited chatter among the Chinese passersby and everyone running for the nearest sports-bar doorway and knowing full well they were all saying "The All Blacks are about to do the Haka."  Rugby, sure, the Chinese don't care about ... but that Haka definitely excites us all.

Including, it would seem, Ireland's Very Own Modernist James Joyce.

So let's just throw a haka in here in honour of James Joyce, and to celebrate that, for the first time ever, we actually know what James Joyce is on about:



(And please note that this is NOT the "Ta Mate" Haka, so go suck all you folks who claim that the All Blacks only do that one Haka!)

So Kudos, Dean Parker.  What an amazing discovery.  And enormous kudos for being probably the only person on earth to have finished "Finnegan's Wake".