Campbell's First Contact with Finnegans Wake

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lfrisch
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Campbell's First Contact with Finnegans Wake

Post by lfrisch »

I know that Campbell brought a copy of Ulysses back with him (via Sylvia Beach) when he returned from Paris - having had the advantage of her exegesis - but does anyone know when and under what circumstances he first encountered Finnegans Wake? I suspect that is common knowledge, but I'm embarrassed to say I've been unable to locate the information. I don't believe he clarifies this in the Skeleton Key, but I don't have access to a copy presently.

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Greetings, lfrisch, and welcome to the JCF's Conversations of a Higher Order. I looked through the index of The Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work and found this on page 114:
When Finnegan's Wake came out in 1939 I had already found it when I had been in Paris; it had been appearing in Eugene Jolas's Transition magazine, in an earlier version under the title "Work in Progress." I had become fascinated in the material at the time because it meant something to me. So when the book came out I immediately bought a copy and spent the first weekend reading it through. And,oh, it was a grand, grand, experience reading Finnegans Wake and being more or less ready for it.
So it looks like he was familiar with it before it was even published.

Cheers,
Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

lfrisch
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Post by lfrisch »

Wonderful! I thought as much. So by 1932 he knew something of the Wake? Do you have any idea what else he. might have been reading and discussing (we know Spengler and the Goethe Conversations with Eckerman) on his 1932 trip from Tacome to Alaska? Mr. Walter appears to have sealed the 1932 diary that could tell us, but I wonder if either there's another window or a possibility of partial unsealing so we could get a fuller glimpse of what these 10 shipboard weeks brought?

Myrtle
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Post by Myrtle »

Hi lfrisch,

Here are a few quotes from the book A Fire in the Mind:
Page 204:

...Campbell and Ricketts were in fact reading Einstein, Heisenberg, and other works on the New Physics during this journey...

...Ricketts was reading the Japanese Zen masters, and the Tao Te Ching...
Page 206:

Besides Einstein and Jeffers, the authors and books that seem to have been aboard the Grampus include: Spengler, which Ricketts was now reading; Goethe, auf deutsch, and Eckermann's Gesprache mit Goethe, The Signature of All Things by the seventeenth-century mystic Jacob Boehme, in the Everyman edition; a German edition of the mystic poetry of Novalis; Allee's Animal Aggregations; Smuts's Holism and Evolution; John Elof Boodin, A Realistic Universe; Briffault's The Mothers; Dostoevski's The Idiot; and Goddard's translation of the Tao Te Ching.[10] This interesting little library was accompanied by the inevitable navigation maps, tidal charts, and technical books to aid in the more difficult classifications.
Page 210:

There was plenty of time for Joseph and Ed to talk, and the friendship that had begun in Carmel was firmly cemented on this return voyage. By now their minds moved alike. They agreed on the towering transcendence of Bach, the greatness of Goethe and Novalis, and the profundity of Spengler. (Ed was brushing up on his high school German, in order to be able to read Goethe and Novalis in the original.) Moreover, the insights that they had gleaned from Jeffers were working in each man's soul in different, but analogous ways.
Hope this helps.

Myrtle

lfrisch
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Post by lfrisch »

Beautifully! I have lost my copy of the Lsarsen's book, and I couldn't remember what they chronicled. This helps immensely. I won't have anything like a Joe Campbell along in September to bounce ideas off - nor, fortunately a Xenia Kashaveroff to distract from reading, scenery and reflection - but I hope to match my reading to their library as much as possible, now if only another Campbell/Ricketts enthusiast were to join this voyage! .

lfrisch
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Post by lfrisch »

"New physics" (relatively and quantum mechanics) influenced a good deal of literature and art in the early 20th century. Given that Campbell was exposed on the Grampus trip to discussions of the New Physics and may himself have read Einstein's popular exposition of relativity in 1932 or earlier, AND was close to John Cage whose modernism is frequently linked (occasionally by Cage himself) to quantum physics, did any of this have an influence on Campbell's thinking? Mann, who Campbell loved, used themes of time and relativity extensively in the Magic Mountain. Did any of this influence Campbell?

I've suspected that in later years Campbell was uninterested in such matters and may have even harbored some hostility to reductive science. Is there anything in his writings that anyone knows that would corroborate or refute this - or was he silent on the subject?

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