Could a non-native English speaker ever read this? I'm tempted to try it...

Could a non-native English speaker ever read this? I'm tempted to try it, seeing how it will never be translated into my native language.

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no one can really read it, native english speaker or not, since it's just random words

Maybe someone with years of experience. Someone who's read many English books before (particularly early 20th century English-language authors). And all Joyce's previous work. Also someone with lots of free time, mainly to look up stuff online. I know I can't.

Can the combined intellectual power of lit make sense of this paragraph:

Now have thy children entered into their habitations. And
nationglad, camp meeting over, to shin it, Gov be thanked! Thou
hast closed the portals of the habitations of thy children and thou
hast set thy guards thereby, even Garda Didymus and Garda
Domas, that thy children may read in the book of the opening of
the mind to light and err not in the darkness which is the after-
thought of thy nomatter by the guardiance of those guards which
are thy bodemen, the cheeryboyum chirryboth with the kerry-
bommers in their krubeems, Pray-your-Prayers Timothy and
Back-to-Bunk Tom.

He's literally describing two kids going to bed.
The fuck is so hard about that?

that's a failing grade there user, please pay attention to possible deeper meanings

Absolutely. Not easily, but it's possible. Especially if you're willing to put work into it (read companion books, interpretations, etc).

You said make sense.
Not analyse.

k my apologies, would you mind contributing some analysis

It’s about St Paul

>Many critics believe the technique was Joyce's attempt to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams
Yeah, I see it. Is that supposed to make sense though, if it's a dream? It's more of words that give you a feeling of understanding something that doesn't make sense when you analyze it.

Do you understand that you're asking people that claim to have read it, but haven't?

Literally no one reads that piece of shit, they just claim they did.

I mean, if I was at that point in the book I would, but I don't really know the surrounding context to be able to provide anything thematic for it.

But in terms of straightforward language, I don't see what's difficult.

>It's more of words that give you a feeling of understanding something that doesn't make sense when you analyze it.
This is basically what I get out of it too. I try to piece things together but it's like being high or something

I have enormous difficulty understanding the relation of one part to a part 5 pages later

Just go to an Irish pub and listen to one of the drunkies dribble on

I picked that paragraph because it seems more or less coherent but it is still composed of about 50% allusions to things outside the straightforward narrative.

Like the 'book of the opening of the mind to light and not to err in darkness' what even is he referring to here, is it a bible, is it some book the kid is reading before bed, is not a book at all but just some metaphor for their going to sleep, i have no idea

it describes putting twins to bed
it plays on the tom/tim motif that stephen dedalus first brought up in ulysses as one of many manifestations of two competing personalities/archetypes - shem penmen vs shaun the postman, who reoccur in a lot of different paired names, including tim/tom

the usage of tom is tied in with tom sawyer and hucklberry finn, which some of the lines in this paragraph allude to

the book is the egyptian book of the dead

I just came across this and i am having a chuckle:

the unhappitents of the earth
have terrerumbled from fimament unto fundament and from
tweedledeedumms down to twiddledeedees

>BRAAAAPTTTehthurdukbrppitybruupppttt
Anyone know what this part means?

>i have no idea

It's an obvious statement of self-hate and frustration caused by the sexual repression of the time.

Why would you ever read translated literature from a language that you know?
You'll be able to read it, you just don't be able to comprehend it. Which is fine, because nobody can.
The translations of FW are, from what I've seen, deliberate exercises in futility, the translators are mostly doing it for the memes.

Yes. It's actually easier if you're also fluent in French, German, Italian...

>Why would you ever read translated literature from a language that you know?
Shakespeare unironically sounds better in my language

must be French because only a frog would say something so irritating

"Closing the portals of the habitations of thy children" could reference when God expelled man out of the Garden of Eden.

"Setting guards thereby" God placed a powerful angel to keep man out of the Garden.

There is a case to be made that if you're fluent in other languages (especially western European) it could even be easier.
Why would you want to read it in the first place though?

Not him but I'm French and at least the sonnets sound much better in French

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You should unironically kill yourselves. Not even an anglo. Just jump off a cliff if the job of literature for you is to "sound good".

>good sounding is not important for poetry

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