A new home for "Finnegans Wehg"

Walter Wetzels, an emeritus professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, recently donated a German translation of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to the Ransom Center. He shares a bit of his history with the text.

It must be more than 50 years ago after reading my first novel in English (that was Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel) that I very ambitiously tried the famous and feared James Joyce. And, of all things, I chose Finnegans Wake. Little did I know what to expect, and—predictably—it turned out to be a disaster. I felt completely defeated and asked myself whether the English that I had learned in school and Joyce’s version were the same language. I gave up. Much later, in the mid 1990s, I heard that some audacious person had translated the work into German. I bought the tome hoping to finally understand it in my native tongue. Of course, the “translation” turned out to be just as impenetrable to me as the original had been. Defeated again— and for good this time—the book ended up on one of my shelves where it has rested, untouched, ever since.

It was not until 2010, when I started to tackle the problem of thinning my library, that the only sensible solution for my ancient struggles occurred to me: the Harry Ransom Center.

I am gladly passing the work on to more competent and determined minds.