Tuesday, June 23, 2009

FWEET

I don't know who reads this blog exactly, but if someone who does happens to have a passionate interest in Finnegans Wake, as I sometimes do, then I'd like to alert you to a website of some value.

FWEET, which stands for Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury has a very powerful & friendly search engine for probing th Wake. It contains over 79,000 "elucidations" about each line of th Wake, & you can search th text of th elucidations & th text of th book. For instance, a search for th word "buggy" (a word that came to mind just now) gives us one line from th Wake itself & two elucidations containing "buggy".

In th FW text, it gives us just that one line, from page 85, "buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park road, with the curb," & if I want to see th lines before & after it, I can click on th page number (085) & get this page.

When I do my bibliomantic divinations using Finnegans Wake, I like to nab a smallish & interesting phrase, so I'll expand that just a bit to:

open to buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park road, with the curb or quaker's quacknostrum under his auxter and his alpenstuck in his redhand


So today it seems we have an image of a thoroughfare & a person walking w/ a quacknostrum (quack remedy) under his arm (auxter, from oxter, armpit) & a walking stick (alpenstuck, from alpenstick) in his redhand. To whom in my life (since it's a divination for me after all) does this refer? Me? A friend? Someone to watch out for somewhere in th world? Th FW gives us a clue where to find him: somewhere open to buggy and bike. I suppose I could take that literally, altho maybe it means something else... like a blog! Ha, maybe it refers to FWEET, a website that seems very elucidating, but actually carries quacknostrum under its auxter. Hmm.

All in all, in spite of any strange divinations that may come up, I do recommend FWEET for joyful Finnegansplay.

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