001.1 - Joyce's Skyquake

We are using the 1999 Penguin Classics edition of Finnegans Wake, with an introduction by John Bishop.

We’ll be starting on page 3, from ‘the fall' to 'bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that we’ve glimpsed the world’s history in motion—rising, clashing, and unraveling—we arrive at a thunderword. A single, roaring word that marks the fall. The fall of man? Wall Street? The Tower of Babel? The collapse of civilizations, past, present, and future? Yes. All of it.

Joyce doesn’t just hint at a fall—he detonates it. This thunderclap is the breaking point, the cosmic tripwire in Finnegans Wake’s swirling cycle. A seismic shift in the dream, a rupture in the eternal loop. We’ve just stepped out of history’s grand panorama—so what comes next in our adventure?

Let’s break down this word.

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

Languages Embedded in the Thunderword

English – thunder

Irish Gaelic – torann (thunder)

Greek – brontë (thunder)

German – Donner (thunder)

French – tonnerre (thunder)

Russian – grom (thunder)

Dutch – donder (thunder)

Swedish/Norwegian/Danish – torden (thunder)

Italian – tuono (thunder)

Spanish – trueno (thunder)

Finnish – ukkonen (thunder)

Sanskrit – ghurna (roaring sound)

Japanese – kaminari (雷, thunder)

Hungarian – mennydörgés (thunder)

Further Diving In:

Some of these words seem to appear in fragments across Joyce’s thunderword:

“bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-”

• bababadal → Possibly referencing the Tower of Babel (a great fall)

• bront → Greek brontë (thunder)

• tonner → French tonnerre

“ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk!”

• ronntuonn → Possibly from Italian tuono (thunder)

• thunnt → Likely from German Donner or English thunder

• torden → Scandinavian thunder (Danish/Norwegian/Swedish)

• enthurnuk → Finnish ukkonen

The thunderword in Finnegans Wake isn’t just a word—it’s an event. A linguistic big bang, a sonic collapse, a verbal cataclysm packed into a single, breath-devouring eruption. Joyce doesn’t describe the fall; he lets it sound through us, shaking loose the very structure of language.

This 100-letter monstrosity isn’t meant to be read—it’s meant to rumble. Try saying it aloud, and you’re suddenly part of the crash itself, tripping over syllables like a man tumbling from a ladder, like Humpty Dumpty mid-air, like history caving in on itself.

But why? Why does Joyce give us this word, this cyclonic burst of syllables, rather than a simple “boom” or “crash”?

Because this isn’t just one fall. It’s all falls. All collapses, all crashes, all cataclysms rolled into one onomatopoetic supernova. The fall of Adam, the fall of Rome, the fall of Wall Street, the Tower of Babel splintering into tongues, the Irish rebellion crushed, the bones of every failed empire grinding into dust. It’s history’s greatest hits—but in reverse, crumbling down instead of building up.

And it’s not just past falls—it’s future ones, too. The next stock market crash, the next war, the next civilization to outgrow itself and tip over into ruin. The thunderword echoes ahead of us, too.

Even the word itself is a falling structure—watch how it stumbles across the page, syllables tripping over each other, consonants colliding, vowels stretching and twisting. The eye tries to track it, but it slips. The tongue tries to sound it out, but it stumbles. Language itself—collapsing in real-time.

And yet, within this chaos, a pattern. Thunder in a hundred tongues. A Babel of booms. A languagequake that reminds us: Every rise has a fall. Every fall, a rise.

What happens after the crash? We’ll have to read on.

References:

• Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury (fWEEK). “Home.” FinWake. Accessed Feb 13, 2025. www.finwake.com.

• Wake: Cold Reading – Finnegans Wake. Cold Reading. Apple Podcasts. Accessed Feb 13, 2025. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wake-cold-reading-finnegans-wake/id1746762492.

• James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The Finnegans Wake Podcast. Apple Podcasts. Accessed Feb 13, 2025.. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/james-joyces-finnegans-wake/id1743344183.