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DALL-E illustrates Finnegans Wake
In §116 of ‘Philosophy of Psychology — A Fragment,’ a draft addendum to hisPhilosophical Investigations(1953), Ludwig Wittgenstein imagines a textbook in which this illustration appears on various pages, each time under a new caption. One describes it as ‘a glass cube’, another as ‘an upturned open box’, then as ‘a wire frame of that shape’, and finally as ‘three boards forming a solid angle.’ ‘Each time the text supplies the interpretation of the illustration’, he comments, ‘but we can also see the illustration now as one thing, now as another. – So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.’
Is the reverse also true? Can illustrations shape how we see and read text? Here DALL-E, OpenAI’s large text-to-image model, has a go at some prompts from James Joyce’sFinnegans Wake (1939). Call the results DALL-E’s Philosophical Illustrations.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Finnegans Wake, 3
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war. FW, 3
The great fall of the off wall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes. FW, 3
This the way to the museyroom. Mind your hats goan in! Now yiz are in the Willingdone Museyroom. This is a Prooshious gunn. This is a ffrinch. Tip. This is the flag of the Prooshious, the Cap and Soracer. This is the bullet that byng the flag of the Prooshious. FW, 8
ALP & HCE
Shem, Issy and Shaun
Helmingham Erchenwyne Rutter Egbert Crumwall Odin Maximus Esme Saxon Esa Vercingetorix Ethelwulf Rupprecht Ydwalla Bentley Osmund Dysart Yggdrasselmann. FW, 88
my [Shaun] trifolium librotto, the authordux Book of Lief, would, if given to daylight, (I hold a most incredible faith about it) far exceed what that bogus bolshy of a shame, my soamheis brother, Gaoy Fecks [Shem], is conversant with in audible black and prink. FW, 425
you) Europasianised Afferyank! FW, 191
Maass! But the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes. And Simba the Slayer of his Oga is slewd. FW, 203
By that Vale Vowclose’s lucydlac, the reignbeau’s heavenarches arronged orranged her. Afrothdizzying galbs, her enamelled eyes indergoading him on to the vierge violetian. Wish a wish! FW, 204
The bird in the case was Belinda of the Dorans, a more than quinquegintarian…and what she was scratching at the hour of klokking twelve looked for all this zogzag world like a goodishsized sheet of letterpaper originating by transhipt from Boston (Mass.) FW, 111
(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. FW, 18
has any usual sort of ornery josser, flat- chested fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination by syncopation in the elucidation of complications, of his greatest Fung Yang dynasdescendanced, only another the son of, in fact, ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everydaylooking stamped addressed envelope? FW, 109
it is just as hurtful to sound sense (and let it be added to the truest taste) as were some fellow in the act of perhaps getting an intro from another fellow turning out to be a friend in need of his, say, to a lady of the latter’s acquaintance, engaged in performing the elaborative antecistral ceremony of upstheres, straightaway to run off and vision her plump and plain in her natural altogether. FW, 109
fork, of à grave Brofèsor; àth é’s Brèak — fast– table; ; acùtely profèššionally piquéd, to=introdùce a notion of time [ùpon à plane (?) sù ‘ ‘ fàç’e’] by pùnct! ingh oles (sic) in iSpace?! FW, 124
we grisly old Sykos who have done our unsmiling bit on ‘alices, when they were yung and easily freudened. FW, 115
the continually more and less intermisunderstanding minds of the anticollaborators, the as time went on as it will variously inflected, differently pronounced, otherwise spelled, changeably meaning vocable scriptsigns. FW, 118
kapnimancy and infusionism may both fit as tight as two trivets. FW, 117
we in our wee free state, holding to that prestatute in our charter, may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense of the lot, the interpretation of any phrase in the whole, the meaning of every word of a phrase so far deciphered out of it, however unfettered our Irish daily independence. FW, 117-18
Good safe firelamp! hailed the heliots. FW, 613
idol worts. FW, 378
And house with heaven roof occupanters they are continuatingly attraverse of its milletestudinous windows, ricocoursing themselves, as staneglass on stonegloss, inplayn unglish Wynn’s Hotel. FW, 609
archdruid of islish chinchinjoss in the his heptachromatic sevenhued septicoloured roranyellgreenlindigan mantle finish he show along the his mister guest Patholic with alb belongahim. FW, 611
Aujourd’hui comme aux temps de Pline et de Columelle la jacinthe se plaît dans les Gaules, la pervenche en Illyrie, la marguerite sur les ruines de Numance et pendant qu’autour d’elles les villes ont changé de maîtres et de noms, que plusieurs sont entrées dans le néant, que les civilisations se sont choquées et brisées, leurs paisibles générations ont traversé les âges et sont arrivées jusqu’à nous, fraîches et riantes comme aux jours des batailles. FW, 281
THE PART PLAYED BY BELLETRISTICKS IN THE BELLUM-PAX-BELLUM. MUTUOMORPHOMUTATION. FW, 281
(Frida! Freda! Paza! Paisy! Irine! Areinette! Bridomay! Bentamai! Sososopky! Bebebekka! Bababadkessy! Ghugugoothoyou! Dama! Damadomina! Takiya! Tokaya! Scioccara! Siuccherillina! Peocchia! Peucchia! Ho Mi Hoping! Ha Me Happinice! Mirra! Myrha! Solyma! Salemita! Sainta! Sianta! O Peace!) FW, 470-71
sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. FW, 628
So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I’ll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. FW,628
‘[Joyce] liked to think how some far day, way off in Thibet or Somaliland, some lad or lass in reading that little book would be pleased to come upon the name of his or her own home river.’ Max Eastman, The Literary Mind (1931), 100. The ALP episode includes ‘jub’ (204) after the Jubba river in Somalia and ‘yangsee’ for the Yangtze (213) which has its source in Tibet.
Artefacts of Writing 
Where would he be without Carrol? Where would we be without the Joyce?