If, among the billions of motifs that ‘adomically’ [cf. FW 615.6] constitute Finnegans Wake, I simply could not help [m'empêcher] picking out [pêcher] the ‘Phoenix’, it is because this motif appears at the beginning of the Portrait of the Artist, where it is surreptitiously associated with the theme of Sin [Péché].

The Portrait of the Artist recounts the genesis of the artist Stephen Dedalus. It begins somewhat like this: ‘Once upon a time there was a strange little birdie …’ This strange bird, a tuckoo (a cuckoo badly pronounced, that is), will grow into Dedalus, the flying artist, a strange bird indeed. All this begins thus like a strange f/airy tale [conte de fée/ nix]. This tale lays its first egg – a little scene, two pages long. These two pages contain, in embryonic form, the totality of James Joyce's work, including Finnegans Wake. The Portrait opens with a primitive scene, a fateful [destinale] scene in which the one who will become the artist is put to the test of the Law. The origin of this primitive scene is always the same, namely the first, Eve's primitive scene/sin [(s)cène] in the very first book which deals with the question of whether or not to be in the know [faire ou pas la connaissance de la connaissance]. There is the Apple; there is the secret of the Apple.