FINNEGANS WAKE - MAY 4TH 1939

FINNEGANS WAKE WAS PUBLISHED ON MAY 4th 1939.
In September 1938 Joyce wrote the concluding pages of Finnegans Wake, its last word (the) being as deliberate as the concluding Yes of Ulysses: 
"In Ulysses, to depict the babbling of a woman going to sleep, I had sought to end with the least forceful word I could possibly find. I had found the word “yes,” which is barely pronounced, which denotes acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance. In Work in Progress, I’ve tried to do better if I could. This time, I have found the word which is the most slippery, the least accented, the weakest word in English, a word which is not even a word, which is scarcely sounded between the teeth, a breath, a nothing, the article the"