Joyce was patiently putting together the all but impenetrable labyrinth of Finnegans Wake. The term 'labyrinth' has been applied to the book with tiresome regularity, but there is rather more to the comparison than Joyce's celebrated identification of himself with Daedalus might at first suggest, for Daedalus' maze, the archetype of all works of art for Joyce (as Finnegans Wake was to be the ultimate work), was said to be constructed in the form of a quincuncial cross - symbol of the structure of Finnegans Wake. The constantly frustrated strivings of the Four to reach the centre of the cross are neatly fore-shadowed in one of the short passages which appear to have been unintentionally omitted from the text of 1.6: 'Fors Forsennat Finds Clusium' (142.24). Lars Porsena's labyrinth at Clusium and Daedalus' on Crete are of course analogous in Finnegans Wake and both are concrete, visual representations of the problems which confront the senate of Four in their search for a clue to the real Shaun in III.3. Joyce is careful, as always, to assure his bewildered reader that in constructing the labyrinth he incorporated the essential thread to guide the understanding: 'A coil of cord.' (433.28) 

Hart, Clive / Structure and motif in Finnegans wake