For Andrea Zanzotto the absolute Babelian freedom of Finnegans Wake represents a threat, but at the same time a seduction. In the end, it brings to light a feeling of anxiety that has been evident from the very beginning of Zanzotto’s activity as a critic. The key to this polarity is a reversibility paradox: at the top of the Joycean verbal utopia, at the very core of his supreme wordplay and explosive “chaosmosµ, barbarian “entrailsµ are indeed emerging, and the repressed inarticulateness of language comes back again.