"What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause!"

(15.29-18.16)  One of the few similarities between my father and Joyce's father is that both of them seem to have undertaken more jobs than their respective sons could count.  For a few years when I was a little Wadlinger, my father worked for a company that was headquartered in Brussels, which often required that he spend extended periods of time in Belgium.  On his returns from Europe, he would regale my sister and I with stories of Manneken Pis, a small statue/fountain that has been a Brussles landmark/icon since the 17th century.  If you're not familiar with Manneken Pis (and if you're not, you've got to get with it), it depicts a little boy . . . pissing.

Why am I writing about my boyhood fascination with some Belgian statue?  Because it's in the Wake, obviously.  More on this to come, but I'd like to take this opportunity to post a relevant photo of me and Manneken Pis from my visit to Europe in 2004:

 

At the beginning of the passage, our narrator (who at least for the moment seems to be Shem the Penman, one of HCE's sons) spies a lone, misshapen figure -- apparently a Neanderthal -- drinking out of a skull.  Shem (I'm going with it for now) tries to speak to this creature, which he identifies as a "a Jute," in a variety of languages.  Once Shem's found the right tongue, he hails the Jute and invites it to "excheck a few strong verbs."  Thus begins the dialogue between Jute and Mutt (aka Shem).

In the Reader's Guide, Tindall highlights the Jute-Mutt dialogue as a depiction of both a family conflict between sons and a public battle between the Irish and the Danes at Clontarf, with the interchange taking place at the time of early 20th century comic strip characters Mutt and Jeff, of the prehistoric cave men, and of the 11th century Irish king Brian Boru.  On the literal level, this dialogue continues the Babel theme introduced in the previous passage, with the stutterer Mutt consistently failing to communicate with the deaf Jute.  When the invading "Usurp" Jute causes Mutt to tremble, Jute attempts to bribe Mutt with a variety of currencies.  At this point, Mutt suddenly identifies Jute as an incarnation of the fallen HCE, shouting, "Louee, louee!"  McHugh notes that this corresponds with the Italian "Lui, lui!" -- "It's him, it's him!"  (It might be a stretch to argue that Joyce foresaw that I'd be reading this on a night when new episodes of Louie were airing.)

Mutt realizes that it's on this "eggtentical spot" where HCE/humpty dumpty had his big fall.  Mutt further references HCE's fall by noting that this new manifestation has occured "[t]here where the missers moony, Minnikin passe."  Minnikin passe, as I hinted at above, references Manneken Pis, and it also foreshadows the eventual description of HCE's fall.  Many can piss here, and this feature of Phoenix Park likely played a role in his downfall, for he is said to have been caught peeping on two young women who might have been in the act of urinating in the park.  (Incidentally, Manneken Pis also has a lesser-known sister statue, Jeanneke Pis, which -- can you guess? -- depicts a little girl pissing.  Jeanneke Pis wasn't installed until the 1980's.  If she had shown up, say, 60 years earlier, odds are Joyce would have placed her in the Wake as well.  I hereby conclude the most extended discussion of micturition that I've ever engaged in.  Moving on . . . .)

Relations grow testier between Mutt and Jute.  Frustrated with his inability to understand Mutt (". . . I can bueuraly forsstand a weird from sturk to finnic . . . "), Jute decries Mutt's language as obscene and takes an unfriendly leave of his counterpart.  (It's worth noting here that Mutt/Shem is a manifestation of Joyce as the author of the Wake, which I suppose makes Jute a manifestation of the reader.)  Mutt detains him for a while longer in order to explain both the presence of HCE in the Dublin landscape and to elaborate on the development of Ireland and the Irish race.  Jute dismisses this as " 'Stench!" and thus prompts Mutt to note that they are in the midst of an eternal cycle -- that the Dublin they know is "crumbling" and the vanquisher will soon become the vanquish.  Misunderstanding rules the day, though, and the passage ends with Jute saying, "Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud."  He is both the immortal god Thor come to lord over Mutt and his earthly home and a bewildered human who will soon be turned to dust.

I had underestimated this passage, thinking that the dialogue would be easier to get through than the previous material.  It was just a dense as the rest of the book, though, but little hooks like Manneken Pis continue to draw me in.