(121.16-123.29) Today's post will likely be one of my shorter ones because, well, this passage is mostly a continuation of yesterday's "Book of Kells" passage, and I don't have much to add to what I wrote yesterday because, well, Finnegans Wake is hard.
The Book of Kells gets explicitly mentioned here when the narrator claims that ALP's letter predates and prefigures that ancient Irish manuscript. After pointing out the "cruciform postscript" of the letter, the narrator explains that this is "plainly inspiring the tenebrous Tunc page of the Book of Kells." This explicit reference to The Book of Kells is closely followed by implicit references to Joyce's Ulysses. "[E]ighteenthly or twentyfourthly," the narrator says, referencing the 18 chapters of Ulysses and the 24 parts of The Odyssey, is "the penelopean patience of its last paraphe, a colophon of no fewer than seven hundred and thirtytwo strokes tailed by a leaping lasso." This references the last chapter of Ulysses -- "Penelope" -- which consists of a long monologue delivered by Molly Bloom (the Penelope figure of Joyce's novel) and provides great rewards to the patient reader. It also references the 732 pages of the original published version of Ulysses. Joyce, then, is incorporating Ulysses into the Wake and using Molly Bloom as another manifestation of ALP.
The four-page "Book of Kells" paragraph ends with an interesting reversal of the feminist-leaning theme of this chapter:
who thus at all this marvelling but will press on hotly to see the vaulting feminine libido of those interbranching ogham sex upandinsweeps sternly controlled and easily repersuaded by the uniform matteroffactness of a meandering male fist?
Is the narrator (or Joyce, I suppose) saying here that it's futile for women to express themselves as artists because their viewpoint will ultimately be overpowered by the dominant male narrative? I don't know . . . .
Today's passage ends with a paragraph referencing the work of one "Duff-Muggli," who apparently is a scholar of ALP's letter. Duff-Muggli seems to have highlighted the "perplex" underlying literary analysis, and perhaps even literature itself. This, once again, is that different individuals will inevitably read the same text differently and, furthermore, have different tastes. For example, The Odyssey (and Ulysses) can be viewed both as "a Punic admiralty report" (detailing the wanderings of one individual as a type of news story or historical study) and "a dodecanesian baedeker of the every-tale-a-treat-in-itself variety which could hope satisfactorily to tickle me gander as game as your goose" (giving an exciting glimpse at an exotic destination). Which is the Wake? Probably both, and more.
(119.10-121.16) Wow. Today's passage is a doozy. These two pages are the first half of a four-page paragraph that, on a literal level, describes the appearance (i.e., handwriting or penmanship style) of the letters that make up the words in ALP's letter.
Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key provides, appropriately enough, one of the keys to today's (and tomorrow's) reading. This paragraph is a parody of an introduction to The Book of Kells written by Sir Edward Sullivan and published in 1914. (Campbell and Robinson assert that the Tunc page of The Book of Kells sheds light on the Wake, but how helpful it is is beyond my level of expertise right now.) Joyce, like Sullivan, describes in intricate detail the way each letter appears on the page. Really, there's no way I can do justice to this parody here. It's something that has to be read in the original to be understood.
Aside from the parody, these pages also feature Joyce commenting on the intricacy and depth of the Wake itself. Atherton, in his The Books at the Wake, explains Joyce's respect and admiration for The Book of Kells, and Joyce here is placing his own book on the same lofty level as that early Irish masterwork. Joyce sets forth the symbols he uses as shorthand for both HCE (an E turned 90 degrees clockwise, so it's face down) and ALP (the Greek letter Delta), as well as a few other symbols. He provides a bit more information on the significant numbers found in the book (such as 1132), and he references words that have figured prominently in the text (e.g., "maggers" at 120.17, which featured in the story of HCE's name and is found at 31.10).
This is all dense stuff, even by Wake standards, and today is one of those days where my understanding of the passage isn't yet developed enough for me to discuss it more in depth. This indeed is a passage "very like a whale's egg farced with pemmican, as were it sentenced to be nuzzled over a full trillion times for ever and a night till his noddle sink or swim by that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia." While I like to think that I'm the ideal reader suffering from the ideal insomnia, I've only read through these pages three or four times so far, so I've got a lot more nuzzling to do here.
I'll close out today's post by highlighting the last lines of the reading:
(here keen again and begin again to make soundsense and sensesound kin again)
I feel like this is a perfect encapsulation of what Joyce is doing both with this passage and with the Wake as a whole. He's taking the English language apart and putting it back together again (perhaps in the manner of Humpty Dumpty) in a way that unites both sound and sense. So far, I'd say his attempt was fairly successful.
(116.35-119.9) We pick up with the narrator digressing a bit from the analysis of ALP's letter to once again comment on the cyclical nature of human existence. This is the way of love, the narrator says: "The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times" This is also the pattern of the Wake (thunderbirth, life, death, and river-resurrection) and (as the secondary sources point out) the Viconian system Joyce used as one of the bases for the Wake. The narrator approaches this idea with a bit of comical exasperation: "So what are you going to do about it? O dear!"
The digression goes on for another paragraph. This time Vico is referenced by his first name: "jambebatiste." "The olold stoliolum" is told in every conceivable language and will go on forever, for "billiousness has been billiousness during milliums of millenions." Both the letter and the Wake -- "this oldworld epistola of their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections" -- will keep on popping up, always an old story, but always fresh and relevant to our situation.
Going back to the literary analysis, the narrator once again emphasizes the trouble with . . . well . . . analyzing literature. While we "may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense of the lot," the narrator assures us that the letter (and the Wake) is of "genuine authorship and holusbolus authoritativeness." The story told in the letter is complete, over, and written into history. But even if someone thinks he or she has a true grasp of its meaning, that person will always have a sense that "this downright there you are and there it is is only all in his eye."
We can ultimately only give our own personal interpretation to the letter and the Wake, the narrator says, because "every person, place and thing of the chaosmos of Alle anyway connected with the gobblydumped turkery was moving and changing every part of the time." Everything in life (and, it seems Joyce is arguing, quality literature) is fluid, whether it be an individual's personal development or language's evolution. We're lucky, the narrator tells us, that "we have even a written on with dried ink scrap of paper to show for ourselves, tare it or leaf it . . . after all that we lost and plundered of it." We can only cling to the hope that "things will begin to clear up a bit one way or another within the next quarrel of an hour."
(114.21-116.35) We pick up today with more discussion of ALP's letter (obviously -- it's what this chapter's about). There are three themes or points of interest present in today's passage, which consists of a single paragraph.
First, the narrator calls our attention to the tea stain found on letter. The narrator says that this stain "is a cosy little brown study all to oneself," and that it is important in "establishing the identities in the writer complexus," regardless of whether it's a "thumbprint, mademark or just a poor trait of the artless." The narrator reminds us that not all letters bear a signature. Here, the tea stain serves in the place of a signature. And really, the narrator explains, signatures are often unnecessary, for "[a] true friend is known much more easily, and better into the bargain, by his personal touch, habits of full or undress, movements, response to appeals for charity than by his footwear, say."
From the discussion of the tea stain signature, the narrator performs a psychoanalysis of the letter's contents. Taking a cue from Freud (referenced with "freudened") and Jung (referenced with "yung"), the narrator dedicates a bit of discussion to unraveling the sexual themes latent in the letter. But, after going into the psychoanalysis, the narrator discounts its value, saying that it's "as human a little story as paper could well carry." This story gets repeated every generation, so we shouldn't be surprised to hear it's happened again.
This leads to the third part of the paragraph, in which the narrator gives a Marxist interpretation to the letter. "Father Michael" is "the old regime," "Margaret is the social revolution," "dear thank you signifies national gratitude," and so on. Ultimately, though, this is Joyce parodying both psychoanalysis (which, on a biographical level, did next to nothing to help treat Joyce's daughter, who suffered from mental illness throughout her adult life) and Marxist analysis. After all, the narrator says, language is language, and certain language is appropriate for the clergy and metaphysicians, while certain language is appropriate for the "kicksheets" engaging in amorous affairs in whatever secluded spots they can find -- whether it's "down blind lanes" or "under some sacking left on a coarse cart" -- and the clergy shouldn't use the kicksheet's language, and vice versa. Once again, this is the narrator reminding us that sometimes it's ok -- and even proper -- to take things literally, and that we shouldn't get "lost in the bush," like a wilderness explorer or Freud himself might. (Admittedly, with the Wake, this is often easier said than done.)
(112.8-114.20) Today in the Wake, the narrator continues to deliver more information about the letter. The passage begins with what could be read as a feminist rallying cry. "Lead, kindly fowl!" the narrator asks the hen. "They always did: ask the ages." Humankind, the narrator says, will follow the bird in evolution, and eventually be able to fly, moult, hatch, and find peace in the nest:
Man will become dirigible, Ague will be rejuvenated, woman with her ridiculous white burden will reach by one step sublime incubation, the manewanting human lioness with her dishorned discipular manram will lie down together publicly flank upon fleece.
The human race, the narrator says, will continue to evolve, despite those who assert that literature hasn't been the same since women became involved with it.
The letter is proof of this. It is a piece of art and an example of one woman's strength and resiliency. The writer of the letter was not out to "dizzledazzle" us, but to tell the honest truth about her husband. On page 113, we get another thunderword, this time in the context of the letter. It may be a bit perplexing on its own, but in context it seems to summarize the fall of HCE as told in this version of the letter. A portion of the thunderword is "himaroundhersthemaggerbykinkinkankanwithdownmindlookingated." This is explained in the following lines, where we learn that the truth told in this version of the letter is that HCE's only failing was dancing with women of questionable repute. This is the "him around her" (the dancing man with his arms around his partner), the "kin kin kan kan" (the can-can dance), and the "down-minded looking at" (the man leering) of the thunderword. Anyway, this is the story as told by "Add dapple inn" (Ann, Dublin), and the narrator says this is the same old story that we've seen throughout human history of a feud sparked by love or lust.
But now the narrator wants to move from confusing "jiggerypokery" and "talk straight turkey." That's not so easy, though, for we all communicate in different ways, and it's so hard to truly understand each other. Unperturbed, the narrator urges, "let us see all there may remain to be seen" in the letter.
The next paragraph, however, begins with the narrator pointing out the differences between the narrator and the reader. The narrator is "a worker, a tombstone mason," who's anxious to please everybody. The reader is "a poorjoist" (perhaps a faltering supporter, a perjurer, and a poor (James) Joyce, all at once) that's anxious to please nobody and is very sorry to have to go home at the end of a night's drinking. "We cannot say aye to aye," the narrator tells us. "We cannot smile noes from noes." So if we're coming from completely different perspectives, how are we supposed to reach any mutual understanding?
The letter itself further complicates the problems. We've already heard it's in bad condition, and now we learn that it's written in a strange fashion, with half the lines running up and down the page and the other half running across the page. The letter seems to be written with good intentions, but, it's confusing to read. Where in this "waste" (Wake, or maybe Eliot's "Waste Land") is the wisdom, the narrator asks? The search will continue tomorrow.
(110.1-112.8) As we go further into the fifth chapter of Finnegans Wake, we gather more information about ALP's letter. After yesterday's foray into literary theory, the narrator today presents "a few artifacts" for our consideration. First is the somewhat fantastical nature of the letter's contents. Ireland, we're told, has been said to be the place "where the possible was the improbable and the improbable the inevitable." If this is true, the narrator says, "we are in for a sequentiality of improbable possibles." But really, though, the narrator says no one should be surprised if this is the case, because "for utterly impossible as are all these events they are probably as like those which may have taken place as any others which never took person at all are ever likely to be." Essentially, this paragraph is a parody of and tribute to the work of "Harrystotalies," or Aristotle. It presents the philosophical underpinnings of the letter (and the Wake) but it (theoretically) keeps us entertained as well.
Next up on the narrator's list of artifacts is the hen who finds the letter in the dump in Phoenix Park. In "Midwinter," a child sees the hen picking through the dump. After coming upon some orange peels (that seem to be just above a layer of actual orange grove in the dump), HCE's son, Kevin, sees the hen come upon the letter and seizes it. Apparently, Kevin -- aka Shaun -- has "euchr[ed]" the letter from his brother, the "heily innocent" Jerry/Shem. This act of treachery among brothers is another in the series of skirmishes that have taken place on this battlefield in the park, another "dual a duel to die to day."
The narrator next names the hen as "Belinda of the Dorans," a prize hen in her fifties, and explains that Belinda uncovered the letter at midnight. The letter, which was sent from Boston, Massachusetts, contains some seemingly trite updates on the goings-on in the writer's life, but these trite updates contain a number of parallels with what we've already read in the Wake. The letter also bears a tea stain that the narrator says (in one sense) marks it as a genuine relic of ancient Irish peasant poetry.
But the letter isn't in pristine condition. The narrator compares it to a photographic negative that has melted. While it sat in the heat among the oranges in the dump, the letter has been physically altered, and "the farther back we manage to wiggle the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw." Like the Wake, it's hard to tell whether anything we're reading is accurate.
The final paragraph of today's reading is written in a mock-colloquial style, but its a significant one nevertheless. We might not understand what's happening here -- the Wake may be "a puling sample jungle of woods" -- but, once again, the narrator tells us not to be discouraged. The perhaps mythical authorities might be in possession of the authoritative interpretation of the letter and the Wake, but any studious person "may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne." With that in mind, let's keep on keeping on.
(107.8-109.36) Today's reading continues with the discussion of the letter, transitioning from its various names to its author, contents, and essence. Interestingly enough, these pages, which take on a scholarly tone, contain the fewest number of annotations in McHugh's Annotations to Finnegans Wake that I've come across thus far. This doesn't mean that the material is any less dense or challenging, though. It's almost as if there's fewer puns and references because the language already carries a number of levels of meaning without them.
Really, it's not exaggerating (and perhaps it's a bit of an understatement) to say, simply, that this is brilliant writing. Amazing, brilliant stuff. I absolutely love it, and it's possible to write a book-length analysis of these three pages alone. This is the narrator discussing the letter, Joyce discussing the Wake, Joyce lampooning literary criticism, and Joyce offering his own method of literary criticism, all at once. The passage begins with the sentence, "The proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of scripture." Like the Wake, the letter is a fluid, almost living, document, many-sided, mystic, and of utmost significance. Once, certain "naif alphabetters" would have dismissed the document/book as the product of a warped mind, but those of us who are willing to put a little time into it know better. There's "a multiplicity of personalities inflicted on the documents or document" and the brave will uncover "some prevision of virtual crime or crimes . . . before any suitable occasion for it or them had so far managed to happen along." "[U]nder the closed eyes of the inspectors" (perhaps the real-life censors and/or harsh critics Joyce butted heads with), the various elements combine to form "one stable somebody" who experiences "a jolting series of prearranged disappointments, down the long lane of . . . generations, more generations and still more generations." This paragraph provides a key for understanding the Wake's use of archetypes and exploration of the cyclical nature of human existence/experience, and it tells us that we will be rewarded for paying close attention to the book.
The narrator brings up the question of who authored the letter, but fails to answer it at this point. Instead, the narrator raises any number of possibilities, including a thinly-veiled Joycean figure: "a too pained whittlewit laden with the loot of learning." Moving on, the narrator, and Joyce, implore us to be patient, for "patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience." (That's a good rallying cry for me and this blog.) It may happen that "after years upon years of delving in ditches dark" some authority might try to say this is all a lot less complicated than it seems, but the narrator and Joyce imply that that person isn't around anywhere yet.
After all, the narrator and Joyce say, readers of the letter and the Wake can't jump to any conclusions based on what they don't see in the text. It might be there -- we might just be looking in the wrong places. Or maybe we're looking for the wrong thing in the right places. This leads into the masterful paragraph that takes up the whole of page 109.
Really, I almost don't want to write anything about that paragraph on page 109. It's as funny as it is fascinating, and what it says can't be said better in any other way. This page should be required reading for any student of English literature, or really any student of literature. To put it too-simply, Joyce says that you can't judge a book by its cover, but you need to remember that the cover is a critical part of the book. He uses the examples of an envelope containing a letter and the clothes worn by a woman. It's the letter and the woman that are important, but the envelope and the clothes are essential to our understanding of them, just as the essence or whatness behind the letter and the woman is deeply significant.
I could go on. Like I said, I absolutely love this passage. But it's best if you read it on your own. Seriously, if you haven't read any of the Wake, read this passage. Catching the references isn't as important or necessary here as in other passages, and it easily stands by itself (even though it fits perfectly with and informs the rest of the book). Read it, now!
(104.1-107.7) Once again, I've missed a few days, but I kinda sorta make up for a little bit of that by covering an extra page or so today. This passage begins the fifth chapter of Finnegans Wake, which is the first chapter primarily devoted to HCE's wife, Anna Livia Plurabelle, or ALP.
The short first paragraph is a kind of opening invocation based (as noted by McHugh) in part on the formula used to open Suras of the Koran and in part on the "Our Father" (or the "Lord's Prayer," if you're not of the Catholic persuasion). ALP is "Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities." Obviously, she's a figure of weighty Wake significance.
The long second paragraph moves our focus toward ALP's "untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest." This is the letter we've heard about before, and we're about to hear a lot more about it. What follows are close to three pages listing the various names that have been used to refer to the letter. These names cover basically all of the key points we've learned about HCE's story, and they range from the relatively straightforward ("I Led the Life") to the mostly-obscure ("The Great Polynesional Entertrainer Exhibits Ballantine Brautchers with the Link of Natures"). There's some familiar references to nursery rhymes ("Lumptytumtumpty had a Big Fall") and songs ("Lapps for Finns This Funnycoon's Wake"). Of course, there's references to the two young women and the three soldiers ("Them Lads made a Trion of Battlewatschers and They Totties a Doeit of Deers"). And there's also at least one sort of meta-reference in "The Suspended Sentence," which references both the early ending of the accused's criminal sentence and the Wake itself (which ends in mid-sentence and begins with the last half of the sentence that's begun at the end).
The list can probably best be described as "exhaustive," and it's a bit of a relief when one gets to the end. Rather than just give a title, the last few lines give a summary of the letter or mamafesta's contents. It's said to be the "First and Last Only True Account" of the story, and it sets up a portrait sympathetic to "a Dear Man" set up by "Conspirators" and "Sloppy Sluts."
More on the letter is sure to come tomorrow.
(101.22-103.11) And so today we reach the end of both our formal introduction to HCE's wife, ALP, and the fourth chapter of Finnegans Wake. There are still those who deride HCE, but his wife remains steadfast in her support of him. In Joyce's own exquisite language, she is "one nearer him, dearer than all, first warming creature of his early morn, bondwoman of the house." She has mothered his children and sacrificed for him, and though she has aged, she retains her youthful vitality. She protected HCE after his fall, watched over him during his wake, and will not rest in her quest for him until she has crushed the slander's head and restored both his good name and the order of the universe.
HCE is beyond help from our worldly medicines and powers now, and we are warned not to defile his grave. As the narrator says, "The bane of Tut is on it. Ware!" "But," the narrator tells us, "there's a little lady waiting and her name is A.L.P. And you'll agree. She must be she. For her holden heirheaps hanging down her back." HCE was not faithful. He spent his time among the harems, with women such as "Poppy Narancy, Giallia, Chlora, Marinka, Anileen, Parme," whose names are words from various languages representing every color of the rainbow. HCE's actions might cause him to be abandoned by all, but ALP will stand by her man. As the narrator says, "Then who but Crippled-with-Children would speak up for Dropping-with-Sweat?"
The next section is a lyric based on the song "At Trinity Church I Met My Doom," in which a man sings of the conniving woman who married him and caused his downfall. In the song, the woman is the deceiver and the man is the victim, but in Joyce's lyric it is the man (HCE) who is to blame, "the groot gudgeon" who "gulped it all." The Wake's thunder is present in the lyric ("Attabom, attabom, attabombomboom!"), emphasizing the man's fall, and in Joyce's version the victim of that fall is not only the man, but us all, which is why the lyric is punctuated with "Woe!"
Joyce doesn't leave us here with woe, though. Instead, the fourth chapter ends in a manner similar to the third chapter. In a passage loaded with biblical allusions, Joyce weaves a comforting image of ALP, the river running in the book's opening word, as the river that buoys and nourishes us during our final rest. This beautiful prose is worth quoting in full:
Nomad may roam with Nabuch but let naaman laugh at Jordan! For we, we have taken our sheet upon her stones where we have hanged our hearts in her trees; and we list, as she bibs us, by the waters of babalong.
(99.20-101.22) The long paragraph detailing the rumors of HCE's whereabouts concludes today with as definitive of an answer as you're going to get in the Wake. Anyone with any sense, the narrator seems to say, believes that that "there had been a real murder." Who's to blame? "The MacMahon chaps," the narrator says, "it was that done him in." (McHugh notes that legend has it that the Irish MacMahon family was founded by Reginald Fitz Urse, the principal murderer of Thomas Becket, Catholic saint and subject of a fairly decent T.S. Eliot play.) The Dubliners loaned or begged copies of "D. Blayncy's trilingual triweekly, Scatterbrains' Aftening Posht" to determine whether the news that HCE is dead by land or water is true. The verdict, at least for now, is death by water: "He lay under leagues of it in deep Bartholoman's Deep." So much for HCE's big resurrection.
The following paragraph is another Babel of mixed languages (like the paragraph we had a few chapters back) that (with translation help from McHugh) basically gives a news report of HCE's demise. The Viceroy (HCE) visited beautiful young schoolgirls, and this giant in Phoenix Park got a banging and tongue lashing from his alewoman ("Bannalanna," or HCE's wife Anna/ALP).
Following HCE's death, a new pope-like figure is elected to assume his place and lights are lit throughout the "long (O land, how long!) lifesnight" to mark the occasion. But, the narrator cautions us, we shouldn't write off HCE as insignificant, and we shouldn't doubt "the canonicity of his existence as a tesseract." (While the idea of a tesseract was foreign to a lot of Joyce's contemporaries, we now generally know this is a pretty significant thing, thanks to the Avengers movies.)
On page 101, we shift from the assembly men who began murmuring about HCE on page 97 to the dispersal women who are wondering about ALP. We thus begin our most extended passage to date on HCE's wife, whose presence has informed the entire book (the Wake's first word, after all, references ALP's river iteration) despite her relative lack of narrative time. The women want to hear all about her, and they begin to ask questions about her identity. But first, there's an aside about Buckley and the Russian General. We're going to get more on that story in a couple hundred pages, but for now we learn that everyone seems to know that it was Buckley who struck the Russian, instead of vice versa.
More on ALP, and the conclusion of this chapter, tomorrow.
(97.29-99.20) Today's reading was (again) confusing at first, but it can be summarized fairly neatly: HCE is nowhere to be found, and rumors of his exploits are everywhere around.
The passage begins with the simple sentence, "One feared for his days." From there, the narrator questions whether HCE made some kind of noise (a yawn, a stomach growl) while hiding. What follows is another series of possibilities -- a short catalog of rumors spread around Dublin -- punctuated by brief sentences indicating breakthroughs and/or breakdowns in communication/communication technology (e.g., "Sparks flew." or "Wires hummed." or "Mush spread." or "Morse nuisance noised.").
First, there's the possibility that HCE killed himself in a fit of despair. Then, it's suggested that perhaps he returned to his native country after digging a hole out of Ireland and stowing away on a ship. In this story, he is now "Turk of the theater" somewhere in Asia Major, where he alternately throws money at belly dancers and begs for change on the streets. Another story sets forth the theory that he visited a priest and was then recalled by God, who "scrapheaped" him. It's then hinted that he might have contracted some kind of sexually transmitted disease ("An infamous private ailment (vulgovarioveneral)") that killed him and "closed his vicious circle, snap." (Of interest after this suggestion, McHugh notes that the punctuation sentence here -- "Jams jarred." -- could be James Joyce punning on his own name.)
You can get the picture as to what's going on. No one knows for sure what has happened to HCE, but that's not going to stop anyone from offering up an opinion. Much like Joyce himself, everyone's got a story to tell, and some are going to be more interesting or entertaining than others (but none as interesting or entertaining as Joyce's).
The fun phrase of the day here is "Estout pourporteral!" This appears in this context:
We were lowquacks did we not tacit turn. Elsewere there here no concern of the Guinnesses. But only the ruining of the rain has heard. Estout pourporteral!
As someone who's enjoyed his fair share of beers, I appreciate how the Guinness unlocks the tongue of the taciturn and enables them to lowquack loquaciously so that there's something to listen to beyond the rain. The brewers and their patrons shout their praise to stouts and porters. But McHugh also notes that "esto perpetua" is Latin for "be perpetual," and that "est tout pour" is French for "is all for." So the shouting's not only for stouts and porters being poured, but also a rallying cry for life and for bottomless glasses of beer.
(95.27-97.28) Today's passage begins with the four judges -- "the fourbottle men, the analists" -- giving a quick recap of the events of the Wake to date. There's been a lot of references throughout the book to the first two paragraphs of the Wake (those two paragraphs that I read over and over again through the years in my short-lived attempts to see how far I could read through the book on my own), but two particular references jumped out at me here on page 96. First, there's "dear Sir Armoury" (96.7), which triggers "Sir Tristram, violer d'amores" (3.4). Then, there's "feeling to find she was she mushymushy" (96.12), which triggers "nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe" (3.9). Maybe these examples are a bit of a stretch, but it does lend an ounce of credibility to the theories that the first page or so of the Wake sets up everything that's to follow and that the four judges' recap sums up everything that's preceded it.
At least some of the judges seem to buy into the idea that HCE's fall was occasioned by his peeping on the two young women as they urinated in the park. (This can be viewed as either contradicting or supplementing the testimony at trial that the two young women were prostitutes who tempted HCE toward the flood.) They talk about "the saucicissters" and "meeting waters most improper (peepette!) ballround the garden, trickle trickle trickle triss, please, miman, may I go flirting?" Yes, in a sense (maybe a big sense) this is Joyce playing around with his urine fetish and his (exaggerated and undeserved) reputation as a smut peddler, but if you can get past that, it's pretty good prose. After all, the "peepette!" is a great combination of pee, peep, and the feminine suffix.
Anyway, let's move past the peeing. (I'm sure there'll be more of that later.) The judges end up disagreeing about what exactly is the truth about HCE, and the summary breaks down into a heated argument. They end up burying the proverbial hatchet, though, and exchange friendly gestures: "And shakeahand. And schenkusmore." In his Annotations, McHugh points out the brilliance of "schenkusmore." In German, "schenk uns mehr" means "pour us more." In Irish, "An Seanchas Mor" is "The Great Register," or the corpus of early Irish law. So, "schenkusmore" is the four men shaking hands again, asking for more alcohol, and reverting back to their roles as judges, all in one Wakeian word.
I thought it's interesting how, in the Skeleton Key, Campbell and Robinson argue that, at this point in the book, "All might be said to be over. Every theme of Finnegans Wake has been sounded." "Yet," they continue, "the dream cycle has hardly begun." Joyce did an impressive job of subtly emphasizing the cyclical nature of humanity and human history, for this theme is in the very fibers of his book.
The narrative picks back up with the narrator once again delivering a caveat. There's a chance that "the framing up of such figments in the evidential order" might not "bring the true truth to light." So, there's still no way of knowing for certain what's really happened. Nevertheless, "all the soundest sense" tells us "that by playing possum our hagious curious encestor bestly saved his brush with his posterity, you, charming coparcenors, us heirs of his tailsie." This means (again, in a sense) that HCE is resurrected and in the process has redeemed his reputation and saved us all. But those that sentenced him to death want to keep him down (just like the mourners at Finnegan's wake who hold him down to prevent him from rising), and so HCE has now become a fox chased by dogs throughout the Irish countryside. HCE escapes, hides, and is "miraculously ravenfed and buoyed up." The "hounds hied home," but it doesn't seem like HCE's home free yet. What will happen? Maybe we'll find out in the last six pages of this chapter . . . .
(93.22-95.26) Yesterday's reading gave us a slightly more extended introduction to HCE's children, and today's reading starts off by giving us a slightly more extended introduction to the mysterious letter, which has been referenced before but not fully explained. With the trial scene wrapped up, the narrator turns our attention toward that letter: "The letter! The litter! The soother the bitther!" The letter is eyebrow penciled and lipstick penned, and these traditionally female instruments indicate that the letter is written by a woman. "Borrowing a word and begging the question and stealing tinder and slipping like soap," the letter's not a wholly original one. The narrator goes on to detail the many songs the letter borrows from (including "Finnegan's Wake") before setting forth what may be the letter's ultimate theme: "The solid man saved by his sillied woman."
My secondary sources note that the letter seems to describe and have an effect on each member of HCE's family. First, we get, "Wind broke it. Wave bore it. Reed wrote of it. Syce ran with it." This is later followed by, "It made ma make merry and sissy so shy and rubbed some shine off Shem and put some shame into Shaun." We also learn that the letter is torn at some point, and then retrieved by the Hen. We finally learn that the letter touches on the HCE-two young women-three soldiers story we've been hearing about throughout the Wake: "A pair of sycopanties with amygdaleine eyes, one old obster lumpky pumpkin and three meddlars on their slies." And of course, we get rebirth out of death: "And that ws how framm Sin fromm Son, acity arose, finfin funfun, a sitting arrows." The narrator concludes this introduction to the letter by asking, "What was it?" and answering,
A . . . . . . . . . . !
? . . . . . . . . . O!
In other words, the letter runs from Alpha to Omega.
The narrative then returns to the four judges we met yesterday. They're now sitting around in their chambers, drinking, and recounting the trial. Their conversation quickly centers on HCE, "the badfather, the same, the great Howdoyoucallem, and his old nickname, Dirty Daddy Pantaloons." They don't seem to like HCE that much, and they devote a lot of their talk to HCE's stench (which is probably especially bad, now that he's in the grave). One says, "I mind the gush off the mon like Ballybock manure works on a tradewinds day." The paragraph (and today's passage) ends with one of the judges, who "sniffed that lad long before anyone," telling a story of his first date with a redheaded girl. The judge and the girl were engaging in "fine feelplay" and "kissabetts frisking" when the girl said to the judge, "My perfume of the pampas, . . . I'd sooner one precious sip at your pure mountain dew than enrich my acquaintance with that big brewer's belch." Obviously, these judges aren't afraid to speak ill of the dead.
(91.33-93.21) Today's passage is a fun one, and in a sense, after having gotten through the hearty, meaty main course of the trial over the past few days, today's reading goes down like a sweet dessert prepared for us by Joyce. We pick up at the trial's conclusion with the accused, having given his defense of himself, half-kneeling and making the Sign of the Cross with his "paws." The narrator paints the accused as a Pope in this passage, calling him here "his holymess the paws," and later having him take leave of "the Switz bobbyguard's curial." The crowd (including the grudging "testifighter" who gave witness against the accused) erupts into laughter in response to the accused's speech.
The narrator tells us that the "hilariohoot" (hooting hilarity) of the windup of Pegger (the accused, who was recently called Pegger Festy) joins with and contrasts neatly with the "tristitone" (sadness, after the Latin "tristitia") of the Wet Pinter (the witness, who has been identified throughout with the initials "W.P."). The narrator explains that this fits into Bruno's ideas about how opposites are synthesized into a unified whole. The moods of the two adversaries -- the "hilariohoot" and the "tristitone" -- also recalls the twins Tristopher and Hilary, who figured so prominently in the story of the Prankquean. This alerts us that we're now going to get a better idea of how HCE's twin sons, Shem and Shaun, figure into this trial scene (as was hinted at a few days ago).
The reaction to the two men -- the accused and the testifying witness -- parallels their "duasdestinies." A group of 28 barmaids (or "maidies of the bar") mob the accused -- who is now "Show'm the Posed," or HCE's son, Shaun (the Postman) -- and shower him with praise and affection. As this lovefest goes on, a 29th maid, "a lovelooking leapgirl, all all alonely," emerges and seemingly merges with Shaun: "the wild wishwish of her sheeshea melted most musically mid the dark deepdeep of his shayshaun." The sea imagery indicates that this is HCE's daughter Isabel, the daughter of the riverwoman ALP.
The narrative picks back up with the narrator telling as that also amid this lovefest are the "four justicers" -- Untius, Muncius, Punchus, and Pylax (those last two standing in for a halved Pontius Pilate) -- who deliver a verdict releasing the people's favorite, King Festy/Shaun. As he leaves triumphantly and "scotfree," the testifying witness, "the firewaterloover" retorts with "a vinesmelling fortytudor ages rawdownhams tanyouhide" (i.e., a f.a.r.t.) that causes the 28 maids to cry (while "pulling up their briefs"), "Shun the Punman!" The witness is thus now HCE's son Shem (the Penman), and this "Parish Poser" is promptly "soccered" to "Drinkbattle's Dingy Dwellings" where this "dovetimid" man is chastised by the chaste belles who say, "You and your gift of gaft of your garbage abaht our Farvver!" In other words, they're mad at Shaun for testifying against their father, HCE. (On another level, this is Joyce -- the punman -- mocking himself for his own gift of gab, which he's using to write this "garbage" about HCE, i.e., Finnegans Wake.) The passage ends with the maids shouting "Shame!" at Shaun in seven different languages.
Didn't I say this was a fun passage? Having this more extended introduction to HCE's children sheds more light on the preceding pages, and it'll give me more tools to use when I eventually go back to decipher who's who among the shifting figures of the trial. Glancing ahead, we're now about 10 pages away from the end of this chapter. I'm looking forward to more fun over the next five days.
(89.24-91.33) Happy July, everyone. Joyce found a load of significance in his birthday (February 2), and somewhat like him I'm always heartened when the calendar turns to my own birth month. Hopefully the Wake momentum I've been building of late will have me rolling pretty good when my birthday comes around in a few weeks.
Anyway, today's passage starts off with the conclusion to the paragraph -- which I began reading two posts ago -- describing the trial. It picks up with more of the cross examination of the witness before the court. The contrast between the cross examination and the passage that follows it is kind of interesting, at the very least in the sense that the cross examination is more challenging to get through with any understanding. In his Reader's Guide, Tindall writes about how the language of the cross examination exhibits a failure in communication between the questioner and the witness. This coincides with my initial impressions of the passage.
I've always found Ezra Pound fascinating, so it was fun to see the man who gave invaluable assistance to Joyce as he was beginning to make a writing career (and who at least initially found the Wake impenetrable) referenced in the opening lines of today's reading: "A maundarin tongue in a pounderin jowl?" More questioning along the lines of what we read yesterday continues throughout the paragraph, and as we progress we get more references to the three soldiers and two young women who were present for HCE's fall in the park. The witness eventually comes right out and says that the two young women were prostitutes. The questioner asks, "The devoted couple was or were only two disappainted solicitresses on the job of the unfortunate class on Saturn's mountain fort?" "That was about it, jah!" the witness answers. This sets us up for the Wake's fourth thunderword, which appears at the bottom of page 90. We've seen by now that each thunderword has a general theme, and this one's theme is prostitution. A few of the portions of the thunderword that can be read as English slang words for prostitute (or sex-worker) are "whor," "ascort," "strump," and "strippuck." McHugh also identifies in this thunderword a reference to Mecklenburg Street (home of Dublin's red light district) as well as foreign words for "whore" like "scortum" (Latin), "striopach" (Italian), and "stripu" (Shelta, the language of a nomadic Irish group called the "Irish Travellers"). Obviously, in this moment symbolizing HCE's fall, his disgrace is occasioned by two ladies of the night.
The thunderword also signifies the end of the cross examination, and now the accused, Pegger Festy, begins to defend himself. While Festy doesn't necessarily deny what the witness has "deposited," he says that he's blameless. He "did not fire a stone either before or after he was born down and up to that time." He goes on to bow his head and swear by any hope that he might have of an afterlife that he has never lifted a hand against another man.
Given the length of the paragraphs in this section of the book, I once again have to cut off a day's reading mid-paragraph. It looks like tomorrow I'll be able to end in a more appropriate place, though. For now, though, I'll mimic my abrupt stop in the Wake by stopping somewhat abruptly here.
