(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 . . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment