"Thee Steps Forward, Two Stops Back"

(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.