Wednesday, May 27, 2015

"to never, narks, cease"

(367.20-369.15) Upon surveying the scene in the pub, HCE -- like the Norwegian Captain of his tale -- discovers "the residuance of a delugion:  the foggy doze still going strong."  The people of the pub, just like the people of Ireland in the story of the captain, are in a drunken haze that heightens their natural prejudices and biases against the invading HCE/captain.  The four judges, in their "fourdimmansions," are among those drunkenly lost in the fog as they prepare to weigh in on the falsities and perverted truths surrounding HCE, or, in other words, the "[w]ringlings upon wronglings among incomputables about an uncomeoutable."

Guns now appear, threatening to bring the bullets' thunder upon any who do not respect the law.  "Keep backwards, please, because there was no good to gundy running up again," the narrator warns.  "Guns.  And it was written up in big capital.  Guns.  Saying never underrupt greatgrandgosterfosters!"  The judges set forth what amounts to their Ten Commandments (there might not be exactly ten, but close enough here), many of which have already been broken by HCE, as Campbell and Robinson note.  Some of these cover theft ("Not to pad them behaunt in the fear." -- McHugh notes that "pad" is slang for "rob"), murder ("Not to go, tonnerwatter, and bungley well chute the rising gianerant."), and lusty behavior ("Never to weaken up in place of the broths.").  These commandments set forth, the patrons join in song, first proclaiming how "the wisehight ones" have delivered to HCE "the punch of quaram on the mug of truth," and then chanting that if these "justicestjobbers" don't convict HCE, then "they'll find another faller."

The narrator goes on to describe the appearance and place of origin of the four judges (who at the beginning of today's passage were linked with the symbols of the four evangelists):  (1) Matthew, "Squarish large face with the atlas jacket," "Gregorovitch" (Moscow); (2) Mark, "Brights, brownie eyes in bluesackin shoeings," "Leonocopolos" (Athens); (3) Luke, "Peaky booky nose over a lousiany shirt," "Tarpiacci" (Rome); and (4) John, "Ruddy stackle hair besides a strawcamel belt, "Duggelduggel" (Dublin).  Like us, these four judges have been in the pub the entire time, "[a]ndoring the games, induring the studies, undaring the stories, end all" (McHugh notes that this last quote encompasses all of Book II of the Wake:  the children's games of the first chapter, the children's studies of the second chapter, the stories of the current chapter, and the brief concluding summary of the fourth and final chapter).

The reading concludes with a listing of six jurors who are also present:  Mr. G. B. W. Ashburner, Mr. Faixgood, Mr. I. I. Chattaway, Mr. Q. P. Dieudonney, Mr. T. T. Erchdeakin, and Mr. W. K. Ferris-Fender.  These men are joined, of course, by HCE, "the tout that pumped the stout" that set this entire chapter in motion.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

"Here endeth chinchinatibus"

(365.15-367.19) As HCE's defense continues, he goes on the attack.  "No mum has the rod to pud a stub to the lurch of amotion," he says (McHugh notes that this is an echo of a famous Parnell quote:  "No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation."), indicating that human emotions (such as lust) cannot be checked, nor can the consequences of our actions.  He was royally devoted to his "little love aprencisses, my dears, the estelles," but returned to ALP with "the colories fair fled from my folced cheeks!"

HCE now delivers the strongest part of his defense  "Wickedgapers, I appeal against the light!" he says.  "A nexistence of vividence!"  There really is no concrete evidence of his alleged sin, just the word of the three soldiers who spied on him in the park.  HCE turns toward one of those soldiers, addressing him as "me dare beautiful young soldier."  HCE flatters the soldier a bit, and hints at offering him the hand of "my deepseep daughter" before challenging him to produce any evidence that HCE is "the catasthmatic old ruffin sippahsedly improctor to be seducint trovatellas, the dire daffy damedeaconesses."  If the soldier can produce any evidence, then HCE will willingly appear before the crown prosecutors, as that will ensure this Caesar's downfall, making the day a new Ides of March, "a good dayle to be shattat."

HCE is now finished.  "Here endeth chinchinatibus with have speak finish," the narrator says.  Appearing next in this impromptu trial are the four old men, who each say something not immediately related to the proceedings.  Maybe they're drunk, or maybe they really don't care much about HCE's plea.  After all, the narrator says "threestory sorratelling was much too many."  We will hear more from them in the next passage.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

"I dismissem from the mind of good"

(363.17-365.15)  After listening to the mocks and attacks of his patrons, HCE plays the better man, making a peace offering of sorts by shaking their hands and taking their leave before beginning his defense.

He immediately and clearly admits his guilt while asserting that it's both a happy (the "felix culpa") and common fault:  "Guilty but fellows culpows!"  He did see the two young women urinating in the park (terming their actions "trisspass through minxmingled hair"), and he acknowledges his ignoble origins ("I may have hawked it, said, and selled my how hot peas") and his questionable practices in the past ("I could have emptied a pan of backslop down drain by whiles of dodging a rere from the middenprivet appurenant thereof").  But he's not a bad man.  He's just "[m]issaunderstaid."

HCE says that he dismisses those "who would bare whiteness against me" and that he has 22,000 supporters ready to mail "parchels' of presents for future branch offercings" on his behalf.  He's a lustful man ("Want I put myself in their kirtlies I were ayearn to leap with them and show me too bisextine."), but as for his other faults, he has reformed himself according to ritual, righting himself in both the spiritual and civic senses:  "I have abwaited me in a water of Elin and I have placed my reeds intectis before the Registower of the perception of tribute in the hall of the city of Analbe."  And it's no big deal if ALP goes out cackling about HCE's faults "to abery ham in the Cutey Strict," because HCE will readily say "the warry warst against myself" and has "with gladdyst tone ahquickyessed" to his infidelities.

HCE is working himself into quite a lather, and his defense -- which comes in the form of a single paragraph that's more than three pages long -- will conclude tomorrow.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

"and what he gave was as a pattern"

(361.17-363.16)  Today's passage opens up with the continuation of "the dewfolded song of the naughtingels."  The song describes the leaves of the trees, which are "full o'liefing" and "fell alaughing" over the Irish citizenry.  They "leaved the most leavely of leaftimes and the most folliagenous" until HCE, "the marrer of mirth and the jangtherapper of all jocolarinas" came to Ireland.  In effect, the song says, he wiped out any trace of joy from the country, for the leaves "were as were they never ere."  But still, even in the face of the invader, we can still laugh like the leaves did while we're alive.

The song ended, the narrative shifts back toward the patrons of the pub.  They ask HCE to stop his storytelling and refill their glasses, shouting, "Back to Droughty!"  With their glasses full, they proceed to mock and attack HCE.  They are unanimous, with their "roasted malts with toasted burleys," in "condomnation of his totomptation and for the duration till his repepulation."  While they refer to HCE's sin in Phoenix Park in an aside -- "(to say nothing of him having done whatyouknow howyousaw whenyouheard whereyouwot . . .)" -- this particular attack is aimed closer to the proverbial bone, toward HCE's family and home life.  Of HCE, they say that "he, that hun of a horde, is a finn."  Of ALP, they say that "she, his tent wife, is a lap, at home on a steed, abroad by the fire."

Their attack now focuses on HCE's house.  While the family's lodgings indicate that they are poor, they have hopes of rising in class:  "Auspicably suspectable but in expectancy of respectableness."  Here, on the second half of page 362, Joyce uses as his source material passages from B. Seebohm Rowntree's Poverty, A Study of Town Life, a 1902 investigative report on the life of the poor in England.  In The Books at the Wake, James S. Atherton notes that Joyce's use of Rowntree's book is a prime example of Joyce using entire passages from another author's work but changing them in the slightest way to transform the material.  Here, rather than the documentarian's objective presentation of the life of the poor, we get the taunter's mocks:  "a sofa allbeit of hoarsehaar with Amodicum cloth, hired payono, still playing off, used by the youngsters for czurnying out oldstrums, three bedrooms upastairs, of which one with fireplace (aspectable), with greenhouse in prospect (particularly perspectable)."

The passage closes with the patrons asking HCE whether he always was as detestable as he is now.  Once again, they throw the sin in the park in his face:  "Why, hitch a cock eye, he was snapped on the sly upsadaisying coras pearls out of the pie when all the perts in princer street set up their tinker's humn . . . with them newnesboys pearcin screaming off their armsworths."  Here, they claim that HCE was found out by the stealthy "Deductive Almayne Rogers," which name McHugh notes sounds just like "Old Man River."  Finally, they mock HCE, wondering whether his children have been baptized and whether they can afford to pay the paperboy.  The verdict?  "He's their mark to foil the flouter and they certainly owe."

It looks like we get HCE's defense of these accusations tomorrow.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

"But what a neats ung gels!"

(359.21-361.17)  The reading today begins with a two-word sentence/paragraph/line:  "Group A."  I don't see any Group B coming up, so what "Group A" is supposed to indicate is another Wake mystery, at least for me.  Regardless, we learn in the next paragraph that we've "jest . . . beamed listening through . . . his haulted exceprt from John Whiston's fiveaxled production, The Coach With The Six Insides."  This is another radio program.  Perhaps it's referring to what we've just heard in the pub, or perhaps it's referring to something we haven't heard.

Another radio broadcast begins.  It sounds like one to which we should be particularly attentive, since it's preceded by, "Attention!  Stand at!! Ease!!!"  This program is referred to as "the dewfolded song of the naughtingels":  the dew-folded song of the nightingales, or the two-folded song of the naughty girls (those always-nearby two young women from the park).  The song, which takes up the bulk of the remaining passage, is often sing-songy, sometimes beautiful, and (unsurprisingly) mostly obscure.  It's rooted in the musical greats -- from "beethoken" to "badch" to "sweetmoztheart" -- and it deals with themes prominent throughout the Wake.

One interruption occurs in the middle of the song.  It's some patrons of the pub noting that they recognize the radio presenter, "Roguenaar Loudbrags, that soddy old samph!"  One of the patrons adds, "We knows his ventruquulence."

The song tells us that it's the "golden sickle's hour," in which we must reap the harvest of HCE after his fall and feast on this "enormanous his," this "Panchomaster," in imitation of the Eucharist.  After this immigrant is made to feel comfortable in Ireland ("teach him twisters in tongue irish"), his fall is brought about by the two young women:  "And move your tellabout.  Not nice is that, limpet lady!  Spose we try it promissly.  Love all."  HCE falls for their flirtations:  "How a mans in his armor we nurses know.  Wingown welly, pitty pretty Nelly!  Some Poddy pitted in, will anny petty pullet out?  Call Kitty Kelly!  Kissykitty Killykelly!  What a nossowl buzzard!  But what a neats ung gels!"

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

"I am, I am big altoogooder"

(357.17-359.20)  After confessing his relations with the two young women (or was he just talking about pictures in the book he's been reading?), HCE turns introspective.  He talks of "idylly turmbing over the loose looves leaflets" of the book while sitting on the toilet and contemplating himself "wiz my naked I."  In doing so, he gets the notion that "I am cadging hapsnots as at murmurrandoms of distend renations from ficsimilar phases or dugouts in the behindscenes of our earthwork."  In other words, HCE gets the sense that what he's reading in the book, and what he's living in his own life, are repetitions or foreshadows of what has come and what will be.  In other other words, this means that he has a sense of his place in Finnegans Wake.

This is a very dense and rich passage of the book, one that I can't really fully unpack at this point in this endeavor.  Regardless, star this particular section as one that might be a key to the Wake.  HCE goes on to say that the noise made by his children (the "loudest reports from my threespawn bottery parts") lets him know that, by virtue of the act of procreation, he has "remassmed me, my travellingself, as from Magellanic clouds, after my contractual expenditures, through the peroffices of merelimb."  As a father, he has ensured his immortality, or at least his reincarnation.  In this, he says, "I, my good grief, I am, I am big altoogooder."  He is bigger than himself, and he is better than himself.

With this, HCE completes (or at least comes to a temporary stopping point in) the story of the Norwegian Captain, which he began early in this chapter (and which I started reading a couple of months ago . . . wow, I've gotten really slow at this reading Finnegans Wake thing).  The captain arrives on the beach with his family to loud applause from the populace.  They live happily ever after (or "winxed and wanxed like baillybeacons") until "we woksed up oldermen."

The final paragraph of today's reading consists of the people "disassembling and taking him apart," like a kind of reverse-Humpty Dumpty.  The people here could be either the people of Ireland or the patrons of the pub (or both), and the "him" here could be either the Norwegian Captain or HCE (or both).  This taking apart consists of (as McHugh notes) analyzing which of six heretical beliefs the Captain/HCE have dabbled in.  These beliefs all, fittingly enough, deal with various analyses of humankind's means of salvation following Adam's fall.  At the moment, it's unclear to me where this fits in with the chapter.  I may not get an answer quite soon, because it looks like next up is another radio interruption.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

"it will cocommend the widest circulation and a reputation coextensive with its merits"

(355.8-357.17)  Today's reading fully sets aside the Butt-Taff dialogue and squarely situates us back in the pub.  The patrons offer some commentary about the play, with one saying, "Shutmup," just before another adds, "And bud did down well right."  The narrator notes the universality of the tale, because, after all, "the law's own libel lifts and lames the low with the lofty."  Night (the curtains?) closes on the players, and they receive their reward:  "After their battle thy fair bosom."

HCE -- "the lord of the seven days, overlord of sats and suns" -- now delivers an extended analysis of the play that he and his patrons have seen.  It is "tootrue enough," he says.  We are all wanderers in the wilderness ("nobbut wonterers in that chill childreness"), he adds, and then suggests the tale of the Russian General's fall is a metaphor for the "overthrew of each and ilkermann of us."  The tale calls to mind the first riddle of the universe ("the farst wriggle from the ubivence"):  "whereom is man, that old offender, nother man"?  The answer given here is "wheile he is asame."  So, a man is another man when he is the same (as the other man, one would presume).  McHugh notes that this riddle recalls Shem's riddle from the Wake's seventh chapter, and this echo adds nice depth to both passages.

HCE's analysis now begins to really wander.  He begins reminiscing about the meals of his youth before noting that he has lately been reading a suppressed book (perhaps Ulysses, or maybe even the Wake).  He goes on to heap praise upon this story of "a timmersome townside upthecountrylifer."  This thought is soon interrupted when his attention turns toward two figures "among others pleasons whom I love and which are favourests to mind."  Anytime we see two people paired together in the Wake, we can safely bet we're reading about either the twins Shaun and Shem or the two young women from the park, and we quickly see that HCE's recalling those women again.  Regarding one, he says that he has "pushed my finker in for the movement" and that she "is highly catatheristic."  Regarding the other, he says that he has "fombly fongered [her] freequuntly" and that she "is deeply sagnificant."  So, at least for now, HCE is admitting to having engaged in a "manual" form of intimate relations with these young women.  Perhaps tomorrow we'll hear the reaction of the patrons (who are also HCE's judges) to this confession.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

"The abnihilisation of the etym"

(353.6-355.7)  Today concludes the Butt-Taff dialogue in nice Wakeian fashion.  Butt, responding to Taff's previous sort of awe-inspired doubt about whether Butt actually did shoot the Russian General, says, "Yastar!  In sabre tooth and sobre saviles!"  He explains that he once again saw the general about to defecate on the Irish soil.  He watched the general "beheaving up that sob of tunf for to slaimhis, for to wollpimsolff" (pulling up a piece of soil to both claim the land for his own and to wipe his backside), and, seeing this "instullt," he "gave one dobblenotch and I upps with my crozzier," shooting the general.

The final interruption to the Butt-Taff dialogue now appears.  This interruption likens the shooting of the Russian General (or the son (Butt-Shaun) overtaking the father (the general-HCE)) to the "abnihilisation of the etym" -- the nuclear explosion generated by the annihilation of the atom, or the consciousness-shattering act of erasing the Word.  The fallout of this action spreads across the continents, and Joyce prophetically (remember, the Wake was published in 1939) foresees "perceivable moletons skaping with mulicules" in London ("Pinkadindy," or Piccadilly) and Hawaii ("Hullulullu," or Honolulu) two sites of bombings during World War II.

Returning to the dialogue, Taff hears a noise upstairs and wonders what the commotion is ("Wharall thubulbs uptheaires!  Shattamovick?").  The stage notes have Butt becoming faint upon hearing this noise, and he replies, "Shurenoff!  Like Faun MacGhoul!"  Apparently, the spirit -- or the reincarnation -- of the Russian General is back to haunt Butt.  

At this point, Butt and Taff merge together.  They shake hands and make peace between themselves.  Speaking in unison, they recall the times when "old the wormd was a gadden" (or the times of Eden when all the world was a garden) when "samuraised twimbs" (Cain and Abel, or Shaun and Shem, or Butt and Taff) were born.  With the reincarnation of the Russian General, the world has returned to that state.  The general will "be buying buys and go gulling gells with his flossim and jessim of carm, silk and honey" while Butt and Taff are "playing lancifer lucifug and what's duff as a bettle."  They will do so until the time to overthrow the "father" comes again:  "So till butagain budly shoots thon rising germinal let bodley chow the fatt of his anger and badley bide the toil of his tubb."

The passage concludes with a final bit of stage notes, which indicate that "[t]he pump and pipe pingers are ideally reconstituted."  We've returned to the beginning of Vico's cycle, and the viewers of the Butt-Taff play are left to figure out where things stand.