(395.26-397.6) In writing Finnegans Wake, Joyce wasn't afraid to get a bit salty. That much is clear through the first 395 pages or so that I've gotten through. References to sex appear frequently, and there's quite a lot of talk of urination. But for my money (which isn't worth all that much . . . remember, I'm doing this blog for my own edification), today's passage is the bawdiest so far in the Wake. It's clearly sexy and provocative, but Joyce's achievement here is that the passage can be as erotic as the reader wants it to be.
The four old men have finished their addresses to each other, and now the narrator takes over to recount "a pretty thing happened of pure diversion mayhap." Tristan, groping Iseult with "his flattering hend," finds a proverbial sweet spot, causing that "vivid girl, deaf with love" to let out a "queeleetlecree of joysis crisis" (a wee little cry of "Jesus Christ!"). The two are now presented with "the golden importunity of aloofer's leavetime," and this is the moment when readers can choose their own adventure, in a sense. Tristan, the narrator says, "as quick, is greased pigskin, Amoricas Champius, with one aragan throust, druve the massive of virilvigtoury flshpst the both lines of forwards (Eburnea's down, boys!) rightjingbangshot into the goal of her gullet." (Note how this passage echoes those lines from the book's opening page: "Sir Tristam, violer d'amores, . . . had passencore rearrived from North Amorica . . . .") In one sense, the narrator describes Tristan and Iseult "frenching," with Tristan sticking his tongue past Iseult's teeth and into her throat. In another sense, the narrator describes the act of Tristan sexually penetrating Iseult. McHugh notes that "massive" stands for "missive," which stands for tongue. On the other hand, it doesn't require much of an imagination (or depraved mind) to take "massive of virile victory" one step further, especially in a book full of genitalia puns.
In the next paragraph, the narrator explain's Iseult's part in this affair. She's "a strapping modern old ancient Irish prisscess," with "nothing under her hat but red hair and solid ivory . . . and a firstclass pair of bedroom eyes, of most unhomy blue . . . the charm of favour's fond consent!" Iseult's role as seductress is fairly clear. "Could you blame her, we're saying, for one psocoldlogical moment?" the narrator asks. "What would Ewe do?" It's not right to expect Iseult to be dedicated to King Mark, "that so tiresome old milkless a ram, with his tiresome duty peck and his bronchial tubes." Instead, Tristan and Iseult come together for an affair, "the twooned togethered, and giving the mhost phassionable wheathers, they were doing a lally a lolly a dither a duther one lelly two dather three lilly four dother." I dunno, it sure sounds to me like they're having sex, and the narrator says that this is "a fiveful moment for the poor old timetetters [the four old men, who are peeping on the lovers], ticktacking, in tenk the count." As the encounter concludes, the narrator describes "her knight of the truths thong plipping out of her chapellledeosy, after where he had gone and polped the questioned." That "thong plipping out of" Iseult could either be Tristan's tongue, or his "member," and your reading of that phrase will color your interpretation of whether the paragraph's final, one-word sentence -- "Plop." -- describes the sound of that tongue coming out of Iseult's mouth or the result of Tristan's ejaculation.
See what I meant? Pretty bawdy. But also stellar prose. The passage ends with a short paragraph describing the effect of the scene on the four old men: "it was tootwoly torrific, the mummurrlubejubes!" As a result of this terrible, yet terrific thing that they've witnessed, the four old men are "now happily buried," indicating that they're either dead or happily (re)married.
It's going to be hard to top this passage in terms of pure, Joycean fun, but we'll see what happens tomorrow, when we reach the conclusion of this final chapter of Book II of the Wake.
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