Tuesday, September 15, 2015

"as respectable as respectable can respectably be"

(544.27-546.28)  Today's passage picks up with HCE's descriptions of those who lived in his Dublin, such as the "harmless imbecile supposingly weakminded" and the "lieabed sons [who] go out with sisters immediately after dark."  Joyce identifies the source material for his parody when he has HCE state, "[C]alories exclusively from Rowntrees and dumplings."  The land upon which these "villeins" reside is given by HCE to "the men of Tolbris, a city of Tolbris."  The secondary sources note that this deed language parodies the language used by Henry II (here, HCE signs the deed as "Enwreak us wrecks") to give Dublin to the citizens of Bristol.  (HCE also bequeaths his vouchers, knife, and snuff box.)

Surveying his life, HCE says that he has "looked upon my pumpadears in their easancies" (the two young women) and that his "drummers have tattled tall tales of me in the land" (the drummers are the three soldiers appearing once again).  He was a magnanimous and steady lawgiver who revolutionized the land with his "eructions" (both eruptions and erections).  The king thanked him for his work and gave him a nickname that "is second fiddler to nomen."  (This, of course, goes way back to the second chapter of the Wake, in which the king gives HCE the name "Earwicker.")  HCE also earned a coat of arms that features "two young frisch" that are "devioled of their habiliments" (emblematic of the two young women) and "a terce of lanciers" (emblematic of the three soldiers) and bears the motto "Hery Crass Evohodie" (translated by McHugh to "Yesterday tomorrow today").  HCE concludes this portion of his address by saying that the elders wonder about HCE's origins, including whether he was the product of forced group marriage, or carried from the sky by a swarm of locusts, but HCE suggests that he might be all these things simultaneously. 

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