(56.20-58.22) I feel like today we're starting to get back into some familiar, or at least less hostile territory. The passage begins with a "Traveller remote" lifting his eyes to the "semisigns of his zooteac," or a Wake-ian zodiac. This traveler "quasi-begin"s to smile before the narrator interrupts (using a parenthetical, again) to tell us that there wasn't really anything going on in the traveler's head as he gazed at the sky. (McHugh notes in his Annotations that this parenthetical both references the writer Wyndham Lewis -- "windy Nous" -- and parodies Lewis's criticism of Joyce as someone who never has much of anything going on inside his head. Score another point for Mr. Joyce.)
The next paragraph seems to ask why the traveler was really smiling. To get an answer, the narrator turns toward the Four Magi of the Wake, who are formally introduced here for the first time as the "forefarther folkers," Armagh, Clonakilty, Deansgrange, and Barna. These four represent the four points of the compass and, as McHugh notes, their names are places in the four corners of Ireland: Armagh in the North, Clonakilty in the South, Deansgrange in the East (in Dublin, notably), and Barna in the West. The four men say (in one sense) that before HCE fell ill he filled heaven. (You could also say that before he fell to hell he filled heaven, or before he filled hell he felled heaven.) His heaven was the stream, "alplapping streamlet," or in other words a small, lapping stream but also his wife, ALP. The rise of one generation at the expense of the next is also indicated by the four men saying that they were "wee wee" "thermites" during HCE's days, and the fall of HCE "wonderstruck" them as thunder. Now, with HCE gone, they are like four all-seeing sages.
But maybe it's wrong to call them "all-seeing." They go on to say that even if we had the "unfacts" of HCE's story, we still wouldn't have enough information to be certain about what happened to him. After all, his judges are "freak threes" (the three soldiers in the park) and his jury are "minus twos" (the two young women in the park). But there's always a story to tell, and this time we look to Madame Tussaud's (the National Gallery is "now completely complacent") to see a wax figure. From one angle, the figure looks like HCE looking maudlin as he watches the sun set. But from another angle, it's Lewis Carroll, with a mildewed cheek, joined by his Alice, who's not in Wonderland, but standing at his side with her hand in his. (Atherton's The Books at the Wake has an extended and insightful discussion of Joyce's treatment of Lewis Carroll in the Wake.) Here Carroll, whose close friendship with young children has generated a lot of speculation and rumor over the years, merges with HCE, whose night in Phoenix Park also generated a great deal of speculation and rumor.
The next paragraph begins by using a lot of legal language to give various (and sometimes conflicting) accounts of HCE's trial. HCE is given the name Greatwheel Dunlop (after the British tire manufacturer), and our debt to him is acknowledged. But this "priest and king" is gone now, "torn limb from lamb." We get another appearance of our old buddy Manneken Pis -- here "Mannequins pause!" -- before we realize that we're at HCE's wake, which bears a striking similarity to Finnegan's wake. And as the new king approaches to replace HCE we see "the unforgettable treshade" loom "up behind the jostling judgments."
The chapter seems to be picking up steam, but maybe that's just me. I guess we'll see tomorrow . . . .
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