"You have it alright."

(89.24-91.33)  Happy July, everyone.  Joyce found a load of significance in his birthday (February 2), and somewhat like him I'm always heartened when the calendar turns to my own birth month.  Hopefully the Wake momentum I've been building of late will have me rolling pretty good when my birthday comes around in a few weeks. 

Anyway, today's passage starts off with the conclusion to the paragraph -- which I began reading two posts ago -- describing the trial.  It picks up with more of the cross examination of the witness before the court.  The contrast between the cross examination and the passage that follows it is kind of interesting, at the very least in the sense that the cross examination is more challenging to get through with any understanding.  In his Reader's Guide, Tindall writes about how the language of the cross examination exhibits a failure in communication between the questioner and the witness.  This coincides with my initial impressions of the passage.

I've always found Ezra Pound fascinating, so it was fun to see the man who gave invaluable assistance to Joyce as he was beginning to make a writing career (and who at least initially found the Wake impenetrable) referenced in the opening lines of today's reading:  "A maundarin tongue in a pounderin jowl?"  More questioning along the lines of what we read yesterday continues throughout the paragraph, and as we progress we get more references to the three soldiers and two young women who were present for HCE's fall in the park.  The witness eventually comes right out and says that the two young women were prostitutes.  The questioner asks, "The devoted couple was or were only two disappainted solicitresses on the job of the unfortunate class on Saturn's mountain fort?"  "That was about it, jah!" the witness answers.  This sets us up for the Wake's fourth thunderword, which appears at the bottom of page 90.  We've seen by now that each thunderword has a general theme, and this one's theme is prostitution.  A few of the portions of the thunderword that can be read as English slang words for prostitute (or sex-worker) are "whor," "ascort," "strump," and "strippuck."  McHugh also identifies in this thunderword a reference to Mecklenburg Street (home of Dublin's red light district) as well as foreign words for "whore" like "scortum" (Latin), "striopach" (Italian), and "stripu" (Shelta, the language of a nomadic Irish group called the "Irish Travellers").  Obviously, in this moment symbolizing HCE's fall, his disgrace is occasioned by two ladies of the night.

The thunderword also signifies the end of the cross examination, and now the accused, Pegger Festy, begins to defend himself.  While Festy doesn't necessarily deny what the witness has "deposited," he says that he's blameless.  He "did not fire a stone either before or after he was born down and up to that time."  He goes on to bow his head and swear by any hope that he might have of an afterlife that he has never lifted a hand against another man.

Given the length of the paragraphs in this section of the book, I once again have to cut off a day's reading mid-paragraph.  It looks like tomorrow I'll be able to end in a more appropriate place, though.  For now, though, I'll mimic my abrupt stop in the Wake by stopping somewhat abruptly here.